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A better idea! |
MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
|  Posted: 2009-12-13 09:27
That's why it can't be based purely on points. There needs to be certain limits, but not so many limits that we just wind up with the same ships we have now. We'd need to be able to sacrifice some armor for weapons if we wanted, or maybe more engines, but not so much that we can sacrifice it all.
What those limits should be, I have no idea. But I do know that gadget size limits would need changing; if this document is accurate for this version then engines have a size of 9, armor 6 but torpedoes 1 and missiles 1. Could you imagine an ICC missile dread that sacrifices 2 armor slots but gains 12 more missiles? Or all those missiles are torpedoes?
Size values
It's a good system for devs modding ships, but not for players, for obvious reasons.
There'd also naturally have to be limits on gadget types according to hull. Wouldn't want combat ships flying around with reload drones, but supply and frigate hulls would be able to use them.
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Starcommander
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Joined: December 14, 2005
Posts: 579
From: In your base, stealing your cookies
| Posted: 2009-12-13 13:18
as I said there would be Minimums and maximums for stuff. So a dessy could strip its armor off but not its shields (for ICC), for UGTO/Kluth it would be they could strip down to 1 plate of armor. Maxes like theirs a max of X wep that can go on a ship. So a dessy would only be allowed say 5 normals and 4 heavy's (of either missle/guns), 3 torps, 6 beams, 1 HCL, 1 IC. Those are the maximums allowed on a dessy. Now do the points allow you to fit those in? Who knows, an IC = 6 points thats a lot of points that could be put into say 3 heavy guns instead that fire faster. Basically the idea is that you can mod default +3. So default system and you can strip and move stuff around.
A combat dessy would have a max of 2 misses so you couldn't take a combat dessy and make it a missile dessy and vice versa. What i am trying to say is there SHOULD be limits in place on how much of what you can put on. If it proves to be too powerful, easy fix, limit that ship by 1 more gun. If it still proves to be too much limit it again. Balancing in this system would be much more easier without completely killing modding.
As i have been saying a ship that is maxed guns and min armor is gonna be an easy pop. If it so much as gets too close or you look at it funny it would die.
For arcs yes I know some of the points on a ship would make it fire through it. If that becomes the case then either limit it to only being able to fire at most its side +1 (e.g a left only gun would fire through the ship if it was fore/left/right so it can only change to be left/fore or left/aft) or it can be moved to stack on top of a similar point. For some ships this would change the angle of how the guns fire. Which in some cases isn't a good idea for say hitting smaller ships.
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-12-13 15:44
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On 2009-12-13 13:18, Fatal Starcommander -TNCO- wrote:
A combat dessy would have a max of 2 misses so you couldn't take a combat dessy and make it a missile dessy and vice versa. What i am trying to say is there SHOULD be limits in place on how much of what you can put on. If it proves to be too powerful, easy fix, limit that ship by 1 more gun. If it still proves to be too much limit it again. Balancing in this system would be much more easier without completely killing modding.
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Plus as I like to say, with one "overpowered" ship vs another "overpowered" ship, is either one really overpowered? One would have to be clearly more overpowered than the other. So balancing would kind of take care of itself, in a modding system with reasonable limits like you said.
The big concern is ship hardpoints for weapons. Yeah we wouldn't want weapons firing through the ship, so how would we adjust weapon counts and arcs while keeping those weapons looking like they've been placed on the ship properly? Take the kluth dreads for instance. They have those pointy spires sticking out from the back, pointing forward. They're disruptor hardpoints. If you were to mod a mandible or siphon and add more weapons, where would those new hardpoints be placed?
How about a system like the current heavy cannons, where every time you add a certain amount of the same weapon to the same arc(s), it becomes a larger version? Add 2 cannons on same arc(s) and it becomes a heavy cannon automatically, same damage and point value. 2 heavys make an assault cannon. 2 assaults make a siege cannon. Etc etc. If you placed 8 cannons on your FORE arc, it would become 1 siege cannon. If you placed 8 chemical lasers on your FORE arc, it would become 1 siege laser. If it's only 6 cannons on your FORE arc that's 1 assault and 1 heavy cannon. Names can be anything but you get the idea?
It would reduce particle counts and eliminate the strangeness of tons of weapons firing from strange places on the ship.
EDIT: With lasers you might want the option of not automatically upgrading them, for PD purposes. For cannons and torps though, it doesn't matter so long as the upgraded versions have the same fire rate, range and projectile speed as the lower ones.
[ This Message was edited by: MrSparkle on 2009-12-13 15:56 ]
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Azreal
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 14, 2004
Posts: 2816
From: United State of Texas, Houston
| Posted: 2009-12-13 16:21
SWGalaxies does it the best I have seen so far.
