this is a very early beta.
chances are there are some very silly mistakes, like ships mounting the wrong weapons or some researches taking longer than they should. but i think i got most of them in testing on my own.
but its mostly there.
http://www.mesialonline.com/madpeople/dnCapCoreR4.zip
extract to art folder
some very brief notes about how its designed to be played / changes (brief its now 1 am)
this is basically DN 4.60 except SY has been re-designed.
the cap ships specialise in tasks
lt class kills fighters, it has fast and weakly armoured ships, and uses skycap to do it.
skycap 1 is the same as usual and can be used on GS (can be researched in gar for giga if not going SY, or comes free with lt class 1)
skycap 2 and 3 do more damage, but use 4* the ammo so can only be used on capships, even though they can still be mounted on GS, they chew through its ammo too fast (+ they weigh a lot)
killing lt class is probably best done with med class, though large numbers of small craft may work (i haven't tested this as its hard to do when testing by your self on a lan server)
medium class has destroyers and devs
dests kill fighters at long range, but are quite &"£$^! when a fighter gets close as they have no turrets and cannot turn (much),
though they wtf pwn everything at long range if they are roughly facing it as hunter killers are much improved.
giga don't get hunter killer 3, but they can buy (at a cost per missile) hunter killer SE (special edition) which is slightly better than HK 3.
dests are weak from behind, if you can sneak a fighter behind them then they can't lock onto you with missiles and they won't be able to turn fast enough to face you, so you can shoot them freely, so their best chance would be to rip out, unless their team defends them (with small ships or lt class ships)
devs are for killing capships and use skyrip to do it (note here that for rix, these roles are now split, rix dests don't get skyrip, and rix devs don't get lancer)
hvy class
frigates/cruisers/battlecruisers are used for killing stations, the ships now use their turrets to shoot stations, tac nuke is gone! the [sky cannon] turrets are very powerful and can easily kill small ships... if they can hit them, which they won't unless the small ship isn't moving (you can dodge these shots in any cap bar a hvy class one, they move that slowly)
battleships are for killing other hvy class ships, but can be used on stations, but aren't so effective. like the other hvy class ships, they use their turrets to do their damage (though the pilot gets xrm torpedo missiles), their turrets are longtoms, but not like the old longtoms, think more like mass drivers, that work better on cap ships than bases
these are very very strong ships, but they have no anti fighter weapons [even bombers can dodge the shots from their guns], so can be easily killed by groups of fighters (want more than 10 to kill it in a reasonable time) or bombers (note here that a single fighter or single bomber won't work, simply too much hp, but if you have a large number then they will work). so you need to defend these ships with small ships [perhaps with support ships to repair the fighters] or lt class ships, maybe med class ships in addition to kill fighters at long range and to take out other caps they may use to attack them.
using med class ships (devs) on these will work well, so will using other hvy class ships (but not so well).
while in a small game low numbers of players may not be able to kill a hvy lass ship easily, since they are so slow, you can easily bomb them while they are advancing very slowly towards your base and kill their bases before they kill yours (provided you have probes and spot their large sig capship...probes win games /smile.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":)" border="0" alt="smile.gif" />)
support class
has ships to provide support roles, ass ships, freighters, piloted carriers (i'm thinking they may just get removed), and support ships
the new support ships are super nans,
they them selves can't be nanned, but they mount 2 laser nan turrets.
what is a laser nan? think pnx laser, except it fixes you instead of damages you.
while technically you can mount normal nans and laser nans on the same slot, laser nans weigh a lot, and use a scout's energy up in under 1 second, they do repair slightly faster than normal nans though.
so basically, you can mount laser nan on a scout, but you won't fly well, and you won't nan well as you will use all your energy and only nan a tiny bit oh hp compared to what you would do with a normal nan.
you can mount normal nan on a support ship, but why do that when it has the energy to mount the more powerful laser nans?
in a break from tradition laser nan levels are related to your current nan level, not the support class level
what you use the support ship for is up to your imagination. basically its designed to keep any ships near it alive, and force the enemy to kill it first. you could try bombing or even galving with it, or taking it with a carrier miner hunting. one thing to remember is that its top speed is slightly lower than a un-pushed bomber's top speed, so if you want to use it for super nan bombing, then your bomb run will need to fly slower else it will fly out of range of the nan ship. you could also use it for keeping fighters defending a hvy class ship alive. or nanning miners or pushing cons (though again, you will need to force the con to fly slower to keep it in range of the support ship)
see pg 1 of this thread for how the the tech tree works.
basically, upgrading a class upgrades the ship
and its weapons.
you don't research weapon upgrades individually.
but you do research shield upgrades separately (though the different classes mount different types of large shield)
cms also are researched separately.
you need mk2 class to get a drydock [dependant on factions, some start with DD]
TF is an odd one out as they don't get med or hvy class, they get flagships, which are sort of hvy class, but i bit tougher, and can mount skyrips at later levels.
plz point out any obvious mistakes. (like giga using GT models, ships mounting guns they shouldn't or not having the right amount of hp etc, or ships or weapons not becoming available when you researched the right class level)
feel free to organize tests with people and tell me what you think.
the main aim of this is to try and make SY scale better with game size, so it isn't overpowered in small games, and isn't underpowered in large games.
one thing to note is that SY isn't really a proper tech path, its designed to compliment your main normal tech path. you can try going pure SY if you want but meh *shrugs*
would anyone be interested in putting this on their server?
i never experienced any crashes during testing it.
if someone does put it on their servers, then perhaps it should go no the AU too?
it would make larger tests easier to do (which is part of the idea - a version of SY that scales better)
the numbers are very rough at the moment, but they should make things behave roughly how i want them to
