Pilot Archive
Thread: Small Capital Ships
These shouldn't then be limited to top elitist players who have 100 mil in their account, nor those who play SWG 10 hours a day.
Flatfingers wrote:
2. OTOH, if only a few people get these, what's to stop them from owning everybody else? How do you balance such power?
Heh. This is a subject that was alreadybeing hotlydebatedon the pre-launch discussion forum... nice to see it making a comeback here on the Shipwright board.
Here are some of the points that have been made on this over the past three years:
1. The resources required to build a true "capital ship" (i.e., cruiser and above) ought to be staggering -- basically only a crafting PA should be able to amass enough such materials. Otherwise you get everybody and his uncle cruising the spacelanes in these things.
2. OTOH, if only a few people get these, what's to stop them from owning everybody else? How do you balance such power?
3. It's been suggested at various times that such large projects (including Outposts) would be a great opportunity to set up a "multicrafter" crafting system. The link goes into more detail, but basically, what do you folks think of requiring multiple crafters to work simultanously on a capital shipschematic? Or does the current systemwhere one person canmake complex items by craftinga bunch ofsubcomponents seem like something worth retaining?
4. If there are going to be player-craftable capital ships, that implies player operation of such ships... so how do you deal with the problem that most of these ships are said to need huge crews? Wouldn't you have tofill these ships with NPCs that players could replace? In which case, how does that work? (Note that this could allow players to assume key command roles: Captain, Ops Officer, Helm, Fire Control, Sensors, Engineering, etc. -- which would leave SWG in a good position to compete with the upcoming Star Trek Online, which is said will feature exactly this kind of rank/role structure.)
5. Speaking of sensors, shouldn't capital ships need a full-blownSensor Opsgame?
6. We talked about Orbital Bombardmenttoo. Still seems like a good idea to me!
7. Finally, for a long time I've really liked the idea of capital ships as carriers for player fighters and gunners. Even if we don't get to craft such ships, what do you folks think of that idea?
Plenty of opportunity for gaming goodness here... if SOE wanted to implement it.
--Flatfingers
Instead of full sized capital ships we would have to start out with smaller frigate and escort type of heavy vessels.
The corevette is a perfect example of a good class. The nebulon-B frigate located outside of the Dantoonie spaceport is another. Smaller cruisers, patrol vessels, and maybe even a Victory class star destroyer type (they were very small compared to regular SSD's) could become available.
There's always a fight as to who gets to man the two turrets on the current multiplayer ships. I dont think there will be a lack of that for a larger vessel.
I think that any kind of large capital ship (SDs, Frigates etc) are unlikely to happen. As has been mentioned already, to keep ralistic to the star wars galaxy they woudl need hundreds of players to crew them poroperly.
If they did bring in larger ships i think you would be looking at Corvettes or Marauder Corvettes to be the biggest kind of thign available.
Bulk cruiserrs that coudl be modified woudl be awesome too. Anythin with more than 4-5 turrets and you are lookign at somethign being way too complicated i would have thought.
Ships that coudl be used (been flickign through the "Essentaia Guide to Vehicles and Vessels"):
YT-2400 (like the outrider form shadows of the empire) - not a capital ship but they are AWESOME ships
Xiytiar-Class Transport- bulk freighter 165m long, mostly cargo/living space but could fit a few turrets on and make it vialble in a fight
Raptor-class transport shuttle - basically an assault shuttle with space to carry troops. could be cool for the boarding actions mentoned ealier
Lambda Shuttle - MUST BE INCLUDED
Lancer Frigate - basically a small captial ship/cruiser designed to fight starfighter with several smaller turrets
Marauder Corvette - 195m long (looks a little like a ferengi ship from start trek TNG) supposed to be a pirate/corporate sector ship
Corvette - We all know what they look like, in the books it is possible to run them with a 10 man crew
Skipray Blastboat - 4-5 man heavy fighter/gunboat - would be about the size of the yt-1300 but more of a fighter feel to it
The lambda shuttle could be crafted as a plain shuttle but with mod-ing option to add a ventral and/or rear turret
The corvette originally had ventral and dorsal turrets but the "modified" ones (in x-wing alliance) also had side turrets too
Marauder corvette dorsal turrets but coudl have a one on each wing too
Raptor has a dorsal turret.
