"Few" Random Ideas

[TurkeyXIII]

QUOTE (Jersy @ Oct 19 2009, 08:02 PM) - Shield-Walls: Heh, it's written there, it's not a flat wall, it's an orb (ball... whatever) with it's centre being the generator... I just kept using the "wall" word for some reason :-)

That's the exact implementation of the DEB shields Andon mentioned.
There's a problem with the collision code that sometimes results in a crash from their use. They couldn't be re-introduced until that code issue is resolved, which will probably be never. Relevant thread.
EDIT: Or so I assumed. Did I imagine that bug?


I want sensor-missiles though!

[Jersy]

Out of all my ideas, I like the ram-cannon the most... I could live with the zero damage I suggested for it as long as I could keep pushing enemies back through the alephs, pushing enemy cons away from asteroids (or into the asteroids making them chrash), pushing enemy miners and TTs away from the green door they are about to enter... And should the singularities be implemented as well, then pushing enemies beyond the safe distance... :-D

But the main point of this post will be the following ideas:

I've been looking through Allegwiki and the articles about weapons to find out, whether there is something like what I had in my mind or not. Well, I found "Rockets, Projectiles and Torpedoes" - out of all the other missle-category weapons, they are closest to my idea, but not too close:

- Short Range Rocket: Small rockets mountable on any small ship, would have no guidance at all (would travel in the direction you are aiming), would come in large packs (10-16 per rack), have quite low damage (like 20 per missile) but very fast rearm/reload time. They would be kinda like those 70mm things they mount on helicopters.

- Bombs: These ordonances usable by any bomber (and some small ones might be available even for small-class ships) would have no propulsion of their own and would fly in the direction your ship is moving. All they would have would be lifespan and the speed *you* give them with your ship. To use the "Range calculation formula", with lifespan of let's say 15 sec, their range would be 0 + Velocity*15. Also, by sacrificing the speed and guidance, they would gain higher damage and would have smaller effect on the ship's signature.

Other ideas would be:

- Missile ship: A bomber-sized ship capable of carrying large racks of missiles (dumbs, seeks, QFs... Maybe hunts) but with no gun-turrets and only one gun-mount. It's defensive capabilites would be somewhat increased by more durable armor. Could be a good adept on trying out the missile-turrets, if it would be even possible to create them (Hmm... Maybe instead of making it through missiles in your cargo acting as ammo for the turret - which indeed could be a PITA to code, you would make for example a "SRM Dumbfire Turret" - an item that would fit into the turret slot, fire DFs and couldn't be reloaded the normal way with ammo or normal DFs, but to reload it, the pilot would have to mount another "SRM Dumbfire Turret" into the turret slot... In other words, it would use the fact that any weapon you carry comes with some preloaded ammo).

- Inter Sector Missile Silo: Research in one of the existing stations that would allow you to build ISM Drones (the same category as caltrops and towers) - By ordering them to "build" they would travel to the designated location there and produce massive AoE explosion (unaffected by friendly-fire settings) when they reach it (they would most likely destroy any small ship or Lt station caught in the blast, but only damage asteroids and heavier stations, sou you would require more of them to take these out). They would be slow and if destroyed, their destructive abilities would be wasted. (Come to think of it... This is quite similar to the "suicide ships" idea... well, whatever).

- He3 mines: Maybe a faction specific thing that would replace the miners with He3 mines - Like SpecMines you would build on He3 asteroids. Once such station would be destroyed, so would be the asteroid. The only problem would be to set the amount of credits it would periodically give you properly, so it wouldn't be way too better or worse than miners.

