[TexMurphy]

Ok this is gonna be a sencetive one.

Ship ballance has always been one of the most infected discussions through out all time in Jumpgate. One of the reasons its been so infected is because each faction is restricted to its own ships. This means that the ships really have to be ballanced or there will be game inballance. The plus side of this is that it creates a very very strong factional identity. This imho is a very important thing in a game that is "avatarless".

Making all ships accessible to all factions would eliminate all discussions about ship ballance == game ballance. Left would be discussions of how to adress hangar queens which is a much less inflamed discussion. But this would hugely hurt the factional identity side of the game.

So here is a sudgestion that is kind of the middle ground.

(I will use Jumpgate Classic ship names below to simplify things.)

Ship hulls are made into commods. Ship hulls are purchasable in stations that have a naval yard. This means that Oct core can be stocked with Typhoons. Ships are repainted upon selling so a Oct core purchased Typhoon is Oct skinned.

When factions arnt in war this is imho quite reasonable. Ship producers export their products just like engine, shield, gun, power plant, radar, ect ect producers do.

Probelm arrises when two factions are at war. Then export of any kind should be prohibited.

If Quantar and Octavius is at war then quantar equipment (including ship hulls) should be considered contrabands in oct space by quantars.

So example.

Quant and Oct are at war.

A quant freighter is scanned by a Quantar pilot in Oct space revealing quantar equipment. The Quant freighter becomes temp bountied.

The same quant freigher is scanned by a Oct pilot in Oct space. No infraction, as Octs dont mind quantar equipment beeing smuggled in.

The same quant freighter is scanned by a Quant in Quant space. No problem ofcourse one can move quant equip in quant space.

This would result in Quant vs Oct wars mostly beeing fought in quant+sol equiped quant+sol ships vs oct+sol equiped oct+sol ships.

Equipment should be reballanced so that all ships can have decent load outs on home faction equipment but ultimate should still be a mix. This would really tie in hauling and smuggling into the conflict and it would lower the impact of ship inballance on game play.

If a factions ship would be under ballanced then that faction would still have a sever disadvantage but not a game breaking one as it would still be possible to import ships from other factions to make up for it.

Tex

[Duodecimal]

Hey, I can steal your idea and incorporate it into my own.

Hulls would be the "equipment" type of commodity. They have several intrinsic stats attached to them --

Mass
Drag factor
Yaw/Pitch/Roll thrusters
Armor

Hardpoints for weapons and engines I figure will have to be hardcoded as unalterable.

Since the scheme has all equipment being made up of components, with each component affecting the value of a stat on that piece of equipment, we'd be able to construct ship hulls from components.

Players would eventually be able to develop a second generation of Armor, and once it's possible to build 2nd generation ship hulls, we'd be able to stick armor with 5% more durability on it. Or 5% less mass (we'd only be able to pick a single upgrade for 2nd generation ships, two for 3rd, etc).

[Karash]

this sort of idea goes great with my idea about doing away with "fighters, traders and miners"

[Aphelion]

Personally, I think Tex's idea goes right along with my bacon, egg and cheese idea. First we give all the pilots free coupons to McDonalds, then they spread the word when the Jumpgate Evolution Happy MealTM comes out.

Joking aside, I really agree that discussing ship balancing was the most factional I'd ever been on JOSSH. If we're going for a more factional game then Jumpgate Classic then this idea is... meh. If we're going for a less-factional game then this idea is great. All the drama of ship balance QQing will be replaced by the ability to use other factions ships (limitedly). Maybe you could even stock hulls in your storage/hangar during times of peace, only to fly a green nix against Octavia.

I think the most pressing issue brought up by Tex is the home-faction geared ships. If/when it comes to wartime, and cross-factional trading becomes harder, pilots will find themselves more and more relying on home-faction goods/equipment. Personally, I thought that while optimally equipped ships were pretty balanced in Jumpgate Classic, home-equipped ships were not. Lets make sure that when war happens we can still fly our ships, although the faction with the better haulers should have an equipment advantage.

[TexMurphy]

Home faction equiped ships arent ballanced at all in Jumpgate. I dont think there has ever been made an attempt to ballance them. It is gonna be quite hard since a few pieces are gonna be best of class while some arnt.

How do you weigh shield vs engine vs powerplant vs guns.

Lets use tens as an example. Remove the guzzler and give it a worse engine. Imho that hurts the tens more then if the PP was down graded. This because the tens is flown as a speed ship due to its shield full guns characteristics.

