Ship Builds

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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utilae
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Ship Builds

#1 Post by utilae »

I've been playing Guild Wars lately and what I find is that the skill system is quite awesome and adaptable for other types of games.

In Guild Wars you can be a mix of up to 2 professions, eg Ranger/Assassin. You get skills from each profession. You have a skill bar, which has a max of 8 skills able to be used. You can only change the skills when in a town. In battle/explorable areas you are stuck with the skills you have chosen (8 skills). Different arrangement of skills combined with the attributes of your professions are your character build. There appears to be no RPS in terms of Warrior beats assassin, or monk beats mesmer, etc. It's more like the RPS exists between the skills.


The point:
So with Ship Design, we could have Ship Hulls, a generic hull, ie no roles, only difference being size. All components that go on a ship are able to be put in a Ship Hull in any combination, but you are only allowed 8 components on a ship. All other major components would be base hull components.
eg (words in [] are important, eg conditions and numbers in [] are able to increase/decrease with refinements):
1 ) Drill Missiles - [Missile]: Does [20] damage and has 20% armour penetration.
2 ) Regenerating Armour - While armour is below [75%] armour regenerate 3 armour per second.
3 ) Particle Scanner - [System]: While this [system] is active, missiles do [+5] damage.
4 ) Targeting Scanner - [System]: While this [system] is active, beam weapons have [+10%] chance to hit.
5 ) Lasers - [Beam]: Does [5] damage. If target is not moving, lasers deal [+7] damage.
6 ) Fusion Power System - For each [System] active, increase power generation by [+5] energy per [System].
7 ) Feedback Pulse - If target ships shields are above 50%, target ships shields has [-5] shield degeneration per second.
8 ) Thrusters - [System]: While this [system] is active, movement radius is increased by [1].

The good thing about this system is that players can compare there ship builds by listing there 8 components they are using, there 'ship build'.
Now a large ship would obviously have more components, so I am still thinking of some way to represent this, without having too many components. Perhaps increasing the refinement numbers, eg laser doing 5 damage would be for small size hull, but 20 damage for large hull or something.

I know we have already decided most things, but I feel like discussing this. Any thoughts?

Ablaze
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Re: Ship Builds

#2 Post by Ablaze »

Interesting.. I think it could work but it sounds like some complexity would have to be added to make it a usable idea. The reason I think this is because if you only had 8 slots total for systems then smaller systems (like EM countermeasures) would never be used. I'm am assuming that EM countermeasures would provide a reasonable benefit, like 20% less chance of being hit by missiles. But why would you want to take 20% less damage from missiles when you could do 100% more damage with missiles by adding two missile slots?

It seems to me that all lesser items would have to be made into major items, so EM countermeasures would have to be more like "Has a 90% chance of deflecting one missile volley per turn."

Of course, if the slots were broken down more then perhaps missile countermeasures wouldn't have to compete with the prospect of simply adding more missiles.. but it easily loses it's simplicity.
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utilae
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Re: Ship Builds

#3 Post by utilae »

utilae wrote: Now a large ship would obviously have more components, so I am still thinking of some way to represent this, without having too many components. Perhaps increasing the refinement numbers, eg laser doing 5 damage would be for small size hull, but 20 damage for large hull or something.
Revision 1 - Size Representation:

Each ship would have the following Attributes (they could differ):
Propulsion 0
Weapons 0
Defense 0
Detection 0
Stealth 0
Crew 0
System 0
Power 0

Attributes would start at 0, and at 0 no bonus is provided eg 0 Propulsion means the ship has standard propulsion speed. The attributes would affect Components (explained in first post), eg by improving the component, perhaps making a weapons damage go from 5 to 20.
Assuming five size classes eg Tiny, Small, Medium, Large and Huge each size class would get 5 attribute points per size class, eg Tiny ship would have 5 attribute points, while Medium has 15 and Huge has 25. These attribute points would then be able to be shared out over the attributes eg

Ship Size Medium:
Propulsion 2
Weapons 5
Defense 5
Detection 2
Stealth 0
Crew 0
System 0
Power 1

In the example above it is now more beneficial for the Ship to have Components such as "Weapons" and "Defense" components, as those components will be much more improved.

