I’d love to have support modules, modules that can support other ships, may I present to you honourable ladies and gentlemen, my ideas :
Repair drone modules:
Repair drone Hive (works like a mobile repair module for cruisers and frigates)
Repair drone factory ( like repair drone hive, faster and/or more, more cost,weight,energy)
Cargo modules:
cargo hold (refills repair modules and hangars on cruisers)
Massive hold ( like cargo hold, faster and/or more, more cost,weight,energy)
Transport modules:
troop transport pod (increases pilot count, may need a bit of tweaking to get the right pilot increase VS money cost)
Luxury cabins( like the troop transport, more pilots, more weight, more cost, more energy?)
before you ask I have not named any costs because I do not think we can accuratly predict their cost whitout seeing them in action, personnaly I would love this added layer of strategy, off course this addition would require a lot of work, not even for just the modules, the code to support them, the orders needed and their codes so they work, and I am not going to assume someone is going to jump on the idea and start working his ass off
what I would love is to hear your oppinions! so please post those and any ideas of your own, and strategies you would try with them.
Iam talking about adding pilots so you can man fighters, not crew to man equipment on frigates and cruisers, I just felt that there should be at least a little effort to make crew quarters stand apart from fighter the fighter crew quarters?
This sort of thing has been suggested before, although something about you using the word “drone” makes me think this could almost work a bit like the Order limpet launchers. You launch a small repair drone that latches onto one of your own damaged ships and acts for a short while as a repair module. Downside is that your repair drones can be shot down by enemy PD.
I kind of like this idea, although it would probably need tweaking as far as the cargo module having multiple uses. If a ship has both hangars and repair modules, who gets replenished first? For that matter, repair modules come in two variants - repair and armor repair (three if you want to count the Tribe modules separately). So perhaps a bit more complex than it sounds. But it is another flavor for repair - doesn’t increase the rate at which things get repaired, just the length of time you can continue repairing.
I honestly don’t quite get what you’re aiming for here. Sounds like maybe you pay for a ship module that increases the pilot budget for the mission? That might be a bit of a game breaker unless handled very carefully.
thanks for the reply, I replied yesterday but the site failed to take my post and stopped working for an hour for me somehow ?
I used drones because thats what the option is to see or not see the little repair bots that use blue electricity ( and MAGIC!) to repair ships, but your idea with limpet like repair drones is even better !
exactly my thoughts
thats indeed it and I agree that balancing this would be difficult, would be far easier to say that it is too hard.
new idea that is sort of off-topic
Javelin missiles: fighter weapon that dammages the fighter when it is fired,+ stick together + the retreat at %% dammage command +??? = profit !
I’d had the notion of a droid cockpit module for fighters. Negative cost, penalty to weapons tracking speed, and -50% pilot cost for the squadron. Similar to what you’re trying to accomplish, because you usually run out of pilot slots when you’re attempting to get adequate fighter cover.
maybe there could be a “drone hive” module that would launch small autonomous fighters that would automatically stay near the ship and defend it against fighters?
weaker than regular fighters and their numbers would get replenished as the hive would construct replacements with limited resources
well i kinda ripped that idea off EVE
i think it would be great tbh… i wouldnt mind spending a slot for those on long range missile boats, the rear lines often need that extra cover or they need to spend much more on armor/reps/tractors/whatever and i dont feel like wasting tonnage on frigates which just die way too fast for my taste
Some great ideas here. I love the idea of pilotless fighters to reduce the pilot count. Thats very cool, probably a nightmare in code, but hey…
Suddenly it occurs to me that a series of ‘companion’ drones could work pretty well. especially if they were targetable. For example, you could have a target assistance drone that hovered around enemy ships and target-painted them.
Tyrian stole my heart since it came out…
epic game, the only one that ever approached its holyness is perhaps Jets’n’Guns
i think drones are in general a great idea,alltho it might not be a good idea to make them exactly as in Tyrian
perhaps maybe even multi-purpose drones? or even equippable drones which you would load in the ships hangar/hive?
What an interesting thread. My thanks to Geressen and the rest of you for this discussion! I’m late to this party and my thoughts are kind of mixed-up, so I’ll just type - a LOT - as I’m thinking…
Out of all your initial proposals at the start of this thread, I like those two the most of all. I think that repair drones – and their combat-capable versions! – have the greatest potential and usefulness.
I am strongly in favor of us armchair admirals being brave enough to get really unconventional with proposals for these drones. I’ll lead the charge by daring to be seen as a wild-eyed idiot with this first idea of mine:
We already have the awkward and very underused Disruptor Bomb, which has a chance of making enemy shields temporarily unstable and liable to collapse.
