Armor Upgrades ....

[Eternal]

Something came to my mind the other when I was commanding my battleship. I started to imagine how exactly should , within roll play , a ship of any kind be fitted with stronger and more durable set of armor. I imagined huge hull plates being added to support the main frame of the ship , thus giving it more toughness. Thing is , thats not the case with what I see ingame. People just want the Biggest and Most expencive armor upgrade they can get there hands on. Because , speaking from a Battleships perspective , the more armor you have - The better.

Armor has become the basic thing you need to succesfully execute a PvP encounter and in 99.9% of the times , armor upgrade is what desides wich Capital ship will win. The one with the more armor usually wins , no matter what. Well , I for one don't think that it should be like that. This thing makes the game ... boring ... because it's a classical mesure of how much time you have spended on your trader to get 4.00 to your BH BB. Armor upgrades give so much to there owner without any drawback !? Fitting a ship with so much more extra weight should ... significantly remove some of it's manuvarability.

Armor types of lower ranks are vurtually worthless , no one uses them because they do not provide anything better then the highter armor upgrades.

I suggest that ships , when bought and without any armor upgrades have more agility. When armor upgrades are added to the ship , it becomes heavier and harder to fly around. So people will have to consider the heavy protection vs. agility matter.

Whats your opinion in this matter ?

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[LoE]

how would you code this?

id like to see an increase in size of the ship so there is more to hit if big ships buy higher upgrades for armor.

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<span style="color:#33FF33">E</span>

What is the beginning of eternity, the end of time, and the beginning of every ending?

The person above me has a very hectic signature.

[Tenacity]

It makes sense, the only problem is what happens to cruisers when they try to equip armor.

See, cruisers right now do not have a real agility advantage, but they also dont have the survivability of a battleship. they're like gunboats that cant dodge fire... so you really have to put an armor upgrade on a cruiser to make it pvp-worthy, but losing what little agility they have would pretty much wreck them.

That's the only ship class I can see having an issue with this though. I think capships are being buffed in 4.85 as well, though i'm not positive yet.



One other suggestion here:

Scanner Shielding

"Scanner shielding is a special armor plating modification added to the cargo bay of a ship to prevent it's cargo from being detected by conventional scanners. This armor upgrade takes 1000 cargo space."

Give this to smugglers, takes up our armor 'hardpoint' and in-rp prevents police/lawfuls from scanning for contraband. To detect the contraband, they'd have to RP actually connecting to the smuggler's ship and doing a manual search, in which case we can just say "We're carrying radioactive waste, I think I can feel my little nomads shrivelling away already, you'd have to be crazy to step aboard this boat!" and fly away =P

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[jammi]

Errm, well I believe you can add mass to equpment. For example, go on SP and add a Bret forward cannon to a starflea using IONCROSS. You'll notice the turning is hugely effected in an adverse manner, because of the sudden mass-jump.

I suppose, you'd make armour upgrades steadily increase in mass, so the bigger the multiplier the more adverse the effect. The heavier the mass, the better ships travel through asteroids as well (I think) and less they are effected by impacts from fighters and stuff.

I suppose it would be a good reason for having a lightly armoured LF as well, after all, the LF loses it's purpose when it has VHF agility.

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[Jinx]

the outcasts wouldnt like that. - their sabre would become very slow with a type 8 armour then.... the corsairs however would be happy. they are used to fly a brick and won t feel a difference.

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Shipdesigns made for DiscoveryGC

[McNeo]

Shiny...

If this were to happen, it would be quite a nightmare to balance. It would have to affect both the turning inertia (responsiveness) and mass (responsiveness again) which Im not sure is possible to do on a whim when switching out armour upgrades. Though, and I could be wrong, it should be much easier to simply add mass, but that again is a big issue to balance. If not done properly, people will probably still use the same, rather than an equal distribution of all armours.

I'd like this if it were done, because its annoying to have to buy armour when I make a new character. For most, it isn't a problem but I trade so little that it really eats into my tiny tiny bank account!

Prices would have to change and a massive debate would ensue as to how capships are affected by this. After all, the Osiris is the one to whom agility matters the most in its class, whereas a Rheinland battleship captain will just make a beeline to the highest armour multiplier.

Changing the size of the ship is not possible either.

With alot of coding, hardpoints could be added to the outside of ships where models of metal plates could be added corressponding to the armour upgrade type. This might even act as a barrier after shields, and the plates fall off if under heavy fire. Lighter upgrades might have smaller plates with less health, and heavier upgrades the opposite...

Then again, its a balancing nightmare, and I can't think of how it would be worth the time to solve something like this. At this stage though, armour upgrades are pretty pointless, as everyone in a fighter/bomber has a universal mk VIII. Its less clear cut with capships though.

Perhaps universal armour should be removed and capital ship armour remain in place? Its not a great difference on fighters, since everyone carries the same one. But I do see many different ones on capships, the most common being the cap VII.

Meh. I dont think its too good an idea right now, but maybe it can be seriously considered for the version after 4.85. That is, if it hasn't been thought over already:unsure:

[Cyro]

Good idea. It would really balance some things, but it would unbalance some things too. That would be too much modding, too much time(again)...

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I wrote a really funny FL story, but it disappeared when the old forum went away. So, no lulz for you today.

[Raekur]

Just keep in mind that there are two different approaches to increasing the structure of a vessel.

1. Thicker hull plating which is relativly cheap does increase the mass of the vessel.

2. Composite Armor - This approach does not increase the weight by using a combination of different alloys but is much more expensive then standard hull plating.

[bearlee89]

I've read the posts completely.

My 2 cents: Don't fly a cap ship. And then everything will be fine. =]

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=T=Alexander -

Temporarily Retired!!!

[ferongr]

I've read the posts completely.

My 2 cents: Don't fly a cap ship. And then everything will be fine. =]

Take it in flood, buddy.

On the topic: You can have a mass on external equipment, but I dont know about internal equipment...

Also, If that happened, it would conflict with the spinning fixes (that use insane mass and thrust-power amounts). Not to mention we should have different upgrades for every class of capital ship. If we added 100 mass on a gunboat, it would matter, but not so mush on a cruiser or BC... Or BS for that matter. Also, that would call for rewriting all ship physics (to compensate for the armor mass, a bit faster than current with no armor, bit slower with best armor for that class)

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