Alpha393

I uhh... may or may not have... started and instantly finished a genocide with three misfired cannon balls... uhh... blowing up the entire living quarters of what was either an ark ship or a very big cargo hauler. Whatever it was, it's now fully integrated into my borg cube Tetris from hell. Actually that's not a bad way to describe my ship. Ah the joys of abandoned frigates just begging to be stolen and lobotomized for use as the bridge of a mobile fortre- *ahem* repurposed.

Ooh! I haz idea! Weapon firing piece drops in addition to turrets. You place them into your hull, taking up a rectangular prism with 3/1/1 dimensions in length width and height respectively. I.e. 3 times as long as it is wide or tall. Sizes range from 1.5 to 15 in some extreme cases. Must be aimed manually and is placed like a voxel, so it can be rotated for broadsides. The actual barrels of the gun are placed like thrusters, and will take in the stats of any firing pieces touching it, or an average of several with none of their secondary effects. Add this, and people will have their darned block based weapon systems in a way that at least tries to fit into the game. Happy? No? Go back to building a battering ram or whatever you were doing then.

cryogenic cannon: space is usually either very cold or very hot. So why not take advantage of that? The cryogenic cannon fires a shell which on contact bursts and freezes a swath of the hull (possibly using the same algorithms for current field hardeners' area of effect, assuming a 1 or 2 unit cube) frozen hull pieces and any attached turrets are disabled entirely if in a shadow, and if in the sunlight, a large sum of damage (possibly the volume of the piece divided by 2?) is dealt and the frozen effect is removed. the frozen effect lasts 10 seconds unless it is reapplied. Thrust damage: would undoubtedly require both a mechanic to disable sides of thrusters and engines covered by other voxels and a buff to thruster strength to give most, but not all, of the mobility back without having to make your capital ships look like Swiss cheese to turn around reasonably fast. I'd say it's worth it for how cool it would be to be able to fire a thruster in a desperate attempt to dispatch that fighter wing before they start cutting into your already crippled hull. Proposed shield generator changes: make shields have a localized health bar based on the voxel they cover, perhaps the shield generator's volume divided by 100 times the health of the voxel for its shields' health? 50% of incoming damage is taken by the total shield health, while 50% is taken by the local health. Keep the main bar at the bottom as an overall measure of the shields remaining total health. Field hardeners: make them only block 75% of incoming damage for themselves. Combined with the need to expose thrusters and engines, less maneuverable capital ships, as well as shields being more (read: at all) vulnerable to focused fire, this would add some fairly interesting counter-play to bring bigger ships down by outmaneuvering them and knocking out key components one by one.

Having more niche weapons designed around excelling in certain situations sounds like a good idea to promote build diversity.

Thanks for your input. It has been fed to the R&D robot. It has taken the opportunity to clear some stuff up. Telefragging is meant as a parting shot effect, it occurs when you use your hyperdrive while in combat. Orion drives are more of a nuclear bomb on a short fuse than anything else. Drop pods are intended as boarding cannons, and are called drop pods only because of the 'sorry to drop in unannounced' pun, and because they double as drop pods. an escape pod variant would be awesome though. I suppose being able to shoot sappers off yourself or in flight would be reasonable. The shield crackers actually work a bit differently from how you interpreted it. They use the enemy's shields as a weapon against that enemy. Although again your idea is awesome too. Fair enough on the artillery weapons, perhaps if they could only be fired via target designator? My logic behind the target designator range buff is this: in space, the projectile won't slow down nearly as fast, and the game's 'range limit' is more around the idea that you don't know it's speed or relative direction of travel 100% and therefor can't reliably hit it beyond a certain range, at least with projectiles. If you did know those you'd be able to land a bit much more reliably at long range, no?

Add this in, and replace the current color items with something else, or use them as color presets?

No thank you. This idea goes against the entire premise of a game with randomly designed factions. I wouldn't mind the odd standard xsotan ship mixed in with the random ones, but beyond that, no thanks. The combat would eventually get dull fighting the same copy pasted zergling tier enemies over and over, a problem which the current system does not have to nearly the same extent.

