' Wrote:I do not comprehend what Rudo is suggesting.
As things are now: House NPCs and player ships are of all varying strengths, based on the levels appropriate for the SP campaign.
Proposed change:
- Unify house NPC strengths to the level of Kusari/Rheinland.
- Reduce the vast diversity of fighter weapon grades from ten classes to approximately four.
- Bring all ships' defenses and offensive capabilities to the same approximate playing field, removing the need for Mark II vanilla ships.
Hypothetical Result:
- Starting players can and will have an impact on the environment they play in from the very beginning instead of climbing a ladder that leaves them isolated from the events and players around them.
- Reduced need for weapon and ship classes resulting in lower numbers of unused and redundant files that very few players use. Also frees up weapon effects, models and ship/weapon names.
- Reduced suspension of disbelief if you are flying through New York and police/pirate patrols can't dent your vessel.
' Wrote:I actually don't see why this shouldn't be done. I mean, the main reason why this hasn't been implemented earlier was simply that Disco supported the storyline. Now with OpenSP it isn't that much of a problem.
NPCs are annoying, but geez, they always are, doesn't matter if they are in Liberty, Rheinland or Omicron space.
Additional weapon classes can make things much more comfortable. Like, an own class for codenames only, or an own class for Nomad weaponry.Maybe things can get even more extreme and assign one weapon class to every house/alliance/region of space.
As for the ships, just rename the MkII ships to the original ones and buff up the MkI fighters to the desired level. Said before, and I shall add that one (be it the MkI or the MkII ones) of each ship should be replaced with the other in selling locations. Like, the Patriot is sold everywhere where the Liberator and the Patriot originally is sold.
I LOVE this idea.
Love it.
Imagine, no more OORP weaponry, ever. Beautiful.
Is it possible to only allow only one class of weaponry to fit on a hardpoint,
or are we stuck with only limiting the maximum weapon grade?
' Wrote:Is it possible to only allow only one class of weaponry to fit on a hardpoint,
or are we stuck with only limiting the maximum weapon grade?
*points at battleships mounting only battleship weaponry*
There is your answer.
Rudo: Ninja ._.
Also, I like this idea. I'm not sure if it should be implemented, but I like it.
Ship builders would have a field day with redesigns for the current Mk II VHFs though.
All of which I have never flown aside from maybe a few minutes in OpenSP just to see what they look like.
All of my time on disco has been spent in fighters, freighters, and transports.
Edit:
' Wrote:*points at battleships mounting only battleship weaponry*
' Wrote:
As things are now: House NPCs and player ships are of all varying strengths, based on the levels appropriate for the SP campaign.
Proposed change:
- Unify house NPC strengths to the level of Kusari/Rheinland.
- Reduce the vast diversity of fighter weapon grades from ten classes to approximately four.
- Bring all ships' defenses and offensive capabilities to the same approximate playing field, removing the need for Mark II vanilla ships.
Hypothetical Result:
- Starting players can and will have an impact on the environment they play in from the very beginning instead of climbing a ladder that leaves them isolated from the events and players around them.
- Reduced need for weapon and ship classes resulting in lower numbers of unused and redundant files that very few players use. Also frees up weapon effects, models and ship/weapon names.
- Reduced suspension of disbelief if you are flying through New York and police/pirate patrols can't dent your vessel.
The most time consuming part would be editing the ini files, etc. I basically did this a while back, in a fashion, for vanilla Freelancer, it took a few days of grinding, but nothing insurmountable. The ships aren't a problem, just take a few minutes to set the stats of the originals to the Mk.IIs. It's only a few paragraphs of text in the ini files, so it doesn't appreciably affect performance or size just to leave them.
Weapons themselves are the nuisance, because of the sheer NUMBER of them, and the references throughout the game to the COUNTLESS variants of them. Headache, big time.
With the Mk.II ships, this is in essence only affecting VERY new players as far as their ships and equipment are concerned. If you've been playing a few hours, you're long gone from starting grade ships anyway. I had a decent fit centurion by the end of the first day and a little scratch on the side. From this standpoint it's not worth bothering with. Make Mk.II versions of the one or two ships that don't already have them. If you're concerned about starting drag (which it is GRUELING AND HORRIBLE to start in freelancer) then up the starting cash a bit. 50k, 100k? Enough to get a decent starter ship.
The only thing this affects to a SERIOUS degree is the NPCs. Currently, passing Mk.II patrols and capships mean you can't go AFK in Liberty (if you're unlawful anyway) but for the most part, once you leave lib, they're no longer a threat to you. It would even this out and encourage people to depart liberty and spread out. This is annoying, but not THAT big of a deal.
Contrary to popular belief, NPCs don't interfere THAT much. I watch corsairs RP all the time in Omicron. You can't completely ignore them while they wail ineffectually on your ship, but it's not that bad. If you need/want to type pages and pages of text, dock or use the forum. Or head a couple k above the horizontal plane till NPCs quit spawning (this). I don't know if many people are aware or think of that last one, but I swear to god it works. That's the ideal for in-game RP.
Now what IS cool about trimming down the number of weapons and equipment is it gives the devs more room to work with on their end, so they can specialize things a little more. And I like the idea of Liberty ships being unable to mount other weapons, etc. Instead of class being a power scale thing, it's just a way to specify certain equipment being used. This is the primary plus to doing this in my opinion.