- Freighters = Capship suppliers in theory, joke-ships in reality?: Well, there was something I quite ejoyed with the freighters while I was trying them out in "one on none" game - you can load them with 12 Caltrops/AC Towers (two in the dispenser slot and two per each cargo slot) and disperse them anywhere you want, but that's beside the point. I would propose making them sort of like "Carriers" in the fact that capships would be able to dock at them and be "Repaired, Rearmed and Ready". This way, their supplying capabilites would be better then just "Jettison and pray they will catch it". Also, just like with Carrier and Attack Carrier, there would be one that would be a drone and would do nothing but reloading the capships (and maybe small ships as well... and maybe allowing the small ships to rip to it), and one, player controlled, that would be armed, turreted and capable of deploying dispenser items (no matter how I look at it, the possibility to deploy 12 caltrops or AC turrets is cool and could be useful in camping, even if would cost 12,000$ to fill the freighter completely... Maybe those carried by freighters could be cheaper, because the ones you buy in Garr are built in a form of a constructor - the freighter ones would be without the con part, as the freigter would be acting as the con and costs some money on its own)...

- Carriers (Well... The player-controlled ones...) could really be carriers and not portable teleport-recievers by carrying ships along with their pilots in their cargo. These ships would be released through the carrier's dispenser and once released, the ship would be fully under the pilot's control. Also the carrier would be able to pick the ships up again... The good thing is, it could carry even things that cannot ripcord and provide protection for them by storing them inside... I dunno, it could carry anything... Ints, bombers, TTs, Cons, Miners... Or just make it more simple and createa new drone: a portable outpost... (My oh my... That one is just crazy... But I won't delete it and keep it there to entertain you :-D)

[Adaven]

QUOTE (Jersy @ Oct 19 2009, 09:57 AM) - Short Range Rocket: Small rockets mountable on any small ship, would have no guidance at all (would travel in the direction you are aiming), would come in large packs (10-16 per rack), have quite low damage (like 20 per missile) but very fast rearm/reload time. They would be kinda like those 70mm things they mount on helicopters.

- Bombs: These ordonances usable by any bomber (and some small ones might be available even for small-class ships) would have no propulsion of their own and would fly in the direction your ship is moving. All they would have would be lifespan and the speed *you* give them with your ship. To use the "Range calculation formula", with lifespan of let's say 15 sec, their range would be 0 + Velocity*15. Also, by sacrificing the speed and guidance, they would gain higher damage and would have smaller effect on the ship's signature.

- He3 mines: Maybe a faction specific thing that would replace the miners with He3 mines - Like SpecMines you would build on He3 asteroids. Once such station would be destroyed, so would be the asteroid. The only problem would be to set the amount of credits it would periodically give you properly, so it wouldn't be way too better or worse than miners.

- Freighters = Capship suppliers in theory, joke-ships in reality?: Well, there was something I quite ejoyed with the freighters while I was trying them out in "one on none" game - you can load them with 12 Caltrops/AC Towers (two in the dispenser slot and two per each cargo slot) and disperse them anywhere you want, but that's beside the point. I would propose making them sort of like "Carriers" in the fact that capships would be able to dock at them and be "Repaired, Rearmed and Ready". This way, their supplying capabilites would be better then just "Jettison and pray they will catch it". Also, just like with Carrier and Attack Carrier, there would be one that would be a drone and would do nothing but reloading the capships (and maybe small ships as well... and maybe allowing the small ships to rip to it), and one, player controlled, that would be armed, turreted and capable of deploying dispenser items (no matter how I look at it, the possibility to deploy 12 caltrops or AC turrets is cool and could be useful in camping, even if would cost 12,000$ to fill the freighter completely... Maybe those carried by freighters could be cheaper, because the ones you buy in Garr are built in a form of a constructor - the freighter ones would be without the con part, as the freigter would be acting as the con and costs some money on its own)...

Your other ideas are all fairly good (some have been mentioned before, but deserve being mentioned again), but I wanted to highlight these. In order:

Rockets - I like the idea. In the past there has been some concern about too many missles on screen bogging things down, but I really wonder if its that much of a problem, especially when R5 comes out

Bombs - GT's pt bombers (then called corvettes) originally functioned like this (and still do on A+ core I assume)

He3 Mines - You probably already realize this, but just to make sure: Dreg more or less does this already. they don't replace the miners though, but supplement them (researchable from garrison).

Freighters - that's actually a really good idea to make them dockable for capships.

