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we'll have the same master class ships with the same level 10 components shooting at each other.. if we ever get that far. (been in deep space yet?)

iv. an observation [aka: "What?!"]

lighter = slower? heavier = faster?!?

- it seems while you can put that engine that'll do 110 and weighs 50k on your huge.. and i mean huge master class mp ship... which moves it wellover the 1000+ top speed margins, a ship that weighs a hundred times LESS.. will have to settle for half the speed of the larger ship. which has rendered its existence useless for endgame.. it'll simply never catch the upper class. not that i expect a z to take on a yt.. in fact i expect the yt to chew through z95's like butter.. (oh, wait.. unless of course they are tier 5' npcs..). the point is that an entire squadron of z'sdont come close to even catching the yt.. let alone getting a shot off..

but you will argue.. 'no gravity in space'

and i will reply. 'EXACTLY!'

but thats space mechanics for you..

so while mass does matter for lower class ships.. it dosent for master.

should a mp ship really be able to go faster than a ship built specifically for fast attack.. just because it has the mass to take 50,000 points of engine..

in closing i do have to agree with the balance issues up to around the 3rd level of the pilot tree..

and im not saying a novice should be able to fly faster in his starter ship than someone who has mastered and is flying a krayt..

but two aces? one in a supposedly, 'fast attack ship' and one in a master class Decimator with a thousand times the mass of the smaller? oh wait.. now mass is mattering again.

and though i have used speed as my example i think that this applies to almost all the components.. some more than others.

however i have already made myself clear on lowclass ships taking on masters..

but..

perhaps we should look into a new ability or continuation on the pilot tree.. an elite pilot profession..

a 'pilot engineer' could for example choose to permanently integrate a component using the chassis' existing structure to balance out the weight difference.. but it would impact the ships overall hp/mass, and it could never be removed.. so by loosing 2000 points of your max mass, you could mount an engine which weighed 20k, or 15k.. or however JTL balanced it out, this would probably work best on a 1 time/component per ship basis..

as i said, it is not my intent to nerf the mastercraft by making smaller ships better. or by providing a novice with anything more than they have earned.

perhaps shiprights could build ace class ships of all the currently available lower class ship.. pilotable only by aces, and taking an exorberant amount of resources..

i guess my main point is.. wont you miss star wars, when your on your pilots endgame pvp in deep space.. wont we miss the half a cd full of expansion we cant play anymore.. wont the same ships with the same components get boring?

--

thanks...

hasaan [flurry]

complete suggestion for all components:

if some armor/hp values look weird, ill reduce all weapon damage while im at it to make pvp last a bit longer than 3 shots. whats the point of component hp when you blow up right away anyway? also, there will be mark VI components, mostly intended for mp ships. ion cannons do their shield damage directly to hp (simulating their effect on electronics). might even be worth to have a fixed mass per point of armor/hp on components to simplify tables and make it easier to calculate.

droid interface:

these are small tech parts that neither weigh 5 tons nor need their own power plant, weight increase is purely based on more protection.

all:
-speed: between 40 (novice) and 15 (master), 10 for perfect rolls/experimentation/ressources
-energy usage: 500 +-250 (depending on speed), up to -200 with experimentation
-mass 500*mark, armor 50*mark, hp 50*mark
mark I: mass 500, armor 50, hp 50
mark II: mass 1000, armor 100, hp 100
mark III: mass 1500, armor 150, hp 150
mark IV: mass 2000, armor 200, hp 200
mark V: mass 2500, armor 250, hp 250
mark VI: mass 3000, armor 300, hp 300

countermeasures:

a launcher doesnt care WHAT it fires but heavier baits require slightly larger launchers to be "compatible". also, heavier launchers store more countermeasures.

all:
-energy usage: 500 + #chaffs*5 (for feeding mechanism)

mark I: mass 1000, armor 150, hp 150, energy 550, 10 chaffs
mark II: mass 1500, armor 200, hp 200, energy 600, 20 chaffs
mark III: mass 1500, armor 175, hp 175, energy 600, 20 chaffs | 10 micro chaffs
mark IV: mass 2000, armor 225, hp 225, energy 650, 30 chaffs | 15 micro chaffs
mark V: mass 2000, armor 200, hp 200, energy 650, 30 chaffs | 15 micro chaffs | 10 flares
mark VI: mass 2500, armor 250, hp 250, energy 700, 40 chaffs | 20 micro chaffs | 15 flares

armor:

no electronics, so hp are all 0 and the whole thing is just there to be destroyed. mass is always armor * 5 with marks only limiting shipwrights to how heavy an armor they can produce. up to the given value they can craft any armor value they like. ressource quality will affect this (ie. 500 quality will mean twice the mass for the same protection) while experimentation can reduce it again. armor is given as front and back (double the value for sum)

mark I: armor 500
mark II: armor 1000
mark III: armor 1500
mark IV: armor 2000
mark V: armor 2500
mark VI: armor 5000

engine:

