A random thought has walk across my brain. I'll put it in writing and let you all make of it what you will.
Why not split transports into two types of combat group.
Type One: Transports that can fight.
Common Examples include; C-Transports, Liners, & House mid-bulk.
These ships will sport a mix of both transport grade and gunboat grade weaponry. A good ratio would be 2/1. (Thats two class 7s for every class 8 it mounts)
Ships with more than 3000 cargo, lose thruster outright (Giving fighters/gunboats the speed advantage), but gain a considerable power core increase.
Ships with less than 3000 keep a standard thruster (130 speed, 100 pool, 10 regen) making them near equals to many gunboats, but will make less cash.
Type Two: Transports that can run away.
Common Examples include; Civ & House Trains, Smuggler specific, & other small transports.
Armed only with class 7 weapons. No more than 5 turrets each.
Thrust speed is 130, but the thruster energy pool is increased to 5000 with no regen. This allows a transport the opportunity, no matter where it is, to out endure its pursuer, without robbing the pursuer the ability to keep the fight going. Thruster will refill when the ship docks.
The less cargo these transports carry, the more maneuverable they are.
' Wrote:We're also talking barghests that can SNAC a civilian transport shield down and then with a bit of recharge simply fire a nova into the exposed hull a couple seconds later, as another option.
I still think something needs to be done with those shields.
The Challenger and Waran can do similar things, the former to Pirate craft, the latter to anything.
Mwerte reported a roughly 1.2mil repair bill from a single Nova impact on his cap4 Ptrans.
I'd like to see better shield options or at least more of them.
A shield with a high return time but low regen, vice-versa, and a high-capacity, low return, low regen version would be nice.
Just to spice things up.
At least until people figure out which one is 'uber' and everyone uses that.
Zealot Wrote:Just go play the game and have fun dammit.
Treewyrm Wrote:all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.
I suggested somewhere else that the Transport class could be differentiated by powerplants as well, by creating a sort of plant that can fire heavy weapons, and one that cannot.
There's two dimensions to Powerplants,
A the resevor: what it maxes at.
B the regeneration: how quick it maxes.
This gives you four quadrants of possible powerplants,
I: Low A and High B: Small powerplants that fill quickly,
II: High A and High B: very large powerplants that fill quickly,
III: High A and Low B: Large powerplants that fill slowly,
IV: Low A and Low B: Small powerplants that fill slowly.
I think the most useful scale between powerplants, in terms of distinguishing two classes of ships inside a single class, is the line between quadrants I and Three, because it allows for creation of guns, in one class, which some ships can use while others can't.
For instance, if one were to give the Percheron a large and slow plant, and the shire a small and fast plant, you could maintain the shire's current balance of fire, by giving it a bit more than just enough energy to fire its volley, and then a regeneration just under what is needed to refill, so that after a while it would begin to lose efficiency on repeated blasts (As it does right now). Meanwhile, the Percheron, with a slow regeneration, but large reservoir, could manage to fire weapons with drain outside of the Shire's reservoir.
Personally, I believe each of the proposed options, the variations on shields, Nexus's points, and my own suggestion for splitting the transport classes can be mixed and matched to create a widely varied Transport class in a way that has so far not materialized, allowing us much greater latitude in properly balancing our transports, and I feel these lessons feed into cap balance as a whole, and even into fighter balance.
While that all is sound and I can see where it can be worked in, I'm actually trying to pitch this as baby steps, taken one easy tweak at a time to see how each will work so nothing gets broken.
There are two things devs hate: implementing a big ambitious change only to realize just how awful it really is so they have to scrap it all and start over, and people pitching big ambitious changes at them which inflames worries that the first pet peeve will happen.
Transports do need to be almost looked at individually because of how broad a spectrum they cover, but that's a big long-range project and discouraging to a dev team that does this for free and already has the whole world whining at them. Ever have to deal with Mjolnir? He gets grumpy.