[Jimen]

Honestly, a lot of your ideas suffer from either being redundant against things that already exist (for example, most of your missile ideas are already implemented, though only in ships specific to a faction I've never ever seen anyone use), being way too powerful to ever use (hacking enemy probe network, any ram-cannon with enough power to be effective against cons, shield walls), being pointlessly ripped from other space combat sims with completely different gameplay (the subsystems idea you copied directly from the Freespace series, and asynchronous fire and slow-fire weapons were probably taken from there as well, sorry to anyone who thought they were "unique" ideas), or just plain old not taking into account what's in the game at all. I don't like to discourage people from posting suggestions and contributions, but I feel the guiding principle should be quality over quantity - rather than posting fifty things that you think would be cool to be added, isn't it better to take your time and think through your ideas and consider carefully their inclusion into Allegiance and how they would interact with the game as it exists now?

I don't want to tell you "go be a veteran at the game before you suggest new things", because as you can see, I'm new too. But if you have to look at the wiki to make sure you're not suggesting a duplicate weapon, and still managed to suggest duplicates of the Quickfire missile and PT Bomber, as well as a drone version of the Ga'Terran Federation's Harbinger of Doom, perhaps you don't know the game's weapons and ships well enough yet. And your suggestion of completely unpropelled bombs only works fine in Freespace 2 because bombers fly pretty fast and have boosters, and because chasing off the interceptors or else your bombs WILL get shot down is a pretty big part of that game. In Allegiance, where bombers are slow and bulky and carry turrets instead of boosters, it just doesn't work. Again, it's a case of ripping ideas from other games without any thought to the differences between the two games.

"Wouldn't this be cool" isn't the only test that something should have to pass in your head before it gets suggested, especially when a lot of "wouldn't this be cool" things tend to require both massive code changes and massive gameplay changes. If you must continue to suggest things, then I'd suggest going for stuff with a more subtle and flavorful effect; a lot of the stuff you're suggesting right now, like the singularity thing, requires such massive code changes that calling them pipe dreams would be unfair to the dreams. The stuff you suggested "just for diversity", though often clones of things already in the game that you didn't know about, often had much better chances than the ridiculous sweeping gameplay changes you've devoted the majority of your time to so far.

[Valiance]

QUOTE (Adaven @ Oct 19 2009, 08:54 AM) Freighters - that's actually a really good idea to make them dockable for capships.

The trouble is afaik, all factions have a sinlge dockable model; the carrier, and unless it was switched to that, each faction would need a new freightor model or at the very least an new CVH, you want it to look stupid.

[Andon]

QUOTE (Jersy @ Oct 19 2009, 10:57 AM) Out of all my ideas, I like the ram-cannon the most... I could live with the zero damage I suggested for it as long as I could keep pushing enemies back through the alephs, pushing enemy cons away from asteroids (or into the asteroids making them chrash), pushing enemy miners and TTs away from the green door they are about to enter... And should the singularities be implemented as well, then pushing enemies beyond the safe distance... :-D

But the main point of this post will be the following ideas:

I've been looking through Allegwiki and the articles about weapons to find out, whether there is something like what I had in my mind or not. Well, I found "Rockets, Projectiles and Torpedoes" - out of all the other missle-category weapons, they are closest to my idea, but not too close:

- Short Range Rocket: Small rockets mountable on any small ship, would have no guidance at all (would travel in the direction you are aiming), would come in large packs (10-16 per rack), have quite low damage (like 20 per missile) but very fast rearm/reload time. They would be kinda like those 70mm things they mount on helicopters.

- Bombs: These ordonances usable by any bomber (and some small ones might be available even for small-class ships) would have no propulsion of their own and would fly in the direction your ship is moving. All they would have would be lifespan and the speed *you* give them with your ship. To use the "Range calculation formula", with lifespan of let's say 15 sec, their range would be 0 + Velocity*15. Also, by sacrificing the speed and guidance, they would gain higher damage and would have smaller effect on the ship's signature.

As mentioned, these have been used, multiple times. Shows the idea's a good one.

