[Diver012]

My 2 cents..

I always thought it would be cool if there could be cap ships incorporated into the game somehow.

Ive played a LOT of space sim games. In most of the games I played, even the MMO games, the cap ships were always AI controlled.

I wouldnt mind seeing Cap ships involved in teh game. I think it would ad a little something extra. But im not so sure if these Cap ships should be in the control of players.

Maybe Cap ships could be GM controlled ships only. A GM could Host a special even like invading Conflux space. Players that wanted to participate could dock their ships on board and launch once in sector. Maybe players that didnt want to get shot down or arent any good at PvP but still liked the thrill of shooting something down, could man a turret or something on board....


Just a few thoughts on the subject.

Im gonna go get me another beer.

[Radi]

Ahh cap ships...

Ohh where to start?


Cap ships in Jumpgate should be vulnerable to fighters/bombers. Not easily vulnerable (one bomber taking down destroyer or battleship). Main purpose of cap ships is to fight other cap ship, lay siege to stations and stationary defenses.

On the same note, cap ships should not be easily obtained. Long construction process and/or lots of resources. Maybe even a limit should be set.

They should be manned by one person. However, with an option to man turrets.


Controlling would be done via third person perspective or kinda like HM2 did with sensor view. However, manual override should be an option.

Problems begins when pilot or somebody has to log out. What happens to the cap ship?

If the pilot owns it [cap ship], I do not think that players in turrets should be able to hop into pilot seat and possibly hijack it. One person per cap ship. It is the only thing that makes sense game play wise.

On that note, turrets should be AI controlled with ability to assign targets. Or even a pilot can hop into a turret.

Type of cap ships:

Carrier: overall, bad idea in Jumpgate. Mobile POS with possible refuel and re-arm = bad. Sounds good, but ruins game play.

Corvette: smallest cap ship designed to defend cap ships from fighters/bombers.

Destroyer: bigger guns than corvette, some anti-fighter defense, used mostly for quick raids, not designed to endure heavy damage.

Cruiser: basically siege machine, very vulnerable to fighters and bombers.

Mobile refinery or ore drop off: deep space mining, vulnerable, ore only,maybe some Refuel but no repair.


The biggest problem I see is when you have to logout. Must be smartly implemented to avoid abuse and reasonable prevention of cap ship loss.

[Radi]

Sub-systems:

Engine: normal and "jumpdrive"
Sensors: even with damages radar, pilot should see roid and jumpgate, but every other ship should not be visible.
Turrets

Maybe some additional and unique for every cap ship (for example: ore drop off for harvester cap ship)

Damages to the engines should only cripple them, not destroy. It is enough punishment for cap ship.
Turrets: destroyable
sensors: cripple only.

[Nanaki]

Radi pretty much hit everything that I intend to achieve, with a few exceptions.

Carrier: overall, bad idea in Jumpgate. Mobile POS with possible refuel and re-arm = bad. Sounds good, but ruins game play.

Big difference between the Carrier and the POS, the Carrier is actually destroyable. The biggest flaw with POSes in jumpgate was that they were indestructable.

Problems begins when pilot or somebody has to log out. What happens to the cap ship?

The pilot can designate 'Sub-owners' to take control of it while he is gone. Worse comes to worse, the ship remains stationary. The AI Turrets still function and defend the ship, but other than that the ship does not move.

A potential solution, though, is that Capital ship pilots could park their capships in the middle of nowhere using their hyperspace drive. Another alternative is docking with a station. Heavy Carrier pilots would likely be unable to do either, since Heavy Carriers are mobile stations and therefore, are a part of the economy.

Staging an attack on a Heavy Carrier, however, is similar to staging an attack on a Factional station. Unless the Carrier was owned by pirates, theres probably going to be someone that may not even have a relationship with the Carrier owner that wont be too happy if you try to fry the Carrier since it is a part of his trade route. Attacking a Civilian-owned Carrier in reg space is going to evoke the ire of NPC defenders, no matter the faction. In addition, Faction NPCs (and PCs) will defend their faction's capital ships.

From what I remembered in Jumpgate, every Station had it's own little batch of pilots that generally never strayed far from that station. These were usually miners. Something similar could happen with Carriers, with a constant population of miners whom follows the carrier around as it visits rich asteroid belts. They also field off attacks against the Carrier, knowing that the Carrier's destruction will force them back to being stationed off static faction-stations.

Turrets: destroyable

They should be disabled instead. More or less, the 'destruction' of a subsystem should never destroy the devices inside that subsystem, but it will be rendered inoperational until repaired.

[Radi]

Yes, that is what I mean. Destroyed = not usable until repaired. You might even have to buy new guns.

[Nanaki]

Becides, I think players controlling capital ships would be interesting. Rather than a GM controlling a Heavy Carrier in an incursion on Conflux space, you could have TRI approaching someone who owns a Heavy Carrier, enlisting them to do the incursion in exchange for, say, some Artifacts that TRI has found, a large sum of cash, or something of significant value.

The reason why I would prefer to have a player-controlled ship, is that player-controlled Capital ships may eventually develop a personality for those who own them. Much like fighters, you might find Capital Ships with different kinds of equipment. For example, I might configure one of my least important light turrets with a InSight and RB-1 for those 'Just in case I ever needed them' situations. Nothing says 'Repair Ship' better than a Corvette outfitted with RB-4s. Cant ever see the customizability potential of Capital ships if they were all GM-owned.