If they did bring in space guild wars then maybe you coudl have the option to base your char/guild on an NPC star destroyer? You could return to the hanger for repairs and maybe even store ammo reloads there too. That way people still get Star Destroyers but SOE done have to worry about everyone having their own.
In this situation an ace pilot might be able to assume the "tactical" station of the destroyer and issue movement and combat commands to any other NPC capital ships. The transission could be fairly simple as it wouldn't involve mappign out the interior of the capital ship, you could dock with it in your fighter and then it coudl work liek moving to a turret, radial menu on the door/airlock and select "Enter Tactical station". There coudl be a couple of capital ship "specials" places in the pilot profs (liek the "Ackbar Slash" or "Interdiction Zone" (which coudl temporaily bring in an NPC interdictor cruiser). even the existing commands (bomber raid etc) coudl be valid but have more punch.
I keep seeing a few issues popping up again and again, and nobody has hit on the most obvious solutions. It's like i go away for a few days and you all get delusions of granduer or something.
1. Availability / craftability - Don't make it a schem. Make it a faction attainable DEED, and make the FP cost bigger than any three people can swing on their own. As a shipwright, i CRINGE at the idea of having to manage the resources required for this, and don't see it as EVER being a reliable and steady way to make credits. Make all the other loot deed drops craftable. Make it so that all capital ships have to be tied to a Player Association, and limit the number of vessels a PA can register (say one SD and two frigs or vettes, etc)
Personally, I just wish they hadn't called them "destroyers."
Caused no end of confusion, that has....
--Flatfingers
Wookus wrote:
1. Availability / craftability - Don't make it a schem. Make it a faction attainable DEED, and make the FP cost bigger than any three people can swing on their own. As a shipwright, i CRINGE at the idea of having to manage the resources required for this, and don't see it as EVER being a reliable and steady way to make credits. Make all the other loot deed drops craftable. Make it so that all capital ships have to be tied to a Player Association, and limit the number of vessels a PA can register (say one SD and two frigs or vettes, etc)
CommTampers wrote:
Wookus wrote:1. Availability / craftability - Don't make it a schem. Make it a faction attainable DEED, and make the FP cost bigger than any three people can swing on their own. As a shipwright, i CRINGE at the idea of having to manage the resources required for this, and don't see it as EVER being a reliable and steady way to make credits. Make all the other loot deed drops craftable. Make it so that all capital ships have to be tied to a Player Association, and limit the number of vessels a PA can register (say one SD and two frigs or vettes, etc)
No!!!! Just because you don't want to manage them doesn't mean that other REAL shipwrights don't want to be able craft them. Personally, I'd be willing to compronise. Make them buyable with FP, but much cheaper and better from shipwrights. As for guild management....well it could force guilds to beak into sub-guilds unless the cap increased with guild size indeffinately. It undermines the other purpose of cap ships, fun. I know that my nova is mal-armed, but I have it well decorated for parties and meetings. Capping cap ships restricts them to the upper elite of guilds. By adding cap caps, we will only get new issues/bugs/exploits.
NO PLAYER SHIPS BIGGER THEN A GUNBOAT WOULD BE BALANCED. Even a Boat would be hard to balance. I don't want to see player controlled capitolships or escorts in any of the space systems. I also don't see the devs adding more zones like DS or kessel since there aren't enough people in space that USE them as they are now. Only one server has an active space component. One server isn't going to justify them adding that much processing power to have space combat zones for big ships and massive battles. We arn't talking some AMD or pent processors for what we want. Would lag to bad if there weren't real dediated servers. Real servers cost money.
On the comprimise how about a change to the YPR stats moving from the engines to the chasis as an experimetable stat and allowing duel methods to get the gunboat.
Let me explain the diffrence to gettign the boat first.
Both ways REQUIRE an epic length quest. This will keep the number small.
At the end of the quest you can buy a DEED with a lot of faction. I'm thinking about 5 million faction OR you can buy a Schem for a lot of faction, but less then a deed. I'm thinking about 2 million faction.
This would result in two things people can buy the deed if they want and get the ship to play with now, or they can get a schem that a SW can experiment on. The Deed should have stats equal to a MSW made ship but be at the 80% level. Not at the 100% level. This means a MSW CAN make a better ship if they can get the resources to make it.