QUOTE Other ideas would be:

- Missile ship: A bomber-sized ship capable of carrying large racks of missiles (dumbs, seeks, QFs... Maybe hunts) but with no gun-turrets and only one gun-mount. It's defensive capabilites would be somewhat increased by more durable armor. Could be a good adept on trying out the missile-turrets, if it would be even possible to create them (Hmm... Maybe instead of making it through missiles in your cargo acting as ammo for the turret - which indeed could be a PITA to code, you would make for example a "SRM Dumbfire Turret" - an item that would fit into the turret slot, fire DFs and couldn't be reloaded the normal way with ammo or normal DFs, but to reload it, the pilot would have to mount another "SRM Dumbfire Turret" into the turret slot... In other words, it would use the fact that any weapon you carry comes with some preloaded ammo).[/quote]

I've actually incorporated something like this, a "Missile Escort," into Faction X

QUOTE - Inter Sector Missile Silo: Research in one of the existing stations that would allow you to build ISM Drones (the same category as caltrops and towers) - By ordering them to "build" they would travel to the designated location there and produce massive AoE explosion (unaffected by friendly-fire settings) when they reach it (they would most likely destroy any small ship or Lt station caught in the blast, but only damage asteroids and heavier stations, sou you would require more of them to take these out). They would be slow and if destroyed, their destructive abilities would be wasted. (Come to think of it... This is quite similar to the "suicide ships" idea... well, whatever).[/quote]

Hmm.... hefty code change, but a "Self-destruct" would be nifty.

QUOTE - He3 mines: Maybe a faction specific thing that would replace the miners with He3 mines - Like SpecMines you would build on He3 asteroids. Once such station would be destroyed, so would be the asteroid. The only problem would be to set the amount of credits it would periodically give you properly, so it wouldn't be way too better or worse than miners.[/quote]
Dreg!

QUOTE - Freighters = Capship suppliers in theory, joke-ships in reality?: Well, there was something I quite ejoyed with the freighters while I was trying them out in "one on none" game - you can load them with 12 Caltrops/AC Towers (two in the dispenser slot and two per each cargo slot) and disperse them anywhere you want, but that's beside the point. I would propose making them sort of like "Carriers" in the fact that capships would be able to dock at them and be "Repaired, Rearmed and Ready". This way, their supplying capabilites would be better then just "Jettison and pray they will catch it". Also, just like with Carrier and Attack Carrier, there would be one that would be a drone and would do nothing but reloading the capships (and maybe small ships as well... and maybe allowing the small ships to rip to it), and one, player controlled, that would be armed, turreted and capable of deploying dispenser items (no matter how I look at it, the possibility to deploy 12 caltrops or AC turrets is cool and could be useful in camping, even if would cost 12,000$ to fill the freighter completely... Maybe those carried by freighters could be cheaper, because the ones you buy in Garr are built in a form of a constructor - the freighter ones would be without the con part, as the freigter would be acting as the con and costs some money on its own)...[/quote]

Would require a code change (Otherwise cap ships would be able to dock at every carrier...) but I think, compared to a lot of other things, it's fairly simple.

QUOTE - Carriers (Well... The player-controlled ones...) could really be carriers and not portable teleport-recievers by carrying ships along with their pilots in their cargo. These ships would be released through the carrier's dispenser and once released, the ship would be fully under the pilot's control. Also the carrier would be able to pick the ships up again... The good thing is, it could carry even things that cannot ripcord and provide protection for them by storing them inside... I dunno, it could carry anything... Ints, bombers, TTs, Cons, Miners... Or just make it more simple and createa new drone: a portable outpost... (My oh my... That one is just crazy... But I won't delete it and keep it there to entertain you :-D)[/quote]

HAving people "mounted" in the carrier has been suggested for a long time, and would require a large code change. But using the cargo for craft is an interesting, but nifty, idea.

[Jersy]

Jimen:

First, those missiles you are talking about are, indeed, faction specific, however, they have quite specific use - they are mostly AntiBase and AntiCap and can be equipped either on bbrs, sfs or capships. Rockets for normal small-ship use do not exist in alleg.

