Ship Design

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

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marhawkman
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#31 Post by marhawkman »

Dreamer wrote:It is an unusual question, but why should ships have crew? AI can aim better, move faster (even acelerate more), don't need quarters of any kind and don't need most usual supplies.

Ships without crew don't need to dock inside bigger ships or any kind of docking more complex than a grappling hook. You would need some tacticians and commanders on capital ships way behind the battle but that's it. Also you don't need complex interfaces for pilots and the AIs have perfect combat awareness.

Past certain tech level (and not a high one, since we ALREADY have the cappability for tech like this on real life) droids or drones should be the most obvious answer.
The ship would still have a targetting and navigation computer. But ships controlled entirely remotely would be more likely to get taken out. It'd be relatively simple for an opponent to simply jam the transmission you're using to control it. then the ship would be at your opponent's mercy. Although you could make it so that AI ships can't be taken over by boarding parties at all.....

Maybe I'm just trying for too much realism here..... :roll:
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Dreamer
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#32 Post by Dreamer »

marhawkman wrote:The ship would still have a targetting and navigation computer. But ships controlled entirely remotely would be more likely to get taken out. It'd be relatively simple for an opponent to simply jam the transmission you're using to control it. then the ship would be at your opponent's mercy. Although you could make it so that AI ships can't be taken over by boarding parties at all.....

Maybe I'm just trying for too much realism here..... :roll:
Well, not, but you just took all the AI from an AI. An "artificial intelligence" is no more helpless with jamming than a pilot with jamming. An AI drone is not the same that a remote controled drone.

marhawkman
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#33 Post by marhawkman »

Hmmm.... I suppose making AIs that can take the place of a crew would be a special tech you could research later in the game. I guess for game play purposes it'd work okay.
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Geoff the Medio
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#34 Post by Geoff the Medio »

You might not be able to board a ship with an AI "crew" and take it over, particularly since the "crew" would just be built into the ship's systems and there would thus be no internal living space or access for living crew, but you could perhaps infect the AI systems of such a ship with a computer virus, and thereby take over the ship...

marhawkman
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#35 Post by marhawkman »

Geoff the Medio wrote:You might not be able to board a ship with an AI "crew" and take it over, particularly since the "crew" would just be built into the ship's systems and there would thus be no internal living space or access for living crew, but you could perhaps infect the AI systems of such a ship with a computer virus, and thereby take over the ship...
:P Neato. :D
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Dreamer
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#36 Post by Dreamer »

Yep, I indeed have thought of that. The point is that drones should be a very standard option from an early-middle game. And this kind of ships would have some different rules to them that we have not considered at all.

BloodyIron
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#37 Post by BloodyIron »

I'm still catching up on the thread (quite a few posts) but I must aggree with those advocating that power consumption is over complicating the ships, especially that it is getting the same effect, but at no real extra gain in strategy within the ship.

Additionally, ships do not fight in warp state, think about how much extra energy is available from a fusion engine when it is not pushing some big hunk of metal at 2 parsecs/year?

I'm not a big fan of hard points either, as I do quite enjoy getting battle pods and loading up a ship to the brim with one or two different weapons, yippie!

marhawkman
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#38 Post by marhawkman »

BloodyIron wrote:Additionally, ships do not fight in warp state, think about how much extra energy is available from a fusion engine when it is not pushing some big hunk of metal at 2 parsecs/year?
This is why I advocated having a powerplant built into the engines.
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Redaxe
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#39 Post by Redaxe »

Hey again folks sorry about the long interval

It seems most people are against the power plant idea which is cool but I think there should be something that encourages/forces you to employ a variety of weapons/equipment on your ship and not just hoard one type.

Master of Orion 2 was notorious when you could stack a ship full of Heavy mount, continous, autofire Phasors at a cost of 10 space each. If a ship has 200+ space it becomes way too imbalanced.

I just think that something should be in place to check that otherwise the game becomes ridiculously unfun and boring... :D

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Skaro
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#40 Post by Skaro »

I'd also like to include some advantages and disadvantages to different ship configurations:

Average ships

Neutron damage: normal, the crew gets killed, but the ship stays intact
Emp damage: normal, the crew is unharmed, the ship will lose certain systems.
Boarding: A boarding party needs to defeat a crew to capture this ship
Hacking: Hacking can temporarily disable this ship
Repair: This ship can only make minor repairs without a automated repair system


Organic ships with a crew

Neutron damage: Ship and crew will take damage
Emp damage: EMP has no effect on this ship type
Boarding: A boarding party needs to defeat a crew to capture this ship, this ship will get a bonus for defense because it can fight boarding crews
Hacking: This ship cannot be hacked
Repair: This ship heals without a problem, the crew can speed up healing


Organic ships without a crew (automated)

Neutron damage: The ship will take more damage than a ship with a crew.
Emp damage: No effect
Boarding: This ship cannot be boarded
Hacking: This ship cannot be hacked
Repair: This ship can make repairs without a automated repair system, this will be slower than a crewed ship.


Anorganic ship with a cybernetic crew

Neutron damage: No effect
Emp damage: Both crew and ship will take damage
Boarding: Cyberneticly enhanced creatures will have a defense bonus
Hacking: High level hacking can temporarily disable this ship, the crew can undo this effect
Repair: The crew can make repairs without a automated repair system


Automated ship

Neutron damage: No effect
Emp damage: The ship will take more damage than a ship with a crew
Boarding: This ship cannot be boarded
Hacking: High level hacking can convert this ship to the side of the hacker
Repair: This ship can't make any repairs without a automated repair system



Though I suppose it needs some more tweaks for balancing.
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marhawkman
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#41 Post by marhawkman »

Hmm... I think there needs to be some way to take over Autonomous Organic Ships. There are ways to take over all the others. Maybe you could have a special tech for this?
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Dreamer
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#42 Post by Dreamer »

marhawkman wrote:Hmm... I think there needs to be some way to take over Autonomous Organic Ships. There are ways to take over all the others. Maybe you could have a special tech for this?
Telepaths ;-)

marhawkman
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#43 Post by marhawkman »

Dreamer wrote:
marhawkman wrote:Hmm... I think there needs to be some way to take over Autonomous Organic Ships. There are ways to take over all the others. Maybe you could have a special tech for this?
Telepaths ;-)
Genius!!! But I'm thinking it'd take more than just one or two telepathic people to do it. Maybe a telepathic bio-Ship? Or a ship Crewed by Telepaths?
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utilae
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#44 Post by utilae »

An organic ship could be taken over by a boarding crew just like a virus could make a person act crazy by taking over the mind.

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Geoff the Medio
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#45 Post by Geoff the Medio »

utilae wrote:An organic ship could be taken over by a boarding crew just like a virus could make a person act crazy by taking over the mind.
I dunno... teleporting a bunch of gerbils into an elephant's brain probably wouldn't make the elephant fight for the gerbil army...

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