As that one guy with literally no background or research into this type of thing, here's my two five cents. As has been stated a few times, defining based on mass or even volume when it varies so wildly between materials and module count makes little sense. So why not define it based on role? Well, ship roles in the navy are a bit finicky too, being defined based on ideal performance in the water, not in space. And they overlap eachother sometimes. If I have a ship with all the armed turrets down the center but salvagers on each side to use in combat, is it a battleship or a dreadnought? They're not meant to be weapons, so it's a dreadnought, but they're being used as weapons, so it's a battleship, and so on. What I propose is this: use a mix of the navy terms and the sci-fi/sci-fa terms for the names themselves for the sake of familiarity, and redefine the role of each type to better suit avorion's needs, while still at least making sense. Flying coffin: take a guess. Small, relatively cheap, and therefor disposable (and you want to get into that thing?!) this is reserved for the fighter squadrons of the game, and the player's starting drone. Corvette: usually compact and simple, generally best used against other corvettes or fighters. As a general rule, will most likely die if deployed alone. Frigate: (hopefully) able to take on small groups of corvettes alone or take on large swarms of fighters, but poorly equipped to deal with larger vessels. Gunboat: this is your glass cannon catch all. If it has turrets placed so densely that it vaguely resembles a flaming metal porcupine, this is probably where it belongs. Not particularly capable against anything able to keep up with it and land a few hits. Destroyer: the name says it all. Designed to take on frigates, other destroyers and possibly cruisers and battleships, likely sacrificing some speed and health for the sake of raw firepower. Cruiser: and now we're starting to reach average capital ship territory, I think. Often moderately large, and well equipped to deal with medium groups of smaller ships, as well as smaller cruisers. Likely somewhat vulnerable to swarms of bombers due to blind spots in its firing arcs. Battleship: geared to take on cruisers, other battleships, and capital ships in general, likely sacrificing some mobility for thicker armor and more weapons. Very well equipped to take multiple hits from bombers and corvettes due to sheer mass, but when hitting back, results may vary. Dreadnought: Alright yeah I'm throwing the real life definition out on this one but can you blame me?. In general, It's a ship able to take on several battleships and come out on top, and sometimes surprisingly agile for its (usually colossal) size. Vulnerability to bombers makes smaller vessels nearly a necessity, whether from its own hangars or an escort. Titan: For the ships that have transcended the definition of capital ship into something truly... titanic. I'm so sorry for that. As a general rule for this class, if it can take on multiple dreadnoughts with a reasonably high probability of winning, it's a Titan. Mobile fortress: In general, these Leviathans exist for the express purpose of being a PITA to break. Relies little on support from outside to function, but can eventually be overwhelmed by bombers when alone. Sub-roles: Carrier: if it possesses a substantial hangar volume, it's also a carrier on top of its normal classification. Cruiser carrier, mobile carrier fortress, and so on. Light: usually smaller than average (remember I'm throwing tonnage out the window) and geared to be better at fighting ships smaller than itself. Medium: usually average size, geared to compete with ships around its own size. Heavy: usually bigger than average, and designed to be better at fighting ships larger and likely more dangerous than itself. In the case of mobile fortresses, designed to break other mobile fortresses without reinforcements. Patrol: reasonably fast and likely smaller than average for their class, these vessels of this sub-role exist to defend an area against attack. Thoughts? Feel free to explain why this is all wrong in great detail should the need arise.

