In regards to the faction specific class-9 weapons idea, I would just like to say that it's a great idea... but then I've always used the guns that suit me best, regardless of their faction of origin. I feel that's part of the game, that you can customise your ship to suit your fighting style however you'd like. It's not a massive stretch of the imagination to say you've salvaged guns from downed hostiles, in SP that's practically the best way to proceed and succeed.
That said, I hate equip-to-win. I see the most unbalancing weapons in the game as the Tizona and Colada class weapons, as one fighter can effectively neutralise the shields of even the biggest ships. Without them, fighters struggle (as they should) and capships have the strength they were intended. Gunboat Infernos are fine against fighters and gunboats alike, there is absolutely no need to mount Tizona class guns on one. I plain don't like 'em but I guess that's just my gripe :0P
With current weapons it is fairly easy to destroy even the heaviest of fighters in about 3 seconds flat using an equip-to-win attitude and half decent aim in an opposing heavy fighter. Perhaps hull damage specific weapons for fighters could use a little gentle downgrading?
@Dab, I was simply explaining that you can't use the sunslayer bug (that all player made craft also have) as something unbalanced about it. That would fall under a general bug.
But on the topic of sunslayers, without changing their damage or whatnot, it would be easily fixed/minimized if the Sunslayer/Missiles/Torps explosion radius was reduced.
Reducing blast radius would DECREASE damage doe, not only to new fighters, but to Vanilla ones as well. As thje blast damage might not effect ALL of the hull parts that way.
Just a comment: I'm out of my league talking about blast radius, hit boxes and such. But as a new guy trying to start a new faction, I pick the ship that best fits the faction. I will fly vipers and battlestars even if they get nerfed to hell and back-Sorry DO-even if they get over balanced :P I would also point out that there are 2 types of custom ships: the player invented ones (slipstream, zoner cap ships... and the stolen ones (vipers, battlestars, cylon raiders, mars flyers etc.)
New ships that are derived from vanilla ships are not in either category.
A faction can be defined by the equipment and ships it uses so the introduction of ships from outside the FL canon means there should be a set of equipment to go with these ships. Otherwise those of us who want to make these ships part of their faction have no reason not to 'build to win.' However if given a set of equipment that is meant for my ship, I will choose to use it over whatever else is out there because it adds individuality and authenticity to the RP experience
The same would be true if I wanted to create a HomeWorld faction.
One of the drastic things we could do that would certainly up RP, if at the same time piss just about everyone off, do a complete reworking of player ships.
Instead of having all of the VHFs and whatnot be balanced with each other, let's try to balance them with the NPCs. Instead of new Class 10 fighters, let's try other class 7's, or 6's. The Valkyrie, for instance. What about the Dragon? And let's not even touch the multitude of Homeworld ships.
I have no idea about how it would work fully, and as I said it would probably piss the hell out of just about everyone on the server. One argument I hear already, "But players are the ELITE pilots!" Well, guess what? Elite pilots don't automatically get better stuff. That's not why they're elite. They're elite because they have the same stuff, possibly a little better, and STILL kick everyone's collective @$$es.
(This is goanna be a big post folks)
So, the above you can take or leave at your digression. Just one idea that had been discussed before and I thought it should be brought to the rest.
The next item would be the Viper and Manta.
Viper: This has been discussed before, although I have yet to see anyone say "This is how we fix it." So, get working!
Manta: One of the best VHF fighters in the game. That's fine. Bounty Hunters would need something like that when dealing in the Corsairs and Outcasts home systems. But the agility of an LF? What the heck!? Come on, this guy needs a downgrade in the agility department, or something to make up for it.
(Next section!)
All right, now let's start on one idea I had here. Don't know what happened to it last time, but I'm bringing it up again. Either say "Yes" or "No" but please don't just ignore it.
New Weapon Type: Rail gun
Hull damage: Very High
Shield damage: Low
Shields weak against it: NONE
Speed: Very fast
Range: Long
Energy Requirements: Medium to High
Refire: Slow (1 per second for the good ones, perhaps 2 for some of the lighter turrets, and even 4 for the auto-cannon variants although they have a high energy requirement)
This would be a snipers weapon, to use an analogy. A good Rail gun ship's job would to stay in the back of the fray and let rip it's cannons once the other ships have taken down the opponent's shields. The range allows it to do this, and the speed of the bullet allows it to reach those ships before they get too far away. Without those supporting ships, however, a Rail gun ship would be hard pressed to take down other ships without some turrets being pulse turrets.
Basic structure of the turret: (Let's go for the battleship one)
Class 10
Hull: (Thousands. Tens of Thousands. Enough to rival the battleship Battle Razor anyway)
Shield: 500-600 (Or something like that. Low for a cap-ship, anyway)
Refire: 1.00
Speed: 2000 MPS (I told you it was fast)
Range: 1500 M (Or 2000. Or 2500. Long range, like I said. Theoretically, in space the Rail gun would have infinite range)
Energy: (For the battleship? Somewhere around 5 million, probably more like 10 million or something)
The Rail gun works on the principle of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Going back to the olden days of projectile weapons, the Rail gun is culmination of that technology. Firing a heavy Deuterium slug, there is little in the way of armor that can stop the massive velocity reached by this weapon. Even the most agile of fighters have trouble dodging it. Shields, on the other hand, work very well against it. They absorb the kinetic energy instead of the ship and prevent the bullet from reaching the desired target. But woe to thee who scoffs the battleship variant; they generally scoff no more when the first shell punches a head sized hole in their cockpit.
Obviously, this thing is going to need work to get it all set up. I don't have exact numbers so some of this will have to be tweaked.
(Oh boy, even MORE stuff!)
Now, about the Rheinland Battleship. Yes, I'm goanna b*tch about that too.
