Pilot Archive

Are they going to make it so Imps/rebs can board opposing faction captiol ships to take them over? or blow them up? that would be pretty cool.

As far as the Corvette is concerned, I would like to see it either 'borrowed' by overtaking it or 'rented' with Prestige. The same goes for any of the cruiser level ships they might add. They should take a huge crew to run (no NPCs) but come fully stocked and ready to go.

For the smaller capital ships these should be privately owned in a special data slot reserved for them (oneper player) or take multiple slots. These should be Shipwright crafted from a RIS-like quest schematic (once learned never forgotten)

• Rebel: Rebel Gunboat (4 turrets)pilot controlled missilesX2 + forward gun TOTAL of 5 guns 2 missiles


• Imperial: Imperial Gunboat (5 turrets) pilot controlled missilesX2 NOpilot gun (this offsets the extra turret the ship gets) TOTAL of 5 guns 2 missiles


• Freelance: Modified Skipray Blastboat (4turrets - one dorsal one ventral and one "ball turret" on each wingtip) pilot contolled missilesX2 +forward gun TOTAL of 5 guns 2 missiles [This is a hypothetical variationand could be used for balance purposes instead of the standard Skipray which the wing guns were controlled by the pilot]

That's only one new ship exterior to design and it's a great looking ship too! Certs to Master Pilots after a quest, maybe also require the co-pilot (or even ALL crew) to beMaster also to keep the regular POBs in demand.

I would like to see them also have space for:

• a capacitor for eachturret/gun


• fore, aft, starboard, port, ventral and dorsal armor


• both fore and aft shields.

By adding 5 capacitors, 6 armor slots and 2 shield slots you could reduce the number ofShipwright made components to mainly Capital Class Reactors to provide for the HUGE power demand these ships would call for.

Basically these are larger POBs that can dish out and take more damage but take more folks to run.

Other ships to think about: Lambda Class Shuttle (3pilot guns (could be made into 1pilot and 2 front-side turrets for balance if necessary), 1 rear turret, no missiles), Imperial Landing Boat (3 turrets, 2 missiles + pilot gun), and of course the YT-2400 (same as YT-1300 with new skin)... yeah i know it'sa POB but it's so pretty

Message Edited by Cdapolito on 06-19-2005 07:03 AM

Itolia Rapo
Master Tailor, Roleplayer, and HELPER 
(I'm just a glutton for punishment)


Galaxy City, Dantooine


							

Ideally:

1. Pilot
2. Co-Pilot 1 (Primary Shields)
3. Co-Pilot 2 (Secondary Shields)
4. Co-Pilot 3 (Flight Computer)
5. Flight Operations Officer (Manages Shuttle Bay/Traffic of friendly ships boarding & leaving)
6. Engineer 1 (Manages/Repairs Reactor)
7. Engineer 2 (Manages/Repairs Engine)
8. Engineer 3 (Manages/Repairs Primary Shield)
9. Engineer 4 (Manages/Repairs Secondary Shield)
10. Engineer 5 (Manages/Repairs Weapons)
11. Engineer 6 (Manages/Repairs Weapons)

12-18. Turret Operators (Gunners)

19. Communications Officer (Designates Suggested Targets and tries to keep everyone on the same page)

20-25. Flight Surgeons (Heals Crew as needed)

26-50. PvP - Defends the ship from boarding party

51-75. Pilots on board ready to defend/attack (Can launch their ships to join the battle)

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I wish i knew enough people to man something this way but i cant see 75 people in 1 ship for a long time you know. Unless ur guild has 1000 people which is almost impossible to achieve this would not be a good thing. Yes i think it should be 8+ but not 75.

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Banaster wrote:

First of all lets dispel some myths.

Yes, lets do just that....

Capitol ships other than the largests vessels are perfectly capable of landing on planets.Many shipsup to and includingan Imperial Strike Cruiser can enter atmosphere and land anywhere. Plus in the case of the Corellian Corvette they are in use by far more than just the Empire or the Rebellion. Private corporations use them, planetary governments, smugglers and etc. So as long as you have an I.D. that will stand up to scrutiny you should be able to land at any starport with a big enough facility.

