Pilot Archive
Thread: POB Talk
Command Role
TomoRainer wrote:
A bizarre but, I think, very Star Warsy solution would be to increase their shields and armor a ways, but not excessively much--two, maybe three times what they're at now--but have an enormous damage reduction against POB subsystems, both in PVE and PVP. The point would be this: let enemies knock out their protection with modest ease, but make it way hard to chew through all their equipment, which, hopefully, could result in very frantic, exciting situations where your crew's scrambling to repair subsystems as they're slowly knocked out, the kind of flying-by-the-seat-of-your-pants situation we so often saw Han and Chewie reduced to.
The problem with this suggestion is it may be difficult to balance the numbers to where concentrated fire can destroy subsystems faster than a dedicated crew can repair them, but not so quickly to where the crew has no chance to get their systems back on line before the entire ship's blown up. Also, it may cause far too much decay, so you'd have to find out a way to eliminate decay from mid-combat POB repairs, maybe by not incurring decay until a part reaches 0 condition.
It comes with a lot of upside, though: it makes POBs tanks with a tradeoff, it makes repairmen much more valuable, and it could, I think, be extremely immersive and reminiscient of the way we've seen these ships used. If you could get it right, this would be my favorite solution by far, but I think the "getting it right" part would be much tougher here than on either of the others.
In any event, any changes to POB defenses would have to satisfy the condition of making them tougher to kill without imbalancing their effectiveness in PVE or PVP. I'm sure there are other solutions, but those are three that spring to mind as both balanced and interesting.
Tomo, that is extremely well thought out, and I think the best solution that I've heard. You're absolutely correct is saying that it is a "Star Warsy" solution as well.
1. It would make grouping for a POB ship much more important, as it stands now, the only draw to potential crewmates is that they get to man the guns.
2. I would be much more likely to actually use my Deci in combat, instead of keeping it as a floating house.
To your suggestion, here are a couple of ideas, to add: (Mostly these deal strictly with the feeling of immersion in combat)
1. Do players inside a POB ship that is in combat (walking around, NOT sitting at a station or turret) hear the shots that hit the ship? If not, this would help them feel the sense of urgency that would reinforce the "Star Warsiness" feel. I'll even go so far as to say that there should be some sort of graphic representation inside the ship, whether it be a camera shake effect that corresponds to incoming shots, or perhaps sparks come out from the conduits, maybe some combination thereof. -- The end result is to make everyone on board aware of the fact that a battle is being fought, and that they are as integral a part as the gunners.
2. Give the Ops seat something else to do. This could be the active shunting of power to certain areas of the shields, in anticipation of incoming blasts, or manually adjusting the amount of energy being used by the capacitor for each weapon. - Basically allowing the Operations person to fine tune any systems in flight, and including that person to also feel like he/she is involved in the actual battle.
3. Give the pilot a "Battle Stations" signal. This could be a flashing red light that the crew sees, or a Klaxon sound, something like that, which would further immerse the crew in the feeling that a battle is immenent, and that they are as important as the pilot to the welfare of the ship.
Basically, I think that flying in a POB ship should be similar in feel to what the crew of a submarine feels. For examples, look at U-571, Das Boot, Battlestar Galactica (New series), Crimson Tide, but also look at Naval ship warfare in general, what would a POB ship be used for? We must define this role, or discover the role that the devs have in mind, (if any) to use these ships for combat, instead of just as ddecoration.
Kinj
Message Edited by KinjiruSpleen on 07-22-2005 01:51 PM
eapers wrote:
Looks good.
First off, your example once again shows how badly the ROTW reward ships need to be nerfed. Before ROTW, it was more or less sacred that high mass = big and clunky; low mass = swift and evasive. The JSF needs to have its mass lowered somewhere below 65k, the RGI tie needs to have its hitbox aligned correctly and have its mass reduced (maybe 65k?). The reward ships should be a sign of status, not of uberness like they are now (the other ROTW ships probably need to be nerfed to, but I havent used them and am not in a position to critisize). Also, get rid of the heavy noob ships. Starting out as a pilot used to be a challenge.
But you know all that- back to the POB ships. I like your ideas very much, and I don't have much to add. I will say that it would be very nice to see a role for missile bearing ships, such as the B-wing and Opressor.
