[alphabet]

Originally Posted by Injustice

As I recall, bombers did a fine job of dealing with infestations without any cap ships to help out. Personally, I always saw the lack of cap ships as an extension of mankinds philosophy following the Great Collapse.

Personally I saw the absence of cap ships as a game flaw or graphics engine limitation.

I agree with Nanaki.

[Nanaki]

Capital ships are a different style of play than fighters. As opposed to fighters, which are entirely reflex-based, Capital ships are more strategical. As opposed to dodging enemy fire and getting your aim right, your plotting which course will allow you to inflict the most damage on the enemy without putting yourself at risk. You find the weakpoints in the enemy's defenses and try to destroy it with brute force. You also had to choose carefully, as due to the slow speed, dangerous and deadly situations are far more difficult to get out of.

As for their purpose? Well, they would be a good replacement for POSes. More or less, its strapping an engine, armor, and weapon systems to the POS in exchange for losing invulnerability. Although I think the whole idea of invulnerable structures in the game is silly. Only the Core stations should be impossible to destroy, and even staging attacks on Core stations should cause some form of damage. Although you should be able to construct full-fledged stations in the name of your faction as well. In addition, Stations should gain shielding and their own weapon systems, as well as NPC Escorts.

Heavy Carrier upgrades are not really upgrades, but rather that the Heavy Carrier actually leaves the Production line incomplete. Initially, it will only be able to dock and launch strike craft (Fighters). These upgrades will 'unlock' the station capabilities of the Heavy Carrier, and will include a Repair upgrade, Refueling upgrade, rearming upgrade, market warehouse upgrade, Storage warehouse upgrade, and a production upgrade. The Production upgrade requires the Storage warehouse upgrade as a pre-requisite.

How production would work. A lot of these ideas can also be used in player-owned stations as well, and forms the basis of a player-runned manufacturing system.

Ore taken to the Heavy Carrier will be refined into basic raw material commodities. These raw material commodites are stored onboard the Carrier until the production center needs them. Unlike most production lines, the Heavy Carrier's production center is modular, and it can only run a limited number of production lines at once. While manufactured commodities do not count towards this number, there is the option to disable the production of certain commodities (or disable production entirely) in order to save raw materials.

The Production center can only run so many ship-based component production lines per turn (lets use 5 as an example). As long as the Carrier possesses the blueprints for those components, they will be manufactured. The Carrier can instantly retool it's production facilities to produce different components, but the owner must still wait until the production cycle occurs in order to receive those items. Retooling production lines does not destroy blueprints, and the Carrier, at a later date, may retool it's production line back to producing what it originally did.

What is the purpose of this? The Heavy Carrier was designed to operate in extended operations (Which will be necessary in any extended operation in Conflux space). However, stockpiles only last so long. Eventually the Carrier will have to either call in supplies, or manufacture it's own. With self-sufficient manufacturing, a Heavy Carrier, provided it has plenty of blueprints as well as miners bringing in ore, can remain on the field indefinately, assuming that the Heavy Carrier's fighter wing manages to avoid being podded.

As a result, however, this has made the Heavy Carrier prohibitively expensive for large-scale deployment. It is also the largest Capital ship, easily comparable in mass to an Alpha or Bravo class station.

Light Carriers are smaller, much cheaper and faster, and lack the need to upgrade, but also lacks a production center, ore refinery, or a market. In addition, it has limited cargo space for storage and fightercraft. They are primarily designed to spearhead assaults instead of projecting long-term strategical power.

[xerout]

Originally Posted by daslog

I don't really see the point in Cap ships, other than to provide a mobile spawn point when you die.

Gunships could be cool though. 2 person ships, where one pilots and the other turrets.

Rapid deployment of fighter/bombers over great distances would be the other point of Cap ships as well as mobile spaw points.

@Injustice, certainly fleets of fighters and other ships could move through the galaxy as they do now without the need for a cap ship. Cap ships would only be really useful within a fairly narrow set of circumstances imho like rescuing a far away sector under attack or launching a surprise attack. Making them expensive and having a time-out on the jump drive would make people use them sparingly and carefully. I think there'd still be plenty of need for regular fleet deployments.

Xerout

[Nanaki]

I would imagine having the ability to repair, rearm, and refuel close to the battle is also a significant advantage. In the middle of nowhere, a nearby carrier would be a godsend for a bomber who is out of bombs.

[Karash]

If capital ships make it in J-G-E then I really believe a joystick setup would not be wise. Give them a 3rd person viewpoint and a control system similar to Nexus: Jupiter Incident. Now THAT would be a great addition to Jumpgate.

Capital ships should be squadron owned, and only purchase-able if some sort of non credit way (such as fame points, prestige, etc). They WOULD be powerful, but pilots could use them as floating bases for operations and run regular piloted ships.

[Nanaki]

Actually, Im probably a dying breed, but I prefer piloting my capital ship manually rather than having Eve or Nexus-esque automatic controls. Although, an option for both would be good, as I sometimes like viewing my ship from the third person.

Individuals should be able to purchase and own capital ships, given they scrape togther the cash for it. Faction-specific Capital ships should require an immense amount of presteige with your faction, but the TRI (Non-faction) Capital Ships should be purchasable as long as you have the money (and havent pissed TRI off).

[Karash]

Well I think it would be essential for the 3rd person view, even if you controled the ship via joystick. The problem is that with such a huge mass, the controls are going to be extremely sluggish (as they should be). Capital ships should not be travling across the sector but rather jumping to key points within the sector and taking up real estate (just imo).

[Nanaki]

Except that Capital ships usually arent sitting still if they are in a battle.

[Chicod]

Originally Posted by alphabet

So far its been hinted that large ships will have FTL travel, meaning they wont have to use the jumpgates to travel from sector to sector.

Now imagine a carrier class cap ship, that holds say 30 fighters. That would indeed be the type of gameplay I would be interested in.

It would also give a purpose to those things currently in game called bombers... think about it.

Now, if they implemented polycrewing where one fellas controls the cap ship and other folks control laser turrents.. same token, one guy flys the bomber and another mans the tailgun. Then you have some totally awesome gameplay on your hands.

Use this in conjunction with the idea of having "docking" more like hanging on, outside a station (docking tube idea I saw floating around recently), you could theoretically make it the same as a mobile station.

Huge sheilds, anti-missile capabilities, but also give it the ability to help restock, refuel ships currently engaged in combat and you've made an awesome ability without making Cap ships the uber offensive weapon.

[Karash]

Not saying that, but they would be moving too slowly to traverse a sector I would think...

I know we are all still in the mindset of how Jumpgate is right now, but things can change dramatically as far as game design. Jumpgate will always be about piloting ships with your own personal skill...but captial ships are piloted by entire CREWs of supposed people...how do we transform that into a game design that works, and doesnt look goofy ingame? We cant have capitals just zipping around doing courier missions right...or is that what you were thinking?

[alphabet]

I dont think anyone has said that a cap ship would be "zippy" by any means. If your intending to say they can fold space and disappear from one sector and appear in another, than yes, thats about as zippy as you can get.

If you mean traversing sectors, than no, they should be lumbering bohemeths.

[Karash]

Originally Posted by alphabet

I dont think anyone has said that a cap ship would be "zippy" by any means. If your intending to say they can fold space and disappear from one sector and appear in another, than yes, thats about as zippy as you can get.

If you mean traversing sectors, than no, they should be lumbering bohemeths.

I agree...they should be lumbering hulks. Now how to joystick fly those effectively?