03-01-2014, 12:18 AM
So this is going to be quite a lengthy post. I apologise in advance. There won't be a tl;dr version. I will give a reward at the end of the post(s) if you get there. I promise it'll be a freakin' dance party.
Some of the ideas in this have been floating around my head for some time. I do not expect the ideas posted here, or indeed anything like it, will get implemented. This project would be ambitious and may not be popular with the players - However, I believe it is worth posting simply to provide an alternative view than rebalancing by twiddling about with numbers in an already existing system.
This series of ideas was born of what I percieve to be a need to change the way balance on discovery works. At the moment, every ship class seems to work independantly of other shipclasses, with very little requirement for planning or structure in fleets.
Lets take a war between two houses as an example. Right now, large fleets of caps are relatively easy to operate. You grab a bunch of friends, saddle up in cruisers and battleships and just roll out. It doesn't take that much pre-planning. There is no need to logistically support these operations.
But what if you found a way of limiting offensive operations and made it so that long range house-to-house attacks were far more interesting?
Class vs. Class Balance.
Shield changes, and vulnerability to specific ship classes.
Now that I have outlined how these classes of ship stack up against one another, I should probably explain how these will work.
As most of you are aware, different shield types are more and less effective against different types of weapon.
For example, if you have a ship with a Graviton shield - it will be more effective against photon and laser weapons, and less effective against plasma and particle weapons.
At the moment, the modifier to damage on these shields is very small, making comparatively slight differences in combat. However, if the resistance offered by a shield to a certain type of weapon was increased to 80% or 90%, it would render that weapon near useless against that shield type.
If, using the system of balance above, we made it so all Carriers used Graviton shields and all Battleships used Plasma weapons, it would make carrier shields just crumble whenever a battleship fired at them.
However is Cruisers used Molecular shields, Battleship weapons would be much less effective against cruiser shielding.
The replacement for the gunboat.
I would like to explain my plan for gunboats. I wish to remove the gunboat class as a whole, and use the models that are already in game to form a new class of ship. This would be called the Electronic Warfare Ship, or EWS.
The Electronic Warfare ship would be a very hard type of ship to kill... It would be fast (like currrent heavy bomber fast... like a barghest) and would have a shield only marginally less effective than current gunboat shields and would have a large supply of bots and batts.
This would be offset by the fact the EWS has no offensive capability of its own. However, the EWS would have several neat tricks up its sleeve. It would be equipped with a wide array of tools for disrupting the enemy's operations... This would include (but not be limited to) the following.
- Cloak Disruptors. This would send out a pulse and disable the cloak of any cloaked eney ships in the area.
- Jump Drive Inhibitors. This would prevent ships from jumping away from the combat zone, if the EWS uses its Jump Drive Inhibitor.
- Bomber Weapon Jammers. This piece of equipment would temporarily disable bomber energy weapons within its area of effect, slowing down and disrupting the enemy's effort to take out your cruisers using guns.
- Torpedo Jammers. This would cause any missile or torpedo within radius of the EWS to lose its target and spiral off course. This would be especially effective against bomber torpedos.
- Power Leeches. These would function much like firing pulse weapons at shieldless ships do now, draining their powerplant. The primary difference being Power Leeches could do so through shields.
There are almost infinite possibilities for this ship. I think it would add a truly unique addition to tactical combat, and create a nice niche for itself, with a handful of dedicated pilots, who would absolutely love using these.
Fuel Limitations and other related things.
I would like to expand upon the idea of fuel limitations. All ships would have a fuel requirement. This would require different types of fuel for different ship classes.
Cap Fuel - Used by Carriers, Battleships and Cruisers.
Strikecraft Fuel - Used by Fighters, Bombers and Electronic Warfare Ships.
If a ship runs out of fuel, it will be reduced to exactly half speed, for cruise, and impulse. Thrusters will be disabled entirely.
Fuel is used at a steady rate at any time the ship is in space. Fuel for ships can be bought for one credit per unit. Every base sells strikecraft fuel. Only shipyards, major stations and planets sell cap fuel.
Fighters, Bombers and EWSs only have small a small fuel tank (limited by cargospace). This limits their effective range. Carriers have a large cargohold, and are able to resupply strike craft when they dock on a Carrier. Carriers, therefore, are the way to project strike craft operations over longer distances - for example, in hostile space.
Carriers, Battleships and Cruisers use Cap Fuel.
Carriers have a large cargohold for fuel - but this is compromised by having to carry fuel for its fighters as well, limiting the range of Carriers if they wish to fulfill their role of supporting strikecraft.