Another way to improve the utility of POB ships would be to allow them to use more of that 5 million mass. Put two more gun slots in the POB ships- each of the two gunners would have two guns. Allow a secondary sheild on the POB ships. (While we're at it, allow the true small fighters to have two engines- their speed adds and their YPR averages. There could be caps or level limits so that speed wouldnt reach a rediculous level).
I hope it gets worked out. These ships are very, very cool.
If they start increasing the number of components we can add, I'd think a drop in mass for the POBs is due, probably to something in the 3-4 million range.
Even with two more guns, a second shield generator and even a second reactor (you think you're gonna power all this stuff on a player crafted level 10? rofflez.), you can still throw everything Elite and Type V with mass to spare at 5 million.
Gotta be some ceiling on performance and balancing imposed. If you want Elite double shields, then you've gotta give something up, either a Capacitor gets downgraded or your belly turret's only mounting Experimentals or something. Somewhere, there's got to be something given up for gain, right now we give up engine performance for no countergain, so the balance is off. Give us the ability to fight that, but don't shove us the other way.
As far as combat goes, the ability to reload missiles mid-flight is a definite need, and Darth_Platypus (the main space dev) does seem to agree. I've also liked the idea of making POB guns more shotgun-like to actually have a chance against miniscule and hyperagile fighters.
Having shield mods tied to the speed mod of a ship is interesting in that it would help out heavy fighters and bombers, the problems with which are hinted at in the first post. It really wouldn't go far enough for POBs, though, so I'm not sure how useful it would end up being in practice.
There are a lot of really great ideas here so far, keep it up. And if you know of other threads that have relevant discussion in them, feel free to link them so we can see about incorporating that info as well.
Hey just thought of a use for the YTs dish i hate that gets in the way, make it part of the mod catagory,why not use it to be able to adjust the threat range of ships say have it move from 100 to 2000 m so you can detect all imediate threats, THis dish also may give bonuses to missile lock since the yt only has two missiles and give bonuses to chafts ,THe dish would be able to move and lock onto targets and be able to lock onto missiles and targets to launch at. This would give some use to another chair in the yt.
Another idea know how han had the hudden blaster turret why not make this the person in the fourth seats job instead of a turret we not add a mounted launcher that pivots and can tract ships or you can add another dish if you want
this idea is just a random thought the one in red to fill the fourth seat lol.
Just my extra two cents from the last post lol
My Suggestions
Elite Launchers and Packs
10-25% more damge
Packs have 2x or 3x ammo
In space reload is good as well
I wouldn't tweek the shields too high but another 50%. If you put it up too high you become to strong for PVE. Maybe just reduce PVP dmage to POB ships
Variance between the POB ships would be cool too. Since all the faction ships have different congiurations, why not the POBs?
Add Turrets. Simillar to the Incom T-72 Rebel Gunboat. Has 1 on top/bottom/and both sides (and I think rear too, plus 1 forward firing pilot I believe)
Add Pilot controlled Forward firing guns.
Droid Shield and Booster Programs would be nice.
Elite Droid interface and Flight computer.
Increase Elite weapons strength.
Mutliple Armor layers.
Single rear firing launcher controlled by rear turretman.
1.) The independent movement of turrets, aka "gyrostabalization." This would greatly improve the effectiveness of the turrets.
2.) Improvements to the ops chairs. More than just operating the droid commands and skills.
3.) Extra components: ex. another capacitor that cap to shield shunt pulls from.
4.) Better defenses.
5.) The ability to reload missiles from inside the ship.
Overall I think the POB ships, if properly equipped and crewed, should be able to last a while in a fight against fighters. I'm not saying they should win against the fighters but should be able to last.
Personally, I'd like to see the POB ships to be best against other pob ships. You'd have a fighter escort to get the fighters.
It would be great fun to have heavily armed POB ships just slugging it out in space.
Also, the best fighters to take out the POB ships should be the bombers instead of just everyone using the light fast fighters.
Earlier this night another pilot and I were running duties out of the Kash space station. These missions spawned gunships, 2 at once, at one point. We didn't get further, but IMO, it was one hell of a fun time trying to take them down. In PvP, that's what it should be like, too.
When we were attacking, we would get in range, and then have to shunt, IFF, or run. FAST. Failure to do so resulted in a whomping that'd send us back to the station in pieces. IMO, it would be really fun if actual POB ships were a little more like that. They're big. They're supposed to be tanks. But at the same time that's not their sole purpose.