[Twinky]

My thoughts on cap ships:

First critical thing about cap ships is that you need a significantly large player base. What good does it do to have a carrier ship if your fighting small battles where the carrier pilot is better used in a fighter ?

Next, you need more than carriers, first I would impliment light cruisers. Slightly larger than the current cargo barges (forgot what they're called) with decent maneuverability, short point defence (against missles and fighters) and standardized weapons of mass destruction, ranging from gun boats to missle boats. Fairly expensive of course. After you have your light cruisers you need to know how to counter them. This will require the opposing force to know strategies and have the proper equipment. Then the captain for the cruiser needs to know how to use it effectively, does he hang back and wait for the clean up or does he charge in providing point defence and attacking what ever is in range ?

Once you have your light cruisers, your ready for light carriers, twice the size of a light cruiser with minimal point defence and small fighter capacity with limited ordinance to rearm fighters. This forces the carrier to bring a heavy fighter escort or a battle cruiser screen to run defence for it. The carriers' job is to sit back and provide fighter support, its a light carrier with no real defences or offencive capabilities, after all. Next, you can't home an entire fleet on said carrier, maybe a couple and the rest pod home to nearest station, the idea is to maintain a small fighting force, not create an endless gank fleet.

These light cap ships are obviously easy to kill in the right situations, and given thier price you shouldn't see them all that often in small or medium sized fights where squad fighter strength should suffice. They shouldn't have shields, just decent amounts of armor, reason for this is you need to have a risk for such a large investment, not an invincible flying rock with guns. Aswell, they will need to degrade in effeciency when damage is taken, such as engines slowing, point defence failing, ect.

Once you estabilished light capital ships and the game has advanced where majority of the player base is even on all sides and you start seeing large factional battles with light cap ships on both sides, you can implement medium cap ships, these are the babies that require squads to start pooling thier resources if they want to be competitive. Same concept as the lights but bigger, these guys should be less effective against fighters and thier main object in the battle zone is to clear out enemy lights and mediums. Aswell you lessen thier maneuvering and they start becoming strategic, only threat they pose to the main battle (fighter jocks) is if they get too close to the point defence with out doing it on purpose. Medium cap ships should be rare as they are expensive and only usefull in large battles where fighter jocks will ignore them.

Large capital ships should be reserved for game events by GMs or elected players and they should be factional, as it should be obvious that these suckers cost more than any one group could afford to lose. Large cap ships cover mainly Dreadnaughts (think mother ship), super carriers, and large battleships.

Now I say all that, your thinking I'm stupid. Well I can agree, I'm just dreaming. For cap ships to work, you need balance and alot of "systems" that are currently not available in Jumpgate. You can say it will ruin gameplay, but will it ? More thought needs to go into these than say...BFRs in planetside, consider that an example of what not to do when introducing something large and powerful. And again, cap ships will require that there be a large player base, other wise anything larger than light class is...

Next, we need to think out how does one impliment cap ships and have the player base know how to destroy them, with out getting thier butts handed to them and saying they suck ? Give them to the AI first, Conflux cap ships, pirate AI cap ships, ect. Once players realise how easy they are to destroy, they say bring'm on; Thats when players learn how effective they are and the multiple types of value they can bring to battle engagements.

Finally, you need a reason. I can think of a few, like excitement, I like large epic battles more than little skirmishes that are really nothing more than a bunch of 1v1 duels at the same time. Next, strategy, were the need to call for retreat or regroup become required to maintain fighting force and minimize losses, especially big losses like cap ships. Another is just sake of a space sim, every book/movie/show/anime I ever watched that was about space involved cap ships, and to me, its just not complete with out them.

Hows that ?

As for poly-crewing ships, I would love it. You can say its boring all you want, and give all the reasons to not fly one, but I still would, I end up being bored flying to the battle anyway so its not a real change.

[Aphelion]

I think one capital ship is going to be hard enough to implement. If they can get one capital ship to balance with the rest of the new ships, it will be a miracle. Then let them patch in additional ships.

Of course, then we'll be waiting until Jumpgate 3: Just Who Are These Conflux Anyway? until we get the rest of the capital ships.

[Raz]

I mentioned this before, but the easiest way to balance this out is to ensure that caps are always regulated to a support role.

In other words, caps should exist to SUPPLEMENT ships and should not be able to replace them in any way.

I did like the idea I read a bit earlier in the thread about how Indestructible POS kinda ruin the PvP in the same way.

I agree. How about regulating POS to faction space, and caps can be the support 'class' in neutral and enemy space?

[alphabet]

Great post Twinky! Me likey.

I wouldnt worry to much about the balance of cap ships. Scorch has already said that if it aint perfect, it aint goin in. This is a totally radical shift in thinking considering the EP2 and HF fiasco. Thats good enough for me.

[Karash]

Does everyone here think piloting capital ships with a joystick is...'out of balance' (I am being very PC here), or am I the only one?

[alphabet]

Im sorry Karash, I dont know what you mean.

If they move like chocolate pudding going