The battleships of Discovery are now the mobile fortresses they should be. Well, most of them. The Rheinland Battleship seems to have lost something of it's former glory. It is by far one of the largest battleships out there, and therein lies the problem. Because it is so large, both in length, width, and height, it's turrets cannot cover it totally. Should a fighter get within close range, the battleship has no chance to hit it. Should the same fighter come in at a certain angel, the battleship cannot bring it's firepower to bear correctly. There are two ways to deal with this;
1) Increase the number of turrets on the Rheinland Battleship so that coverage is complete, or
2) Increase the speed of the current turrets, both in turning and shot speed.
(Last one, I swear)
Last but certainly not least, are missiles.
The battleship missiles, or any of the cap-ship missiles, are absolute cr@p. They are useless against any adequate PC, and barely any good against NPCs. Now, in this day and age the missile is probably the best weapon we posses. Able to bring a powerful warhead accurately and quickly to any given spot within range, there isn't a lot that can stop one. Why should that change in the future?
The cap-ship missiles need a massive re-work. Tracking is the biggest problem. The battleship missiles are slow, ponderous, and miss more often than is effective. They loose tracking almost as soon as they're launched, rendering them little more then a small navigational hazard to all but the newest of pilots.
Increase the turn rate, up the speed just a tad, and a missile cruiser becomes the fighter terror it should be. Or even get rid of the Gunboat/Cruiser/Battleship missile turrets all together and change them to STF (Ship to Fighter) and STS (Ship to Ship).
STF has excellent tracking, good speed, and takes a good amount of energy to fire. These are missiles like the Stinger, the Patriot, or other STA missiles used for taking out hostile aircraft.
STS missiles are more of torpedo hybrids, dealing massive amounts of damage but are just about useless against fighters. These are the heavy missiles that you see in most space combat Sci-Fi. These are the Bomb Pumped X-ray Laser missiles, the Heavy Fusion Missiles, the Battle Razors of the missile world, if you will. Of course, getting them to be effective against said capital ships would be a little difficult but not impossible.
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You know....i do agree, but that would takea hell of a lot of time to implement.
One question though (scientific). I thought dueterium is heavy Hydrogen, which isnt very heavy.
And at least the BH's get a good fighter in your suggestion(s) :D .lol
I agree with the massive energy consumption on the railgun however, i thought the power plant on a bs was 7 million :P .
Now that kind of hull killer is somthing i'd really go for on my fighter. one tizzy (if they would exist) and a level 9 railgun....heheheh....
On the Rhineland battleship, i agree with that though i have never tried it before. I think that the gun count would need to be upped. That way, if the power plant stayed the same, the person flying one would be forced to have some basic or low energy consuming turrets on all the Anti Fighter slots. To be honest, i want a huge, imposing battleship but im scared it will be way too ineffective against fighters and even GB's, depending on their agility. I know that i can deal serious damage in my Ravenclaw with a gunboat (more if there was another ravenclaw with the same loadout i use) to a bs because i tried and nearly succeded. A gunboat + a fighter must never under NO circumstances be even able to challenge a bs IMHO. bs' are supposed to be almost invincible (again, IMO) to all but Cruisers/Destroyers, which should be a bs' big weakness.
Missiles....i'd love these, if only they would turn better like you said. If they did though, then mabey the damage would need to be a bit less according to their hit ratio or turning speed. Mabey a few variants (more than 2) giving an inversely proportional ratio to the turn:damage. ie vs fighters, GB, Cruisers, Frigates (even though they have cruiser stuff) and battleships. And mabey an anti sheild version, like an upped paralyser (the fighter variant is already there in the form of the sunslayer, sidewinder and paralyser i think ^^)
I definitely think that there should be a rail-gun. I always wanted to mount one on my liberty cruiser. Just to sit back at 5k and fire at ships, leaving me invulnerable. *sighs* I assume they would take ammunition, tho, deuterium is not energy. You could also use depleted uranium.
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RP Story (Still deciding whether or not to finish)
Dab,Nov 10 2006, 08:13 AM Wrote:Reducing blast radius would DECREASE damage done,<snip>
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Just a quick comment on that.. It would decrese the damage done to Vanilla fighters, not player made fighters. Which would put all fighters, be Vanilla or custom mades, on a level playing field when it came to explosives.
marauder,Nov 10 2006, 05:40 PM Wrote:So basically your saying that we should, or need, to add BSG and star wars weapons to the mod?
And if their better then the FL weapons whats to stop people using them instead of the nomad, codename and chaingun weapons?
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1)Call me a noob, but are there any starwars ships in this mod (I thought Bs was running around in vipers and Osiris's anyways...)? And having ship specific weapons would at least facilitate people playing into their roles better. What I'm trying to say is that I was drawn to the viper not because I knew it was an overpowered, hard to hit fighter, but because I'm a fan of the show it comes from.
Having so many variants in the game makes balancing that more difficult and eventually you'll might end up with duplicate weapons with different names. Codename weapons/chainguns...everything should be assigned a faction.
2)There is nothing to stop people from looking for the uber combination of weapon and ship. Unless you want to put real limitations into the mod on what equipment you can use with a certain ID, you will always have this. I'm getting the impression though that this mod has put eye candy ships and a high amount of flexibility of play to lure more players to it-even ones who don't care so much for RP. This is the result of that philosophy-willy nilly jury rigging Millenium Falcon type ship loadouts.
So yes, the only way is faction specific weaponry and ships. Freelancers would have to use civilian ships/weapons-no more neutral freelance battleships etc.
Take your pick, flexible play as you like or structured yet balanced.
*BTW all this talk of railguns and uranium charges reminds me alot of EvE, next thing you know each faction will be manufacturing their own ammo :P
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