ship technology

Message

marhawkman · #1 Post by **marhawkman** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 11:53 pm

How detailed is ship creation gonna be? I need to know this before I can write up my ship building ideas.

Currently I'm leaning towards something of an amalgam of the Stars!, MoO and SE systems....

#2 Post by **Geoff the Medio** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 3:39 am

Not decided yet. Write whatever you want.

utilae · #3 Post by **utilae** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 4:31 am

Daveybaby · #4 Post by **Daveybaby** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:34 am

utilae wrote:very

Geoff the Medio wrote:Not decided yet.

utilae · #5 Post by **utilae** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 10:05 am

To elabourate, a reasonable level of ship design with a good and simple user interface.

Skaro · #6 Post by **Skaro** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 2:12 pm

Daveybaby wrote:
utilae wrote:very

Geoff the Medio wrote:Not decided yet.

It's very undecided

marhawkman · #7 Post by **marhawkman** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 2:29 pm

Okay....

Basics:
multiple hull designs
Hull maximization?
multiple weapon types
weapon miniaturization?
powerplant?
scanners?
special hulls that have somewhat restricted uses?
unresearchable techs that you must find in order to use?
armor is a number based on what you've put into the design.
and a number for the hull itself?
shielding, with multiple types of shield generators?
And there's the weapon array idea I posted in the other thread, maybe make it something you have to research?

solrac776 · #8 Post by **solrac776** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 3:02 pm

utilae wrote:To elabourate, a reasonable level of ship design with a good and simple user interface.

I second that. My admiration to the person who does it though.

marhawkman · #9 Post by **marhawkman** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 3:58 pm

solrac776 wrote:
utilae wrote:To elabourate, a reasonable level of ship design with a good and simple user interface.
I second that. My admiration to the person who does it though.

I figure I can do it by combining traits from MoO, Stars!, and SE4. Doesn't really sound HARD, just time consuming.

Zpock · #10 Post by **Zpock** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 8:22 am

I think stars! is hugely superior in this area.

marhawkman · #11 Post by **marhawkman** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 12:54 pm

Zpock wrote:I think stars! is hugely superior in this area.

Stars! had several nice features. But the basic ship design part was somewhat lacking IMO... There was only 2 or three designs that were any good late game and they were incredibly expensive. And there were some annoying gameisms that were a bit too exploitable.

Hmm... I just thought of something interesting. Maybe make reload time a function of the powerplant capacity of the ship. Or perhaps it would be better called "Charge time"? :p The basic idea here is that the amount of time it takes to charge a weapon is a function of the amount of power available to charge the weapon.

Example:
Lets say you build a frigate, with a relatively low tech engine. Lets call it hydro ramscoop. And we'll say it produce 100 megawatts of power. Now the ship is equipped with 2 "Cobalt Lasers" that each require 60 megawatts to charge the weapon in one combat round. So either the second cobalt laser fires every other round or both of them do.

#12 Post by **Geoff the Medio** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 6:00 pm

Seems unnecessarily complicted... Just have a single Rate Of Fire rating for the ship which determines how many shots it puts out when it fires, or a single Reload/Recharge time which determines how many "rounds" or how long in continuous battle-time between firings.

marhawkman · #13 Post by **marhawkman** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 1:56 pm

Geoff the Medio wrote:Seems unnecessarily complicted... Just have a single Rate Of Fire rating for the ship which determines how many shots it puts out when it fires, or a single Reload/Recharge time which determines how many "rounds" or how long in continuous battle-time between firings.

Welllll.... the idea here is to have the fire rate determined by the weapon type and the powerplant.....

Thus using a few weapons with a mediocre powerplant would give you a high fire rate. hmm... Maybe even give a sort of "Gatling" effect if you had a high enough amount of power available. Like 2-3x the amount required to fire the weapons once.

New evil idea.....
Get rid of the "move X squares each round" combat system. It's been stated that to make having a variety of weapons useful a sort of GUI interface is required. But the chess board system seems to be very unrealistic.... My idea? Hehe..... You guys are familiar with the game "Asteroids" right? If not I can email you a shareware version. The idea here is that ship speed is the ship's acceleration/stopping rate. And that turning isn't gonna do you much good if you can't stop to move towards your new target. But this raises a question how to prevent ships from fleeing? Part of this proposal is to add tractor beeams as ship components that can be used in battle. Either as a way of stopping enemy ships or to simply divert their course away from their intended targets.

Zpock · #14 Post by **Zpock** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 4:08 pm

New evil idea.....
Get rid of the "move X squares each round" combat system. It's been stated that to make having a variety of weapons useful a sort of GUI interface is required. But the chess board system seems to be very unrealistic.... My idea? Hehe..... You guys are familiar with the game "Asteroids" right? If not I can email you a shareware version. The idea here is that ship speed is the ship's acceleration/stopping rate. And that turning isn't gonna do you much good if you can't stop to move towards your new target. But this raises a question how to prevent ships from fleeing? Part of this proposal is to add tractor beeams as ship components that can be used in battle. Either as a way of stopping enemy ships or to simply divert their course away from their intended targets.

YES! Newtonian physics are a must have I think.

Daveybaby · #15 Post by **Daveybaby** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 10:48 am

Zpock wrote:YES! Newtonian physics are a must have I think.

Dear god no! I recall this came up during Moo3's development - when you have more than 1 or 2 ships to manage it would become impossible to have any degree of control over your fleet.

Besides, when you have FTL travel newton tends to go out of the window.