Carriers, docking modules and the pop density problem ideas

[LuckyOne]

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.

[James Horatio Creed]

Love the idea of the docking modules being a respawn point for the carriers considering I own a Carrier which is used as a support vessel but up to now we have not used it.
Also the idea of the snubs not being punished for combat docking on the docking modules would be a cool idea so they can restock during battle.

And making the carrier into a support vessel rather than a heavy vessel is a good idea and also means that more caps will be needed to support the carrier from being destroyed.

I would love to see a battle scenario with some of this actually implemented and made permanent.

Overall I think a rework of this would be awesome.

[darkwind]

Tbh, docking module rework was sort of rejected with words
"Too many code changes in one pull request"

To be continued its requiring
to have a lot of code review or to be remade into small parts for easier reviews.

The first one requires big efforts to process and
The second thing requires big mind efforts as well, which makes me hesitant to do.

Not sure if I have enthusiasm for that.
There are things that can be made quicker than continuing with it

Or may be I am just too pessimistic today.

[Ilya]

Love the idea of the docking modules being a respawn point for the carriers considering I own a Carrier which is used as a support vessel but up to now we have not used it.
Also the idea of the snubs not being punished for combat docking on the docking modules would be a cool idea so they can restock during battle.

And making the carrier into a support vessel rather than a heavy vessel is a good idea and also means that more caps will be needed to support the carrier from being destroyed.

I would love to see a battle scenario with some of this actually implemented and made permanent.

Overall I think a rework of this would be awesome.

Tbh, docking module rework was sort of rejected with words
"Too many code changes in one pull request"

To be continued its requiring
to have a lot of code review or to be remade into small parts for easier reviews.

The first one requires big efforts to process and
The second thing requires big mind efforts as well, which makes me hesitant to do.

TBH, looking at these changes proposed, the population density just prohibits their usage in such ways, If we regularly had 100+ logged and good density than some of this would be good and meaningful, however we don't, changes to the carrier have to be meaningful and reflect what the current population allows us to do, and that is besides the coding, I imagine will be a pain, so it comes down to Time=/=Reward ratio,

Will the changes to support warrant the effort required to make this happen? no, they simply would not be used very much.

The respawn idea is tantalising but ultimately is it worth the effort, will it be used lots outside of liberty? probably not, its very niche.

Carrier launch platforms are somewhat redundant with the JD4.

Ultimately, converting to Heavy Battleships may be the most efficient and Cost=/=Reward positive move.

EDIT: Changes should not make the class defunct, and currently some of these changes would simply make it a gimmick and ultimately useless. Admittedly I am biased somewhat, taking away a carriers heavy firepower would gimp Coalition as we don't have a battleship/dreadnaught class, the Tempest serves as both a carrier and heavy firepower platform, removing that would strip us of our ability to lay down heavy firepower.

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[darkwind]

(+) Adding the ability for carried by docking module snubs to disconnect and log later with appearance still inside.
(+) Adding the ability for a carrier to relog and still being keeping snubs (snubs can undock with offline carrier also)
(+) Adding the ability to dock not-in-game capital vessel which is at the same base.
(+) Snubs being kicked by carrier in some base, get transferred themselves to the base it is in.
(+) You can buy ammo and batts inside the carrier now! (Minus cloak/jump batteries)(Items are copied from Green Station)
(+) Replaced all messy old commands with new system of commands

Many bugs were fixed:
(+) New command /dock send to have stable and reliable alternative to dock (F3 is still a choice)
(+) Distances for dock and allowdock are calculated in a right way(considering object radiuses) now
(+) Fixed lack of compatibility when plugin interacts with POB instead of normal NPC base.
(+) Notify players around about docking with TRAFFIC CONTROL
(+) Fixed bug with wrong module available amount calculation after hot plugin restart
(+) fixed to have dock kick by number, not name.
(+) Fighter which docks with cargo inside of the fighter, will be 'undocked' to proxy base if it disconnects from the game. (to prevent offline way to increase cargo for smuggling)

It would be nice one day to process it though

[LuckyOne]

Thank you both for your inputs.

Darkwind, please, don't give up. Go small steps, refactor function by function but find a way to get your fixes in game. Slowly is better than "never". It would be a shame for such work to go to waste.

@Ilya , I think you misunderstood, some of the proposed changes are aimed exactly at "solving" the pop density problem (well the last change mostly). As for the Coalition issue, maybe heavy slot removal is not necessary for their carrier if you take out some of the Docking bays slots.

From my observations the problem of current state of Disco is this: even when there are enough players online they all prefer to sit in their own corners of Sirius. And when a potential situation develops, for example a shootout between Navy and Pirates, it's often pointless to try and reach the hotspot unless you are at best a system or two away.