What about a friendly version – a shield [size=150]RE[/size]-stabilizer repair drone???
You leech a few of these onto a ship and if the host ship’s shield stability/overall shield strength drops below a critical value, it activates a special emitter which helps the host ship recharge its failing shield much faster than normal. That would be useful as hell! Especially in the later stages of a very hot battle when both sides have already lost many of their best ships.
Of course there’s also the evil attack version of the same drone. This nasty gadget leeches onto an enemy ship and then does its best to slow down the host shield recharge rate.
Hell, while we’re at it, let’s have a sub-variant which only concentrates on reducing enemy host ship’s shield resistance. I want, want, want this! >:-]
Another enthusiastic “hell, yes!” vote. I’ll provide additional fiendish crazed variations on this; see below!
Jets’n’Guns??? I’ll be damned. I never thought I’d bump into someone else on the GSB forums who’s played that one. You have good taste.
Mmm, yes, J’n’G’s ‘Air Autotrons’ and ‘Ground Autotrons’ certainly help describe this drone concept. I think that a GSB implementation would be tactically akin to something like a Predator UAV which could (but doesn’t have to) execute its own sorties. Or perhaps more of an unmanned helicopter – something to steer a station-keeping course to remain near the home ship. Variants could and should exist: heli gunship, target-painter, electronic warfare (a P-3 Orion ASW chopper for GSB, lol!), EMP beam for home-ship defense, shrapnel bomb-thrower to break up incoming fighter strikes, and so forth.
There’s several missions which fill a valid tactical role. We just have to get creative and come up with the concept of some brand-new drone-only modules with which to fulfill these roles.
I’m partial to a point-defense module allowing missile takedowns at a distance from the home ship. At present, ship-based PD modules mostly suck. However, a swarm of PD-enabled drones in echelon, riding ahead of your ship and positioned along the likely threat axis, could rip up a lot of bogeys via distributed fire. This would help take a lot of the pressure off of your ship-mounted PD and target-scrambler modules when the enemy comes knocking at your door.
I adore the cruiser EMP beam and frigate EMP missile, so I’m gonna shout and rave about wanting an EMP drone module. The strength and duration will be lesser than the other two sizes of EMP devices, but the potentially large deployment quantity should make up for that. I love the idea of a dozen little EMP-armed hummingbirds hovering their home ship, stun-blocking anything that strays too close. This could be an awesomely strange new form of zone denial against enemy fighters: hypnotize the little bastards, and then let your other fighter-centric weapons lay down the smack on them! Damn, this is cool.
Feel free to call me an overcaffeinated maniac, but my notion of a shrapnel bomb-thrower drone module could go somewhere useful.
I have other drone module ideas but I think I’d first like to let the rest of your comment at your leisure about what I’ve already mentioned. Even if it’s only to say, “You madman, this will never work.”
I’ll close by saying that I am a strong believer to the adage of “defense in depth,” and that long ago I studied enough medieval siege warfare to have applied various related concepts to the space games that I enjoy.
The home ship is your castle.
The drones are your soldiers.
I’m creating weird and useful ways in which to keep the siege invaders from crossing the moat and scaling your walls.
That “distant past + distant future” combination is where I’m coming up with more and more uses for these unmanned combat drones. I think we are already far along the path of making them tactically distinct from both fighters and ships. We need more of that sort of thinking. Not just “more guns,” but new and odd kinds of guns & other equipment to defend the castle. This is truly a worthy mission…all we need now are the tools to fulfill it!
I’m probablly going to get chewed out for going way off topic but here’s a variant idea of a “support module”
what about a module that negated (or better yet) reversed the “stacking effectiveness” of some systems.
For example: I call this idea a “Point of impact enegy condensor” a system that, in essense channels shield energy to one point and makes shields MUCH more efficient. In game terms such a system would negate or even counteract the reduction of shield effectiveness: So if placed on a ship that had 2 shield systems this would change the effectiveness from 90% to 120% or something. The idea is this secondary system links the two shields in a way that makes the whole greater than the sum of it’s parts.
keep in mind those are arbitrary numbers and such a system would obviously be quite costly to unlock and install…but in a way it limits itself because it’s making 3 module slots perform the job of one or two.
The possabilities are potentially unlimited here: linked power cores for more power, linked target trackers for better accuracy, linked repair modules for better/faster repairs
and now that my ranting is complete I’ll let this topic resume it’s course…sorry again for jumping in.
