First off, these are just some personal thoughts of mine, thought up during the past weeks when I've been unable to play, but have been frequently lurking the forums. I'm sure some people will disagree. I'm sure some (all?) of these ideas have already been brought up before. And some of the ideas may be entirely unfeasible. I don't really expect any of these ideas to be implemented in the future, though if they were that'd be cool. So, please, lets keep things friendly in this thread.
Battleships. Battleships should be tough. So tough that they should be practically indestructible to anything short of another battleship, several cruisers, or a whole horde of gunboats or bombers. The way things currently stand, there is pretty much no reason why any faction would construct a battleship. With skill, a single (or, at most, a pair) gunboat or bomber can take one out. They cost 10 times as much (or more) than a gunboat, they have a crew 10 times the size of a gunboat. If you were going to war and had the choice, would you prefer ONE battleship, or TEN gunboats? Or even FIVE gunboats? The answer is pretty obvious.
I think this needs to be changed.
Here are my thoughts on "buffing" the battleships. First, remove their shield. Capships in vanilla Freelancer don't have shields, there are even rumors talking about the fact. No shields also make flying a battleship into battle (or through asteroids) EXTREMELY expensive, as it should be. So the battleship no longer has a shield, how does this help? Well, multiply it's armor by a factor of, oh, 10, maybe more. Yep, thats a frakload of armor, especially when you take armor mods into consideration. Make them SO tough that the only way to have any real chance of destroying them would be another battleship, several cruisers, or a whole fleet of gunboats/bombers. Also greatly increase the toughness of battleship turrets, but leave it so that a skilled bomber pilot might be able to blast them off. They might not be able to take down a battleship, but a really good pilot might be able to cripple it somewhat.
So now we have a ship that's nearly impossible to destroy without another battleship or cruiser. This obviously wouldn't do much to help the capwhore problem, and would probably make it much, much worse. Solutions? Well, first would be making battleships more expensive... Around a billion credits or so. But this wouldn't stop people. It would require some rules that I was rather reluctant about when I first started playing, but they've grown on me. Make battleships faction-only. Specifically, allow each faction only ONE battleship, period, just one.
Ok, so now we have even MORE people starting up hundreds of silly factions just because they want their own shiny battleship. Here's the big thing I used to think was a bad idea, but now I think it may be a good one after all. Make factions (true factions, not just groups) Admin-approval-only. If you want a faction, get at least five members, write up your RP story and faction status, and submit it for approval. Maybe have a "RP-Faction Board" to decide rather than just the Admins.
Ok, now you have the uber-powerful uber-rare battleships. What about the other capships? Well, for cruisers, do the same thing as battleships. No shields, more armor, more expensive. But don't limit them to factions-only... They'd be the largest ship an independent could get their hands on. Might still want to limit their number in factions... Say, one for every five members (round down, so ten members gets you two cruisers). Cruisers should be powerful enough that a pair of well-flown cruisers might be able to take down a single battleship, but it'd be a close call.
Gunboats, leave them unchanged. Same armor, same shields, possibly same cost (maybe a bit more). A few gunboats, maybe with some bombers as backup, might be able to take out a cruiser, but it'd take awhile and there would probably be some casualties (unless the cruiser pilot sucked). Same with transports, leave their shields/armor the way they are.
Alright, so how would these changes affect Discovery, specifically the Discovery RP server? Well, a LOT fewer battleships, but they would actually MEAN something. They'd be a ship to be feared. Two fleets are fighting and one brings out it's flagship, that would likely turn the tide of the battle (unless the other side brought out it's out flagship). Probably fewer cruisers in factions, but possibly more independents (except for their cost). Only way to prevent that would be to make cruisers faction-only as well, but I'm not sure I like that idea. But it might give factions at war a real reason to hire independent mercenaries. Overall, I think we'd start seeing more fighters and gunboat combat.
A quick question: why should only the factions be allowed to fly bships? It would be unfair for the rest of the folks out there. I'd vote to let them as they are. Or increase the shield capacity from 460k to some more, and increase the turret damage, and add 100 more mills to the price. But no decisions/rules which will deny ppl to have their battleship.
' Wrote:In real-life the battleship became obsolete due to the aircraft carrier and bombers.
