4.81 Main Features

[Igiss]

This thread is a place to discuss all issues related to new features that -might- be introduced to Discovery v4.81. I'm starting this discussion cause important balance issues are concerned here. It's rather doubtful that we can all agree on questions that may arise, but as I'm creating this mod for those who are playing (not for myself), it's essential that I take into account your opinions, however controversial they might be.

1) All torpedo-type anti-capship weapons will be removed.

This applies to Mortars, Nova and even Supernova mine. All those weapons will become normal slow-projectile weapons not requiring any ammo, like other turrets and guns. Supernova converted into a top-tier anti-fighter mine.

Why? Basically, cause all original capships have hulls that contain of several parts. When a torpedo hits them, several parts are damaged, which multiplies total damage. New ships contain of one hull part, so the damage is not multiplied. As I can't cut 3rd party ships into pieces or deal with torpedo immunity in any other way, the only choice is to remove torpedoes once and for all.

Capship missiles will remain, but we need to think how to make them anti-fighter-only weapons.

2) Capital ship weapons in general.

First of all, I'll increase range for all of them. Next, gunboat turrets will become more anti-fighter type. Didn't research this yet, but a bit faster refire and speed should help.

3) Reputations. I finally found out how reputation modifiers work, so now Kusari-Bretonia war won't be only a couple of skirmishes in Tau. If you work for Bretonia military, police, and corporations, Kusari will start to hate you. If you work for Kusari, Bretonia will hate you.

Modifiers for many pirate factions were also changed. So now it will be more complicated then 'fight any pirates - befriend with lawfuls' or opposite. Some pirates, for example, get along with Kusari well. As for Bretonia, it's less obvious, but you'll still notice that some pirate groups don't hate you as much as before for working with Bretonia.

4) Clan systems

That's something many people were waiting for. Yes, all factions excluding corporations will get clan systems near their current 'home' system. For example, Rheinland navy system will be near New Berlin, Zoner system near Theta, etc.

Guardian factions were not yet implemented and I guess it will take time (maybe they'll be absent in 4.81). However, I did want to place appropriate battleships, bases, wplatforms and encounters inside clan systems. They won't be ordinary. Rather, they'll be able to damage even the most powerful player ships painfully. So if enemy will enter hostile faction system, they won't have an easy life.

Reputation is a problem, of course - hostile players can always mod their rep to suit enemy rep, so that NPCs of guardian faction will become neutral and won't shoot. Maybe even modify them manually so that NPC relationships won't influence guardian factions at all.

For example: all guardians are hostile to everyone by default. For friendly players they are made max friendly. For allied - neutral. For non-allied and hostile - hostile (trespassing is not very nice, even if factions are not at war).

Clan systems won't contain any exclusive equipment, no stuff that's not available elsewhere (except maybe for IDs, but that's also doubtful). No exclusive trade routes. So that non-faction players won't be tempted to enter.

5) Additional systems

I'm intended to include lots of new systems to Discovery. Well, it's called Discovery, right?

Lots means lots - and as I've got single design document, Dab's future systems will have to be integrated into this structure somehow. Of course, it's impossible to set up bases, clouds, etc for all those systems in one release. In most of them, only stars and jump holes will be present. It's partially like SDK: me (or even others) will be able to open a system in FL Explorer and fill it with objects. Then you'll submit system ini file and list of infocards to me.

I hope some faction leaders will use this to customize their clan systems. Within reasonable limits, of course.

And I'd like to remind that I reserve right to edit or reject any work submitted without explanation of reasons. Rejecting is very unlikely, however, if you succeeded in screwing everything up, that might be the only way... as for editing, this mod is about quality, so everything excessive, unbalancing and illogical will not stay here.

6) IDs. Some changes here.

Neutral IDs will be available for purchase even if you are not friendly with police. Maybe I'll add them for sale in more locations.

As for other IDs, they'll mostly stay as is.

Oh, yes... you'll be able to sell Name Change Certificates without being kicked for cheating. All for now.

