Capital Ship Missiles

[Nightfall]

Not as easy as you might think.

Amount of ammo in Freelancer is set by ONE constant that determines max ammo for all ships and all weapons (missiles, mines, CDs, CMs) at once. Right now this constant is 70. Nightfall wants this to be lowered; I don't think I'm going to change it. I admit that 70 is too much for powerful missiles and torpedoes, but it isn't much for CMs and less powerful weaponry.

Also take into account that 70 is maximum for all ammo for one weapon type. This makes your idea about ammo for capship missiles absolutely impossible to implement. If max ammo will be upped to 100 or 200, then fighters will get too powerful, and capital ships still won't get enough. If max ammo is 70, ship with 5 missile turrets (not too much, for a battleship at least) will be able to fire 14 shots with its missiles. Then return to base, resupply - top-level fighter missiles cost 7 thousand, so if battleship missiles will cost, say, 20 thousand, resupply will cost 1,5 million - and fire the next 14 shots. For me this sounds ridiculous.

Missiles will be changed, surely. But no ammo. They'll have 30% higher refire (1.5 > 2.0) and significantly increased energy requirements. As for the damage, I didn't make a final decision on that.

Gunboats will not be nerfed in any way, but maneuverability will be reduced. Miner... well, I thought it would be interesting to have a transport capable of equipping gunboat turrets, but since it gets abused, level 8 turret slots will be removed from that ship.

Good I got an error while posting so I saw your post.

Yes, I realized the problem so I was thinking:

I was typing the following:

Yes, missle launchers without ammo is a loop hole. And missles can be seen as a loophole because they negate evasive manuevers and aiming. Another loophole is how a ship as small as a fighter can possibly hold 70 missles (unguided rockets are small enough for that, but missles are miniature space crafts in and of themselves and are much larger. A fighter carrying between 5 and 10 missles is more likely to me.)

----

The "because I can" people are severly outnumbered now, and even some of them are starting to hear and believe the RP gospel.

In fact, I thank the 'because I can' people, they help find the bugs. I wish there would be less flames though. I think the Discovery community is not the everyday PvP community you find on most other FL servers, we are moving a different way. I wouldn't be so vehemently supporting that way if I didn't think it's special.

Limiting the ammo that certain ships can carry seems to be the answer, but I think it's a constant for all ships (defined in constants.ini). On the other hand, there might be a way around the ammo constant - maybe if the ammo took up cargo space... in that case, it would depend on the ship's cargo capacity how many it can carry... but then again, we would be restricting the cargo space on the ships and they won't be able to carry loot which, true, would add to the realism of the fighters that wouldn't be carrying much loot anyway...

continued below...

i say mcneos proposal wa good but i think that fighters should only be able to carry 2 torps and 8 missles like todays fighters can

As I said, it would be possible if the ammo took up cargo space, you would be able to carry as much as your cargo hold size on the other hand, two torps wouldn't be able to do much damage to any capship the way they are set up now, arises the question of torp damage... needs some thinking on it.

So, in general, the constant in the ini could be upped to something like 200 or more having various ammo take various amount of cargo space... just an idea but it still may have the cost problem, not sure.

---

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God? - from 'Nightfall' by I. Asimov
The Outcasts consider Siniestre Nube a sacred place for several reasons. Early explorers discovered a jumphole within the depths of the cloud that leads to a strange world of ringed stars and strange craft. All ships in the burrial ground are placed facing that hole to honor the Alien Spirits. - An Outcast rumor