Every ship has a given mass number.
Every gadget has given mass.
You add gadgets in different slots up to the overall mass allowed of the ship.
They have a modding system that allows for one gadget to house a multiple strike cannon or launcher, which isnt present in DS. But the overall scheme works freaking great for modding you ship and still keeping some control on balance. There are literally HUNDREDS of possible loadouts of any particular ship, but its all balanced in each catagory.
Like I said, to me it is the best system around for customization and balance, and I have played almost every space combat game out there.
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Starcommander
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Joined: December 14, 2005
Posts: 579
From: In your base, stealing your cookies
| Posted: 2009-12-13 16:28
the other thing you are forgetting about is the wight issue. yes guns have wight on them. The more guns the heavier you ship is going to be and its gonna turn like a bus.
Hard points, or spines like on a krill or mandy, would be allowed to be fully upgraded to fire Fore/left/right. Since there is nothing that would be in there way. but upgrading costs points. So to upgrade from a fore only to a fore/left it costs 1 point, to upgrade it again it will cost 2 points. Those points are basically 1 = another normal gun or 2 points = a heavy gun. Adding more guns then on default layout would be interesting. Like have pre set places where a new gun would show. so when you add that new gadget it will show up in pre set locations. So say you add a new one and its on left, the next one you add would be on right, and the third one would be on fore. you can then upgrade those left and right gun points to give them the fore firing ability's. Now tho you just spent a lot of points in doing that. If it was 3 normal guns that's 3 points +2 more for upgrading the points = 5 points spent.
Basically if the point won't fire through the ship if its upgraded (this would need testing) then it can be allowed to be upgraded. If its a left only gun and its in the middle of the ship then ya it can't and won't be able to be upgraded cuz doing so would make it fire through the ship.
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Jar Jar Binks
Grand Admiral
Joined: December 25, 2001
Posts: 556
| Posted: 2009-12-13 20:37
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On 2009-12-13 07:25, Lark of Serenity wrote:
can have points limited themselves by the number of places you can put a weapon?
edit: case in point, a dessy can usually survive pretty well by just avoiding fire. itd be ridiculous if someone put all their points into weapons and no armour and were running around with a dessy with the firepower of a cruiser.
[ This Message was edited by: Lark of Serenity on 2009-12-13 07:26 ]
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and anyone that had a clue how to point jump would waste that dessy in notime 
i'd say its a fair tradeoff.
/edit: i still love this idea, it would mean my poor EAD actually had something to mod other then the type of armor and what engines to use
[ This Message was edited by: Jar Jar Binks on 2009-12-13 20:39 ]
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-12-14 10:13
With this system there probably wouldn't be an EAD and BD and MD, it would probably be an empty stock hull, maybe with a few gadgets that come standard, and then we modify it to our liking according to whatever limits are in place.
That's my vision of it anyway. Modding an EAD so it's more like a BD wouldn't make it an EAD anymore right? Modding a MD so it fires torps and cannons instead of missiles makes it anything but a MD.
So there's no reason to keep the current ship mods around with their specific names, unless you want to keep them around in addition to a stock hull that you can modify. Like looking at the UGTO dread list you'd see Elite Assault Dread, Battle Dread, Agincourt, Carrier Dread, Command Dread, and Dread which would be the stock hull you could modify.
Like I said that's how I envisioned it. BTW, a modified stock hull with a basic name like Dread makes it so your enemies won't know what's coming at them. Is it cannons? Torps? Missiles? Lots and lots of lasers? Core Weapons?
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Starcommander
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Joined: December 14, 2005
Posts: 579
From: In your base, stealing your cookies
| Posted: 2009-12-14 16:53
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On 2009-12-14 10:13, MrSparkle wrote:
With this system there probably wouldn't be an EAD and BD and MD, it would probably be an empty stock hull, maybe with a few gadgets that come standard, and then we modify it to our liking according to whatever limits are in place.
That's my vision of it anyway. Modding an EAD so it's more like a BD wouldn't make it an EAD anymore right? Modding a MD so it fires torps and cannons instead of missiles makes it anything but a MD.
So there's no reason to keep the current ship mods around with their specific names, unless you want to keep them around in addition to a stock hull that you can modify. Like looking at the UGTO dread list you'd see Elite Assault Dread, Battle Dread, Agincourt, Carrier Dread, Command Dread, and Dread which would be the stock hull you could modify.
Like I said that's how I envisioned it. BTW, a modified stock hull with a basic name like Dread makes it so your enemies won't know what's coming at them. Is it cannons? Torps? Missiles? Lots and lots of lasers? Core Weapons?