[seanstakes]

plz plz plz plz change the enemies in omega-49 corsairs in titans? i cant even get near planet gran canaria basically exit jumphole and then boom im dead so quick

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My 'Unknown' Characters

Baldomero[TBH] - Titan

Baldomero.B[TBH] - Praetorian (Planned)

Baldomero.J[TBH] - Private Cruiser, Named the Hezamorph (Planned)

Baldomero.G[TBH] - Good Ole' Rusty. (Corsair Gunboat)

[Igiss]

plz plz plz plz change the enemies in omega-49 corsairs in titans? i cant even get near planet gran canaria basically exit jumphole and then boom im dead so quick

Man, you probably deserve it. At least for offtopic posts in a thread that everyone should pay attention to.

[marauder]

1) All torpedo-type anti-capship weapons will be removed.

This applies to Mortars, Nova and even Supernova mine. All those weapons will become normal slow-projectile weapons not requiring any ammo, like other turrets and guns. Supernova converted into a top-tier anti-fighter mine.

Capship missiles will remain, but we need to think how to make them anti-fighter-only weapons.

For the missiles, perhaps increasing their turn radius and lowering the damage they do so that they only do as much damage as a cannonball missile?

2) Capital ship weapons in general.

First of all, I'll increase range for all of them. Next, gunboat turrets will become more anti-fighter type. Didn't research this yet, but a bit faster refire and speed should help.

3) Reputations. I finally found out how reputation modifiers work, so now Kusari-Bretonia war won't be only a couple of skirmishes in Tau. If you work for Bretonia military, police, and corporations, Kusari will start to hate you. If you work for Kusari, Bretonia will hate you.

Modifiers for many pirate factions were also changed. So now it will be more complicated then 'fight any pirates - befriend with lawfuls' or opposite. Some pirates, for example, get along with Kusari well. As for Bretonia, it's less obvious, but you'll still notice that some pirate groups don't hate you as much as before for working with Bretonia.

4) Clan systems

That's something many people were waiting for. Yes, all factions excluding corporations will get clan systems near their current 'home' system. For example, Rheinland navy system will be near New Berlin, Zoner system near Theta, etc.

5) Additional systems

I'm intended to include lots of new systems to Discovery. Well, it's called Discovery, right?

Lots means lots - and as I've got single design document, Dab's future systems will have to be integrated into this structure somehow. Of course, it's impossible to set up bases, clouds, etc for all those systems in one release. In most of them, only stars and jump holes will be present. It's partially like SDK: me (or even others) will be able to open a system in FL Explorer and fill it with objects. Then you'll submit system ini file and list of infocards to me.

6) IDs. Some changes here.

Neutral IDs will be available for purchase even if you are not friendly with police. Maybe I'll add them for sale in more locations.

As for other IDs, they'll mostly stay as is.

Oh, yes... you'll be able to sell Name Change Certificates without being kicked for cheating. All for now.

[snapback]32465[/snapback]

Sounds good to me, are some of the ID's going to be re-worded?

[Igiss]

What IDs exactly need re-wording? I don't know... except for a couple of obvious infocard mistakes.

And avoid long quotes marauder.

[marauder]

Sorry.

Good question about which IDs need re-wording.

I think the trading company IDs are the only ones that might need re-wording as I've seen players using ships not on listed as allowed on the ID infocard.

It should only need something along the lines of 'this ID is only for player traders'.

Also could we get a list, either in the infocard or in the server rules stating what the limits are for the 'can attack anyone on sight within certain limits' on the xenos ID.

At the moment I'm assuming it means within the server rules you can attack anyone in sight but it would be nice to have something we can refer to.

[General Nakazawa]

I love it all exept the lack of anti cap ship weps but il deal i guess this is when i start working towards going for SO agen now that you are puting in the faction sytems.

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Articles Of Interest: Bio | Capure of the General | The Rescue |"Ultimate Guide To Yakuza" | "The Origens of Aaron Koss"

[Behemoth]

1) All torpedo-type anti-capship weapons will be removed.
(...) New ships contain of one hull part, so the damage is not multiplied. As I can't cut 3rd party ships into pieces or deal with torpedo immunity in any other way, the only choice is to remove torpedoes once and for all.

[snapback]32465[/snapback]

Could you clarify please?
Sorry if this is one silly question but:
How is a bomber supposed to attack without the "bombs"?

