Forums » Suggestions
allow me to explain me slots comment. I'm not against the basic concept of the slot; however, the fact that a large group of weapons has been assigned the status of 'small' is limiting. There is no incentive to use more than about a third of them. As rogue observed, no one uses the gatling cannon. If they can afford it, they'll simply get the turret. My suggestion is not that we abandon slots, but that we introduce mass. The mass of a missile launching system would weigh a little bit more than a free laser. Not only would this be an incentive to pack in some lighter weight systems, but the masses could also be used in performance algorithms. (eg. a triple flare valk wouldn't be able to catch a triple tach valk) Then, instead of adding equipment slots, the other addons, say radar enhancements or shield arrays, would be added internally and take up space, but not slots.
Now, allow me to quote the developers:
"The expense and difficulty in purchasing ships would increase proportionally to their size. Over time, a single character might build a trading empire and amass a fortune great enough to own a large freighter. However, the resources of a great many players would be needed to secure ownership of a large capital ship, not to mention the caveats required for political approval."
AND
"Multiple characters will be able to use a single large ship, either by piloting the vessel or manning defense turrets. Craft of a certain scale may contain docking bays, allowing users to transport and launch their smaller ships from the larger."
You can find the originals at:
http://www.guildsoftware.com/ven.ships.and.addons.html
From this, it's going to be us, not the NPCs running around in frigates. Yes, it will be difficult to coordinate a large group of players to man a capital ship. That's why they will only be avaiable to members of the military. As in, yeah, we're going to have to learn to play together.
"skill"- have you ever seen a bot master the art of tactics? Yes, they can dodge and, yes, they can shoot and, yes, they can hunt you down, but they can't even manage to fly AROUND their own ship. I mean intellecual skill, not twitch.
"cooperation"- have you ever seen two bots operating as wingmen? I don't mean double teaming a player, but actually working together. As in, one playing a decoy while the other sets up his shot. Or, determining threat levels and distributing forces accordingly. This will only be feasible with a human in command. Yes, it would be hard as things stand now, but the idea is that somewhere along the line, there will need to be war rooms installed on Flagships. Then, a commander will sit there and spend the battle issuing commands to his forces. The USAF has its AWACs planes, we should have ours. The idea of this war room is that it would have a 3D, orbitable radar display of the space around the ship. It would also have com channels to the group or specific divisions.
"dedication"- granted, this is the biggest issue with PC capital ships. That's why we will have to wait until the player base expands in order to man the things.
Now, allow me to quote the developers:
"The expense and difficulty in purchasing ships would increase proportionally to their size. Over time, a single character might build a trading empire and amass a fortune great enough to own a large freighter. However, the resources of a great many players would be needed to secure ownership of a large capital ship, not to mention the caveats required for political approval."
AND
"Multiple characters will be able to use a single large ship, either by piloting the vessel or manning defense turrets. Craft of a certain scale may contain docking bays, allowing users to transport and launch their smaller ships from the larger."
You can find the originals at:
http://www.guildsoftware.com/ven.ships.and.addons.html
From this, it's going to be us, not the NPCs running around in frigates. Yes, it will be difficult to coordinate a large group of players to man a capital ship. That's why they will only be avaiable to members of the military. As in, yeah, we're going to have to learn to play together.
"skill"- have you ever seen a bot master the art of tactics? Yes, they can dodge and, yes, they can shoot and, yes, they can hunt you down, but they can't even manage to fly AROUND their own ship. I mean intellecual skill, not twitch.
"cooperation"- have you ever seen two bots operating as wingmen? I don't mean double teaming a player, but actually working together. As in, one playing a decoy while the other sets up his shot. Or, determining threat levels and distributing forces accordingly. This will only be feasible with a human in command. Yes, it would be hard as things stand now, but the idea is that somewhere along the line, there will need to be war rooms installed on Flagships. Then, a commander will sit there and spend the battle issuing commands to his forces. The USAF has its AWACs planes, we should have ours. The idea of this war room is that it would have a 3D, orbitable radar display of the space around the ship. It would also have com channels to the group or specific divisions.
"dedication"- granted, this is the biggest issue with PC capital ships. That's why we will have to wait until the player base expands in order to man the things.
>Get between the two frigates. Dodge. Watch them blow each other up without you ever firing a shot.
Well, if the frigates are on the same nation, they couldn't damage each other right?
If you fire a gauss on a teammate, he doesn't lose any HP so...
Well, if the frigates are on the same nation, they couldn't damage each other right?
If you fire a gauss on a teammate, he doesn't lose any HP so...
