Customizable Ship Design

[EisenSeele]

I would like to see the Freelancer Engine be applied to allow for a complete re-evaluation of ships based on loadout.

For this to happen, we would first need to implement a large variety of ship equipment mounts. We already have a number of them, but here is what we'll need:

-Engine mounts with variable speeds/sizes/power consumption
-Powerplants with variable outputs and capacities
-Armors with variable armor values, sizes
-Guns with variable sizes/power consumption/damages
-Shields with variable sizes/power consumption/capacity/regen
-Mountable surface objects (like containers) with different shapes/sizes/health

Ideally, I see the actual naked ship that one would purchase as nothing but a chassis. The role or the class of a ship is dictated by what equipment is mounted, which then dictates the speed/firepower/agility/shieldpower/cargo capacity/armor values of the ship.

For instance, if one would like to make a trade vessel out of a chassis, one would put on an engine that is just powerful enough for hauling, a minimal powerplant to power the engines and shields, and minimal shielding. Such a loadout would occupy very little space on the chassis, which allows for more cargo to be taken up.

If one were to make a heavy combat ship, one would need to select the desired weapons, shielding, engines, and armor, for which a powercore would be chosen to provide sufficient to power said loadout. Engines powerful enough to give combat capable agility and speed would have to be selected. One might also want to mount additional surface mounts to their ship in order to put a physical shield over their engines/powercore/shields/weapons, but would need to find a good balance that provides protection without hindering agility too much.

Weapons, shields, and powercores would have to be separated into classes based on power output/consumption, as well as capacity. For example, heavy weapons and heavy shields would require a heavy core to power - and certain heavy weapons could be made to require a higher drain than some heavy cores, to allow for additional levels of weapon class separation.

Specialized equipment could also be applied, with Docking Modules/Cloaks/BS Scanners/Jump Drives/etc balanced by available cargo space, power core, and so on.

Balancing between ID's can be done through ID technerfs and/or shipcompat. For example, ID's that don't allow for battleships will not have access to the heavy weapons/shields/powercore/chassis - by imposing a 1% core nerf, which would render such loadouts unviable. Faction RP access to certain weapons or chassises would also be regulated via ID +Technerf +Shipcompat.

With something like this implimented, we'll be able to see a lot more variability in ships and roles. For example, we could see an actual "Xeno Battleship" which has Gunboat level shields, core, and weapons on a Hegemon chassis - or junkers using stripped down decommissioned battleship husks being used for hauling. Hell, we could probably see battle transports being used for actual battle by various merchants and/or pirates - with either side being surrounded by uncertainty and suspense as almost any ship that they encounter could either be a juicy target or death.

EDIT: Adding mass seems to be a tricky little thing.

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