Even then, novas don't do as much damage as can be seen in RM scenes in Single Player. Unless there are "bombs" other than Mortars and Novas that *really kill* Battleships...

2) Capital ship weapons in general.

[snapback]32465[/snapback]

Imho, increasing range for all weapons is not going to be suficient.

Example - we have posts like this:

The reason why many people (including myself) are mounting [marsflyer] weps on Battleships is because battleship weapons sucks. They use too much power for the punch they give.
(...) I allways thought that BS weapons should do ENORMOUS, almost insane, ammounts of damage. Because they are battleships. They have turrets almost the size of a fighter, power generators far bigger than those of fighters (even bigger than the fighter itself)... And still, some fighter weapons do more damage than their BS counterparts.
(...) Its the most annoying thing in the universe being defeated by a $ 4.000.000 slipstream when you are on board of a $ 200.000.000 battleship just because you run out of energy every time you shoot more than 3 times at it. And it is also annoying havin your shields being depleted by a fighter in less than 10 seconds, when it is supposed that the fighter has 1/100 of the power output of a BS.
(...) So thats why people use MF weps on battleships. To make battleship LOOK like battleships. Not just big, expensive, unamenuverable fighters, with poor power output...

[snapback]13591[/snapback]

I'd say prety unbalanced! Right?

Perhaps due to the fact that players can get Battleships in this mod, it was decided they should not have that crazy ammount of power...
However, I must say that diminishing the power of a battleship just because there can be alot of people using them is very weird. Maybe even because it is easy to get access to one, a Battleship should not be considered just a "BIG flying thing".
They ARE Battleships and their power should be Battleship wise!

Nothing to say about other stuff, yet :)

Good work btw :cool:

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[Korrd]

1) All torpedo-type anti-capship weapons will be removed.

[snapback]32465[/snapback]

By slow projectile you mean pulsed energy weapons?
Well, that would kill a few strategies bomber uses against BS. Firing at long range and hitting the BS will be next to impossible as a BS can dodge slow energy weps. I've done that with my spyglass against a battlestar once. I was at around 1200m. I could strafe to evade the shoots of a razor. Also, taurus was able to evade my infernos at 700m by strafing.

The anti BS weps should be fast energy pulses. And by fast i mean they can make all the way to max_range in half a second. like Range = 1200, Speed = 2400 m/s. That way they would behave more like the relativistic particle pulses they are.

2) Capital ship weapons in general.

[snapback]32465[/snapback]

The current problem with BS weps is speed.
As the range was increased, you can now fire at a target further away. But they are still ineffective at that distance because of the time they take to reach the target. They [the big bs weps] move so slow that you can dodge them easily now, As i stated in the previous quote.

BS speed should be increased, but power usage should not be touched. They use a lot of power now. If we increase the power usage with the speed, they will be as un-effective as they were in the MF turrets era.

So with BS weps we increase range and speed so the projectile is fast enough to hit a moving target at max_range.

3) Reputations.

[snapback]32465[/snapback]

Good. I was tired of seeing traders friendly with pirates or pirates friendly with the police.

4) Clan systems

[snapback]32465[/snapback]

This will be a mess to implement. But looks interesting. Maybe, we can make the weps of the stations in all the systems to *really* hurt.. As they are inoffensive even for a fighter. If you annoy FP11, it should be able to punch you quite a lot. After all, its a station. It should have a formidable defense system, not some crappy turrets that do nothing to an unshielded starflier...

5) Additional systems
I'm intended to include lots of new systems to Discovery. Well, it's called Discovery, right?

[snapback]32465[/snapback]

Cool. Exploring the mod and discovering thing is one of the most interesting things to do in the mod.

plz plz plz plz change the enemies in omega-49 corsairs in titans? i cant even get near planet gran canaria basically exit jumphole and then boom im dead so quick

Leanr how to fly. If i can make all the way there in a stock straflier without being killed, you should be able to reach there in a VHF.

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[Qunitinius~Verginix]

Stick in Wingmen that u can hire or what about NPC freelancers that fly around like human players and u can kill them with a rep loss cause their freelancers (the NPC freelacner could be after u cause it was hired by an oppsing force {ur a pirate,send by militray} to kill u or somehting?) and open the jump gate to magellan from NY if u can

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