Battleships have a smaller cargohold than Carriers, but they do not have to support any other ships' fuel needs, therefore they have a longer operational range than Carriers, under most circumstances.
Cruisers have smaller cargohold than battleships. Their operational range is a lot shorter unless they have the ability to refuel.
All cap ships require a certain number of crew - And therefore the essentials for life. Food, water and oxygen. Much like POBs, if you do not have food water and oxygen, the crew die. If the crew die, then the cap ship's powerplant and/or weapon damage, is reduced to almost nothing.
This brings me to an additional ship class. The Fleet Tender.
The Fleet Tender is a support class. It is a large ship that is vulnerable in combat. It is only weakly armed and armoured, and vulnerable to all classes of ship (although fighters would take a long time to kill it).
This ship has a huge cargohold, allowing it to carry all the essential cargo a task force's capital craft need. The Fleet Tender does not have any crew of fuel needs itself. It exists to resupply the capital craft, thereby extending the operational range of the entire fleet, allowing it to remain in hostile territory for a longer period of time.
The Fleet Tender is also the only ship which is capable of using a jump drive. Fleet Tender jump drives work in the same manner as the most expensive jump drives do now - capable of also jumping other ships that are in close proximity. However, these jumps are only one-way.
The Fleet Tender will be a priority target, and therefore will try to stay away from the action, unless it has to get close to resupply the capital ships it serves.
Killing a Fleet Tender may render an entire battle-group helpless. Without the Fleet tender, they may find themselves stranded and immobile, with non-functioning weapons, a long way from friendly space.
Some of the ideas in this have been floating around my head for some time. I do not expect the ideas posted here, or indeed anything like it, will get implemented. This project would be ambitious and may not be popular with the players - However, I believe it is worth posting simply to provide an alternative view than rebalancing by twiddling about with numbers in an already existing system.
This series of ideas was born of what I percieve to be a need to change the way balance on discovery works. At the moment, every ship class seems to work independantly of other shipclasses, with very little requirement for planning or structure in fleets.
- - - - -
Lets take a war between two houses as an example. Right now, large fleets of caps are relatively easy to operate. You grab a bunch of friends, saddle up in cruisers and battleships and just roll out. It doesn't take that much pre-planning. There is no need to logistically support these operations.
But what if you found a way of limiting offensive operations and made it so that long range house-to-house attacks were far more interesting?
Class vs. Class Balance.
- Limit the operational range of fighters and bombers by giving them a fuel requirement. This means they cannot conduct offensive actions in distant territory without support.
----------
- Make Carrier class vessels able to carry 10 or so fighters, bombers and gunboats by default. This number can be increased with the use of docking modules, to a total of 15 or so. Carriers must be able to carry fuel and supplies for the fighters.
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- Make Carriers near-invulnerable to bombers and fighters by giving carriers excellent short range anti-fighter/bomber weapons. Carriers are the only capital class ship to carry anti fighter/bomber weaponry.
----------
- Make Carriers extremely vulnerable to Battleships. This will make it necessary for Carriers to have escort vessels.
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- Battleships will be excellent at killing Carriers and other Battleships. Battleship weapons have a bonus to damage on Carrier shields. Battleships will be vulnerable to Cruisers. Battleship weapons will be ineffective against Cruiser shields.
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- Cruisers will be extremely effective against Battleships. Cruiser weapons will have a bonus to damage on battleship shields, and they will out-range Battleships. However, Cruiser weapons will be inffective against Carrier shields, making it very very slow, or impossible, to kill a carrier using cruisers. Cruisers will be vulnerable to Bombers.
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- Gunboats - I will come to this class later. They will be completely redesigned and will fulfill a totally different role.
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- Bombers will be tasked with killing Cruisers. Their weapons will be more effective against Cruiser shields, and ineffective against Battleship shields. Bombers will be vulnerable to Fighters and Carriers.
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- Fighters will be tasked with killing Bombers and to a lesser degree, other fighters. Fighter weapons will do bonus damage to Bomber shields. Fighters will be vulnerable to other fighters, and to Carriers. Their weapons will not be powerful enough to scratch the shields of Carriers, Battleships or Cruisers.
----------
Shield changes, and vulnerability to specific ship classes.
Now that I have outlined how these classes of ship stack up against one another, I should probably explain how these will work.
As most of you are aware, different shield types are more and less effective against different types of weapon.
For example, if you have a ship with a Graviton shield - it will be more effective against photon and laser weapons, and less effective against plasma and particle weapons.
At the moment, the modifier to damage on these shields is very small, making comparatively slight differences in combat. However, if the resistance offered by a shield to a certain type of weapon was increased to 80% or 90%, it would render that weapon near useless against that shield type.
