Endless possibilities....

[Ramcat]

I have been madly pumping out ideas. Some of you may think all these ideas are distracting to Cliffski in getting our beloved “Campaign” game done. This is not my intent. It is to archive the possibilities for continued development (at my work we call this the “Future File”). Also to show him that this game has unlimited potential. Cliffski is trying to get sales up enough to make a living off his games (Cliffski, forgive me for speaking for you). I think this game has that potential, and it has years of development in it. All that development/improvements/features will continue to attract more players and retain the current players (who are the word-of-mouth engine for the game, I have told all my friends).

So I have another idea, but it is clearly in the future file. I’d like to see the five ways of play built that I have layed out, and would love to dicuss them further (I’m sure many of you can add refinements I have not thought of). But then:

GSB 2.0!!

With new hulls and completely reworked ship construction. Here are my suggestions for hulls:
FTL:
Dreadnought 23-25 slots
Battleship 20-22 slots
Cruiser 17-19 slots
Frigate 13-16 slots
Destroyer 10-12 slots (our current frigates)

Sub Light (must be transported across star lanes):
Fighter 3-4 slots
Bomber 6-7 slots
Assault Boat 3 slots (and Marine bay (required)) (single shot, damage over time (marines attacking ship physically), possible capture)

Fighter bays can haul lots of attack craft (F, B, AB) and bloat the size (not the weight) of a hull. So a Destroyer dedicated as a “carrier” would have a hull the size of a Cruiser, and be that much easier of a target. Thus any ship with a Fighter bay would get a larger image depending on how many fighter bays. An example, a Destroyer (based on current Federation Fox Frigate hull (4 hard points)) with 1-2 Fighter bays would be the size of a Frigate (in my new layout) and with 3-4 Fighter bays it would be the size of a Cruiser graphically. Of course the fighters would add weight and make the Destroyer rather slow until it’s fighters launched and it would gain some speed.

[strask]

@Ramcat

I have been madly pumping out ideas. Some of you may think all these ideas are distracting to Cliffski

Nah, that’s why we have a “Suggestions” section in the forum. Cliffski is plenty good at focusing on whatever he should be working on, more ideas don’t hurt.

attract more players and retain the current players (who are the word-of-mouth engine for the game

This is something that I don’t think gets enough attention. We need to do everything we can to make this game popular and drive sales, so that Cliffski can afford to continue working on it to implement all these cool ideas. And fix some bugs. If the game doesn’t sell better, especially once the Gratuitous Campaign that he’s been working so hard on is released, he won’t have the resources to keep working on it and we will be out of luck.

So take a moment today to persuade a friend to buy the game, to post about it on some other forums, to write about it on your blog or twitter or facebook or whatever. It will help.

(and Marine bay (required)) (single shot, damage over time (marines attacking ship physically), possible capture)

This is a really cool idea, but I would want an order option to tell my captains to avoid shooting at ships that have marines attacking them, don’t want to blow up my own guys.

[Berny_74]

@Ramcat

GSB 2.0!!

With new hulls and completely reworked ship construction. Here are my suggestions for hulls:
FTL:
Dreadnought 23-25 slots
Battleship 20-22 slots
Cruiser 17-19 slots
Frigate 13-16 slots
Destroyer 10-12 slots (our current frigates)

Sub Light (must be transported across star lanes):
Fighter 3-4 slots
Bomber 6-7 slots
Assault Boat 3 slots (and Marine bay (required)) (single shot, damage over time (marines attacking ship physically), possible capture)

Just for the realism note - Dreadnought’s are smaller than battleships. Battleships are a progressive development from the dreadnought class. I know it’s a sexy sounding name but people have been hacking in realism tropes with firing arcs etc.

A frigate is generally smaller than a destroyer. The world war II analogy would be a Frigate = Destroyer Escort. Not to mention the US is no longer producing frigates of which it did so only 1960’s-1990 (excepting the age of sail). The US is now using the term Littoral Combat Ships (LCS).
Personally that name is NOT sexy. I think the US should have kept the term frigate.

I would like to see the ability to “upgun” classes. Certain weapon slots can be combined to allow the fitting of a weapon from the next size up. You still have to deal with crew/power but it would allow “BattleCruiser” type designs, heavy weapons on a lighter frame. Or a frigate could be armed with a Plasma cannon at the expense of 2 weapon slots.

Berny

[Ramcat]

@Berny_74
So:
Battleship 23-25 slots
Dreadnought 20-22 slots
Cruiser 17-19 slots
Destroyer 13-16 slots
Frigate 10-12 slots

It’s really the slots and the carrier issue that I am trying to get to. The name order is irrelevent to me as this is so far in the future that mankind may have changed the names.

@Berny_74

I would like to see the ability to “upgun” classes. Certain weapon slots can be combined to allow the fitting of a weapon from the next size up. You still have to deal with crew/power but it would allow “BattleCruiser” type designs, heavy weapons on a lighter frame. Or a frigate could be armed with a Plasma cannon at the expense of 2 weapon slots.

