The EW Regulator is one of the innovations I had planned. Actually the term "black hole" may be somewhat misleading as obviously this weapon effect doesn't suck out all ships in area, but it was the closest, sci-fi and sotryline-wise, that I could come up with. More details will follow.Valiance wrote:QUOTE (Valiance @ Aug 3 2011, 11:13 AM) FYI, this is the unique faction tech list:
OK, so first off: All the SY tech except Plasma Boosters has no real reason to exist and all have very similar equivalents already in the game they could swapped out for except the Regulator which was the silliest of them all anyway (you said you have all the sprites, but can you even make a black-hole in allegiance?)
The LRM Harpoon -- either the MRM Zeus from GT or just the plain old LRM Hunter can replace this.
The Lt Earth/Shield-ripper -- what's wrong with TF's Bomber/HTT guns?
Dust-Gun -- if this really needs to exist either EW Pulse Laser or Mini-Disruptor could do the trick.
EW Heat Cells -- Solar Inverter anyone?
Photon Boosters -- if you want to perk their boosters, just give their ships more fuel. Simple.
Plasma Boosters -- If you want your caps to boost, you are going to need some sort of new booster with the specs that allow it to do this -- really, this is the only bit of unique tech that is actually needed.
If you really want EW to be your faction's thing, you could have EW Pulse lasers (with appropriate energy store nerfs) from the start, but there's no need to go overbaord on it and replace every single piece of tech with an EW equivalent -- especially when such equivalents already exist.
I can see, now from another perspective, that the faction is very (perhaps too much?) SY-emphasized. I can suggest to make the BL SY available in mid-game (as opposed to all other factions which can only sport (stronger) SY's after solid economy and big late game), but I am by no means an Allegite strategist. The BL SY requires few players as opposed to other SY's, as all caps are dockable and are fairly nimble.
The EW heat cells were meant as backup to EW guns (if I remember). They were different from solar inverters in the sense that they did not raise signature - I really find hard to recall what I had planned for them, but they were, I believe, finite energy deposits using some ICE tweaks (?). After the Heat cells had "cooled off", you could eject them out and gain maneuverability/speed/other.
The Dust gun would be an experience with exp cheese. As the name implies, it had a tremendous ROF *and* spread - bullet spray. Sort of a reward after a relatively weak EXP.
About the boosters: The BL faction is not an "always boosting" faction, it's an "always speeding" faction. Their hulls and shields are weak and their top speed unremarkable; they rely on "adrenaline" boosters and naturally low sig to get out of situations. It's therefore not the stamina (fuel) that really mattered, save for capships.
You could replace the earth-ripper by TF's base guns. The only minor problem with those is that they are, well, TF's.
The harpoon is the least needed tech - just an attempt at "hey I got my own missiles too!" Can be left out without problem.
There were also (not mentioned) special probes for each tech branch (EXP-probe, TAC-probe, etc), but I guess they are really not essential and may be dropped.
Obviously those who which to experiment may drop, pick and explore all the planned s.tech at theirs and the community's leisure - the intention is having something new, not clumping every single idea into every core.
