Discovery Gaming Community

Hello everyone, welcome to another "morning idea" thread of mine.

Yesterday, I was trying to put an exploration research vessel together with an OSC ID , one which can mount a JD and a scanner for it. The only ship for the job is the Bustard.
That would be fine and all, but here comes the catch! ( please note, I took numbers from here, if the math is wrong, it's not my fault)

So:

The Bustard has 1800 units of cargo space. Let us pretend that equipment ( turrets, shield and all ) doesn't take cargo space, to make it easier.
A Jumpdrive ( Mk II. or III. ) takes 900 cargo away. Their fuel consumption is the same, 420 units during charge, using non perishable fuel ( Oil or H-Fuel )
A Hyperspace Scanner (Mk. II ) takes 600 units of cargo space, during its operation ( 100 sec) it consumes 700 units of non perishable fuel ( Oil or H-Fuel )

Let us do the math:

1800
-900
-420
-600
-700
_________
- 820 units

This does not contain any other equippment ( I'm not sure if docking modules take cargo space or not ).

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After describing the problem I ran into, I sarted thinking about how could that be solved, since the only other ship which is flagged as a civilian explorer is the Corvo, with worse specifications for this useage.

Idea #1.): Buff the cargo space of the Bustard accordingly ( it costs 500 million after all , which is ridiculous, even with its capability to mount JDs ) so it can house and fuel all the equipment it has a hardpoint for. - not the most appealing, as it could bring up multiple balance issues in both trading and other things. Not to mention the cryfest to buff other caps cargo hold.

Idea #2.): If possible , JDs and Scanners could operate the same way cloaks do. With their own respective batteries or power sources. Each JD or Scanner would have its powercore, it could even be built on PoBs from the previously used fuel sources ( Oil , H-fuel, Deuterion, He-3 or MOX ) or be sold everywhere like cloak batteries. However their numbers would be limited to 2 or 3 max, so that you can't jump around unlimited and would have a cost of something similar to what the average cost of the previous fuels.

Edit: In light of what suggested , power cores could take ~100 - 150 cargo space each , to deny the possibility of having a jump capable, CAU8, cloaking Carrier a problem. so Even having 1 on board denies the possibility of either having a CAU8 or a cloak.

Here is an example:
JD Mk. III.
-Previously it took 420 H-Fuel to run. That, on an average price would be 660.000~700.000 credits.
-Powercore Mk III. could cost 2.000.000 credits ( still not much ) and a jump would consume 1 of these. ( If they would be a PoB made item, than prices could be way different )

JD Mk. IV.
-Previously it took 2800 H-fuel for a jump , costing ~4.5 million credits
-With Powercore Mk. III it would take all 3 powercores that a ship is capable of holdign at once to jump, which would cost 6 million credits, but would still be much more convinient.
( Or in order to keep the "teamwork" requirement for a group jump, each ship could have 1 powercore in hold, so you'd need someone to buy you 2 more - small detailes)

Same thing could be done with Scanners, accordingly, setting their respective energy source price a bit higher than the current average price of the most commonly used fuels ( which I think is either H-fuel or MOX ). Please note, charging times and everything else should remain untouched, so that we don't end up with people jumping around in a matter of minutes.

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Footnotes:
* Jumptrading is not a thing now, sice JDs are limited to 4 systems and JD Mk IV. only takes ships with less than 3.6k cargo with them. Setting the prices of making jumptrading not worth it would keep it dead.
* This is not about making anything OP. This is about thinking something out to make use of what devs put into the game ( fe. 2-3 hyperspace module hardpoints to most caps ) and to have ships be able to maximize their capabilities. Or to at least have a chance to get a proper setup. ( Yes I know, tastes are different when it comes to proper)
* Before you even try to say : "Get another ship to haul the scanner" , I would like to point the fact out that the Bustard cost 500 MILLION credits , which isn't really in line with its value, the other option ( Corvo ) suffers from a similar problem having 1000 units of cargo only. ( I might be wrong on that though ) for 1300 units of cargo space needed.

Please keep it constructive and civilized , trolls and freeloaders will be asked to be dealt with accordingly. Thank you.

a bustard should not have both a jumpdrive and a hyperspace scanner,the corvo should be able to use one without the need of a second ship to supply it
why i would like to be able to mount a cloak,i do know better ,the troubles it will cause outweigh my benefit

however i do like your idea regarding jump fuels but will need some tweaking :
it should use more cargo ,1 powercore should be between 300~400 because anything else will cause some balance issues with other ships than bustard ,such as being able to mount a JD,Cloak and CAU8

POBs will produce them,however it should require more fuel to make a powercore than just using the fuel.like 6,000 or 9,000 fuel
^it will also create a market for it because it will be much cheaper to buy them from GMG POB owners;GMG will have a hard time keeping the pob population under control,but i guess they would love a challenge,one that would grant them quite a few hours on the activity tracker and forum rp for contracts and the likes..

(02-24-2016, 10:40 AM)Hannibal Wrote: [ -> ]a bustard should not have both a jumpdrive and a hyperspace scanner,the corvo should be able to use one without the need of a second ship to supply it
why i would like to be able to mount a cloak,i do know better ,the troubles it will cause outweigh my benefit

That is indeed a way of looking at it, but since the Bustard has no other role but to act as a "carrier-ish" exploration ship at the moment, I think being able to go somewhere, scan for coordinates and be able to actually jump there later on would turn it capable to serve its purpose. ( We will probably differ on that, just sharing my view )

(02-24-2016, 10:40 AM)Hannibal Wrote: [ -> ]however i do like your idea regarding jump fuels but will need some tweaking :
it should use more cargo ,1 powercore should be between 300~400 because anything else will cause some balance issues with other ships than bustard ,such as being able to mount a JD,Cloak and CAU8

That is indeed a good point, however, since no capital ship has more cargo space than the Bustard, (1800) and even with the removal of fuel taking space up, it would barely have enough cargo space to mount a JD3 (900) , a Cloak (450) and a CAU8 (300) - it is 1650 total, and we didn't count shields, turrets or anything else into account, which all take cargo space, especially for battleships ( Lib Carrier with 28 turrets or Coalition Carrier with 32 says Hi ! ) . However, if adding some cargo value to these batteries, it would totally cancel that possibility, I agree on that.

(02-24-2016, 11:03 AM)Oldum Wrote: [ -> ]That is indeed a way of looking at it, but since the Bustard has no other role but to act as a "carrier-ish" exploration ship at the moment, I think being able to go somewhere, scan for coordinates and be able to actually jump there later on would turn it capable to serve its purpose. ( We will probably differ on that, just sharing my view )

that's the thing..it should have only one purpose and the other one be left to corvo that right now has no role ingame,keep in my mind you will be able to bring a corvo with you to scan a location

(02-24-2016, 11:03 AM)Oldum Wrote: [ -> ]That is indeed a good point, however, since no capital ship has more cargo space than the Bustard, (1800) and even with the removal of fuel taking space up, it would barely have enough cargo space to mount a JD3 (900) , a Cloak (450) and a CAU8 (300) - it is 1650 total, and we didn't count shields, turrets or anything else into account, which all take cargo space, especially for battleships ( Lib Carrier with 28 turrets or Coalition Carrier with 32 says Hi ! ) . However, if adding some cargo value to these batteries, it would totally cancel that possibility, I agree on that.

since LN is the one faction that uses battleships while being the most active one...you just proved my point


there might be an alternative for this..a JD could take less space on a bustard since its purpose is to make available jumptrading while not flying a battleship to do so

(02-24-2016, 11:53 AM)Hannibal Wrote: [ -> ]since LN is the one faction that uses battleships while being the most active one...you just proved my point
there might be an alternative for this..a JD could take less space on a bustard since its purpose is to make available jumptrading while not flying a battleship to do so

True, although they tend to use Dreads more often, as the Lib Carrier is still a huge flying target. Either way, I indeed find your point valid, but I'm not sure if it's possible to make an equipment take less space on one ship than all others , probably not.

However, numbers of my concept could be altered according to your suggestion to deny the possibility of this. - Edit: Added the idea to #2.

It was my intent to use Corvo as hyperscann ship , since it is perfect for that ( good armor and shields but weak for attacks ) but , like you know , it missing some little cargo space . It would be great if it is boosted a little , or if it require no space for fuel ( it uses some batteries ) .

That would be the whole point, not to mention buying the Bustard for 500 million I would expect it to be at least capable for it's price.
also, I would like to have some yellow opinion on this too , although they don't really notify anyone if they are around .. if

Okay, I do understand this is not a pvp / balance related thread, but not giving a damn so much surprises me

I tried getting cloaks to be more feasible to use several months go but was told to wait on an FLHook update that still hasn't arrived and now is busy for the next month. Oh well.

Also the scanner consumes 7000 units, not 700.