The fleet battles that develop "spontaneously" are a few caps and a couple of snubs at best, and even then it's usually because a few tagged ships decided to try and provoke the locals. And of course then you have the issue of snubs getting their fun spoiled by overzealous Solaris - decked caps, turning what could be a fun firefight into a quick death with no second chances for the next hour ...

You either need to have a ship docked, kitted out and ready at every potential point of interest or try to go for organized events / raids through 3rd party services (Forum / Discord).

I believe some of the proposed changes would help with spontaneous development of a bigger fleet battle, not the usual half an hour affair that is the current meta.

[Ilya]

Thank you both for your inputs.

Darkwind, please, don't give up. Go small steps, refactor function by function but find a way to get your fixes in game. Slowly is better than "never". It would be a shame for such work to go to waste.

@Ilya , I think you misunderstood, some of the proposed changes are aimed exactly at "solving" the pop density problem (well the last change mostly). As for the Coalition issue, maybe heavy slot removal is not necessary for their carrier if you take out some of the Docking bays slots.

From my observations the problem of current state of Disco is this: even when there are enough players online they all prefer to sit in their own corners of Sirius. And when a potential situation develops, for example a shootout between Navy and Pirates, it's often pointless to try and reach the hotspot unless you are at best a system or two away.

The fleet battles that develop "spontaneously" are a few caps and a couple of snubs at best, and even then it's usually because a few tagged ships decided to try and provoke the locals. And of course then you have the issue of snubs getting their fun spoiled by overzealous Solaris - decked caps, turning what could be a fun firefight into a quick death with no second chances for the next hour ...

You either need to have a ship docked, kitted out and ready at every potential point of interest or try to go for organized events / raids through 3rd party services (Forum / Discord).

I believe some of the proposed changes would help with spontaneous development of a bigger fleet battle, not the usual half an hour affair that is the current meta.

I saw your intentions, and understood them, beaming to a carrier is not going to solve it, not entirely sure what will, I know personally i find the pvp aspect rather boring, i tend to focus on more rp and indie side of the game, where there is less wrist ache from trying to shoot a corkscrewing snub or capital

There are very few spontaneous fights, which largely boils down to who can dump the most caps on someone, but also, ganking, theres far more ganking than actual fights, and its logical, why fight when youre not outnumbering the targets, it does limit the interactions people want to participate in, I don't for example go solo or duo around house space as I'l just get /1/2 ganked, its off putting and I have better things to do than give away free blues, and that is an attitude quite widespread, but its also sensible attitude

Most people have strategically placed ships, I do, If i want to get into a fight, I can easily do so, the limitations of FL chat mean that things like discord are required as we can be on any number of toons, its peoples willingness to engage in fights and interactions that limits the number of fights

Getting to a fight is not hard its actually very easy, its getting the motivation to engage in fights thats the issue, with the population being on the low side, the opportunity for spontaneous fights combined witht he Y button where its easy to avoid them. While not everyone is a pvp loving manic, most are not averse to a bit of it here and there (like me, i dont mind it here and there) there is just less incentive to actually do so.

Incentivise the combat, no idea how, but gimping carriers to allow ships to beam in etc, are not really addressing it either.

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[Thunderer]

I am almost completely ignorant of how one does coding, so I gave 100% of my trust to those who were experts at that when I was a balance developer, and they said that the drone concept was too demanding on Freelancer's outdated and limited resource pool, so I decided to scrap the concept and turn carriers into battleships.

However, no one's ever explained to me how admins can spawn NPCs, yet players with carriers wouldn't be able to.

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[Ilya]

I am almost completely ignorant of how one does coding, so I gave 100% of my trust to those who were experts at that when I was a balance developer, and they said that the drone concept was too demanding on Freelancer's outdated and limited resource pool, so I decided to scrap the concept and turn carriers into battleships.

However, no one's ever explained to me how admins can spawn NPCs, yet players with carriers wouldn't be able to.

I imagine being able to spawn them and actually controlling them, keeping them with the carrier and recalling them would be the issue more than anything, probably too resource intensive, and the games engine just cant handle it, upgrading the engine would be too time consuming for little benefit

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[LuckyOne]

No, it's actually possible, engine wise. Even a hundred of NPCs is doable (direct quote from one of the old Freeworlds devs). Unfortunately Disco's got a bit of short end of the stick when it comes to the coding department currently, as the golden days of FL coders are long gone, and the people who would be able to do it here presumably don't have time or incentive for such a gargantuan effort and potentially very little payout: