Shipyard & CC_07

Freyja · Post by **Freyja** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 1:25 am

Cap speed;

Freighter 120 135

Corvette 80 90

Attack Carrier 75 80

Destroyer 75 90

Frigate 75 85

Assault Ship 100 110

Devastator 75 95

Cruiser 70 85

BattleCruiser 70 80

BattleShip 70 75

current suggested

cashto · Post by **cashto** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 4:07 am

Gawd, so many radical changes, it's hard to keep them all straight.

Microsoft's original vision of SY seems to have been "expensive juggernaut tech", but in reality it's always been more like "completing the rock-paper-scissors triangle by being stronger than exp but weaker than sup". Either way, SY is something that stands alone, it's not a supplementary second tech -- and that's the way it should be, because face it, the other techpaths don't really need any help.

The problem I see is that the rock-paper-scissors cycle isn't balanced. Sup is actually pretty balanced against exp -- it has inferior ships, but superior endgame tech (plus galvs!). So putting aside the "support role" path, there's really two routes we can go:

The RPS route: nerf sup endgame tech. Drive sup teams to building a SY in order to overcome exp. Move tp2 to SY (or just use assault ships). Or nerf figbees. Or unnerf XRM and put it in SY. Etc. OR:The expensive juggernaut tech route: raise the barrier to entry to SY. All factions need an adv base before building SY (except IC which can "rush" SY with a regular tech base). Nerf dis against capship hull. Hell, nerf everything against capship hull. Dis should be like mini is today, and mini should be like nanning a capship, it's that impotent. Make it so the only thing that can kill a capship is another capship, and even then you have to turn out a half-dozen of them.
Of the two, I prefer the second approach. The RPS model has a problem in that one of the two teams will be stuck with the "wrong" tech and will be forever trying to build two techs to counter the opponent's one.

The irony is that the so-called "RPS core" actually took the "expensive juggernaut" approach rather than the "non-transitive cycle of techpath dominance" approach. The downside of the second option is that CC becomes more like RPS core -- but I think the fatal flaw of RPS core is that no one wants to go through five levels of fundamentally the same sort of tech (and the levels aren't well balanced against each other anyways).

cashto · Post by **cashto** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 4:17 am

PS: I'd also like to see freighters have more real use. Reduce nukes to one per rack. In order to kill multiple bases in a single run, you need to rip home to reload, or otherwise have a freighter tagging along a sector behind you ready to rush you a new set of nukes. (Having multiple cruisers running around is another viable option, though a more expensive one).

Makida · Post by **Makida** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 4:27 am

That's a cool idea to get freighters to be used as intended.

Though I think in practice, the concept will take too long to catch on, and in effect it'd just be treated as a simple nerf rather than an incentive to use different tactics. They'd just fill cargo with missiles and then rip home between bases (unless it's a missile frigate I suppose, but then people would probably just wait for a better ship for the next base); it'd be seen as simpler than using a freighter (especially with all the slow manoeuvring required to get stuff from one cap ship to another).

Valiance · Post by **Valiance** » Sat Jul 25, 2009 8:54 am

I like Xeretov's idea the most, so long as the the different paths (support, attack, defence) are priced accordingly to how cheesey they are. Imo support would be the cheapest, followed by defence and attack class way out in front to stop b-ship rushes.
I would also like individual caps (once researched I mean) to be a little cheaper. Not so much the "attack class" ships, but the defence class ships seem too costly for what you get, generally (corv is just a big gunship... that costs like 10 times as much, destroyers pretty much NEVER get used; a team would rather spend the cash on a big base killing ship like a cruiser.

EDIT: The current freightor speed is 110-120 (cant remember); imo one way to get them used would be to make them faster, as in, can catch up to a battleship it is supposed to be supporting fairly quickly, so I say increase freightor speed to 150.

Vlymoxyd · Post by **Vlymoxyd** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:20 am

I'll start with the most game-changing idea: Make a new capital ship that would be the ultimate support ship(It would replace freighter).

It would have:
-A better name than freighter
-A standard mass for a capital ship
-1 big nanite for capital ship
-Relay lead indicator(You could remove it from assault ship, it's barely usefull for them anyway)
-It would have good scanners(something like 3600, same as garrison, 20% more than adv scouts)
-It would have a sig that is similar to other capital ships.
-It would be as good as a freighter to resupply other ships.
-It would be fast for a capital ship in order to be able to support smaller craft on miner O.
-Ability to deploy towers and calthrop
-carrier model(so that bombers/smaller ships can dock in it, you could give attack carriers the freighter model and rename them to something else)
- It could mount nanite turrets. You could allow it to mount 2 type of nanite turrets, one for capital ships and one for standard ships. The standard ship nanite turrets could be long range ones and it could allow this capital ship to support bombers from behind.

I think that one thing that SY always lacked were good support ships. I think that a ship like this could be very interesting and would fit with the idea of making SY a "support" path.

Destroyers: I'd like hunter-killers to stay as the primary destroyer missile, HK just need some fixes. Imo, faster HK, lower damage, faster reload rate and a lower cargo size would be a good start. The main problem with HK imo is that you're often forced to use 1 extra missile just to finish up an enemy with 10% hp left. if HK did half the damage but could be fired twice as fast, this would not be so much of a problem. I'd like to see destroyers being able to storm enemies at close range with quickfires, but imo, staying at long range should still be the best way to use destroyers.

MFs: I'd like to keep them. Imo, the game relies too much on bombers. You need them for XRM, SBs, Figbees(or is it just galv),TT runs(since EMP gun sucks), you need them to kill teleport if you only have Htts and they are the main way to take out bases early in the game. I wouldn't mind to see them changed in a way that they require combat capital ships in order to do things instead of being the strongest capital ship available(by itself) at their SY level. You could give them mini-skycap. I like the idea of SY being mostly a support tech path but I'd still not like SY being completely unable to win games by itself in the right situation. Imo, it should be possible to win a game with SY without having to buy bombers or by forcing a resign.

Longtoms:
-Instead of having them be like a SC4, could they be a different type of turrets? I'd like to see a small range turret that would do lots of damages. I'm thinking about making turrets that could be used to break camps while skycaps would be used to attack enemies from far away. This close range turret could have different levels. I think this could make capital ships better at breaking camps without making them too strong when they manage to enter sectors that aren't camped(as long as they carry the right type of turrets). I think that the choice between a powerfull short range turret and a long range one would be much more interesting than the choice between AC and SC(Why would anyone take AC?). No matter what, I think that AC shouldn't be mountable on capital ships unless there's a change that doesn't make it stupid to use AC.

Adaven · Post by **Adaven** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 6:33 am

I will apologize for not keeping up with the previous threads or fully digesting this one (I am working on catching up though). I more or less agree with Vly's post. I would like to throw a few tidbits out there:

-Like others said, Un-Nerf XRM and move it to SY, and make it the default missle for frigates. I realize you guys would prefer to not muck around with the other tech trees atm, but XRM has been a problem child for a while now, and F/B's should be able to pick up the slack. The longer range seems more in theme with SY, and it always bothered me that frigates couldn't mount bomber missles. It also adds to your concept of SY as supporting the other Techs, because Heavy Bombers could still access if you had them. And Un-Nerfing XRM in this case wouldn't re-break sup, because of the added cost/time needed to get SY.

-If you want another way to perk Devastators, bring back Skyripper mk2 (got shelved during MS beta).

-I know it would require a code change and thus doesn't really belong in this discussion, but while I'm dreaming, being able to modify Turret turn rates would be amazing. Because then you could create powerful anti-cap/anti-base weapons that turn too slowly to be effective against figs/ints and vice-versa. There's a lot of gameplay variations possible when you throw that sort of control into the mix. Maybe I'll try to learn C++ and do it myself or promise to nan Andon/Imago for a year or something

Andarvi · Post by **Andarvi** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 8:47 am

What I would like to see is dis nerfed and fighter mounted anti-capital torpedoes, slow, but with a long life and agility (so they can be fired at 3k or something). Give the turrets something to do

Don't mind me, I played too much Wing Commander back in the days.

Vlymoxyd · Post by **Vlymoxyd** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:16 pm

Another ideas:

Res-resistant shields: I got those in my personal unfinished cores for a bunch of years and I beleive they can be very interesting. Imo, it'd be best to have a devel that unlocks an anti-res version of all shields in garrison or starbase rather than unlocking this shield for capital ships only. I've though about this a lot when making my core and I beleive that allowing small ships to use those special shields could create many interesting situations. I imagined a bunch of defenders trying to counter aleph res with res resistant shields(that were, as suggested here, weaker against weapons) . The attackers, however, didn't bring aleph res and enter with their strong shields which gives them a huge advantage.
I think that the level of these shields should be tied to the level of their "normal" counterpart. Having small shield 2 and the anti-res devel would unlock the small anti-res shield 2.
The shield devel could be in Starbase. I beleive that getting those should require some investments.

Talking about shields:
What about an "extra large" shield type? It would use the same damage class as large shields but would have more hit points. I think it could make the balance between different tech levels a bit easier. I think it'd make a lot of sense for a battleship to have more shields than a corvette or a MF.

Adept · Post by **Adept** » Sun Jul 26, 2009 4:16 pm

I'm a nostalgic old grognard. I'd really like to scrap some of the stuff that was added after the MS days.

Dis I think is going to be scaled down, so it no longer chews through capital ship hull. That will solve a large part of the problems in itself.

Thins I'd like to see removed as pointless.

Battlecruisers
Battleships
Long Toms.

I'm almost glad I missed the core wars that saw all this stuff added. I think the super heavy (above cruiser) caps exist because the previous kings of caps (dev & cruiser) became underpowered with the overpowered dis.

I couldn't find old MS values yet, but I'm also pretty sure that Skycap firing speed and damage have beenn raised to something way over the top in comparison to the MS days. This is silly dumbing down of Allegiance. Skycaps kill small craft in seconds, but cap hull is also made so weak that they also die in moments. How has this been a good idea, and why the hell would we want to keep things like this?

Long Tom seems to be an extention of the same. Since caps now die so easily, we need the super cap Battleship, who in effect has the durability of the old cruiser, and we also have cannons that make SC 3 look like pea shooters.

Can I tell you how much I hate that kind of logic?

***

My own memory of the MS days is hazy after 9 years, but the the pattern of cap use was much nicer than now.

MF and Cruiser were the supersized bombers for traditional base killing. A devastator was the king of cap vs. cap in close range, and a good alternative for killing small bases, and a Destroyer could kill the Devastator with Killer Swarm from beyond skyripper range.

I'd really like to see us try to get back to that, unless it was somehow crap and I'm just a nostalgig old fart. Remind me why we've come from that to the horrible situation we have now post DN? Is the current one really better somehow?

Oh, and with the demise of Long Toms and Battleships, I suggest removing Heavy Booster as well.

Edited: Removed broken image.