Now lets use Nix as an example. Its already slowest fighter out there so a bit slower doesnt hurt it nearly as much as removal of power plant and guns. So here we have a different situation.

But then agian you can also make home factional equipment that is tadeoff and not just worse. Take engines they can have lower thrust but higher efficiency. A low thrust high efficiency engine would be a very viable home faction equipment on a ship like the phoon. I like tradeoff situations and hence these should be found.

Im a bit off topic now I know.

But inorder to make it so that ships are viable on home faction equip only all equipment has to be moved around so that key equipment for each faction is built by the faction. With 2nd prio equip beeing built by other TRI factions and 3rd prio equip built by Hype and Aman.

Tex

[Aphelion]

Okay, my brand-new, almost-on-topic, extremely-hyphenated-question is this:

Would access to other factions ships hurt the gaming experience that will be Jumpgate Evolution?

I've thought about the uniqueness of Jumpgate, and I keep relating it to WoW because it's the only other MMO I've played more then two days. WoW doesn't really have factional balance, they've just got single, tiny, insignificant racial abilities. Jumpgate was more like StarCraft in terms of three unique races battling for who-knows-what. The point is they were completely different and still maintained some semblance (illusion?) of balance.

As much as I want to let each faction have access, even limited access via opti, hyperial/aman, or whatever, a little part of me dies inside every time I think of myself flying a green and white Tensy, or a blue and white Nix. Emotionally (pathos) I say no, logically (logos) I say yes... It would definitely settle all ship balance arguments period. But I kind of liked those arguments... and you said it yourself that they really brought out the factionalist in all of us.

StarCraft was constantly patched to reflect balance issues. Building costs, unit costs, build times, DPS rates, and spell rates were all changed each patch. When some new strategy was discovered that gave one faction the advantage, it was nerfed. I think that if Jumpgate Evolution has enough support staff, I would like to keep the three unbalanced and unique factions, in favor of three RP'd factions with the same ships. Although, that ship hulls idea still sounds neat...

[Wild_Bill]

(snickers) DPS... Yeah, I know "Damage Per Second", but what I first saw was "Department of Public Safety" aka Texas Highway Patrol. Thanks for the laugh Aphelion, that's the second one you've given me tonight!

[Pyrophred]

Originally Posted by Duodecimal

Hey, I can steal your idea and incorporate it into my own.

Hulls would be the "equipment" type of commodity. They have several intrinsic stats attached to them --

Mass
Drag factor
Yaw/Pitch/Roll thrusters
Armor

Hardpoints for weapons and engines I figure will have to be hardcoded as unalterable.

i like this idea. sort of like the SWG way of equipping ships you have your hardpoints and a certain amount of mass you can shove into your ship.

So instead of current way of equipping my ship(the "best" size 3 engine, size5 PP, size3 shield) I could put whatever I want on, within my ships ability to handle it.

I could strap into my tens with Respect engines, Warden shield, 3 raks, head into flux space and turret c25s

[Aphelion]

Originally Posted by Pyrophred

i like this idea. sort of like the SWG way of equipping ships you have your hardpoints and a certain amount of mass you can shove into your ship.

So instead of current way of equipping my ship(the "best" size 3 engine, size5 PP, size3 shield) I could put whatever I want on, within my ships ability to handle it.

I could strap into my tens with Respect engines, Warden shield, 3 raks, head into flux space and turret c25s

Okay... so also like Mechwarrior where the weapon "hardpoints" were limited both by hardpoint size, and total weight of the Mech. I can stick four gauss rifles on my MadCat, but I'll only be able to fit 4 SRM4's in my missile hardpoints, and I'll probably have to shed some armor and powerplant to make it fit. Or I can stick the Sport+ I've always wanted in my phoon but I'll have to take off 10k armor and I can't fly with missiles... *drool*

[dahalb]

This idea is sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet

Being able to customise your ship to your own style in any way is not necessarily a bad thing. It would also add some more excitement to engagements, as you would never be 100% sure of what your opponent was packin'.

Please please please please please can we have it

[Istanbul]

It makes a certain amount of sense. Perhaps still keep the slot size limitations, but be able to pay tech fees to customize the ship in such ways (with the tradeoffs then factored in in the custom tech interface). Basically, a phoon can normally carry a size 3 PP, but by going to the custom tech, you can get them to knock off some armor, and a missile slot to make room for a size 4.