If, using the system of balance above, we made it so all Carriers used Graviton shields and all Battleships used Plasma weapons, it would make carrier shields just crumble whenever a battleship fired at them.
However is Cruisers used Molecular shields, Battleship weapons would be much less effective against cruiser shielding.
- - - - -
The replacement for the gunboat.
I would like to explain my plan for gunboats. I wish to remove the gunboat class as a whole, and use the models that are already in game to form a new class of ship. This would be called the Electronic Warfare Ship, or EWS.
The Electronic Warfare ship would be a very hard type of ship to kill... It would be fast (like currrent heavy bomber fast... like a barghest) and would have a shield only marginally less effective than current gunboat shields and would have a large supply of bots and batts.
This would be offset by the fact the EWS has no offensive capability of its own. However, the EWS would have several neat tricks up its sleeve. It would be equipped with a wide array of tools for disrupting the enemy's operations... This would include (but not be limited to) the following.
- Cloak Disruptors. This would send out a pulse and disable the cloak of any cloaked eney ships in the area.
- Jump Drive Inhibitors. This would prevent ships from jumping away from the combat zone, if the EWS uses its Jump Drive Inhibitor.
- Bomber Weapon Jammers. This piece of equipment would temporarily disable bomber energy weapons within its area of effect, slowing down and disrupting the enemy's effort to take out your cruisers using guns.
- Torpedo Jammers. This would cause any missile or torpedo within radius of the EWS to lose its target and spiral off course. This would be especially effective against bomber torpedos.
- Power Leeches. These would function much like firing pulse weapons at shieldless ships do now, draining their powerplant. The primary difference being Power Leeches could do so through shields.
There are almost infinite possibilities for this ship. I think it would add a truly unique addition to tactical combat, and create a nice niche for itself, with a handful of dedicated pilots, who would absolutely love using these.
- - - - -
Fuel Limitations and other related things.
I would like to expand upon the idea of fuel limitations. All ships would have a fuel requirement. This would require different types of fuel for different ship classes.
Cap Fuel - Used by Carriers, Battleships and Cruisers.
Strikecraft Fuel - Used by Fighters, Bombers and Electronic Warfare Ships.
If a ship runs out of fuel, it will be reduced to exactly half speed, for cruise, and impulse. Thrusters will be disabled entirely.
Fuel is used at a steady rate at any time the ship is in space. Fuel for ships can be bought for one credit per unit. Every base sells strikecraft fuel. Only shipyards, major stations and planets sell cap fuel.
Fighters, Bombers and EWSs only have small a small fuel tank (limited by cargospace). This limits their effective range. Carriers have a large cargohold, and are able to resupply strike craft when they dock on a Carrier. Carriers, therefore, are the way to project strike craft operations over longer distances - for example, in hostile space.
Carriers, Battleships and Cruisers use Cap Fuel.
Carriers have a large cargohold for fuel - but this is compromised by having to carry fuel for its fighters as well, limiting the range of Carriers if they wish to fulfill their role of supporting strikecraft.
Battleships have a smaller cargohold than Carriers, but they do not have to support any other ships' fuel needs, therefore they have a longer operational range than Carriers, under most circumstances.
Cruisers have smaller cargohold than battleships. Their operational range is a lot shorter unless they have the ability to refuel.
All cap ships require a certain number of crew - And therefore the essentials for life. Food, water and oxygen. Much like POBs, if you do not have food water and oxygen, the crew die. If the crew die, then the cap ship's powerplant and/or weapon damage, is reduced to almost nothing.
This brings me to an additional ship class. The Fleet Tender.
The Fleet Tender is a support class. It is a large ship that is vulnerable in combat. It is only weakly armed and armoured, and vulnerable to all classes of ship (although fighters would take a long time to kill it).
This ship has a huge cargohold, allowing it to carry all the essential cargo a task force's capital craft need. The Fleet Tender does not have any crew of fuel needs itself. It exists to resupply the capital craft, thereby extending the operational range of the entire fleet, allowing it to remain in hostile territory for a longer period of time.
The Fleet Tender is also the only ship which is capable of using a jump drive. Fleet Tender jump drives work in the same manner as the most expensive jump drives do now - capable of also jumping other ships that are in close proximity. However, these jumps are only one-way.
The Fleet Tender will be a priority target, and therefore will try to stay away from the action, unless it has to get close to resupply the capital ships it serves.
Killing a Fleet Tender may render an entire battle-group helpless. Without the Fleet tender, they may find themselves stranded and immobile, with non-functioning weapons, a long way from friendly space.
- - - - -