Ship Redesign

[Infinity]

Ok, this is a tough one, lots of work ahead, lots of talking and probably lots of different opinions, some of which can be read in this thread: http://smrcnn.smrealms.de/viewtopic.php ... 55&start=0 and as I said in chat, it was more throwing rotten fruits than a discussion, but hey, it's just us, the beta team.

Ship list needs major reworking, some of us think there are too many ships and that a good portion needs removing, some however would just redesign current ships and change some of their classes. I've heard some wilder propositions in chat.

General opinion is that there's too many ships on the list, be it neutral, be it racial ships, some don't see a point in having 3 racial raiders, some do (probably just me, lol).

I'm going to remind you of major propositions we have had:

1. removing 2nd tier racial raiders, removing some restricted ships (evil, fed)

2. making 2nd tier racial birds hunters (needs thorough redesign of these ships)

3. making a new class of ships - warbirds

What I want you to do, is to come up with a proposition of your own, explain why you think it would be the best solution and please don't discuss other propositions for now. We'll go back to throwing rotten fruits at each other later

There is a second issue I'd like to be addressed, but I would leave that for the moment when the ship list is complete. These are ships and upgrades prices, I believe it needs balancing, but as I said, let's leave it for later.

P.S. I was asked to initiate this discussion, I am aware of the work we have to do and I apologize if the thread isn't motivating enough, as it was pretty difficult for me to, well, point in the right direction, seeing there are so many different ideas. Thank you all for understanding

[JettJackson]

ill rank the 3 ideas on how i wish they'd be

2 3 1

so if 2 cant happen then id like option 3

[Baalzamon]

I agree with JJ

Also, I think that we need to expand the "utility" class. Not just ships used to mine or stock CDs, but going on the idea of "Tow Truck" ships and such...ships that have a low defense, but carry shields/armor for OPs, ships that can spend extra turns per sector by "carrying" another ship, be it because they are low on ship condition, or are saving their reps. I feel like these ships would have extra restrictions, such as once you are in a utility ship, you cannot reship into another type of ship for at least 24 hours. This would be to prevent people from switching in and out of portable unos during OPs.

These ships might even possess aspects that we now see on research planets, such as all ally ships IS get a MR bonus, or advanced Stealth/Sensor stats.

I think that utilizing this ship type to this degree would make it so that we can take some of the "useless" ships on the shiplist, and give them more of a reason to be used throughout the game.

[Page]

I'd like to reprice ships to make more of them useful, at the moment it's easy to just trade for a couple of days (even in Classic) and afford a PSF/top racial with no problem at all, this just makes all the <5mil ships completely useless past a couple of days in. What I'd like to do is make the cost of ships more spread out, so you start off with the small ships and gradually build up over the course of a week or two, giving those ships their place and being real options for different strategies, rather than just the decoration they currently are. Especially if they remain being worthwhile purchases throughout.

This would mean that the extra expensive ships 1.5 added would be fairly redundant as they would be bumped up to a point where it was just unrealistic, but instead maybe swap for extra racial stepping stone up to the higher ships.

To clarify what I'm talking about I'll chuck in some numbers (just for an idea - they'd need working with obviously), numbers based on Classic as 1.5 money has changed around so many times that it would make a pretty bad measure.

Racial raider (EoS) price to around 40mil
Higher racial hunter (Rav) to around 15-20mil
PSF to around 35mil
IST to around 15-20mil
Lower racial hunter (Pred) to around 4-5mil
Racial trader (Drudge) to around 2-3mil
(Added equivalent Salvene ships)

Now before you shout, wtf! that'll make everything too expensive to do anything, look at the current ship list and think how many neutral ships, and the lower racial ships, that you would now consider using. I'm not saying these numbers are perfect, but just by spreading the cost out more it makes such a lot more variety in the ships that are interesting.

[Freon22]

I think that sometimes having to many choices in ships is a bad thing. I like the old ship list best, but I don't see everyone dumping the existing ship list in favor of the old ship list. So I will leave that for a debate at another time.

But if we keep the existing ship list with I am sure some modification to the list. I think the way upgrades are done needs to change. The way it is now is wrong, here is my reasoning behind this. As it is now you have a base ship be it a PSF or some war ship. From this point on you can upgrade it into a super ship of its class.

Now I know Page has said that making these super ships will be harder and that is a good thing. But I think the answer is in how the ship can be upgraded, being from the old school I learned you can't get something without giving something. So if you have a war ship and you want 8 or 10 HP then give up something like the CDs that it can carry. Want a PSF with a 1000 cargo holds give up some of shields that it can have you want a faster hunting ships that uses less SC then give up a HP. The give to get works to allow players to modify their ships and at the sametime keep a some what balances in the ships.

[Edgecrusher]

If Kiky's original topic wasn't big enough, people are bringing in lots of extra issues.

Let me break it down (although all these issues are connected):

1 Ship classes: we have had the discussion on 'carreers' many times. Hunting, trading, fighting, excavating. Utility just means you're the alliance :D, so that's not a carreer imo and should be open to anyone. I can agree with the carreers (though I think it should be complexer), but implementing ship classes without also implementing carreers is meaningless.

2 Upgrading ships, in whatever form you implement it, is linked to excavating: people should only be allowed to upgrade ships when they have done something for it. IMO it is one of the benefits of the carreer path 'excavating', and if people disagree than we should not link it to excavating, but find some other criterium. We all agreed that upgrading should only strengthen a ship's natural characteristics, as was sort of written into the 1.5 code along the way. I'm all for entirely removing static benefits.

3 2nd tier/1st tier is meaningless in my eyes. Some races don't have hunters (like alskant and wq), so what are we talking about here. Name the ships cause I don't know what tiers mean. I think that ships should be linked to carreers, that is there should be ships for a specific carreer. people from other carreer paths can board these ships too, but benefit less from its special properties. I think there should be 2-3 ships per carreer, and if you want to call them 1st-, 2nd, and 3rd tier ships, fine with me.

4 Page's idea to modify ship costs is brilliant, but not sufficient. I think that you can also differentiate ships by setting the amount of allowed upgrades. And I even like to see (but I suspect people object) level requirements linked to ships. For example, I can board the 3rd tier hunter at level 1-7, the second tier hunter at level 8-20 and the top hunter at 21+.

That's just some ideas, I'll spawn more if I pass my deadline

[Blade]

My idea.

Scrap all 1.5 ships, add warbird or battleship to ship class (defines as alliance battle ships, used for fleet battles, large planet assaults and 8-9 level ports)

Add 1 more racial known as a warbird to each race (raider being a small planet buster or lower port buster)

Add 1 ship to each alignment section Fed ship would have a warbird class, evil having raider class

1 extra ship to neutral for each class of ship (hunter, trader, raider, warbird)

Warbirds have very low base MR and very slow, bring back the uno type ship the warbirds can uno from.

Allow planets to hold ships, each player can have 2 ships 1 flying 1 in hanger but not of the same class.

[milly22]

35mil for a psf...hmmm slightly high

[Blade]

35 mil can be made on 1 or 2 trades I dont think it's high

[Swagman]

Actually I used to like that feature in the other game I can't remember the name of... lol

Having a few spare ships that needed certain lvl's to fly, so you could take it out for a spin, from the planet...

Although would that mean that upgrades would have to be attached to the player, and not the ship... as if you swapped ship you should keep the same upgrades in the same sections...., not just jump into a super powerful WB from a trader