Dead on. I was trying to figure out how to do “battlecruisers” even had them as a hull type. But scratched it because you can “battle” upgrade any hull type, just didn’t know how to say it. I think the alternative should also be true. I can fit 2 weapons from smaller hulls into one slot. Using your naming model a Destroyer bristling with Frigate guns (making for a “light” destroyer - light & fast with light armaments).

[Berny_74]

[quote="Ramcat

@Berny_74

I would like to see the ability to “upgun” classes. Certain weapon slots can be combined to allow the fitting of a weapon from the next size up. You still have to deal with crew/power but it would allow “BattleCruiser” type designs, heavy weapons on a lighter frame. Or a frigate could be armed with a Plasma cannon at the expense of 2 weapon slots.

Dead on. I was trying to figure out how to do “battlecruisers” even had them as a hull type. But scratched it because you can “battle” upgrade any hull type, just didn’t know how to say it. I think the alternative should also be true. I can fit 2 weapons from smaller hulls into one slot. Using your naming model a Destroyer bristling with Frigate guns (making for a “light” destroyer - light & fast with light armaments).
[/quote]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_class_cruiser

With eight dual 5 inch/38 caliber (127 mm) gun mounts (16 5-inch guns), the first run of Atlanta-class cruisers had by far the heaviest anti-aircraft armament of any cruiser of World War II. They could fire over 17,600 pounds (10,560 kg) of shells per minute, oftentimes of the radar-fused “VT” antiaircraft shells.

I loved playing that cruiser in Task Force 1942.

But back on topic. Yes the naming conventions are really - moot - and possibly it could be different for each race. Might be confusing. The idea of upgunning/downgunning would be nice as stated. I don’t think every weapon slot would have the ability - but lets say certain classes would have a greater capability to upgun/downgun.

Berny

[Noc]

I have myself been pondering Destroyer hulls in the EVE vein, as oversized frigates.

They’d come with a high number of hardpoints (say, 7-10), and a power output bonus to make this viable – however, they would remain limited to Frigate-size modules, and their larger hull would make them an easier target for weapons that would usually have difficulty with frigate hulls. Also maybe a speed penalty – or a stacking nerf on engines, if we want to get fancy.

The power output bonus makes them more efficient weapons platforms, for the sorts of long range barraging and AA duties that normally require higher numbers of smaller frigates, at the cost of being unsuitable for speed tanking.

This seems easy to implement, as it’s just a set of guidelines for hull development instead of an actual game-change. If I ever get around to doing some modding, I might fiddle around with this and see where on the Useless -> Viable -> OP’d spectrum they fall.

. . .

For oversized weapons, I think size-specific hardpoints would be the easiest way to implement this, instead of trying to figure some way to combine hardpoints into Ad-Hoc Super Points on the fly.

So a frigate might have a couple of “Small” mounts for frigate-sized modules, and then one “Medium” hardpoint that lets you stick something Cruiser-sized in it. Of course, the Medium mod will still have its usual power and crew requirements, making fielding it trickier. Cruiser hulls could carry a smattering of Small hardpoints (great for AA guns, extra missiles, or when you need just a little bit more power…), and maybe one or two Large hardpoints for things like big honking lasers and AOE siege cannons and ultraheavy shields.

I like the idea of oversized laser guns. They seem pretty Gratuitous. We’ve got a lot of PEW PEW! at the moment, but I would really like to see some PREEEEOWWWWW! going on, too. Also: big cannons that take a long time to very visibly charge up, and then KA-POOOSH out a big ball of death. Or oversized missiles that are big enough for fighters to shoot at, but set off a shockwave whenever they get killed.

This would also leave room for plus-sized ship classes, which can carry more than one Large mount. Even having, like, two is a fairly big deal, since otherwise you need to support a Gratuitously Large weapon with Medium-sized power generators and crew quarters, and have to push it around with puny little undersized engines.

Minus power, crew, and weight issues, this is the way Sword Of The Stars handles its ship-customizing, if I remember right. SotS also includes a couple of role-specific hardpoints, like fixed-forwards mounts for heavy beam weapons. I know that GSB’s AI isn’t quite good enough to handle firing arcs, but ships already try to point themselves towards their driving target, so fixed-forwards mounts might be doable.

. . .

Unlike the Destroyer thing, this is a fairly significant gameplay change. On one hand, I don’t think it would involve any real change to the in-battle engine or AI or anything…but on the other, it would require creation of a lot of new hull variants, as well as a complete overhaul of the Ship Design interface, and neither of these things are really trivial. Well, the hull variants might be, if it’s just a matter of sticking a size flag onto module hardpoints. But “Overhauling the Ship Design UI” sounds like kind of a big thing.

[RCIX]

@Berny_74

Just for the realism note - Dreadnought’s are smaller than battleships. Battleships are a progressive development from the dreadnought class. I know it’s a sexy sounding name but people have been hacking in realism tropes with firing arcs etc.

Not sure where you get this. According to wikipedia, the Dreadnought type spawned out of a large battleship built by England called the HMS Dreadnought. According to Princeton, a Dreadnought is a “battleship that has big guns all of the same caliber”.

