Some Freighter/Transport Questions

[Mr_3ppozz]

I have a BSG tagged Large train, it has IMG ID and Tag, and is one of many BSG's traders. Why hide your trader? everybody knows your getting the cash from one... be honest about it:)

EDIT:
Yes ive been on the PvP server, ive seen that my shield capicity went up a bit... (with adv train) but other then that no difference, but i havent been shot at by anyone so really no way of testing the Cruise disrupters and armor and such. I think its wise to play the new version even if its a Beta version... it gives you an understanding of what is about to change...+ it helps in finding bugs if there many players that have tried stuff... most players tend to stick to their respective areas (Like me, find me in the taus) so if everybody tested a few things all should be covered.

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"War. War never changes. Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything, from God to justice to simple, psychotic rage."

[alance]

If you think that low-level players should not exist at all, and should not have any ships to use, then Discovery is obviously a wrong mod choice.

I have in no way suggested new players should have no cargo ships to fly. I hope you can get past this worry since it is not -my- idea but an assumption you've made. Nobody is cursing your mod, we love it and we want to see it evolve and we want to help. If the spreadsheet I post (when i find time to finish it) has no value to players, fine, but I'd hope you could clear your mind of preconceptions and look at the idea with an open mind when it is presented.

I don't see what a transport cannot provide compared to a freighter.

The idea is to rebalance freighters and transports so that there are clear differences aside from cargo hold size. I agree that right now there is no point beyond RP to fly a freighter.

Agility? Not much needed, since such ships cannot participate in combat.

Transports are getting attacked all the time, escape from piracy and battle zones is valued, defending vs NPCs is important. I fly a Behemoth because it is a nice combination of speed+agility for less cargo space. This is the sort of distinction i'm talking about accentuating.

Defensive capabilities? How can a freighter that's 10 times smaller than a transport have nearly as much hit points, shield and power capacity?

I have not posted any numbers, they're not as drastic as you assume, but, there are good rationale for a small ship to be a tough nut to crack:
1) A shield generator for a large ship requires much greater power than one for a smaller ship. When you double the radius of an energy field you square the power needed to generate that field. Small ships thus can have the same class of shield protection for much less energy output.
2) For armor, a six inch plate is a six inch plate. If you cover a ship of surface area X with 6 inches of armor, that armor is just as hard to penetrate as a ship with surface area 10X at the same thickness. Yet, the smaller ship is much lighter still because as the radius object (assume sphere for easy calculations) is cut in half, the surface area is decreased by a power of 2.
3) Finally, a star ship doesn't explode because every piece of armor and structure was blown to fragments. It explodes because the armor was penetrated in a vital place or places. A hit on a small ship is more likely to hit something vital, i agree, but that doesn't mean a salvo into the engine room of a transport is going to do less damage than when fired into a freighter.
4) Some fudge factor is acceptable to make the variety/game nature fun and interesting.

As for IDs and roleplaying: I think that nearly all factions will be allowed to fly transports with their "native" IDs, including pirate IDs, and even military IDs. We got a wrong practice when factions use transports with different IDs to get richer, and this will have to stop.

Awesome. If all factions are going to be able to use transports then that means less work on the freighter side of things. Part of my goal was to give those factions who are limited to using freighters a bit more bang for their buck. As it is I can just tweak a few of the numbers that seem grossly out of place for a few of the current freighters.

I'd like to ask everyone to limit their comments in this thread for a couple of reasons. First I don't want Igiss to feel ganged-up on. That is not my intention at all, I just want to offer my ideas on balancing some freighter/transport numbers. Second I don't want a ton of speculation as to what my new numbers entail before I get the first draft up. I posted some questions here that I needed cleared up before I continued on the project, those have been answered (thanks Igiss).

And @Igiss: again, I and everyone here very much appreciates your work on Discovery. There is a tendency on projects like big game mods for things like balancing newbie ships and vanilla features to be shrugged off in favor of new, cool ship designs etc. This isn't a condenmation but an acknowledgment that new gunboats, bombers, and even new trade ships are more fun to work on than doing an overview of all freighters and transports. My eyes for this project may be too big, but I think the trend I will propose is going to be something good for everyone. Please view it with an open mind when I manage to get it finished and posted.

Thanks!

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"To gain a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence;
to subjugate the enemy's army without doing battle is the highest of excellence."