I'd love to see the POB ships become a sort of capital ship. It's boring having to fly a greivous fighter or an A-Wing in pvp or get owned. I enjoy the larger gunships, and I would very much like to see them fill their role (or what I see to be their role) as a capital ship, more.
I have liked the suggestions on restricting tabbing through targets to targets that are within the 180 degree range of the guns, and I also support the shot-gun like projectiles of the guns, as well as a camera motion that didn't require so much of a twitch. As it is, the slightest movement on the behalf of the pilot drastically screws up the gunners aim. While fighting the assault gunships, it was doing complete rolls, and I was being pegged by all 4 guns at once.
POB ships need to be gunships. They need to deliver high amounts of damage to keep enemy fighters on their toes. While I am not an advocate of 1 shotting the smaller, lighter fighters out of the sky, I think that there is a middle ground in which the POB ship and the light fighter can be equals in the fight. Where the small ship has to balance the risk of staying within range and unleashing a long volley that will do a considerable amount of damage, but by no means be a fatal blow, and making short, quick strafing runs, where it takes a little damage, and delivers a little damage.
Naturally the gunships in hte pvp lacked the ability to shield shunt, therefore the shunt is unbalancing in pvp, in favor of the PvP. I would be in favor of the defense of the ship lying in the hands of the gunners to keep attackers at bay then the ability of the operations officer to shield shunt over, and over, and over again.
I really like the idea with all the repair men running around frantically, would make fights in a POB ship much more atmospheric. One thing I don't like about repairing at the moment though is how you just use a repair kit and *shazam* the component is new, shiny and fully operational. This is hardly how it was done in the Star Wars films is it? I think it would be much better to have repairing sub-systems be like a little minigame. Maybe a screen with a bunch of wires and chips would appear and....well this is all off the top of my head at so I haven't really thought about exactly how it would work but I'm sure you all get the idea
While I appreciate that repair kits are currently in the game to help keep shipwrights' pockets filled, I don't think that it would make that much difference to the shipwright community if they were removed so that a more dynamic form of POB ship repairing could be introduced, after all I'm sure most of their credits are earned selling ship chassis. However I'm not actually sure about this so if there are any shipwrights out there, please feel free to correct me 
I also think that a mini-game style of repairing would add much needed tension to those battles, with the repairmen scrambling to complete the mini-games as fast as possible, perhaps making mistakes under the pressure.
What do you guys think?
Imaridril wrote:
Command Role
One of the things that a lot of people would like to be able to do with a POB ship is use it as somewhat of a command platform for organizing and directing other player fighters. Here's some ideas for some simple functions that would allow POB ships to fill more of a command role...
1. Long Range Sensors: The co-pilot would be able to activate a function that brings up something similar to the Area Track menu that rangers have. The menu would have four sub-groups on it. They would be: Rebel Ships, Imperial Ships, Neutral Ships, and Player Ships. The co-pilot would select one of the options and then it would scan out to a range of 4000 meters in all directions and then give him a list of all ships within that range that belong to the sub-group he selected along with their range away and an arrow that gave their general direction. The co-pilot would then be able to select one of the ships from this list. A waypoint to the selected ship would then be created and activated in the co-pilot's on-screen waypoint monitor. The same waypoint would also be sent to the on-screen waypoint monitors of anyone he's grouped with.
2. Target Relaying: The co-pilot would be able to select a target within radar range, and then use the slash command /relayTarget. This would cause the object that is targetted to temporarily be highlighted on the radar of everyone that is grouped with the co-pilot. An on-screen message would also be sent out to everyone grouped with the co-pilot alerting them that a priority target has been selected.
3. Hyperspace Jump Coordination: If the co-pilot in a POB ship hits H, the normal hyperspace map will come up, however once the co-pilot chooses a destination, a pop-up window will come up on the screen of the pilot of the POB ship, as well as on the screens of any other pilots grouped with the co-pilot. The pop-up window would show the destination the co-pilot has chosen, and give the viewer a YES or NO option as to whether or not he wanted his ship to begin calculating a jump to that location.
4. Dock and Reapair: If a POB isn't moving, fighters that are grouped with it can use the /dock command on the POB ship. Once docked, someone inside the POB ship can go down to a terminal inside the POB ship and from that terminal he can use repair kits to make repairs to the docked fighter.