Ship Redesign

[Edgecrusher]

Well, if upgrades only strengthen the natural characteristics of ships, then they cannot be attached to the player. In my opinion, ship upgrades should add to the value of your ship, so that if you sell it, you get 2/3 (or is it 1/2) back, which you can then invest in your new ship. Yes, that allows you to quickly switch from a 'super-trader' to a 'super-hunter', but you can also switch from a PSF to a DC, so what's the big deal?

[Blade]

I think only having 1 ship is a serious downfall to 1.6 and it's test of game play

I mean classic is classic simplistic game, 1.6 adds more value to the rpg and the strategic player.

[Baalzamon]

Couldn't refrain from reacting to this..

Utility just means you're the alliance , so that's not a carreer imo and should be open to anyone.

I love doing utility things, thats why I went Human this round, compete with Izza in mining. I doubt I can beat him, but hell, why not try? I like mining, izza likes mining, bob likes mining. I would absolutely follow a career path like that. Especially since I suck at hunting, and trading gets monotonous.

And ya, I like having multiple ships in Merchant Empires. Really the only thing I liked about that game.

[Page]

35mil for a psf...hmmm slightly high

35mil is not actually that much for the best trade ship in the game, I've made 20mil with no problems at all in Classic - the point is to make all the cheaper ships actually be worth something, the only ships that get used past the first few days are IST/PSF/Top Racial (includes ATM)/FU/DC. HBC/ITAC/Cara may also be used depending on the player/purpose, but either way that's a tiny portion of ships. Having the best one cost more means the smaller ones get considered for cost saving (main reason Cara may be used instead of DC I expect).

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

I did mention I was using Classic style money, in which 35mil is worth a lot more. But the point really is that if the cost means something there's a lot of other ships that will get considered useful.

[Blade]

Ok would sure make losing the bigger ships painful as it should

[Infinity]

Uhhh... I say "cabbage", you say "screw cabbage, let's do papaya"

It's either my need to structure everything or you guys are in bohemian mood these days.

Prices - I agree with Page on upping the prices of smaller ships, however, please leave it out of it for now, as we can't make a good setup before the ship list is done. Why not - cause we want to make prices that make sense in relation to each other, plus, it's easier part of the job.

Level requirements for ships - agreed, I'd like that in, makes perfect sense.

Spare ships on planets - agreed as well. If it ever goes in, ships should be pretty expensive (one more reason to postpone decisions on prices).

amount of allowed upgrades.

Can be done, again I don't see HOW it can be done BEFORE we have the ship list, gotta start from basic values if you want to limit number of upgrades on them.

Blade's proposition is probably something similar to what I have said in chat today. I'd like a racial trader, 2 racial hunters, 1 war-bird and one fancy raider. One hunter smaller and cheaper, the other slightly bigger, more expensive and with more firepower. I supposed the base from 1.2.1 ship list can be used for this. War-bird should be a third class,something in between hunters and raiders.

Try focusing on, for one, racial ships, for two additional neutral ships (including various utility ships). Career paths, prices, and everything else can be done AFTER this.

[Edgecrusher]

Well, no, if you say cabbage, then I say "yes, but we have to have a balanced diet. Eating only cabbage makes you look green".

You cannot see the discussion about ships seperately from carreers and prices. For example, you leave no room for an excavating ship: one that is great for excavating but useless for anything else, contrary to the super-PSF that you can both excavate and trade with. And you also contradict Blade, who proposed that war-birds are even above raiders, not in-between hunters and raiders.

I think we should severely reduce the number of neutral ships, and strengthen the role of racial ships. For example, I have always thought it is complete idiocy that alskant, the trading race, does not have a better trader than the neutral PSF.

On final comment on being able to store ships: I like it too, but it will have far greater consequences than you seem to think. For one, it allows you to switch from trader to hunter or fighter without any cost. Plus, it raises issues of planet construction (you'd need ship hangars) and planet ownership (are the ships shared? do they belong to the planet owner?).

[Page]

Level requirements for ships - agreed, I'd like that in, makes perfect sense.

Spare ships on planets - agreed as well. If it ever goes in, ships should be pretty expensive (one more reason to postpone decisions on prices).

These are both from APME, we could add one of them I guess, but both is just a bit too much copying really and ships on planets would take a lot of balancing I expect
Also I dunno if anyone remembers but ships used to have level requirements, they just never had any effect.

Prices - I agree with Page on upping the prices of smaller ships, however, please leave it out of it for now, as we can't make a good setup before the ship list is done. Why not - cause we want to make prices that make sense in relation to each other, plus, it's easier part of the job.

I'd like a racial trader, 2 racial hunters, 1 war-bird and one fancy raider. One hunter smaller and cheaper, the other slightly bigger, more expensive and with more firepower. I supposed the base from 1.2.1 ship list can be used for this. War-bird should be a third class,something in between hunters and raiders.

Each race already has 2 hunters (other than Human and Alskant - and Alskant should only have 1 I reckon), it's just at least 1, if not both of the hunters are normally completely ignored because of prices being meaningless. They also all have a racial trader, WQ one does suck for the price, it has cloak but will never get enough experience for the cloak to come into effect (similar to the hunter and it's cloak). Again, they all have a racial raider other than Alskant - who are traders (and should have better, or comparitively cheaper, trade ships)
Admittedly there are no "warbird" class ships, but 1 of 5 isn't bad.

Also on top of these racial ships, there's an awful lot of neutral ships that could be useful if prices were changed.


So my opinion is that we actually have all (or majority) of these ships already, it's just they are so cheap it's better to just spend a little more to get the handful of top ships.
Anyways, I'm going to have a quick look at prices sometime later and see if I can get anything sensible that would actually demonstrate this.

[Infinity]

You cannot see the discussion about ships seperately from carreers and prices.

Yes, I can, and I say this only with the meaning that I, personally, have the ability to do so. Structuring is quite simple actually

For example, you leave no room for an excavating ship:

That's why I have you guys to think of something smart tho that would be tough to think of, excavating demands lots of mining drones and lots of holds to be effective, so any ship with lots of holds is at the same time great for excavating and trading. If you want a purely excavating ship then there should either be a ship that can carry more mining drones than holds, or we could have different types of cargo holds (HK's idea, somewhere in Suggestions forum). If you see a 3rd possibility, shoot.

I think we should severely reduce the number of neutral ships, and strengthen the role of racial ships.

I'm thinking the same, this is the best formulated waypoint on where we want to end this.

And you also contradict Blade, who proposed that war-birds are even above raiders, not in-between hunters and raiders.

I may have missed something, thread got big while I was away yesterday and I had a bad hangover tho it's not a huge contradiction.

Each race already has 2 hunters... etc.

Hence why I said, start from 1.2.1 ship list and then move forward.

[Edgecrusher]

Well, you may be able to see carreers seperately from ship design, but I can't, because I have a strong opinion on carreers and how they should play a role. As I said earlier, and Page also said it, ship hangars on planets takes far too much balancing. Apart from the fact that it strictly isn't copying, cause storing ships in APME (even earlier in BryanME) was partially my idea to begin with, we should have new ideas.

As to excavating, it is really very simple: right now mining drones are coupled to your cargo holds, which is not necessary and is not used in any part of the 1.5 excavating code. Just decouple them and your problem is solved. A PSF can have 600 or 1000 holds, but it's a trader and should not be allowed to carry mining drones. And again, excavating also isn't a new idea (TDZK), but the cool thing is what you are able to do with what you can find on asteroids.