While you are correct, nothing larger than a Vic would likely be entering the atmosphere. True, there are stories of SSDs etc that did land...or where built on the surface....for all normal operations, those ships would stay in space...leaving the planet's gravity can put a big strain on those larger ships. Now, with that in mind...its one thing to sneak a X-wing into Theed. Its another to land a Carrack Cruiser in Coronet. Bigger the ship, the more it sticks out. Also, the Spaceports we currently have are too small to handle anything larger than say 75m. Theed might be able to handle the large ones...its Spaceport is pretty large, but we would need to see a retool of the other Spaceports if they are to launch from them.

Next the idea of huge numbers of crew. Keep in mind the grouping system will only allow eight members ina group. Any number much larger than this and the group becomes far too unwieldy to manage in text chat. Not everyone has teamspeak or other voice programs and since they are not provided by SWG for its customers they should not be required to manage new material.

Actually you can take far more than 20 up onto an MP/POB ship. As for being too large.... We managed just fine with 20 players for almost 18 months with no problem. I don't see that being an issue. SOE didn't cut groups down because of communication issues either. They did it as it is easier to balance raid content on a group of 8 than it is a group of 20.

Now the Idea of boarding Cap ships? Fun but why bother when you can just blow it up? And why shouldn't the player Captain of a player ship be able to scuttle it to avoid capture? Keep boarding actions for Npc ships and stations I'd say. It's ridiculous to have player cap ships that take huge resources to build or great effort to quest and then to have them capturable right away. If you can't board and capture Nova couriers, YT's, Decimaters or Y-8s there's no reason to board or capture other player ships. If you were to make them capturable then you might as well make Ion Cannons disable vessels like they are supposed to in the Star Wars universe.

Most people want to deal with capitalships like faction bases. Boarding a player ship isnt intended to capture, but to destroy. Save the capture stuff for NPC ships. Naturally, in this case, destorying doesn't mean gone...it means back to the spacedock where you will need to repair before getting back into the action.

Now as to the types of ships.

Forget gunboats. Anyone that has done any flying in Kessel against the mission gunboats there knows they handle way too much like fighters. What's the point of having another Nova, YT, Decimater, or Y-8 with a few more guns? Instead keep it to Corellian Corvettes and maybe the Warlord Heavy Cruiser that cruises in Dathomir for Freespacers. The huge ISD already lags out a system whever it fires it's close range guns. I have a top end system that can handle most of it but a great many players do not. Keep the ships simple.

I agree there, and many others do as wel...350-450m max for a ship. Anything larger is askig for ht esame trouble that we get from the ISD already in DS.

Now how about craftible versus quest ships? If Capitol ships are craftible then shipwrights will no doubt charge incredible amounts of credits for them. I should know I am a shipwright lol. However if they are simply questible than the shipwrights lose out on a great deal of fun. I'd love to be able to builda capital class ship. Solution? make some cap ships buildable and some craftable, just like the player fighters are.

I think the best way is to make Cap ships questable (steal from a shipyard for example) and make the parts for them craftable, and not lootable..or only lootable from other cap ships so they are rare. That seems to me to be the most balance. Cap ships are simply too large to be made by one single SW. The parts however....it would make since for an SW to make them.

Now, the hindrances and benefits. Any Cap ship is going to be a huge friggin target. Without fighter escorts it's pretty much going to be a sitting target whether you are talking about PVE or PVP combat. Keep in mind PVP gunners are generally much less acurrate than PVE gunners. So just having them around means there had better be some pretty hefty benefits other than just "They look cool." There needs to be tangible benefits to having a capitol class ship. Otherwise they are just going to be another POB ship that never gets used. How about finally revamping the system to have movable cargo? (which we should have for the other ships anyway and I'm not talking about asterois resources. Wasn't this supposed to be addressed in a Smuggler's revamp that never happened?)

How about benefits to building and repairing damaged ships and components while aboard a Cap ship? Shipwrights could then make a living by hanging out on these ships to repair incoming fighters. Maybe mitigate the chassis and comp damage a bit when it's repaired on a player Cap ship verses a repair from an NPC station?

I agree, Cap ships at the least should require at least a Novice SW to be fully functional, but they shouldnt be taking huge amounts of damage either.

