Starting this thread to document discussion spurred in the Discord Help channel, and for better visibility.
Now I know we are all anxiously awaiting @darkwind 's awesome fixes for Docking modules, which should help with their utility, generally increasing their actual usage.
But there are still questions if the current mechanics regarding Carriers / Docking modules make them "worth it" considering the investment.
General issues the community brought up for the current state of the Carriers / Modules conundrum:
- docking / undocking / disconnecting bugs (already being worked on by darkwind)
- Carriers are really just differently named Battleships
- drones were a cool idea that sadly failed due to bugs
Suggestions for changes
Rename (remaining) Carriers to Dreadnoughts
Cosmetic change, leaves the mechanics as they currently are
Turn Carriers into Heavy Battleship variants
Dreadnoughts (former Carriers) = Heavy Battleships, offer factions that don't currently have a light BS the Battleship as a light and a Dreadnought as a heavy variant.
Turn (Heavy ?) docking modules into a "spawn point"
Currently the best way to use Docking Modules / carriers is to surprise undock some buddies during a piracy / piracy defense scenario. It's a cool but quite niche use case. During a battle, when your friends are out, they're out for an hour due to the PVP death timer.
A suggestion is to decrease (possibly even remove ?) the PVP death timer for ships respawned on the Docking Module.
After all, a carrier should be supporting at least a squadron of snubs, not just a couple of friends at max.
This "trick" would make the fleet battles more epic in terms of numbers, without requiring additional players to join in the fight. Basically an encounter with a carrier would play out similarly to a respawn-enabled event.
To prevent abuse and make the "carrier battlegroup" actually counterable a few constraints would have to be implemented:
First, carriers could be nerfed by removing their heavy slots. Make them purely a supporting asset in a fleet battle. The opposing side would be able to counter the carrier by destroying it quickly with other caps / bombers, preventing additional respawns.
Second, a way could be found to limit the number of respawns allowed on the Docking Modules. The idea is to use commodities of appropriate price / cargo size / sellpoint location (Faction shipyards I guess). Each time a player respawns on the Docking Module the number of these commodities in the carrier's cargo bay is reduced by one. If there are none available, the player is respawned at the proxy base (or possibly respawned but unable to undock until the carrier restocks their respawn commodity)
Turn (Heavy ?) Docking Module into a hybrid of JD and Hyperspace Beacon
An alternative or even additional take on the previous idea is to turn Docking Modules into personal "/beam" beacons for snubs.
Basically when a carrier is online if it has a free Docking Module slot he could beam his buddy in a snub to the carrier. This way Docking Modules would become sort of reverse-jump drive for snubs.
A jump drive for snubs has been suggested many times with the opinion that it would facilitate players getting to their friends / action more quickly.
Again to prevent abuse an appropriate (expensive) commodity could be introduced, and reduced in case the snub accepts and gets beamed to the carrier.
An additional limitation would have to be to only allow beaming snubs docked to bases, to prevent them from escaping mid-interaction.
Thoughts, criticisms, opinions, suggestions, additional ideas are welcome.