Bombers should whip battleships.
yes but this is space fighting. a BS should always travel with fighter escorts. Lone BS should not be flying around without proper protection...in RP, if someone wants take thiers out w/o support they should be easily destroyed.
I'm not wild about limitting stuff to guilds. If you need to be in a player-run faction to get a battleship then we wind up with the "old boys club". If it's one battleship per faction then it becomes even more of a popularity contest. Nuts to that.
I like your physical idea for battleships, though. The monsterous shields on player capships/transports has bugged me since the first day I installed the mod.
Re: blunt vs monk... Agree with blunt. There's a reason nobody has built a battleship since before WWII. Not just bombers, but ordinance in general (rocketry is a big one) has badly surpassed armour technology at sea. In the olden days battleships didn't need protection; they WERE the protection. I guess the question is, what erra does a Freelancer battleship fit into? Is it the monster that takes point and shrugs off everything the enemy throws at it? Or is it the bombardment tool that hides behind a screen of defenders? (If it's the bombardment tool then it doesn't really has no practical use in the hands of players)
dont think this will work. most players here would love to own a battleship... so limiting them to 1 per faction AND faction only... will seriously undermine the "feeling" of the game, as there are no true objective's to get your hands on the biggest ship that fits your RP...
Second, how will this be implemented without a player wipe, remember we have at least 20/30 active battleship captains around... that will make 20/30 extremely strong "flagships"
Now my 2 cents... i do think we can limit the cap use but the only way to do it is to make the prices go trough the roof... and making it VERY expensive to fly, yes i do believe that the shields on Battleships need to go, or at least NERFED to a way beyond belief, so that a single fighter with only shield busters, can break trough... this will ensure that caps dont have to pay up for flying trough a small asteroid field or something similar
All in all... we need to limit cap usage but nobody really has an idea on how... or is there... That Cap ID i heard of maybe a solution, if only we had a way to make pilots care less about winning and PVP then they do now...
"War. War never changes. Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything, from God to justice to simple, psychotic rage."
But battleships in space are only very, very distantly related to sea-based battleships. A real battleship can be taken out by being rammed by a single plane. If battleships are being constructed in the Freelancer-future, then there must be a reason, but there currently isn't one. 400+ million credits and hundreds of crewmen for a ship that a single pilot can destroy? Makes no sense. What would they be used to bombard, anyway? Bases? Planets? Don't need a battleship for that.
But you can't increase the power of a battleship without restricting them somehow, such as limiting them to factions-only. Otherwise capwhoring would be even more of a problem. They should be more powerful, but they also should be rather rare. You don't use battleships to hunt pirates or escort traders, you use them to defend planets and fight wars.
i fully agree on the fact that battleships should be rare, but then again, what is the main reason there not? the cash... i can make my very own battleship in only 1 week... and thats starting from scratch... so tell me... how does it work... we need to limit them, i see on obvious reason... make the price INSANELY high in time the capship problem will start to grow... but untill then we have the time to find new ways to limit them..:)
I am all in for a char wipe.. but i know im gonna be flamed for 3 years if i even suggest this to ANY admin... i played multiple online games, where the main goal was to achieve an RP goal... most of the goals were getting rich, getting mansions in every corner of the world, having the biggest baddest and meanest ships, cars, plane's... With every new version, or even when a certain amount achieved the goals, the entire player directory was WIPED CLEAN... that means.. all but really ALL players had to start from scratch... the first 5 players who were able to setup a decent family/faction/guild/clan would recieve a 200 mil bonus for the creation and startup of that family/faction/guild/clan and it worked great...
even newbies who just joined made a chance to become one of the mightiest players... even though there were a handfull of Ranking whore's (sorry for choice of words) who played 36 hours straight to and teamed up with others to get to the needed level for a family/faction/guild/clan and thus claiming the 200mil cash reward.... but even then the odds werent allways against you...
Maybe reconsider the active thoughts on how players develop troughout the game... A player wipe every once in a while isnt a bad thing... its a way to ensure that all players start equal when a new version or release comes along...
...Now let the flaming against poor old me begin.. *hides in corner*
"War. War never changes. Since the dawn of human kind, when our ancestors first discovered the killing power of rock and bone, blood has been spilled in the name of everything, from God to justice to simple, psychotic rage."