"...the fact that a large group of weapons has been assigned the status of 'small' is limiting. There is no incentive to use more than about a third of them."
One does not follow from the other. There is no incintive to use some of the small slot weapons because other small slot weapons are better. There are plenty of variables that can be tweaked to correct that situation. It has _nothing_ to do with slots.
"My suggestion is not that we abandon slots, but that we introduce mass."
That's not a new suggestion. But it doesn't solve the problem. You cited the problem that the weapons aren't balanced, and you are proposing as a solution that we add yet another variable to all the weapons as if this will somehow make them easier to balance. Instead, it will just make it harder. We already have plenty of variables to tweak. Adding more just makes it more difficult to determine what variable is hindering the weapon and what will result from changing it.
Not that I'm opposed to adding mass to certain objects, but we should only do it when we have a really good reason - not just because we like the idea. I can see adding mass to batteries, because right now one battery is clearly superior to another and we don't have numbers to tweak that really solve that in an interesting way. But adding varied ammounts of mass to different small slot weapons just confuses the problem. We can add mass to weapons to give some advantage to not mounting them, but they should all weigh basically the same ammount.
"Then, instead of adding equipment slots, the other addons, say radar enhancements or shield arrays, would be added internally and take up space, but not slots."
Volumn has been discussed before too, but again, it doesn't in itself solve the problem. In fact, it actually creates one. The more valuable cargo volumn becomes for something other than economic purposes, the more unbalancing cargo advantaged ships like the Marauder become and the more difficult it becomes to balance what was supposed to be an unobnoxious trade vessel. Plus you have problems like the Centurian having only 2 cargo spaces. It's more interesting to give ships 3-5 choices of special equipment than it is to limit them to only 1 or 2. Breadth and diversity is good. But what does 1/2 of a cargo slot mean? What happens when a vulture pilot fills his three cargo slots and finds he's completely unable to carry cargo? The 'Bus' suddenly becomes unintentionally a quite good ship (its already not bad), and the Valk and Marauder become insane.
As far as I can tell, all you really are suggesting is 'cargo slots = equipment slots'. That's not a good solution, and it becomes a worse solution as we get bigger and bigger ships. Should a freighter with 50 cargo slots be able to load up more than half the equipment in the game?
Volumn is useful for somethings, but mostly for things that are equivalent to cargo in being of economic worth - passenger cabins, casinos, manufacturing complexes, refinaries, and other things that add RPG value to the vessel not first person shooter value.
I am well aware of what is written elsewhere on this site. Using your logic, NPC's won't have fighters either, because clearly we are intended to. The fact that at some point, PC controlled large ships are planed, does not perclude either the intention for or the need of NPC controlled large vessels. I've discussed Capital Ship interfaces to death in other threads. Go look in the archives. In particular, look for the 'turret' thread.
"That's why they will only be avaiable to members of the military. As in, yeah, we're going to have to learn to play together."
Do you know how much time it takes working together to get a group to work in a game with military precision? About as much time as it takes in the real world. If you expect to learn to work together, expect the game to become your life. I know. I've been there. I had to quit because I could have had a real military career as much time as I was pouring into training for simulated combat. And to tell you the truth, its really all for nothing because you can't demand people show up for the battle. People will have real lives, even if you don't.
"skill"..."cooperation"..."dedication"
If you had meant all three of those words to mean 'intelligence', then you should have said so. They don't actually mean 'intelligence' so you had me somewhat confused. Yes, its highly unlikely that an AI will be as intelligent as a human player any time soon. But that doesn't perclude AI's being lethally effective.
"...the idea is that somewhere along the line, there will need to be war rooms installed on Flagships. Then, a commander will sit there and spend the battle issuing commands to his forces. The USAF has its AWACs planes, we should have ours. The idea of this war room is that it would have a 3D, orbitable radar display of the space around the ship. It would also have com channels to the group or specific divisions."
There are alot of things I want to say in responce to that. First, you are demanding the creation of alot of new interfaces. That is work for the developers, and I'd think that a good suggestion is one that involves the minimal ammount of work. Second, the USAF has people that do the laundry, cook the meals, and repair the planes as well. All are essential work, but they are not the sort of work people clamor to do. It is highly unlikely that you will be able to convince anyone to take over tedious non-combat roles. It will be hard enough to convince people to man turrets since most of the time they will just be passengers waiting around for something to happen. And thirdly, speaking from experience, it won't work, because the degree of professionalism required to make that sort of combined arms approach just really isn't attainable in a video game (at least on any sort of large scale), and you'll lose to an equal sized force of relatively uncoordinated (but skilled) attackers all of which are using front line combat ships.