Before anyone rushes at me with pitchforks in hand, I'm just spitballing ideas here for the sake of brainstorming on new gizmos and mechanics and such. Criticism only helps if you explain your reasoning. Okay? Okay. ;D On to the suggestions! Void charges: Like depth charges, but in space. And launched out of a giant confetti cannon. Why? Because you don't have gravity to help throw the explodey murder ball away from your delicate, fragile, heavily fortified and gun toting spaceborne city like you do on the ground. Comes in burst fire, rapid fire, and slow firing varieties, with damage scaling comparable to a cannon and a 'range' of about 2-3 km, but with the charge halting its travel about halfway to max range and persisting there for anywhere from 5 to 50 seconds. I.E the charges will start shooting before the enemy is within their actual range, to have a substantial field built up. Now then, on to the fun part: chain detonations. The actual blast radii of the mines is huge, about .05 to .5 km. Any mines caught in the blast of another will promptly explode with them. You can see how this ends, can't you. However, mines will only detonate by chain reaction or direct contact with an enemy vessel. They simply fizzle out if they run their timer down. They by default deal 10-25% of their damage through shields. Telefragging: last time if checked, an Alcubierre warp drive works by bending spacetime to its will and shrinking space in front and stretching it behind to fling itself and its occupants over ludicrous distances in a literal jiffy. Less, actually. Point is, it goes fast and it probably some crazy side effects if you're standing too close when it goes whoosh. What I propose is dealing damage equal to .1% of the mass of the ship (for balance's sake), blast volume being equal to 75% of the ship volume squared, and the blast shape being equal to that of the ship, kind of like how shields work only much further out and scaling up rapidly. This is more just for the sake of cheap laughs and shenanigans than an actual method of attack. Should probably have a toggle to shut down those people who will make a brick or iron and warp out of the starting sector across the map every half a minute or so, blowing all the new players up. Maybe just a hard cap of 5k damage or less would be good. Damage = ship mass / 1000 Blast volume = 75% of ship volume ^2 Something like that. I don't know the math behind the energy shields. Orion drives: because using nukes as propulsion is totally safe and reasonable. Essentially an omnidirectional force cannon fired from the hot bar for a massive shove forwards, potentially even reaching the Tera-newton range with enough bombs. Should probably deal massive damage to yourself and anything nearby too for the sake of balance. Drop pods: Should planets ever be implemented, not saying they need to be, they will obviously have a purpose there. In the much less distant/alternate future, boarding. Why this and not a transport ship? Because those things are expensive and fragile. Also, what part of throwing a giant homing wrecking ball out of a cannon to deploy a five to twenty man kill team straight to the enemy bridge doesn't sound badass. Stats should probably be similar to a missile with less damage, a bit more speed, and a big health bar. Sappers: if you've played FTL, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Those little buggers that stick to your hull and jack up your ship systems every now and then. What I'm proposing here is a bit different. Instead of just turning he system on, it just adds a slight delay to that system's response time. .1 to .5 seconds of delay per attached sapper, sappers can be shot down in flight and take .2 to 3 hangar space apiece. After 3-15 seconds, the sapper will return to the hangar. The longer the duration, the smaller the delay effect on average. Shield crackers: they do exactly what it says on the can. No they don't give you +4 vitality each when you eat them, they break energy shields, and in quite a destructive manner at that. For every 10k health of the shield they remove, they spawn a plasma projectile that deals 10-50% of that damage back to whatever it hits, which spawns under the shield and hits the hull if all goes well. Notably the constant shield drain does not cause the shield damage graphic to occur. (please for the sake of frame rate make it less laggy or localized to the point of contact or something. I fail to see how it'd be too difficult to just make the effect play only when the shield breaks if nothing else.) Artillery: basically a variant of all weapon types with extra long range in the +100 to 400% range, and extremely high accuracy of 97 and up, with two major catches: large size, and they overheat faster from damage. When they take too much damage, they don't die, but instead simply overheat for double the normal overheat cooling period of the weapon. And to stop you guys from using shields too much, these guns will receive 1% of all incoming shield damage as excess heat. Can be mounted on stations and can receive targeting information from a target designator variant of the same faction/player, and fire on designated targets at an additional 150% of their average normal (for the weapon type) range, rather than +100% Target designator: a simple fire and forget beacon that deals no damage, but highlights the marked enemy. And it has an average firing range of 8 km and lasts for 15 to 45 seconds, 20 seconds on average, after which the target can be marked again. Marked targets can be locked onto by any weapons as long as it is within their range plus a 100% bonus to their range and a 1% accuracy buff. The catch? Slow turning speed, and laser or beam based weapons only receive a 50% range buff. A variant of the weapon will force any artillery weapons in range belonging to the faction/player of the weapon to fire on the painted target. Blackout sectors: very dark, far from the nearest star, and sometimes fairly rich in raw materials, as the leftovers of planetary formation pooled far from the local solar system. Sometimes contain small planetoids several dozen to several hundred km across. Rarely civilized as the factions would likely stick to the light closer to the star. Flood lights would likely be needed to explore these areas properly. Xsotan invasion: you know the occasional xsotan attack events? Imagine if there was an even bigger wave based one where the xsotan kept pounding a sector with wave after wave, and the local factions called in heavy reinforcements to help the player defend. I say help the player, but really the player is likely the one helping in this event. Picture the opening scene of a new hope, except after the star destroyer, a mon calamari cruiser arrives, then a star dreadnought, then a whole rebel fleet, and so on. The capital ships of both sides should probably reside somewhere about halfway between bosses and the average frigates and cruisers you fight most of the time, although preferably without adding too much to voxel count where possible. Anything here stand out to you? Please don't hesitate to give feedback or add with your own similar ideas! ;D

I like everything here except the idea of starting as a fighter. a small ship for sure, but nothing anywhere near as small as the drone for a relatively large starter ship. Please. If I wanted a tiny nearly insignificant fighter I'd stick with the drone. For the sake of comparison, A jet ski or a yacht, which would you take as a long term living space?

Yes please. Also, as my own addition to this idea, what amounts to armor piercing bouncy ball torpedoes. Faster, more agile, and rather than exploding on contact, they just tick for damage and either plow through or bounce off, and keep hitting the target like a homing railgun slug of death. Of course they'd lose lots of health from nonstop collisions, so maybe have a 10-50% resistance to collision damage so they have a chance to get past the second chunk of hull?