Discovery 4.81 features, bugs & suggestions

[Kane]

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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