Now with adding the YPR to the chasis and not on the engine a MSW can make boat better then a DEED boat in YPR, mass or hitpoint. Given that if the deed boat is at 80% it will be very hard for a MSW to amke a boat better then a DEED boat in every way.
There is some thing else that needs to be thought out here. That is how would it be crafted. My thoughts, like a droid. You build parts and put the parts togther in to a chasis to make the adv droids. So to make a gun boat lets say it takes 4 bulkhead sections, one power section, one life support section, one bridge section and the amount of resources to make any of the other PoB ships. Each section would require diffrent resources. The amount of resources for each section should be the amount needed to make a PoB ship or a master level fighter. Some sections can require crafted parts. Like the bridge and lifesupport sections would require some Electronic Memory modules and some Electronic GP Modules in addition to the resources to make, and a micro sensor suite to make the bridge section. If we wanted even more crafters involved then include the need for walls for all sections and the power section would need a power core form archetects.
I know some people are screaming we don't want to rely on other crafting proffesions! But the more it takes to get some thing the better it can be. This also would gain support form some other proffesion to help us get this to reality. The armorsmithes, droid enginers and weapons smithes were very mad that they were excluded from being able to help make ships. Yes you need a Flight computer or a droid o get the best from a ship but you don't NEED it.
Currently, the POB ships are the ones getting owned and outgunned. Right now, no POB ship is balanced. I can see requiring an epic quest, but not some uber number of faction points. That would limit it tothe poeple who FP farm several hours every night this upcoming summer. Two million is way over the top. On the converse, how can it be unbalancing if everyone can have it?
Yalton wrote:
CommTampers wrote:
Wookus wrote:
1. Availability / craftability - Don't make it a schem. Make it a faction attainable DEED, and make the FP cost bigger than any three people can swing on their own. As a shipwright, i CRINGE at the idea of having to manage the resources required for this, and don't see it as EVER being a reliable and steady way to make credits. Make all the other loot deed drops craftable. Make it so that all capital ships have to be tied to a Player Association, and limit the number of vessels a PA can register (say one SD and two frigs or vettes, etc)
No!!!! Just because you don't want to manage them doesn't mean that other REAL shipwrights don't want to be able craft them. Personally, I'd be willing to compronise. Make them buyable with FP, but much cheaper and better from shipwrights. As for guild management....well it could force guilds to beak into sub-guilds unless the cap increased with guild size indeffinately. It undermines the other purpose of cap ships, fun. I know that my nova is mal-armed, but I have it well decorated for parties and meetings. Capping cap ships restricts them to the upper elite of guilds. By adding cap caps, we will only get new issues/bugs/exploits.
NO PLAYER SHIPS BIGGER THEN A GUNBOAT WOULD BE BALANCED. [bla bla bla bla bla]
Second CommT, Unbanlanced doesn't mean it has to be balanced against other players ONLY.
Even a ship in the way I outlined a page ago would drstically alter teh PvE game for any group that ahd acces to one. Sure other players could kill it in DS. But if it isn't overt or is owned by Corsec pilot that is really neutral on the ground then it can be used to help on ANY mission. Making most missions trivial. It would really be nice to have that much firepower of the Storm Squadron missions. But it would make most Ace badges even more worthless.
/rant
Yes, Ace badges are worthless. You're not a true Ace till you clear Deep Space of the opposing faction by killing them not just taking out the Base or the SD AND have at least 5 player PvP kills.
/endRant
The faction cost is to keep them rare. I don't want to see 10 of these boats in Naboo just around the station. I would love to see 10 going at it in DS with about 60 fighters also. Now that would be a fun furball
For neutral players the cost for the DEED would be in creds but about 2-4 times the faction cost. Yes some people ahve that much money. Ask the BEs about the good days when they could take Kimo missions on Lok.
Now the numbers and costs don't ahve to be where I ahve set them. They can be lower or higher. It all depends on how fast people can get the faction also. A good pilot can make an enourmous amount fo faction in DS in an hour. Let alone people camp killing the SD or Rebel base there.
In terms of balance, PvE is already unbalanced. NPC fighters have uber shields and butter-knife weapons.
Message Edited by CommTampers on 05-30-2005 06:18 PM