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This system is an attempt to get the old modding system back with a slight twist. Still no trading of tech. All the stock hulls will still be as they are and no other type of hull can change to be the other. Is why there will be limits in place of a certain type of weapon. So basically a BD cant be an EAD, it can get close but never the power of an EAD. Same with a missile cruiser trying to be a battle cruiser. It can try and get close but won't be able to fully match it ect.
A thought was to allow 1 core wep on every ship below dread (since dreads come with more then 1 duh). This would bring a battle of ideas. Ya a corvette can run with a QST but would it want to? It would have just the QST, hardly any armor and its turning would be horrid since the weight of trying to carry one would be hard for such a small ship. Core weps are 6 points in the current system, thats a lot of other stuff. As i said in the one before it could be other things instead of 1 slow firing gun. Also you would have to be VA or higher to even have a QST in your inventory.
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Iwancoppa
Fleet Admiral
Joined: November 15, 2008
Posts: 709
| Posted: 2009-12-14 17:29
idea:
This system i think could be to hard to make in the game so, a bsic system to do it:
the devs release a program witch allows us to make layouts the way we want them. we then click a button witch saves it into darkspace.
start up darkspace. on the ship selection screen, press the "select custom layout" button. select your layout, then hit spawn. you will then spawn at the SY/gate you selected etc etc
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Jar Jar Binks
Grand Admiral
Joined: December 25, 2001
Posts: 556
| Posted: 2009-12-14 18:48
i would rather not have a "third party program" to do this, it would just invite ppl to try and hack it to get an advantage.
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MrSparkle
Marshal
Joined: August 13, 2001
Posts: 1912
From: mrsparkle
| Posted: 2009-12-14 19:25
It's good to try to get some of the old modding system back, I was just thinking even further than that into a whole new, even more customizable system, where every ship could really be unique.
But any modding system is a good one, so long as they're willing and able to make it.
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Starcommander
Marshal
Joined: December 14, 2005
Posts: 579
From: In your base, stealing your cookies
| Posted: 2009-12-14 20:17
Quote:
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On 2009-12-14 17:29, iwanii the top gear Gaifen wrote:
idea:
This system i think could be to hard to make in the game so, a bsic system to do it:
the devs release a program witch allows us to make layouts the way we want them. we then click a button witch saves it into darkspace.
start up darkspace. on the ship selection screen, press the "select custom layout" button. select your layout, then hit spawn. you will then spawn at the SY/gate you selected etc etc
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This system is already in palce, just gotta make it avalible to everyone else in a more user friendly way. All in all it woulnd't take much EFFORT to do it. When it comes to devs I useally feel like this when I try to understand how they think.
[ This Message was edited by: Fatal Starcommander -TNCO- on 2009-12-14 20:17 ]
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WH 40k armies, Grey Knights, Dark Angles, Imperial Guard (Vostroyan First Born) and Orks.
There is a thin line between knowing when to give up and when to try harder.
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Tael
2nd Rear Admiral
Palestar
Joined: July 03, 2002
Posts: 3695
From: San Francisco Bay Area
| Posted: 2009-12-14 22:26
We discussed something like this when we first implemented modding and decided not to go this route.
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Iwancoppa
Fleet Admiral
Joined: November 15, 2008
Posts: 709
| Posted: 2009-12-15 00:27
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On 2009-12-14 22:26, Tael wrote:
We discussed something like this when we first implemented modding and decided not to go this route.
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notes the "firsts implemented modding"
thats whats agers ago.
and hey, you have a whole stack of people liking this idea... seriously. listening to the players can work.
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Enterprise
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 19, 2002
Posts: 2576
From: Hawthorne, Nevada
| Posted: 2009-12-15 01:48
I always figured if we were to do free form modding like this, it would probably be a nightmare. Balancing something with very little limits is extremely difficult.
And you would have to really drastically alter the game in some cases. You would get stock hulls with badge and rank requirements.
The hulls, would come already outfitted with a certain amount of armor, reactors, shields (if applied) cloak, EW, etc. depending on the hull. The only thing that remains undecided is the weapon loadout.
Higher ranked hulls would have more slots, basically. The slots would be freeform, but be affected by size. So you would have the EAD, and it would have 7 small slots (cannons/lasers), 6 medium slots (missiles/torpedos) and 5 heavy slots (heavy lasers/ core weapons/heavy missiles).
Things like bombs, fighters, mines, etc. would come with specific hulls.
But thats how I always envisioned it, but then, I would be perfectly happy with already balanced and extensive varieties of ships that fit many different kinds of loadouts and roles, and just give me the option of boosting certain aspects of it (more weapon damage for more energy cost, etc.)
-Ent
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