Now about crew. Certainly a number of people need to be required. But this doesn't need to be a huge amount. One of the great turn-offs of Everquest was that at certain points you couldn't do anything without 70-75 people. SWG doesn't have the requisite population to support this. An alternative however is to make droids usable for a number of crew tasks. Not only would this require further investment to man the vesel but it would give the languishing droid engineer profession some help.

I think droids would be acceptable as long as it 250m ship isnt fully peratinal with 3 guys and a bunch of droids. Droids should be able to do some tasks, but manning turrets needs to be by players for exmaple.

Next, please, please let's try to keep any new additions in the context of the star wars universe? SWG and JTL already bend the rules in so many ways as it is I don't even want to think about it.

Finally and in my mind most importantly once changes are made can they be well and thoroughly tested before they are introduced into the game? I'm still mad that when flying my Y-8 in combat I get no credit or component rewards because it hasn't got that silly loot box the other POB ships have. There are already so many fixes needed for bugs in the game that lets make sure to weed them out in testing before any Cap ships go live.

We can only hope on this one. Hopefully the loot box issue is a bug tho...the YT-1300 made it into the game without a loot box as well.

That being said, let's have some cap ships then.

Banaster

P.S. I apologize if I have repeated too many previous ideas. A guildmate told me about these posts and I didn't have time to do more than scan 11 pages of them.

There are a lot of good ideas in the 11 pages...we can only hope the devs take the time to read them.

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!Drevin of DROW!

!!

YEs you guys are in the right directiob.

I am a master sw but what can we do on the ship what would br our purpos besides running any spot we want i am a ace so i could pilot too.

I say have a screen for shieds kinda like in episode one were they show the sceen . put max power less from guns. ect.

for engines yuo see anikin put power into the other engine in pobrace seen.

copilot controls droids

pilot pilots

master gunner tell people were to fire

gunners

boarding captin also protects ship plus his assult crew.

hanger captin - flight controller some modified corvettes held x wings ties in a small haner they modifed x wing series. also some docked ties in escape pod parts book five x wing series.

someone does mini game for reactor can put more power to certin things while putting less top others .

sw- do not know but good to have one to repair flight mechanic then

kazzabev master sw and freelance ace

I haven't had time to read through the entire thread... there are some good ideas on how to limit or control capital ships, but as someone said back on page 2 people will have them simply because they can. I was explaining the process for becoming a Jedi to a friend that doesn't play SWG the other day... and at each point he thought I'd say "then you're a Jedi" I would go on into the next thing you had to do. He asked me why there were even Jedi on any of the servers, let alone as many as it seemed.

The thing is that no matter how hard you make it to get something, most people are going to want it if they think it's something good or something that makes them special because everyone will believe that they've earned it whether it's good or not. Or they'll want it just because other people have it.There should be a major cost, and I don't think that a huge cost in materials, money, time spent questing, quest difficulty, or status is going to mean much... people will just work that much harder to earn or harvest such things.

I think that capital ships should have their own advanced profession off of pilot... Starship Officer (or something)and unlike pilot, should cost skill points that go toward the existijng total number of skills you can havejust like architect, bounty hunter, or pistoleer would, for example... in addition to any other suggestions for limiting the proliferation of capital ships. I think if you want to tool around the galaxycommanding a city-sized armored arsenal you should have to make a sacrifice somewhere else in your character. For example, be a combat monster on the ground, or be Godzilla in space... your choice. But it should be a choice.

Any cost to get or make these ships isn't going to be meaningful in the long run whehter it's status, rank, money, guild status, quested, resources harvested... people will grind out whatever is needed to meet those costs and you'll see more and more capital ships over time. There has to be a realcost that can't bemitigatedwithtime but requires a sacrifice on the part of the player(time invested in something is ultimately a meaningless limitation in an MMO, because people will take the time required),where people have to decide: You can have this, but then you have to give up being that.

However, the skill trees for such a Starship Officer profession would give something back... perhaps a skill line called Automation could allow the officer to replace stations that it is required that a player operate to be operated by a droid. You'd have a skill line that would grant a different "rank" to the starship officer and therefore affect what class of ship he can command. And so on. I don't think that it should be so limiting no one would want to have a capital ship, and there should be some cool features, but I do think it should cost something tangible (money, status and resources are not tangible in an MMO, they generate spontaneously and without limit, they are simplyrepresentationsof time invested in the game.)