Ship Components Idea

[Hamsterlord]

I made this suggestion in the game ideas thread, but I want to see what people think of it individually.

Since every move in the game is logged (almost), those logs could be used to figure out what a person's favorite tactics are. Then, when you use those tactics enough, you receive a ship component. Ex: A person spends 80% of his game moves on piracy in friendly space. So, after a while, he gets Active Sensors or something. These make him 50% more likely to get cargo pods, and 15% more likely to get Marauders. They stay on the ship until it is destroyed, and they are transferred if he gets promoted to new ship type. These upgrades would be rare to get, so these ships would be protected by the rest of the fleet.

Here are some preliminary suggestions for components:

Low Signature Hull Plating: Makes you appear powered down to 50% of the enemy ships in the sector, even if not powered down.

Occlusion Monitor Software: Allows you to see and fire upon 50% of powered down ships in sector on normal scans.

Docking Auto Turret: Any ships attacking you receive 20% of the damage they caused.

Point Defense Turret: 50% chance of Seeker missiles being killed before hitting you.

Hull Armor: Extra 1000 hit points, in addition to shields. Not repairable. Ex: 8000/7000 shields. This one doesn't transfer in ship changes.

Comms Laser: Can send comms message to one ship of any faction in the sector. This message cost one move, and can only be done once per turn.

Secondary Fusion Ring: Damage per shot increased 50%, chance of Marauder attack in piracy increased by 20%.

Active 5 Sensors: 50% more likely to get cargo pod in piracy. 15% more likely to get Marauders.

Can anyone else think of one?

[haza]

i like the components but i dont think getting them like the way u suggested. u should research for them or something like that

[Spektyr]

Not much for repair ships... they spend as many turns as possible doing repairs... giving them advanced repairs or something would pretty much be the same as just increasing the repair per level.

Of course if they do a lot of piracy they could hope to become major bait for marauders...

I mean they really only do three things. Repair, piracy, and get shot at. Maybe something like 'Elite Repair crews'. 50% chance to do extra repair, maybe like 10% of it not taking a move (only once per turn).

One question:

"Hull Armor: Extra 1000 hit points, in addition to shields. Not repairable. Ex: 8000/7000 shields. This one doesn't transfer in ship changes."

So you get a one time 1000hp increase? That can't be repaired? Not much use IMHO. Maybe not repair ship repairable, but autorepair should fix it. (It would still take 7 moves to fix.)

And it really should be taken off AFTER the shields. The hull is inside the shields after all. Would be a nice surprise for your attackers.

"What? He was at 200 shields, I did 300 damage and he's still here?"

It's not like your attackers can see the armor that easily.


Research would be a tough thing to work out. How about being able to 'buy' them instead? With your points. That would certainly give lvl 10 ships something to do with the points they collect past 50k.

[Hamsterlord]

I have thought of some repair ship-specific components:

Repair Expert software: Double repair strength, costs one move, can only be used once per turn.

Self Defense Module: Repair ships below level 5 only. Enemy fire has 50% chance of missing the ship entirely, causing no damage. Ships above level 5 are too big for these kind of evasive maneuvers.

Countermeasures Launcher: Damage to ship is reduced by 25% per shot. Under Level 5 only. Above level 5, ships are too big to miss anyway.

Salvage Drone Array: Specialised salvage drones, mounted with cutting lasers and prying arms, allow a repair ship to garner 100 scrap directly from the hull of enemy ships, causing 100 hit points of damage.

The level 5 requirements make sure that bigger repair ships, which are hard to kill anyway, are not made even HARDER to kill. But it gives the little guys a chance to do something on the front lines.

[Spektyr]

Not bad, I like!

Especially the Salvage Drones.

"What? That was your ship? It looked like junk to me!"

LOL


Awww... he's not using that heatsink. We'll just 'liberate' it from him.

[Hamsterlord]

Thought you might like that one. Have never been repair ship myself, but it has gotta get frustrating when there aren't any friendlies to repair, and there is that nice juicy target, and boom, you get marauders, or nothing found. That's gotta suck.

[Spektyr]

Actually, there's one thing that sucks worse. Being a high level repairship, getting that gattlin, firing on the target with about 350 left on it's shields, doing just over 300 damage, and then a lvl 1 fighter comes swooping in, fire's it's slingshot and gets the kill.

[Hamsterlord]

Yeah, I can definately see how that would suck. Of course, if you are high level, then the little dude needs the points more anyways, but still, that sucks.

[Spektyr]

Bah... he shoulda fired sooner. After all I have to take the time to do piracy! *smirk*

Really, it didn't bother me that much, if you're looking for a game that's all about 'you', then you should be in single-player. As long as it helps the faction, I'm happy.

It's possible to be happy and disappointed at the same time. Getting kills as a repairship isn't easy.