The only good orders in a video game are:
"Go to where the fighting is."
and
"Engage the enemy more closely."
Don't expect any of the others to either a) be listened to, or b) be executed with sufficient skill to make them worthwhile. In other words, "Keep it simple stupid."
One does not follow from the other. There is no incintive to use some of the small slot weapons because other small slot weapons are better. There are plenty of variables that can be tweaked to correct that situation. It has _nothing_ to do with slots.
"My suggestion is not that we abandon slots, but that we introduce mass."
That's not a new suggestion. But it doesn't solve the problem. You cited the problem that the weapons aren't balanced, and you are proposing as a solution that we add yet another variable to all the weapons as if this will somehow make them easier to balance. Instead, it will just make it harder. We already have plenty of variables to tweak. Adding more just makes it more difficult to determine what variable is hindering the weapon and what will result from changing it.
Not that I'm opposed to adding mass to certain objects, but we should only do it when we have a really good reason - not just because we like the idea. I can see adding mass to batteries, because right now one battery is clearly superior to another and we don't have numbers to tweak that really solve that in an interesting way. But adding varied ammounts of mass to different small slot weapons just confuses the problem. We can add mass to weapons to give some advantage to not mounting them, but they should all weigh basically the same ammount.
"Then, instead of adding equipment slots, the other addons, say radar enhancements or shield arrays, would be added internally and take up space, but not slots."
Volumn has been discussed before too, but again, it doesn't in itself solve the problem. In fact, it actually creates one. The more valuable cargo volumn becomes for something other than economic purposes, the more unbalancing cargo advantaged ships like the Marauder become and the more difficult it becomes to balance what was supposed to be an unobnoxious trade vessel. Plus you have problems like the Centurian having only 2 cargo spaces. It's more interesting to give ships 3-5 choices of special equipment than it is to limit them to only 1 or 2. Breadth and diversity is good. But what does 1/2 of a cargo slot mean? What happens when a vulture pilot fills his three cargo slots and finds he's completely unable to carry cargo? The 'Bus' suddenly becomes unintentionally a quite good ship (its already not bad), and the Valk and Marauder become insane.
As far as I can tell, all you really are suggesting is 'cargo slots = equipment slots'. That's not a good solution, and it becomes a worse solution as we get bigger and bigger ships. Should a freighter with 50 cargo slots be able to load up more than half the equipment in the game?
Volumn is useful for somethings, but mostly for things that are equivalent to cargo in being of economic worth - passenger cabins, casinos, manufacturing complexes, refinaries, and other things that add RPG value to the vessel not first person shooter value.
I am well aware of what is written elsewhere on this site. Using your logic, NPC's won't have fighters either, because clearly we are intended to. The fact that at some point, PC controlled large ships are planed, does not perclude either the intention for or the need of NPC controlled large vessels. I've discussed Capital Ship interfaces to death in other threads. Go look in the archives. In particular, look for the 'turret' thread.
"That's why they will only be avaiable to members of the military. As in, yeah, we're going to have to learn to play together."
Do you know how much time it takes working together to get a group to work in a game with military precision? About as much time as it takes in the real world. If you expect to learn to work together, expect the game to become your life. I know. I've been there. I had to quit because I could have had a real military career as much time as I was pouring into training for simulated combat. And to tell you the truth, its really all for nothing because you can't demand people show up for the battle. People will have real lives, even if you don't.
"skill"..."cooperation"..."dedication"
If you had meant all three of those words to mean 'intelligence', then you should have said so. They don't actually mean 'intelligence' so you had me somewhat confused. Yes, its highly unlikely that an AI will be as intelligent as a human player any time soon. But that doesn't perclude AI's being lethally effective.
"...the idea is that somewhere along the line, there will need to be war rooms installed on Flagships. Then, a commander will sit there and spend the battle issuing commands to his forces. The USAF has its AWACs planes, we should have ours. The idea of this war room is that it would have a 3D, orbitable radar display of the space around the ship. It would also have com channels to the group or specific divisions."
There are alot of things I want to say in responce to that. First, you are demanding the creation of alot of new interfaces. That is work for the developers, and I'd think that a good suggestion is one that involves the minimal ammount of work. Second, the USAF has people that do the laundry, cook the meals, and repair the planes as well. All are essential work, but they are not the sort of work people clamor to do. It is highly unlikely that you will be able to convince anyone to take over tedious non-combat roles. It will be hard enough to convince people to man turrets since most of the time they will just be passengers waiting around for something to happen. And thirdly, speaking from experience, it won't work, because the degree of professionalism required to make that sort of combined arms approach just really isn't attainable in a video game (at least on any sort of large scale), and you'll lose to an equal sized force of relatively uncoordinated (but skilled) attackers all of which are using front line combat ships.
