Regarding Faction flagships.

[Rodent]

This came from an earlier thread by Del, about what official factions would like implemented.

So this thread goes out to official faction leaders, regarding flagships.

Firstly, the concept.

Flagships would be very powerful ships, requiring a huge dedicated effort to bring them down. However, this is offset by huge maintenance costs to fly them. These may even be openly available for anyone who can group together for the effort, however, practically the immense amount of effort means only factions/groups of factions can feasibly operate one.

Of course, not every faction can reasonably have a flagship. Military factions would gain preference, with trading factions next in line for some different kind of ships.

So how much work would it entail for the dev team?

In theory, you'd think each faction would want a unique model for their flagship, and that means a lot of work. However, that's not necessarily the case. Factions could easily just ask for a nicely buffed version of an existing ship, with statistical changes that are easy to perform.

However, if the factions want unique flagships implemented, the onus falls on them to develop the model, not the dev team.

So. How feasible is the concept? I personally feel the introduction of boss-units or their equivalent could be an interesting exercise in disco. Awe-inspiring capital ships and things like that, while being costly enough to operate that they won't be a daily occurence. Of course, these ships will be OP, but within limits, guys.

Go for it.

[Jaika]

Sounds good, and maybe it can be spiced up a bit if we give some special weapons to then but those can be built only on player base modules. And make those modules to require the maximum leveled base and expesive materials.

Give a power core buff to these flagships and raise the power consumption of the flagship weapons. Maybe a single flagship turret can require as much enegy as a BS Cerb, or even more so other normal battleship can't use them effectively.

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There is no such thing as too much firepower.

[Junes]

Creating an unique ship model for every faction will be costly. Buffing the stats is the best emporary solution I guess. Add more turrets, increase power core, add more hull, lower the agility. Shouldn't be much of an effort, right?

[Lobster]

Boss battles are something that, I feel, is very much needed in disco. IT would alleviate the "same old same old" feel of battles we have right now.

Currently, we have two (three?) ships in disco that could be considered bosses, though mostly for RP reasons. The Tundra, Mon'Star, and maybe the zoner unique battleship.

We need more.

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Wraga, the sex machine.

[Rodent]

Sounds good, and maybe it can be spiced up a bit if we give some special weapons to then but those can be built only on player base modules. And make those modules to require the maximum leveled base and expesive materials.

Give a power core buff to these flagships and raise the power consumption of the flagship weapons. Maybe a single flagship turret can require as much enegy as a BS Cerb, or even more so other normal battleship can't use them effectively.

This is an excellent idea. Make flagship construction an extension of the base stuff. Perhaps with a rule that no more than one can exist at any one time. Complete with special turretry and stuff.

[Dashiell]

Sounds like fun. A lot of work, but fun.

But what stops factions sending the damn thing into every battle if it's so potent in pvp? People love to win. Give them a tool that really ups their chances at coming out of a brawl on top and they -will- spam it. ths reducing the 'omg, here's comes the boss' feeling you may have when it appears seldom.

Im all for this, but Im worried about how people will wave their uber stick.

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[Snak5]

Sounds like fun. A lot of work, but fun.

But what stops factions sending the damn thing into every battle if it's so potent in pvp? People love to win. Give them a tool that really ups their chances at coming out of a brawl on top and they -will- spam it. ths reducing the 'omg, here's comes the boss' feeling you may have when it appears seldom.

Im all for this, but Im worried about how people will wave their uber stick.

Absolutely huge repair prices, maybe?

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[Rodent]

Sounds like fun. A lot of work, but fun.

But what stops factions sending the damn thing into every battle if it's so potent in pvp? People love to win. Give them a tool that really ups their chances at coming out of a brawl on top and they -will- spam it. ths reducing the 'omg, here's comes the boss' feeling you may have when it appears seldom.

Im all for this, but Im worried about how people will wave their uber stick.

Read carefully. Maintaining these ships would be -expensive-.

Perhaps introduce a possibility that equipment from the flagship will fall off if it gets destroyed. Considering all flagship stuff is expensive and might be produced via player bases...yeah, it's a tough deterrent.

[Slainte]

A good idea.
But,
Trading factions dont really need a ship like that. Give trading factions the opportunity to by the Barge again because what we need is storage not guns:)One Barge per trading faction.
No need, then, to change loadouts buff this and that and create more work for the devs.
I know, i know, your going to say build a base then:)but for small factions thats just not feasable.

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[Rommie]

First of all, you might want to expand this concept. It doesn't bring anything new to what anyone thinks of when brainstorming on 'Faction Flagships'. A one of a king big ship with big guns that does big explosions.

'huge maintenance costs to fly them' - Exactly how huge, what kind of costs. Fuel, maybe? Expendable ammunition? All this has been already thought of and presented in earlier drafts of this concept.

'the immense amount of effort means only factions/groups of factions can feasibly operate one' - Since the obvious limitations of the game limit any ship able to be flown by one player at a time, I have no idea what you're thinking of about 'operating one'. Huge costs in building one in POS' is closest I can think of. And this has already been brainstormed on as well. They're pretty logic things, obviously.

Trading factions having flagships doesn't lead me thinking of anything else but Custom Barges. Regardless of how one would balance such a ship, it would end up either too overpowered(regarding powertrading), not any bit more useful then a current Barge, or simply too demanding in comparison to the advantages it would bring, that would render it useless.

Usage in military factions brings the most obvious benefits, but with obvious drawbacks. First of all, balance drawbacks. The amount of agility you'd give to such a ship in order to keep it 'realistic'(the freelancer kind of realistic) would make it either: a) a big Valor on steroids, b) a big Green Brick of Doom on steroids, c) a big Lost Battlestar on steroids that takes 10 minutes to turn around. I'm saying there's no way to keep such a ship balanced, in a way that would make flying it enjoyable.

So the only reason someone would want one would be the visual appeal of such a ship, or the roleplay one. And that can already be accomplished by simply increasing the reputation of a ship ingame. Take the Hellfire Ven'Gyr. The sheer reputation of the ship allowed us to use it on at least one accountable occasion by simply roleplaying in local comms the arrival of the ship in the next few minutes. At least two dreadnoughts retreated. And this all happened in the past few months, while the Ven'Gyr was, and still is, nerfed, and not usable in combat.

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In space, nobody knows I'm a panda