[Hamsterlord]

Instead of a chance component, this could be an automatic upgrade ability on repair ships:

Minelaying Pod: For level 5 and above repair ships only. Allows you to drop H/S Mines in a sector. Only 5 mines can be in a sector at once. These mines are like decoys, only powered down. They wait in that sector for any ship of another faction to arrive (they can't tell between allies and enemies). As soon as there is a nonfreindly ship in the sector, they attack the highest level ship available, causing from 250 to 500 HP of damage each.

Naturally, this one would become available later in the game, when mostly medium/high level ships are in the sector. I think this would add a new twist to life as a repair ship. Maybe the repair ship could even get credit for the damage and kills from these mines.

Weapons Manipulator Arm: For level 8 and above repair ships only. Allows you to drop a Gunstar Weapons Platform in a sector. There can only be one Gunstar in a given sector, and only 5 total for a faction. They act like miniature HQs, with 8000 hit points. They fire automatically each turn at the highest level ship of any faction other than its own, causing 500 hit points per shot, and when they are attacked, 30% of the damage caused to them is caused to the attacker.

These additions would definately improve HQ defense, and make it more difficult to assault a faction with a fleet which is mostly inactive.

[Lightspeed]

I think part of the game is that inactive faction shall be easier to kill :grngrin:



Survival of the most active.

[Hamsterlord]

Ah, but even for active factions, automated defenses would give the fleet more flexibility. The FC ship would be able to move about more freely, and it would slow down an advancing fleet long enough for a coordinated faction to mount a defense. An uncoordinated faction would just prolong the inevitable however.

Plus, giving Repair ships extra stuff to do kinda compensates for the incredible boredom. Piracy, piracy piracy piracy piracy, jump to another sector, get shot at, repair things, piracy piracy piracy piracy piracy.

[HardEyes]

I like the idea with the mines (see "suggestions for game3"), laying them should use some scrap... and of course the kill is the one of the repair... actually some kind of delayed damage. so every mine shall use up a move, and please, don't let them lay by piracy..

But don't let them choose a "highestlevel" target, they shall just attack a random enemy ship. Their damage depends on level of repair (and his combat skill prob.) vs. piloting from ship. This way your nice 5000 Damge mines just kills the allied lvl1 fighter next to you...

the idea with the gunstar seems similiar to the idea of repair/defense stations. i think they are to hard this way, i really believe a ship shall sacrifice himself to built such thing.
See again ("suggestions for g3"), there are the details listed.

HardEyes

[soltys]

We could take a lot of stuff from IW2. But it could be really nice to expand it in following way:

- points are treated as money only
- you start game with let's say 2000 points.
- you must create your ship by yourself - buy hull, armor, reactors, guns, repair components, all
- you have your "home" at HQ - you can store unused equipment there (so if you want to change ships, you can do it only at HQ)
- you can buy / sell at any sector owned totally (== no enemy ships) by your faction, but you ship must be flyable after such operation (must have hull, drive, etc.)
- if you die, you start again with your current money (if > 2000 ) or with basic 2000
- buying / selling costs move[s]
- if you faction loses HQ, you lose all of course

It could be like that or simmilar to that.

[Spektyr]

I have another idea for the active 5 scanners:

First off, make decoys completely indistinguishable from real ships. In other words, have them constantly update their info so that they perfectly match the ship that launched them.

Now, active 5 scanners allow you to do the following:

1. Identify decoys (they have less mass, and bounce less of the active scan)
2. Scan other ships to see what components they have installed.
3. Instead of only increasing the chance of pods or Marauders, make it a 20% increase across the board of finding anything.
4. Able to detect mines (if implimented). Detection of a mine would make it targetable by friendly ships, giving them a chance to automatically shoot it before it hit (maybe 50%).

Alternately, there could be a third ship class: Sensor ships. Same as above but add the following:

5. Can scan any adjoining sector (any sector that can be jumped to from that sector). Like FC scans but limited range.
6. Can 'paint' targets with their sensors to increase their faction's damage to those ships. 5-20% increase in damage (according to ship levels and skill) done by ships in their faction to the ship 'painted', can only paint one target at a time. (ie. If you paint another ship, the bonus is transferred to that ship) Due to the immense power of thier sensor array, this should show up in logs. In the case of multiple sensor ships, only the highest bonus would be used.

Nuts & Bolts:

1. Scans use one move.
2. Painting enemy ships gives points similar to attacking.
3. Scanning enemy ships gives reduced points compared to attacking.
4. Enemy presence bonus for any scanning/painting.
5. Similar shields/speed to repairships, with no offensive or repair capabilities. Combat skill is 'sensor skill', adds bonuses to painting targets.
6. No bonus for painting an HQ. It's too big to miss anyway.

Sensor ships would reduce the burden on the FC to constantly supply scans, allow fleets to operate more self-sufficiently, and make the ships they fly with more lethal in combat (if they attack coordinatedly). Due to their slightly reduced points gaining capability in combat, they would get the points gaining bonus of Active 5 sensors for piracy, along with a better chance of finding Gats, Seekers, LDA's (and marauders). I think this would give sensor ships enough power to make them useful, and also make them viable targets. It wouldn't be good if they didn't give enough to their side to make them the last ship on the target list. Risk vs. Reward.