First thing up is.. Give us information.

How big is each ship? What is the Hull value of each? How much power does a Engine create? How much power does moving 15 gu/s take? How much power does it take to shoot an AR Missile? What is the range of an AR Missile? How much damage does an AR Missile do? How much damage can that shield or this Armor withstand? How fast will it repair?

WHile we are on the subject, the only current power reading we had in game is the remaining charge in capacitor. We also need change indicator... to let us know it is charging or being drained and by how much. An analog gauge found in most automobiles cannot be that out of place in a futuristic starcruiser.

I understand the need for locked planets. After you build your most excellent planet, you do not want some hippie coming along and scraping your shipyard and factories to build an all food planet, saying "Feed the hungery, not your fascist war machine!" However, locking the planet also locks those same shipyards and factories. I assume this is for resource wasters and their prevention in a low resource situation. However, is there a way to split this function? A seperate "NO BUILD OR SCRAP" lock that still allows use of the facilities? Or just remove the resource lock completely. The same waster is still able to buy all the resources at the starport even when the planet is locked.

On factories, the que is small and the needs are large. Can the factories be made to automate? Let them build automatically until the starport has a certain number of each item the factory can produce... or if it is a series, the best its tech level or resources will let it produce. It could also scrap extra items for returned resources.

In this, I mean a planet with an ICC factory and a starport would set out building IE Drives (and everything else). Once it got a high enough tech level and had resources, it would switch to AFE, PFE, and AME drives, attempting to keep 50 on hand at all times, if possible. During the course, once it was producing AFE drives, it would begin scraping all the IE drives for resources, keeping 50 total drives on hand at all times. As more people switch out, it contines to produce AMEs and scrap the incoming IEs. While doing this, it is also producing Active shields and scrapping reactive shields.

Clearly, you would not want this feature on shipyard planets, or when building, as it would drain the resources... so maybe a maunal control/automated control button similar to the I/HI control on barracks? I know it has already been said that an upgrade option will be available in future versions. Perhaps if not a switch, then perhaps the automated factory would be a second level upgrade for the factory?

I assume the planets are limited to 32 buildings because each building is processor load. At the same time, we have far too much control over the planets themselves. In much the same way that Terran Planets have invisible support for population, would it be viable to completely remove the ability to build civilian structures? Let the planets manage their own Population, Food, Research, and Mining. Players should only be able to build Defenses, Shipyards, Starports, Barracks, Factories, and Depots... using what ever power, workers, and tech level the planet provides for them. Of course, the number of structures per planet could then be signifigantly reduced.

After preaching on the podium of realism for this long, I know want to flip flop totally. I know your view that the logoff teleport is an exploit, or, at least, a frowned upon grey area. Please, embrace this instead. Allow any ship placed in a shipyard to be spawned at any other faction controlled shipyard. I know this is unrealistic. I know this is defeating the feel of the long distance travel, the purpose of the warpgates. However, every system is not connected by warpgate. There are large areas of no warpgates. Most ships cannot even jump from one star system to another.

It is a constant affair to spawn a ship, find a factory, build in the factory for 12 minutes, mod a ship, fight for 3 minutes, dock the ship in the SY and begin the whole affair anew. Player created Wormholes are neither common enough nor reliable enough to be used for routine travel. They are useful and important for new strikes into enemy held systems only.

If this is impossible to accept as a proposal, then please remove the "fuel" from the jumpdrives. A longer jump with a pretty good chance of crashing even though the way is clear is to be prefered over the endless modding and waste of resources because a startship cannot carry enough fuel to leave the system in which it was built. Travel limitations are a common thing in the beginning of MMOs. Designers believe them to add to the atmosphere, the setting. The first few times you cross from Freeport to Qeynos... you get the fear in Highpass, the awe of the EK canyon, the wonder of the bridges in North Karana. After those few times, it just becomes a highly unpopular pain in the ass. They always relent on the travel restrictions for the overall good of the game. Darkspaces has at its greatest strength incredible action... the very first MMO to actually get PvP right.

On that note, please allow players to have three slots to fill with a ship mod so they can spawn it straight from the shipyard. This would be home tech only, of course, but what is the point of forcing everyone to spawn with reactive shields and IE drives? That just fuels the mentioned above behavior. So a person builds a heavy cruiser during a slow time... mounts active shields, AME drives, a FR1500, 4 sabot and 4 fusion torpedoes. If the action gets close qurters, he is ready. Then he goes tot he shipyard and saves this ship in one of his three slots. He can now produce this Heavy Cruiser and it will spawn with these mods each time. If a balancing act is needed, loss of these ships could have a higher prestige loss... marking them as double the lost resources or something.

Along with the Target Nearest Enemy hotkey, we need a Target Nearest Small Enemy hot key... enabling us to rapidly target those annoying missiles and fighters that PD seems to miss.

Corvettes, Frigates and Destroyers need a rework in design and purpose. Corvettes are currently totally at the mercy of missiles and fighters, yet mount several heavy weapons, Frigtes run a range of Cruiser level firepower to none, and destroyers are pretty much completely overlooked as the ranks it falls under can surpassed in three hours in a supply ship.

Aside from the required bomber versions, each class needs an assault version with size appropriate firepower (long range), and an escourt version with enhanced Point Defense weapons, allowing it (with the help of three or four like vessels) to act as an anti fighter and missile screen for an entire task force. Both of these versions would need to make heavy use of Electronic Warfare devices.

With the coming fighter changes as they are planned, a dedicated antifighter platform will be needed, and it will need to be done at ranges far longer than current PD allows. Placing the smaller vessels closer to the enemy so they can intercept the fighters just turns the screening vessel into the first poorly defended target. Fighters tearing a big, slow, and alone dread to pieces is a good thing, but players using tactics need a way to protect them. You want more people in smaller vessels, this is the perfect way to do it. Fighter kills may need to become a pretige gaining activity, however, or at least a tracked stat.

My final thing is a pet peave. Remove the Engineering ship from the Midshipman list. Move it up to 1st Lt at least. The supply ship, however, needs to be moved down the list to midshipman, however. New players need a way to be useful, and supply is the best way. And the last thing you want a midshipman doing is engineering. I would raise it up to Captain, but you need it for the newbie server.

Darkspace is a remarkable game. You have pulse pounding action in a space game. The action will not fade because it is not AI monsters and rote "tactics", but PvP. You are the only MMO to get PvP right... where dying painful enough that you want to avoid it, but not so crippling that you want to shoot your neighbor when you die. Death is not Free like Planetside or DAoC, nor do you lose items for which you spent months saving. Emphasize the action, demphasize the slow activities of building and travel. It might be strategic, but its not fun.

On 2004-04-25 19:37, Doran wrote:
2 Weeks™