"faster" mostly means more powerful and only used for simplicity. ships have a speed factor roughly about 10000/mass limit. listed speeds/armor/hp are maximum per shipwright skill and can be chosen when crafting. obviously for mp ships the mass limit is plain whack and the factor needs to be different. its .05 for a 200k ship, i use .01 for mp ships. mass listed as sum (speed and armor/hp)

all:
-mass: speed * 20 + (armor+hp) * 5
-energy: 1000 + 2*speed

mark I: speed 100, armor 100, hp 100, energy 1200, mass 1500+1000
mark II: speed 500, armor 175, hp 175, energy 2000, mass 7500+1750
mark III: speed 1000, armor 250, hp 250, energy 3000, mass 15000+2500
mark IV: speed 1500, armor 325, hp 325, energy 4000, mass 30000+3250
mark V: speed 2000, armor 400, hp 400, energy 5000, mass 40000+4000
mark VI: speed 10000, armor 800, hp 800, energy 21000, mass 200000+8000

booster:
later

reactor:

good balance between mass and energy output is important, so numbers will most likely change a lot. again, output can be chosen and mass adjusts. output also needs to scale more (right now its all mostly between 10k and 16k). goal: decent reactor should take about quarter of the ships mass it is intended for.

all:
-mass: (output/200)^2

mark I: mass 2500, output 10000, armor 200, hp 200
mark II: mass 3900, output 12500, armor 300, hp 300
mark III: mass 8100, output 18000, armor 400, hp 400
mark IV: mass 19600, output 28000, armor 500, hp 500
mark V: mass 50600, output 45000, armor 600, hp 600
mark VI: mass 490000, output 140000, armor 700, hp 700


capacitor:

one place where all the new energy will be spent

all:
-capacity: 1000 (modified with experimenting)
-energy: recharge * 100

mark I: mass 1000, energy 2000, recharge 20, armor 50, hp 50
mark II: mass 1250, energy 2750, recharge 27.5, armor 100, hp 100
mark III: mass 1500, energy 3500, recharge 35, armor 150, hp 150
mark IV: mass 1750, energy 4250, recharge 42.5, armor 200, hp 200
mark V: mass 2000, energy 5000, recharge 50, armor 250, hp 250
mark VI: mass 3000, energy 8000, recharge 80, armor 500, hp 500

shield:

shields are front and back, double for sum

all:
-energy: (shield^2)/1000
-recharge: 15 +- 5 (crafting)

mark I: mass 2000, energy 2000, shield 500, armor/hp 100
mark II: mass 3000, energy 4000, shield 1000, armor/hp 200
mark III: mass 4000, energy 9000, shield 1500, armor/hp 300
mark IV: mass 5000, energy 16000, shield 2000, armor/hp 400
mark V: mass 6000, energy 25000, shield 2500, armor/hp 500
mark VI: mass 11000, energy 100000, shield 5000, armor/hp 600

weapons:

greatly reduced damage.

all:
-energy: 500 +-250 (crafting)
-speed: .375 +- .125 (crafting)
-cap drain: total damage/20

mark I: mass 1500, drain 15, damage 150/150, armor/hp 50
mark II: mass 2000, drain 20, damage 200/200, armor/hp 100
mark III: mass 2500, drain 25, damage 250/250, armor/hp 150
mark IV: mass 3000, drain 30, damage 300/300, armor/hp 200
mark V: mass 3500, drain 35, damage 350/350, armor/hp 250
mark VI: mass 6500, drain 70, damage 700/700, armor/hp 300

mass limits:

rethink them. does a b-wing really look like about 20x the mass of a z95? or the absurd mass differences the result of the already absurd mass differences of components? just for once, when something us unbalanced, DONT fix it by unbalancing something else.

well, tweak away.

This is not as much of a problem as it seems. Optimal turn speed matters a great deal. Now that NPC ships are no longer insanely fast, turning rate matters.

Each chassis has a speed modifier and an optimal turn speed. These determine how much of that engine that you actually get to USE in combat.

If I have a Y-Wing, with a 90 speed engine, it's optimal dogfighting speed is at 50% throttle, or 450. (Since Y-Wings have a lower speed multiplier, this would actually be about 380-90). If I have a TIE Advanced with a 70 speed engine (far lower mass), it's optimal dogfighting speed is 85%, or 595. That's a huge fricking difference!!! If you make that a 70 speed engine on 30% overdrive, you get an optimal turn speed at 773. WOW!!! If you drop that engine to a mere 59 engine, it will STILL be faster than that 90 speed engine in a dogfight. If that wasn't enough, there's more. If that Y-Wing were also using engine overload three, it's optimal combat speed would be 585. (With the hull penalty, that would be more like 500).

