As you can see, carriers bypass their battleships by the number of weapons, the power of the core and even the strength.
Let's turn to the reality: no aircraft carrier has such a number of weapons, and even more so - such strength to withstand the enemy's tight fire. All their weapons are fighter jets and bombers with different weapons.
So, in connection with the appearance of Drone Bays, I propose to introduce the following changes:
Bretonia:
Characteristics
Bretonia "Invincible"-class Carrier (Before the changes)
Bretonia "Invincible"-class Carrier (After the changes)
This will change the class of carrier ships radically. But let's have a closer look.
Weapons:
Changes in the number of turrets should lead to the fact that carriers could successfully fight with enemy fighters, and not act as tanks in each battle. Of course, such a need will lead to the creation of new weapons for carriers only:
The main feature of the gun is a low energy cost and high damage to small targets (bombers, fighters).
I would use the main guns from the battleships, since some kind of firepower needs to be kept.
Nevertheless, even with such weapons, the firepower leaves much to be desired, because such a weapon can destroy a small group of bombers (and that is not a fact), well, or a n00b gunboat/cruiser.
Drone Bays:
Carriers for this and called carriers, that carry on their board some ships. As I believe, you need to expand the arsenal of the Drone Bays. Now we have a bomber with powerful shields and conventional armor. The only variety on it is torpedoes. As I believe, carriers should have an fighters/bombers on their board.
So, I propose to introduce the following Drone Bays in return for the old ones:
Number of ships carried: 5
Class of ships: bomber.
Capacity in the cargo hold: 300.
Also I believe that you can distribute Bays for homes: Liberty Fighter Drone Bay etc. So Military ships will replace civilian models which will be logical.
Naturally, there will be confusion with the commands: how to activate it, how to activate the other ... But in fact: how can we activate all this simply and conveniently? I think that for each Bays we can make the distribution as in turrets:
1 slot - Bomber Medium Drone Bay
2 slot - Fighter Medium Drone Bay
You can change the permutation of Bays, but you can use all the same commands:
/bay1attack 6th|LNS-Hampshire - This means that the drones of 1 slot ( Bomber Medium Drone Bay ) will attack 6th|LNS-Hampshire by SNAC`s and EMP weapons ( because shoot at one torpedo is not too interesting and easy for good cruiser-player ).
/bay2attack 6th|Alpha-1.1 - It means that the drones of 2 slot ( Fighter Medium Drone Bay ) will attack 6th|Alpha-1.1. It will be attacked by the fighters, so that it will not be sweet...
/bay1launch - This means that the drones of 1 slot will fly into open space and will stand next to the host ship waiting for orders.
/bay1return - This means that drones of 1 slot will fly to their host-carrier and dock to him.
Or (alternative):
/bay2attackt - This means that the drones will attack the target that we clicked on.
We do not need to think about which ships to use, we are now often meeting the Cultists. Their ships appear thanks to the commands of the administration. In fact, ships with the same principle of operation will be able to use and players.
(In addition to the Cultists ships, administration can spawn and military vessels).
Why need to do this:
Class of the ship: in no computer game I have not seen carriers have high firepower, including a large number of ships. As a rule, if there were such ships, they were huge, not the size of the battleship, for example.
The mission of the ship: now the carrier will really be a support ship, and not an attacking tank. He will need cover from a large number of bombers and certainly help from the battleship that appeared on the horizon. He will be dangerous when fighting at a long distance, but his strength ends in a battle with any ship of the same size as himself in close.
There is much more to offer: new types of weapons, bays. But the bottom line is that at the moment the carriers are too strong, they are practically battleships (not to mention the Liberty and Bretonia ships).
I like your weapon idea but hull nerf is over the top on your suggestion from what i see. Plus drone bays are going to be limited to 1 drone per ship for the moment as you know.
(06-15-2018, 10:50 AM)TheShooter36 Wrote: I like your weapon idea but hull nerf is over the top on your suggestion from what i see. Plus drone bays are going to be limited to 1 drone per ship for the moment as you know.
Well, it's not a problem to change the number of ships in one compartment, as I think.
(06-15-2018, 11:08 AM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: Never touch a running system. We don't need to fix carriers kaputt. They are fine the way they are and the drone bays are the icing, really.
+1
they are being balanced right now. currently the libcarrier is the only one with drone bay and the other carriers will have drone bays too. maybe next update
(06-15-2018, 11:08 AM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: Never touch a running system. We don't need to fix carriers kaputt. They are fine the way they are and the drone bays are the icing, really.
Are you seriously?
Do you think that 1 drone-bomber really can do something in real combat? The current system is primitive and inescapable, I propose its improvement.
The drones are a gimmick, a tiny bit of support. You're requesting a change for the entire class which is not necessary. The drones are generally rather underwhelming and only situational useful. It either requires a buff to the drones themselves or to revert the carriers to their old stats + drones as gimmick. Adding more drones could turn into a serious problem for the server performance though, especially in bigger battles - and carriers are often deployed into larger battles.
The proposed changes also will require a long time of looking for exploits in terms of balance. The current carrier system is nice the way it is. I say that as owner of both an Atlantis and the Bretonian Carrier.
(06-15-2018, 11:31 AM)Sombra Hookier Wrote: The drones are a gimmick, a tiny bit of support. You're requesting a change for the entire class which is not necessary. The drones are generally rather underwhelming and only situational useful. It either requires a buff to the drones themselves or to revert the carriers to their old stats + drones as gimmick. Adding more drones could turn into a serious problem for the server performance though, especially in bigger battles - and carriers are often deployed into larger battles.
The proposed changes also will require a long time of looking for exploits in terms of balance. The current carrier system is nice the way it is. I say that as owner of both an Atlantis and the Bretonian Carrier.
There is no problem in how the balance will change there. Yes, it will be crooked and bad, but still it will be some kind of progress. Over time, everything will improve and the update will be on the level. From the point of view of realism and logic, carriers should not have such high firepower, they need drones, like support ships and only.
Realism in a video game, especially Freelancer, is a very bad argument. I'm 100% this will not make it into the game because this is absolutely not needed. If you want to have a different experience, don't try to bend the game to your will but try another game. Freespace 2 for example. It does have carriers as well. Heavy armed ones, I might add.