The only good orders in a video game are:
"Go to where the fighting is."
and
"Engage the enemy more closely."
Don't expect any of the others to either a) be listened to, or b) be executed with sufficient skill to make them worthwhile. In other words, "Keep it simple stupid."
First off I have to say I did not read this whole thread. I read 3 of Celebrim's posts and a few others. It is a rather long thread:)
The capital/frig ships need large scale weapons. A ship that is 20x bigger then the fighters should not be using fighter weapons. The exact details of such weapons is hard to make because of the huge amount of balancing required. Giving the frig weapons with more damage and a longer range would make it much harder to get in close to the weak or blind spots. There would obviuosly have to be a very small number of these weapons on each ship and like I said, there are huge balancing issues.
Equipment Slots I think have merit. But I believe they would have to be balanced by powerplants.
A powerplant would produce power, like batteries do now, but not store any of it. Batteries would still be required to store power.
A powerplant that produced 65 energy/second could be equiped to a fighter. Where as a cap ship might have a powerplant that could produce 200 energy/second.
Equipment would use power, an upgraded radar might use 15 energy/second or a cloak might use 50 energy/second, etc. You could equip these to Equipment ports.
Any energy that is not used to power this equipment would be used to charge the battery.
This is a very complex idea though and would require a number of possible extra variables such as powerplant size and classes and equipment size and class. But I think it would open up a whole new aspect to the game that would allow for more problem fixing ideas.
The capital/frig ships need large scale weapons. A ship that is 20x bigger then the fighters should not be using fighter weapons. The exact details of such weapons is hard to make because of the huge amount of balancing required. Giving the frig weapons with more damage and a longer range would make it much harder to get in close to the weak or blind spots. There would obviuosly have to be a very small number of these weapons on each ship and like I said, there are huge balancing issues.
Equipment Slots I think have merit. But I believe they would have to be balanced by powerplants.
A powerplant would produce power, like batteries do now, but not store any of it. Batteries would still be required to store power.
A powerplant that produced 65 energy/second could be equiped to a fighter. Where as a cap ship might have a powerplant that could produce 200 energy/second.
Equipment would use power, an upgraded radar might use 15 energy/second or a cloak might use 50 energy/second, etc. You could equip these to Equipment ports.
Any energy that is not used to power this equipment would be used to charge the battery.
This is a very complex idea though and would require a number of possible extra variables such as powerplant size and classes and equipment size and class. But I think it would open up a whole new aspect to the game that would allow for more problem fixing ideas.
Hmmmmm, Where to begin.
First off, Celebrim it's a pleasure to have you back on the boards and posting regularly.. you had vanished there for a while and my brain wasn't getting much of a workout. :)
Now, on the subject of combined arms and coordinated battles. Soundguy, I like the way you think, that would be awesome and wicked cool. Only one problem, Celebrim is 100% correct in that it cannot be done on a MMORPG. The only way that would work would be to have a LAN set up somewhere connected to the internet by a T1 off of the Router and everyone on your team in the same room around an array of 12-20 computers. the crosstalk and coordination is insane, and that still doesnt keep the half a dozen other pilots who are in the area and not part of your group and have never worked with you before from completely ignoring your grand plan and doing their own thing, thereby screwing it up totally.
On to the Slots / Mass / Volume issue.
This has been talked to death, and there is no "Perfect" solution.
My take on it is that we have the slots allready in place, and it is, on the whole, a good system. right now we have 4 types of slots (weapon, engine, battery, & cargo) with weapons broken down in to small and large. In a final product I would envision 6 (maybe 7 see below) slots(Weapons, Engines, Batteries, Sheilds, Equipment, and cargo [the 7th slot is a split of the current batteries]) with all the various slot types broken down into the following categories.
small
medium - (what we currently have as Large)
Large
Very Large
Capital Class
Super Capital Class
the small and medium would be availible on fighter class ships (what we have now)
the rest of the slots would be on differing sizes of capital ships, with each hull supporting a range of slot sizes. For instance something the size of the (misnamed) Frigate might have Large, Very Large, and Capital Ship class slots for it's slot types. Where something twice or 3 times as large as our current ships might carry medium, large and Very large sized slots.