Where big ships really excel is in their top speed. IF you can out-accellerate your chaser before they blow your back shield, you will leave them in the dust. If not, you wind up in a dogfight where they have the turn/speed advantage.

The lesson here is that bombers can go real fast and turn like bricks, or go slow and be maneuverable. Fighters can go sorta fast, but they go sorta fast AND turn on a dime.

Here's more. A 90 speed engine on a Y-wing performs like a 76.5 speed engine on a TIE Advanced. (Again, I'm using .85 hull speed. I checked that number agains the pilot FAQ.)

You know, for the first time, I'm seeing how the numbers work. Wow.

some good points and i guess one can easily say the mass of components is scaling in an absurd way. having two droid interfaces and one with 500 and the other with 50000 mass but only twice the speed looks weird. my pc is 4x as fast as the one i had before, according to swg logic it should be 200x the size and mass. the problem i see is that while people claim "higher tier ships arent meant to be better, just different" thats complete bull. why? because performance scales with higher tier components AND armor/hp does. while it is making sense that heavier (read, better armor/hp) components have more mass there is absolutely no good reason why high performance components should only come in heavy versions.

from master perspective, a scyk should be fast, not take too much damage but still be a viable alternative to a heavy bomber. its not, it will be crawling at speeds that make a heavy freighter look like a pod racer simply because you cant put a decent engine in (not to mention all the other components).

ergo: component performance should only be based on the shipwright skill level and experimentation (with shields and weapons being the only components where high performance means high mass, but still scaling a LOT less like at the moment).

so you could have your mark V engine for a scyk with maybe 50 armor/hp or a mark V engine for a krayt with x000 armor/hp. problem: i would go for the light scyk engine and dont care about armor/hp because its already too late once my components take damage anyway. so the big screw up is that they said "fast engine -> heavy" when it was never about top speed (kind of a borked concept in space anyway) but acceleration. sure you can put that scyk engine into a freighter, but it will take all day to pick up speed.

suggestion 1: drop that absurd yaw/pitch/roll stuff and replace it with a single power or acceleration rating. remove the same stuff from ship chassis and just leave an acceleration factor. a scyk would have a factor of 1 (example) so a ship with twice the mass would have a factor of .5 or if it really has to be, do it with speed instead. the current factors of .95 or whatever are simply too tame. twice the mass needs twice the engine power to achieve the same result (in the simplified arcade world that is star wars at least).

hm, just thinking about how and why they could even ever end up with a "balancing" the way it is right now can make your head spin. case of the usual overcomplication? ("hey, lets have a dozen values just for turning your ship in different directions to add more complexity".. and nobody said "thats not complexity, thats useless clutter and bs unless you want to go and code an ultra realistic space simulation which we are NOT doing here").

weapons. well, nice that a light ship can only mount low tier weapons which are useless crap against high tier ships. not to mention that light ships already have less weapons which basically compensates all by itself. so why not let a scyk mount that 3600dam weapon? it will still be a joke compared to the 2-4 3600dam weapons on heavy ship. but limiting them to a single weapon far below 1000dam? erm...

let weapons and shields be regulated by their power consumption instead. they draw a lot of energy (weapons indirectly, drop their direct reactor drain, whats that about anyway? targeting system eating as much energy as a shield generator?) so what you need to use those components is a big generator which cant be placed in a small ship. if someone wants a 4000+ dam weapon in his scyk he wont give off many shots before his capacitor is sucked dry (and he doesnt have the mass for a better one) and heavy shields would be impossible as well.

and how about a new crafting interface where a shipwright can decide how much armor/hp/performance he wants, the mass and energy usage is calculated and experimentation can try to reduce these two factors? ressource usage will be a problem (obviously heavy components would require more.. so they would still be different classes/tiers but for this purpose only, performance will be based on nothing but skill). and while we are at it, slicers could try to increase the performance a bit. you would see a lot of pilots paying a lot of money for custom made components or trying to squeeze out just a little bit extra. sure, there are all these modifications you can use while crafting, but again its just overcomplicating the matter with special stuff you need to craft first and still having only minimal influence with maximum extra work.

components where mass should only increase with armor/hp

-droid interface
-countermeasure launchers
-armor (because it only IS armor/hp)

components where performance should affect mass (mainly for balancing) and energy usage

-engine (compensated with ship factor)
-booster (dito)
-reactor (replace usage with output)

components where performance should affect mostly (or only) energy usage

-capacitor
-shield
-weapons (because the possible number of weapons already does that and right now a b-wing doesnt even have the mass to hold 4 decent weapons, completely wasting it's big "advantage")

long list is following in extra post ,-)