Minor, easily reversed changes to see what gets slightly broken, what can be lived with and what ruins months of hard work and should be buried in a deep dark hole should be in order first. Every change I proposed can be made by tinkering with a ship editor.
I'd do it, but I break everything. I just push the buttons I know are harmless now.
When I did some small dev work for a different game, I came to realize that players are turned off by situations where they cannot fight back. Things like one shot kill sniper rifles, landmines, paralyzing weapons, 10 on 1 fights etc.
It's no wonder to me most transport captains run silent, F1, antagonize pirates/customs wherever they can... Most people see running a trade ship as a "necessary evil" rather than viable entertainment. In nearly any player interaction, they have no chance to fight back.
I support boosting transports. Thought process truncated.
I am backing up all activity aimed at the improvement of the ability to survive cargo ships.
They should be able to survive the meeting with the lonely pirate. (I know there are champs able to deal with gunboat or bomber, but most of others can't)
Transport ships are not fun. People treat them like boring hard work, which is needed for financing the game on other chars.
At present cargo ships are defenceless towards almost of every pirate, so people are avoiding contacts, sneaking above trade lane, through jump hole and asteroid field.
It is ok for unlawful smuggler, but captain of corporate transport ship shouldn't even know about jump hole.
He should fly through trade lane and jump gate, because unknown space is too danger for his ship and cargo.
If cargo ships were stronger, would be more of them, there would be more contacts.
Transport turrets. Specifically type 4 are useful for taking down bombers. Their stats however make that prohibitive.
The class 3 for example puts out 2100 hull damage, 1050 shield damage and uses 550 units of power.
Now for the class 4 turret which does 1500 hull, 750 shield but uses staggeringly 2100 units of power.
It's the transports weapon of choice against bombers and almost non of them can fire it enough to be effective. Because of it's lack of punch, it's ineffective against larger class ships so all this renders it almost worthless. Certain class 5's are superior. Reduce the power consumption, by a lot.
Turret turn rate. Increase it, please.
Shields. Not sure they need much. I'd be inclined to have them re-start faster than to mess with the re-charge rate. See how that starts to effect combat situations first.
Power plants. Give them a boost please. Power plants should be aimed at the transport they are fitted to.
These ships that ply the trade lanes aren't fighters which twist and turn trying to get the drop on their enemies. Powerplants in fighters are ok because they re-charge between each pass.
Transports don't have that luxury. They can't out run (I mean speed) their enemy. Only with a little luck will that succeed.
A transport with a max number of turrets that fire in one direction should be able to fire all of these for an extended duration. A ship with 10 guns that can only fire 5 is as good as a ship with 5 well placed ones that can fire almost constantly. Whats the point of lashing out all that cash on development if you can't?
CM's. One of the cheapest and certainly effective ways of staying out of trouble. Any ship developer worth his salt would put one of these aboard. They are probably better than a turret. Never having to use that gun is always the best bet.
Agility. I think agility should reflect the size of the ship. In general (but not always), the more you carry, the more risk you take. Your ship just won't handle like it's smaller cousins.
Agility SHOULD be re-looked at but on an individual basis.
Park the BWT alongside a gunboat and see the difference. That difference should be reflected in it's agility. Put the BWT alongside a Pilgrim slave liner and wow! that thing shouldn't be able to turn anywhere.
Compare the SL with an advanced train, which is modern and designed specifically for cargo transport. They might be a similar size but the train should have a slight advantage in agilty for those reasons.
As I said, each trade ship should be looked upon individually for it's own merits which includes it's background/infocard.
An old standby, the Q-Ship.
Have a very large piece of cargo that can be bought or sold at the same price. An ancient bit of tech but still useful.
How about...
A matter projector. Cheap and nasty. Ammunition would cost and be sold as per normal solid state weapons (missiles).
Most trade ships of a certain size can buy this and mount it.