I include cargo as a "slot" because I believe that there needs to be different size carog containers, this would also allow for "bulk wigits" which fit in a "Very Large" cargo slot eliminating the need to buy 400 units of cargo to fill up your superfreighter. instead you buy 20 bulk wigits, and if your ship is destroyed, only a ship that can hold bulk wigits can collect the cargo.
--EDIT-- this following bit is very much the same idea as durgia posts above.. he posted while i was typing.
The only thing that truly bothers me with the slots the way they are currently is the misnamed batteries. They need to be renamed as "Power Plants" or something like that, and a seperate set of slots that holds actual batteries needs to be added. The number of batteries you have determines your max energy held (and ships can now have multiple battery slots, allowing for more customization), while all the powerplants do is generate power. Then you make the wormhole jumps require a set amount of power (perhaps based on the engine type you have in the ship? a large engine would then require more power to execute a wormhole jump than a small engine?). (maybe 200 or so for a free engine and 50 for each size larger) This way a larger ship still only has one Power Plant and one Engine retaining the limited turbo times. But you can increase the maximum amount of power the ship can store by buying extra or stronger batteries. this would grant longer turbo distance to larger ships, giving traders the option to truly run from a pirate who is in a smaller ship thats optimized for a quick kill, not a long chase. Also it would give ships like the rangarok or the prometheous the option of a better designed energy loadout. right now the major limiting factor is the energy supply availible.
Hmm on a side note we have gone far afield from the original subject of frigate health.
First off, Celebrim it's a pleasure to have you back on the boards and posting regularly.. you had vanished there for a while and my brain wasn't getting much of a workout. :)
Now, on the subject of combined arms and coordinated battles. Soundguy, I like the way you think, that would be awesome and wicked cool. Only one problem, Celebrim is 100% correct in that it cannot be done on a MMORPG. The only way that would work would be to have a LAN set up somewhere connected to the internet by a T1 off of the Router and everyone on your team in the same room around an array of 12-20 computers. the crosstalk and coordination is insane, and that still doesnt keep the half a dozen other pilots who are in the area and not part of your group and have never worked with you before from completely ignoring your grand plan and doing their own thing, thereby screwing it up totally.
On to the Slots / Mass / Volume issue.
This has been talked to death, and there is no "Perfect" solution.
My take on it is that we have the slots allready in place, and it is, on the whole, a good system. right now we have 4 types of slots (weapon, engine, battery, & cargo) with weapons broken down in to small and large. In a final product I would envision 6 (maybe 7 see below) slots(Weapons, Engines, Batteries, Sheilds, Equipment, and cargo [the 7th slot is a split of the current batteries]) with all the various slot types broken down into the following categories.
small
medium - (what we currently have as Large)
Large
Very Large
Capital Class
Super Capital Class
the small and medium would be availible on fighter class ships (what we have now)
the rest of the slots would be on differing sizes of capital ships, with each hull supporting a range of slot sizes. For instance something the size of the (misnamed) Frigate might have Large, Very Large, and Capital Ship class slots for it's slot types. Where something twice or 3 times as large as our current ships might carry medium, large and Very large sized slots.
I include cargo as a "slot" because I believe that there needs to be different size carog containers, this would also allow for "bulk wigits" which fit in a "Very Large" cargo slot eliminating the need to buy 400 units of cargo to fill up your superfreighter. instead you buy 20 bulk wigits, and if your ship is destroyed, only a ship that can hold bulk wigits can collect the cargo.
--EDIT-- this following bit is very much the same idea as durgia posts above.. he posted while i was typing.
The only thing that truly bothers me with the slots the way they are currently is the misnamed batteries. They need to be renamed as "Power Plants" or something like that, and a seperate set of slots that holds actual batteries needs to be added. The number of batteries you have determines your max energy held (and ships can now have multiple battery slots, allowing for more customization), while all the powerplants do is generate power. Then you make the wormhole jumps require a set amount of power (perhaps based on the engine type you have in the ship? a large engine would then require more power to execute a wormhole jump than a small engine?). (maybe 200 or so for a free engine and 50 for each size larger) This way a larger ship still only has one Power Plant and one Engine retaining the limited turbo times. But you can increase the maximum amount of power the ship can store by buying extra or stronger batteries. this would grant longer turbo distance to larger ships, giving traders the option to truly run from a pirate who is in a smaller ship thats optimized for a quick kill, not a long chase. Also it would give ships like the rangarok or the prometheous the option of a better designed energy loadout. right now the major limiting factor is the energy supply availible.
Hmm on a side note we have gone far afield from the original subject of frigate health.