Ablaze wrote: Interesting.. I think it could work but it sounds like some complexity would have to be added to make it a usable idea. The reason I think this is because if you only had 8 slots total for systems then smaller systems (like EM countermeasures) would never be used. I'm am assuming that EM countermeasures would provide a reasonable benefit, like 20% less chance of being hit by missiles. But why would you want to take 20% less damage from missiles when you could do 100% more damage with missiles by adding two missile slots?
Thanks. The idea is for there to be more strategy as well. So yes in Moo2 you have all sorts of little components and big components. On the one hand technology will ensure there are the smaller components, but also more improved ones. On the other, components of the same level tech will have equal importants, ie no small component to use with big component, but rather each having equal importance. It will become a case of not using some components to have more of another, eg less defense to get more offense, or specialise in missiles and missile defense and missile offense support, but have no lasers. Or have lasers and missiles but not be as effective at both.
Ablaze wrote: It seems to me that all lesser items would have to be made into major items, so EM countermeasures would have to be more like "Has a 90% chance of deflecting one missile volley per turn."
It depends how the real time vs turn based system works, but something more like:
EM Countermeasures - For [10..15..30] seconds this ship has a 75% chance to make incomming missiles miss.
or
EM Countermeasures - For [1..3..5] turns this ship has a 75% chance to make incomming missiles miss.
for turns.
Ablaze wrote: Of course, if the slots were broken down more then perhaps missile countermeasures wouldn't have to compete with the prospect of simply adding more missiles.. but it easily loses it's simplicity.
Yes, it does easily loose it's simplicity. The way this system can work is quite effective and I believe would make it more fun and would be interesting in a 4X game.

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Amenhotep
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Re: Ship Builds

#4 Post by Amenhotep »

Hi everyone,

since im new in this forum i'm still figuring out if and where all the good ideas maybe found 8)
but i'm trying to take part in the brainstorming and i hope to be a bit usefull^^

have you thought of integrating an "update" funktion for the ships?
something like:
flying the older generations of a model to a spaceport or station and get to a customize menu,
that allows you to reconfigure your ship. a feature not integrated in the MoO "1" much to my displease :wink:

what is also thinkable is a pre-config in some classes:
"defender", "interceptor" etc. which is using the best and adequate configuration for the use of the ship.
in this example, the defender gets some bigger shield and maye in lack of remaining space not that much missiles (or smth. like that).

i hope i haven't copied some ideas from others...i just wanted to give those thoughts to you. :)

marhawkman
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Re: Ship Builds

#5 Post by marhawkman »

I like it. It sounds relatively simple, and very customizable.
Computer programming is fun.

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pd
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Re: Ship Builds

#6 Post by pd »

0.4 Design Pad wrote:Shipyards are required to upgrade ships. A yard can upgrade any ship that it could build (given tech level restrictions).

* If upgrades were possible without shipyards, then much of their strategic purpose would be lost, in that upgraded ships could be fielded by players far from their shipyard locations.
Please make yourself familiar with this document.

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utilae
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Re: Ship Builds

#7 Post by utilae »

Ideally, we could get ship design to work in such a way that a ship design is like a template, that has your current best technology, eg beam weapons, you have lasers on the MK1s, then you get Fusion Cannons, so the next MK1s you build have fusion cannons. If you didn't want to auto upgrade (you like lasers), at ship design you could turn off the auto upgrade feature on a ship.

Perhaps older ones auto upgrade without having to go back to the shipyard.

Though this all depends on the ship design system, ie the one I set out in the original post of this thread would have upgrades work quite differently then the norm.

Oddjob
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Re: Ship Builds

#8 Post by Oddjob »

One question i have is with the slots will they allow something like more powerful weapons to be attached in larger slots ie Huge hulls large slot? how will weapons be mounted as far as if they will have a firing arc of 360 deg or if it will be limited (90,60,45,03, 0r less) and if there are slots that cover the different fire arcs for the ship?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ship Builds

#9 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Oddjob wrote:One question i have is with the slots will they allow something like more powerful weapons to be attached in larger slots ie Huge hulls large slot?
Maybe. This is listed in the design document and to be determined. It will be added if deemed necessary.
how will weapons be mounted as far as if they will have a firing arc of 360 deg or if it will be limited (90,60,45,03, 0r less) and if there are slots that cover the different fire arcs for the ship?
All weapons will fire in all directions. This likely won't change until after v1.0.

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Re: Ship Builds

#10 Post by Oddjob »

so At this point the ship building slots in the hulls work similar to that of Ascendancy as general placement.

and have no real bearing on functionality of weapons and other tactical equipment. just the amount of them.
so why then at this point are you not using just a size to capacity system for ship building?

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Ship Builds

#11 Post by Geoff the Medio »

There are currently internal and external slots, and some parts can only be put in one or the other. Longer-term, slots can be futher restricted, such as by size, should we decide to do so.

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