[Berny_74]

@RCIX

@Berny_74

Just for the realism note - Dreadnought’s are smaller than battleships. Battleships are a progressive development from the dreadnought class. I know it’s a sexy sounding name but people have been hacking in realism tropes with firing arcs etc.

Not sure where you get this. According to wikipedia, the Dreadnought type spawned out of a large battleship built by England called the HMS Dreadnought. According to Princeton, a Dreadnought is a “battleship that has big guns all of the same caliber”.

If you read in deeper all the “pre-Dreadnought” battleships were really a mish-mash of designs and ideas from the iron-clad era to the 1900’s with differing ideas spawning . Ship building and navy designed jumped faster than most navies could truly comprehend. HMS Dreadnaught was so advanced that all “battleships” were downgraded to pre-Dreadnaught. It was pretty much outclassed quickly since it had some major design flaws. Actually the United States never used Dreadnaught as classification. They kept calling them Battleships. Even in England the term of Dreadnaught fell out by the end of world war I (where HMS Dreadnought was put to rest as scrap with the sole highlight of its career of ramming a single U-boat…).

So really - Dreadnaughts were less of a class and more of an ideaological shift in ship design.

And for Frigates - I generally rely on the British classification since I think they had the most proliferation throughout the age of sail and later WWII to present. Differerent navies have had different ideas on what a frigate was. I will assume Cliffski will follow the same.

Berny

[RCIX]

The impression i get from wikipedia is that the progression went like this:

battleship -> Early Dreadnought -> Bigger and better dreadnoughts

In any case, “Dreadnought” refers to a really really big battleship (as the term dreadnought does refer to a subclass of battleship, and one with extra power). dreadnoughts neccessarily == battleships, but not the other way around. Thus, the common (in sci-fi games) convention of having it go Battleship then Dreadnought.

[Berny_74]

@RCIX

The impression i get from wikipedia is that the progression went like this:

battleship → Early Dreadnought → Bigger and better dreadnoughts

In any case, “Dreadnought” refers to a really really big battleship (as the term dreadnought does refer to a subclass of battleship, and one with extra power). dreadnoughts neccessarily == battleships, but not the other way around. Thus, the common (in sci-fi games) convention of having it go Battleship then Dreadnought.

Well here you get the English/American differences. American classifcation called them battlehsips. Modern listings - B as a pre-dreadnought, BB as post dreadnought. The US did not call there battleships Dreadnoughts (officially).

Before HMS Dreadnought - ships were refered to battleships - but more as a generalization - since the whole classification system we have now did not exist. Different countries called them differently. There were 2nd rates, 3rd rates, an Armoured Cruiser could equal a Frigate in a different navy. There was a complete arms race and research in ship design. What the Dreadnought class did was somewhat standardise what a modern battleship would be and the realization that in a modern navy every battleship had to be a 1st rate.

Ships-of-The-Line (+rating depending on number of guns) → a plethora of names on various hybrids/mods → HMS Dreadnought and age of the Dreadnoughts which are essentially Battleships as we knew them and the beggining of what we generally think of as Cruisers/Destroyers. I say as we knew them because they aren’t exactly being built anymore.

So if you have a Dreadnought Class - it could be the penultimate design or the precurser of even larger ships. Or a precurser of the demise of the battleship? From HMS Dreadnought to the last of the battleships being produced was a mere 40 years.

Larger ships… aren’t people asking around for bigger ships?

Berny
Berny

[Qwepir]

@strask

attract more players and retain the current players (who are the word-of-mouth engine for the game

This is something that I don’t think gets enough attention. We need to do everything we can to make this game popular and drive sales, so that Cliffski can afford to continue working on it to implement all these cool ideas. And fix some bugs. If the game doesn’t sell better, especially once the Gratuitous Campaign that he’s been working so hard on is released, he won’t have the resources to keep working on it and we will be out of luck.

TF2 Hat.
Just throwing that out there.

[Fishbreath]

@Berny_74

Well here you get the English/American differences. American classifcation called them battlehsips. Modern listings - B as a pre-dreadnought, BB as post dreadnought. The US did not call there battleships Dreadnoughts (officially).

(tangent) Did the English, even? From everything I’ve read about Jutland, all the official reports from English commanders refer to everything of battlecruiser size and up as “battleship”.

[Berny_74]

@Fishbreath

@Berny_74

Well here you get the English/American differences. American classifcation called them battlehsips. Modern listings - B as a pre-dreadnought, BB as post dreadnought. The US did not call there battleships Dreadnoughts (officially).

(tangent) Did the English, even? From everything I’ve read about Jutland, all the official reports from English commanders refer to everything of battlecruiser size and up as “battleship”.

I think by world war I they were calling them Battleships. You are right - though you can find listings as “Dreadnought class” and even “Super Dreadnought” I think what happened was that nobody else was calling their country’s battleships as Dreadnoughts and the English followed suit. Also designs quickly outclassed the Dreadnought and the Bellerophon class pretty quickly.

Berny