Carriers and Spawning Issues

[Warlord]

I'll say it once again: The word 'Carrier' needs to be removed from this mod entirely, just rename the bloody things already.

You are aware of your signature right?

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[Tenacity]

You are aware of your signature right?

Yes, and I'm tired of all the stupid proposals to rebalance carriers that will end up making them useless - sorry if I dont want my own ship nerfed.

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[Pingu!]

If it could be done, it should be done.

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But you either follow our rules here and work with us - or STFU and GTFO.

[Taneru]

If dockable Carriers were to be implemented, there would have to be some changes to the rules to take into account their new capabilities, not to mention changes to the Carriers themselves.

Lets take a look at Carriers as they exist now. Currently, there are four ships that bear the name Carrier: The IMG Zephyr, the Zoner Aquilon, the Liberty Assault Carrier, and the Order Geb.
Three of these ships are battleship tonnage, while the Geb is considered a Battlecruiser. Now, while they are called Carriers, at the moment, they're essentially just ships of their class with a different name. Each one has a battleship shield, each one mounts battleship(and cruiser in the case of the Geb) weapons, and each one except for the Geb requires a Battleship Licence.

Now, an Aircraft Carrier's role is to act as a mobile base from which to supply and maintain aircraft, as well as deploying and recovering them. It extends their range and allows them to operate at greater distances without relying on a land-based airstrip. This is something I think should be extended into Freelancer.

Carriers should be mobile bases, not battleships. They should be able to defend themselves, yes, but they shouldn't be the spearhead of an assault. A Carrier's firepower should come from their fighters and bombers, not their own guns as it is now.

Carriers should have their own weapon class, likely the unused Level 6 turret group. These guns should be short ranged, but rapid fire, with even faster Solaris versions and powerful Cerberus ones as well. The guns should be capable of dealing with multiple fighters, but they should be rather ineffective against Cruisers and Battleships. The capacity to outrange a SNAC would be optimal, but balancing would have to be taken into account. Carriers also shouldn't be able to mount weapons like the Mortars. Their anti-capital capabilites should be minimal at best.

As for defenses, the hull values for Carriers should be boosted greatly compared to their Battleship counterparts. These ships are defensive, not offensive, and their armor, combined with their guns, should emphasize this.

The base for Carriers should stock all reloads, as well as sheild batteries and nanobots, but nothing else. No commodities, no guns, no IDs, no Armor Upgrades, nothing but reloads. Docking with a Carrier shouldn't be considered fleeing, however, if the carrier is destroyed while you're docked with it, you should be considered to have died as well. This way, having a Carrier onsite would give a great tactical advantage to whichever side had it, but losing the Carrier would be a huge blow to that side as well.

Now, as for the mechanics part, I've read a couple posts on the subject that talk about putting a hidden base in each system that would be where player ships are sent when they dock. Something like that is not needed. A single base in an isolated system(Bastille would work well) would be sufficient. Let me explain why. Every asteroid miner station, and every gas miner station share one of three base interior files. It is quite possible to beam to these bases and undock from them. Doing so will launch you from the first entry the game engine comes across in the files that uses that base file. However, player docking would be even easier to implement with FLHook. I don't claim to be an expert in using FLHook, but if it is capable of storing preset messages for players, it would be quite capable of storing respawn locations. All that would be needed would be a single base to act as the dock destination.

Here's an example:

Player 1 undocks from Planet Manhattan. Their respawn point is now set to Planet Manhattan.
Player 2 is nearby with a Carrier.
Player 1 'docks' with Player 2's Carrier, using a FLHook Command. Player 1 is warped to the base 'Docked'. Their respawn point is now at 'Docked', however, FLHook stores their previous respawn point of Planet Manhattan.
Player 2 moves to another system, and Player 1 undocks into the system where 'Docked' is located. FLHook has tracked Player 2, and beams Player 1 immediatly to space near Player 2. Player 1's respawn point is still 'Docked', and Planet Manhattan is stored as their backup.
Player 1 'docks' again, and is beamed up to 'Docked'.
Player 2 gets in a fight with other players, and is killed. FLHook notices this and informs Player 1 with a message: "The Carrier you have docked with was destroyed. It also sets a variable which will tell it to reset Player 1's respawn point to their backup, on Planet Manhattan, when they undock from 'Docked'.
Some amount of time later, Player 1 undocks. As soon as this happens, FLHook notes this, resets their respawn point to Planet Manhattan, and beams them there with a message like "Your ship has been recoverd at the last base you visited."

The same thing would happen if the Carrier F1'd or docked.

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Characters
Alan Markson: The Hellfire Legion's Lord Commander
The Perihelion: Freeport Four's guardian, and yet much more. Missing and assumed Lost with all hands.
Eric Dresmund: Junker, smuggler, thief. Last seen drunk on Beaumont
Vayrn Wyard: IMG Recon pilot turned Neo-Terran Captain. Last location unknown

[Kazinsal]

What would really be the point? You arent allowed to dock during a fight to resupply as per server rules, so the only thing this would really do is allow one player to transport other players, which doesnt really help anyone.

I'll say it once again: The word 'Carrier' needs to be removed from this mod entirely, just rename the bloody things already.

The real problem is we can't get anything freelancer/earth-ish bigger than "dreadnought" without implying you can dock with it.

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Retired, permanently.

[ruihu908]

You are aware of your signature right?

WIN.

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Feedback Thread for LNS-Canada

Want a Hand Drawn Sig? Click Here

[nassou]

WIN.

He would change the sig if carrier was removed. So no. No win.

We Just have to give this feature some time. The dev team will decide when it is ready to implement this.

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[Corsair]

This has been discussed to death, and from what I remember, they were planning to put a base in every system, some 400k "up" and you would teleport there upon docking with the carrier, and warp "outside" the carrier to undock.

EDIT: I think that it should also be allowed to reload and repair on Carriers during battle. Otherwise, there would be no point to having them. I mean, it would make it feel like battle, with epic swarms of fighters.

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[jxie93]

From my point of view, right now carriers are little more than even bigger pew pews than dreadnoughts. If anything should be done to make them more suited to their roles they should really just spawn NPC fights. Forget about player docking.

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[Camtheman Of Freelancer4Ever]

I think if the community really does want it this bad, The Dev's will take time from other things to put into this...

But it is not the wisest use of time ever, I mean they could be filling the countless empty/useless systems.