Multipurpose POB Ship | 25 August

[aerelm]

This idea has been bouncing around different discord chats and has been getting input from members of the dev team for a little while now, so you might've seen some earlier iteration of it already. Here's a condensed version of the general outline of the idea so far:

Three main issues this project is hoping to address:

1. Only viable way of taking down a properly maintained POB is to capspam it to oblivion, and the only way of countering that is to capspam the capspam right back, so unless the fight is between two well-populated factions, your typical base siege ends up bein half a dozen BS on each side logging, dying, waitin out the respawn timer, repeating - which doesn't lead to that exciting of a gameplay loop.
   
2. The Heavy Lifter/Hercules, while lacking any practical use, was a nice little piece of worldbuilding - Literally a space forklift meant for taking cargo pods off of transports moored on planets and hauling it to port. The only reason it was picked as the base builder ship when the plugin was first introduced was because it was the least used ship on the server at the time.
   
3. Once you have your base up and running, the builder ship has no use anymore and it's often just scrapped.

That is why Hercules is going back to being the space forklift that it was, and a multipurpose ship is being made to cover all manners of POB shenanigans.

The ship itself would have a unique set of stats:

• Small/medium transport size
  
• Generous powercore
  
• Beefier-than-usual shields/hull
  
• Faster impulse but no thrusters
  
• No gun mounts other than 1 special "gun" hardpoint

The "gun" would be what gives the ship its multipurpose role, and it'd function as more of a module, not a conventional gun. it'll be able to mount one of 5 special modules (shiplocked so only this ship can use em) each with their own specific function:

• A Construction Module that'd have no firing capability but will enable the ship to function as a base builder.
  
• A Demolition Module that'd essentially be a big scary forward gun, balanced specifically to be super-effective for base sieges (and more viable than typical capspam).
  
• A Repair Module that'd essentially act like a repair gun, using Jaz's POB repair idea/plugin. This part needs testing, but could potentially make it a force_ori gun with the hp_fire facing to the side rather than front, which at least in theory should allow the ship to kinda "orbit" the base while repairing under fire.
  
• A Smelter Module enabling the ship to make use of mining bonus system. Mounting this module will add 900 cargospace to the ship (subject to change).
  
• A Freight Module allowing the ship to be used as a transport (mainly intended for base supplies). The ship in this configuration will be considerably tankier than other transports but will have no defensive firepower. Mounting this module will add 1800 cargospace to the ship (subject to change).

So when you build your base instead of havin to toss the now-useless builder, you can keep the ship and instead just swap out the construction module for a repair module and park the ship on the base for defensive purposes, or if your base is centered around mining you can swap it for a smelter module and start using it as a light miner, etc.

Additionally, once an all-in-one ship like this is made into the go-to choice for various areas of POB interactions, that could make rebalancing actual siege encounters something worth considering, since at the moment that's not a feasible option as it'd require a full cap balance overhaul.

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Multipurpose POB Ship

Notes:
- This is just the initial blockin/mockup, and it's mostly to show the idea for general proportions and arrangements of the parts. Shapes will of course be alterened and refined as it goes on.
- The part marked with orange outline shows the general space its modules are intended to take up

Sketch

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The plan is to make the ship itself along with construction and demolition modules first, implement them and adjust the pob system around it, and once all the kinks are ironed out come back and add the other three modules for ingame use.

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Also,

There's now a Discord server for Disco Modelers to share their on-going projects and gather feedback:

Main updates, major discussions and polls will still be handled via forums, but if you're interested in keeping up with the more incremental updates and providing real-time feedback, feel free to join.

[Sniper]

Just want to thank you for your hard work.

It goes to show that, whilst DiscoveryGC is an RP server, so many people get a lot of interest in DiscoGC by contributing in many various ways.

Such as this very intriguing concept, which I hope will come to fuition.

Well done!

[sasapinjic]

Interesting idea,i like it.

[Thunderer]

Nice. I'm a fan of asymmetrical industrial-looking ships.

Out of curiosity, what happens to the stored cargo when the module designed to increase its capacity is destroyed? I can imagine 1800 units simply disappear, but say the ship is carrying multiple types of cargo and the quantities are not proportional to the relation of the ship's base cargo to the additional module cargo?

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[Groshyr]

Would it be only for Sirius or there planned gallic version of this ship?

[aerelm]

what happens to the stored cargo when the module designed to increase its capacity is destroyed?

Short answer: Nothing.

Long answer: Well, here's the thing - Due to technical limitations of the engine, the actual implementation of the ship will kinda be working backwards compared to what's described. As in, the ship itself will have X amount of cargo, and each module will be taking up a certain amount of that cargospace. So, when you mount the mining module for example, it'd take up some cargo, leaving only 900 available for ore. That means if you have a full cargohold and unequip the freight module, the only thing that'd happen is you'd need to free up enough space for the module you're trying to mount next. Freight module is basically only there as visual fluff - being the only module that takes up no cargo itself - just in case someone really wants to trade in this thing for whatever reason.

Also, to keep things simple and straightforward (and also to spare the server some unnecessary increase in load) the modules are not going to be destructible. The hitbox for the ship itself will be covering over the modules, so any hit the ship takes would go straight to its hull. As interesting as the idea of being able to shoot the modules off would be, it puts a bit too much strain on the server and also overcomplicates some balancing parameters around the ship to be worth it.

Would it be only for Sirius or there planned gallic version of this ship?

For the time being we've decided to start small and just keep it to one ship for everyone. Later down the line Gallia would definitely be getting their own version of this, and giving one to each major house would also be a possibility.

[Shady.Stihl.Technician]

I really like this idea, and I think it would be awesome not having to toss out (or senselessly keep) a useless POB ship after deploying a POB.
I don't even know why I bother keeping mine active.

[Laz]

Due to technical limitations of the engine, the actual implementation of the ship will kinda be working backwards compared to what's described

There has been an FLHook plugin around for the last 10 or so years that can deal with that problem. Plus the base game engine is capable of adding/removing cargo with the addition/subtraction of modules (pods).

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[aerelm]

There has been an FLHook plugin around for the last 10 or so years that can deal with that problem. Plus the base game engine is capable of adding/removing cargo with the addition/subtraction of modules (pods).

My memory's not the best so pardon the haziness, but we actually did try the whole idea of makin pods add cargospace to transports back in 2014 (or whenever it was we did the whole interchangeable engines thing), and if I recall correctly, doing it vanilla-style turned out to be screwing with the anticheat in some way and we did consider (and even tested) implementing a plugin that did something along those lines and it turned out to be too janky and finicky to be worth it. So unless someone's made a new one that actually works, the old one that's been floating around the place has a few too many bandaids to be reliable.

But then again, you've looked into this type of thing a whole lot more, so if you're willing to help make it actually work properly without makin the anticheat mad or adding to the already-high server load, it'd be absolutely wonderful.

[Laz]

The reason the anti-cheat gets messed with is it assumes that everything in the INI files is set in stone, which is really a bad way to approach things given how much stuff is changed by the server. I mean, I am generalising, but the point remains the same.

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