The trader would have to decide if he takes cargo or gun (and vastly reduced cargo).
Or..
A flak generator. Damages everything within say... 800k of the ship. Same principle as above but better against smaller targets.
There would be no way to tell if the trade ship was a Q-ship or a regular ship until he was within scan range, which may be too late. Pirates would have to be a little less carefree how they approach lone traders.
I don't think the shields need to be buffed. The shields aren't the problem, it's the weak powerplants, weapons, and oversized hulls that are the problem. If we fix those issues, the situation will equal out, I think.
I'll start in reverse. Compare the size of the ship with others of it's class. If it's cargo hold is of a similar size, then it's hull should be of a similar size. Weapons mounts and armor differences shouldn't be doubling the size of the ship. Or, if we are going to say that it should, then a gunboat should be at least triple the size of my freighter that has close to the same hold size but less than a third of the combat capability. Make the size difference more realistic, and much of the problem will disappear.
Now for weapons. I understand the need for variety, the need for choices and differences. I understand it and agree in many cases. In this case, though, not so much. I'd say get rid of shield buster turrets and rely solely on multi-purpose turrets. Just bump up the shield damage of existing turrets and make thier projectiles much faster. The vast majority of the transport turrets fire projectiles so slow, in conjunction with the turret speed and ship maneuverability, as to be useless. Of course, the other big thing would be to not raise the energy drain rate on the new turrets. Transports are already severely lacking in the powerplant.
Finally, for the powerplant. I agree it needs to be buffed a bit, but disagree that transports should ever be able to pump out endless streams of fire, the only exception would be the Q-ship which I'll address next. That said, being able to pump out a steady stream of fire for more than four seconds with anything better than the basic turrets would be great. A transports powerplant doesn't have to be million dollar strong, but the abillity to fire a heavy broadside more than five or six times is a deffinate must.
As to Q-ships and armed merchantmen, well, we really have all the things needed for them now. The problem is that the devices used are unbalanced. The Junker Salvager is a good example. I know, it's labeled a frigate, but that is probably the worst misnomer in the game. Frigates were designed as fast millitary ships, lone frigates were used to hunt down packs of pirate and privateer gunboats and even destroyers. The Salvager is actually an armed merchantman. It should be able to see off most anything up to the size of a gunboat. However, because of it's overly weak powerplant it fails in it's roll. An average pilot will most likely be able to hold off the lone VHF, but anything more will likely be to much for him. And, finally, as for Q-ships, they were just more heavily armed and armored merchantmen. So all you need to do is combine the best possible weapon arrangement the ship can handle with capital armor. That is all Q-ships were, merchantmen who had even stronger guns and armor than the armed merchantmen. The problem is that everybody already does that. If we add more options, say a piece of equipment that ups the powerplants output but takes up cargospace, then everybody is just going to buy it. And then it ceases to be a suprise, the pirates all expect the ships they stop to have that equipment, and probably have it themselves. Best to just up the combat capability of the transports, rather than design whole new types of equipment specifically for this problem, in my opinion.
Yeah well, anything to make transports just abit above being helpless.
I mean, armed merchants existed because they wanted to have a chance in resisting pirates. In Freelancer, putting weapons on a transport is something like a bad joke. It's like the game says "yeah, waste your money on those guns, it won't do anything anyway"... Even the most turret bristling transport has ABSOLUTELY NO HOPE against pirates, since most of them go about in gunboats and bombers. That, and the fact that engaging is forbidden without RP interaction (which I approve, don't get me wrong), for traders it turns out to be like "forget about getting a chance to get away from that, because you are forced to wait until you're in the worst disadvantage position before you can do anything"... and then the RP interaction you get is usually just "2milsordai".
Look at Sindroms' [*] group, trade ships will stop to roleplay if they don't feel like they will be slaughtered if they don't comply with the other party's every demand. People are more easygoing if they think they have a chance. This is an opportunity to make a real impact on the general attitude around here.