Freespace has individual locations for every subsystem (so you couldn't disable engines by hitting the ship elsewhere). I was proposing the same hitbox, just choosing what to damage.

There is always a way to balance powerful things - make them expensive, for example.

Slow-fire cannons could hardly be ripped out of any specific game, because the idea itself is way too generic. Sync/async came from Starlancer. Ram-Cannon from Conflict: Freespace. I never claimed my ideas were unique in any way.

Harbinger of doom completely destroys everything in the two sectors connected by targeted aleph, so ISM is hardly it's drone version.

Bombs being slow is nothing bad IMHO. Should they be twice as powerful as ABs, for example (with bbr going 60mps, and their lifespan being 15 sec, their range would be 900m)...

I prefer to write down everything with the possibility that something shall actually be good enough to make it into the game itself. Also, they are just ideas and no one is under obligation to implement them, so I see no harm in quantity over quality.

(Also, I get this nice self-satisfactory feeling everytime someone besides me thinks my ideas are cool as well... "Cool! That's gonna be in the game!" is super! "Cool, but not appearing in the game" is still good enough. "Not cool, and, of course, not appearing in the game."... Well, *Shurgs Shoulders* back to the drawing board...)

I apologise for He3 mines though... Dreg *do* have them, indeed (man, that WAS embarassing)...

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About Freighter: It's already stupid that you don't have to fly into carriers green door to dock at it, so I would say "whatever" :-D However yes, the freighters or carriers might require some code change, so the capships could only rearm themselves at the freighter...

Well, but there already is something that makes the carrier recognise what can dock at it and what cannot (DockableShips=Pod; Scout; ...)... Copy that, change the values (DockableShips=frigate; destroyer; ...)... (Oh well... I can already see that this would actually be much more complex than this...)

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Something more about "Spy on enemy" and "Spy Transport":

- Other "nasty tricks" might include: Stealing money, getting to see a "screenshot" of enemys invest-tab (a window would pop up, you could browse through all the tech trees, but it would not keep itself up-to date) copying research blueprints (this operation would have the same result as picking free-floating tech - only you would get to choose what to copy), sabotaging research/construction (by paying some money, you would reduce the amount of money invested in enemy research/construction)...
- also, you might get to choose what the effect of the SpyTransport would be by equipping the ST with appropriate cargo in some inventory slot (missile? gun? cloak? Countermeasure? ...)

[HSharp]

If there was going to be a code change regarding freighters and how they re-arm ships I would rather have it the way someone else suggested where the freighter can actually fire it's cargo to where its pointing instead of dropping it for other ships to pick up.

[Andon]

Individual ships have a "CanDockatCarrier" flag - which would mean if a Capship had it, then it could dock at a regular carrier.

[Jersy]

Hmm, firing the cargo would also be a possibility... Depends if cargo is jettisoned using the dispenser or if it's coded individually... In case of individual code, it would require just a change in the release vector and initial speed, I suppose, but if it's released "through the dispenser" (behind the ship), then it would be neccessary to separate the coding for probes/caltrops/towers and for jettisoned cargo... Or there could be some special "Delivery Missiles" ("AmmoDeliveryMissile", etc.), that you would fire at the capship, and should you hit it, the item would appear in capships cargo...

I dunno, it still seems easier to "copy" the carrier code, change the name on relevant places, and ships dockable at freighter would have "CanDockatFreighter" flag...

(If the carrier code is in the form of "IF CanDockatCarrier=True THAN Repair, Recharge, launch in the vector XY at the speed of Z", than you would just copypaste the code, change the name of the variable from "CanDockatCarrier" to "CanDockatFreighter", maybe toy around with the values in other variables as well, and that would be it... Of course, I don't have a clue how the actual code looks like so it really might be a lot more complex...)

Or it could use "CanDockatShipyardCapshipEntrance" flag, if there is one (AFAIK SY have small green door and big green door and Capships can only dock at those big ones and small ships can only dock at the small ones, so there has to be some difference already)...