6. The technology gap is largely irrelevant. The Order is the culmination of the colonies, while the Monkeys are the evolution offshoot and the Robots are not even related. The technological power these factions should be exceptional to the colonies as they are in war and new technologies are always invented in war, and thus creating the circumstances for them to create weapons of their destruction. Sirius has an economy to worry about and many other internal distractions (one of the many reasons the Robots and Monkeys disdain them) that distract them from progress.
On a simple game play level the technological gap isn't as large as it appears. Shields and armour have only increased by around 25%, (Comparision between Sabre and Anubis Mk II, Titan has 18% less armour) although the light fighters are far more advanced than anything the colonies could match in class. The Mark I or Type A weapons all match power levels with the best weapons the colonies pirates have to offer. I do not see a gap, instead I see a progression that survival has simply forced upon those factions. I don't think making the Order the weaker of the factions is fair.
7. The problem with that initial concept is that the player character has access to all the strengths of each faction. You have to be careful not to over power the player in order to balance the game for NPCs.
Something of note: You consider the use torpedoes in combat something that's not already being done, or something that is difficult to do it seems. On the contrary, currently my Anubis Mk II is loaded with all Vulcan MK III used only for taking off shields. Triple Nomad Improved Torpedoes are used alongside those weapons to do major hull and shield damage. I do these in dog fighting as it works wonders, and it seems to be the only practical way to destroy N1’s and Mystere's hull off. For one reason or another regular weapons (even Monkey weapons) seem to have negligible effects on enemy hulls (not capital ships though...likely because of Nanobots?). The rate is destroys hulls is quite painfully slow and frankly it's a lot more fun to fling 12 odd torpedoes and see massive purple explosions than shooting a ships hull for 2 minutes (even though the shield comes off in seconds as it should?).
Now for the first idea. The above mentioned note, will make a super bomber, the ultimate anything killer. The other more dedicated ships sound interesting though.
The second idea, sounds really really prone to abuse by the player however. Massive hull damage weapons that do little shield damage combined with Screamer Type C Robot Pulse weapons equals a three shot kill to anything. It would also kill capital ship and negate the need for torpedoes. Although it would speed up the kill time of a capital ship for a light fighter. Although I think it would simply be more fair the give the advanced light fighters CD/T hardpoints instead.
The other ideas you have you should say, else I can't comment on them.
4. The idea of fake capital ships for players is fair by me. More of a novelty effect it seems. The price and concepts of the two ships are great as they are to me. Though depending on how much you change the mod later, it may have to be changed, or not. Either way I agree with what your saying here.
Well in terms of single player, I should be able to help (it's all I play, I've actually never played online). You say you don't want the capital ships of the four houses too strong because then single player would become too hard. It also makes the Nomad Capital ships weaker later on because you have put them in a sort of general hierarchy, the Nomad capital ships can't just be the all powerful capital ship and the rest plain suck. Single player is limited by the level your at, so really the best ship you'll be flying is probably a Legionnaire, Hawk, Dragon or Barracuda and then an Anubis. These choices are of course limited by what level you are. This may seem a bit of a large change, but would destroying the "Mission" requirement to level up be out of the question? The levels can still remain so your still levelling up in terms of what you can buy with the amount of credits you have, but you'll still have access to everything you can really get because all the higher class things (especially the new stuff added in the mod) cost large amounts of money that require you to level up anyways. This also means you can access things like the Titan and Sabre during storyline, which you normally can't because of level issues. Also you can therefore increase the power of capital ships and such (even initial ones in Liberty, they cannot disrupt cruise engines, and you'll likely be piloting a Light Fighter, so cruise time is minimal and your able to escape if your agile. If your in a freighter and your engaging a capital ship your already suicidal so why bother?). Even still if you want to take this further you can add some of your new ships to the stroyline like a small squad of N1's after attacking Takagi's Base or two squad of Mysteres in the Dyson’s sphere and maybe a battleship or two. It would also make Nomad Capital ships the extreme danger the situation makes them out to be (Most noticable at the destruction of Toledo, the Nomad Battleships...do nothing but act as hangers for more Nomad Fighters, putting a little draed into the battleship can't hurt). Of course this argument seems a bit one sided, so I'm probably missing something. Feedback will hopefully help this.
As for the special nanobots, I meant them for use strictly with NPC and computer controlled capital ships, so only enemies would have access to them. This is why I specifically said that the Amun and Crusher should use regular nanobots. So if the new nanobots are only in pre-configured enemy ship load outs and cannot be sold then an abuse issue can't really exist? That would restrict them adequately would it not? Even if for some reason you wanted them available to player use, could you not sell them with ship hulls and make them unsellable and unbuyable like ship engines?
The classification of ships, is still something I'm sticking too, although it's the most unimportant thing ever. Ships have always been classified by size and then sub categorized by their speciality (ie. Heavy Bomber, Light Cruiser, etc.). Strength has no meaning because a Dagger Light Fighter is superior to the Liberty Heavy Fighter but it's still a Light Fighter because of it's size. Of course this has absolutely no meaning whatsoever, so you can do what you want with it, just something I thought about mentioning.
And lastly, my idea of the Thoth was just my first opinion. So it's looks again, is totally up to you and was just my opinion. And your right, turrets and triple cockpits fit a freighter but it doesn't make sense that a player could use it like that because there only one person. You'd need at least one person to man the guns and the other to pilot (as turret mode nullifies piloting and you fly in a straight line) so while three people makes sense, it's totally ineffective?
The freighter idea does makes sense to me now, since the Amun and Crusher cannot dock everywhere, though I think you shouldn't lower their cargohold because outfitting them with weapons eats up space so it works evenly. And yeah all your points makes sense (I'd like to think my points do too
but which ever more valid will work I guess.
Too many long posts
, I hope I didn't kill grammer and such up there so badly my point doesn't get across.
Edit: Apostrophes got turned into numbers and semicolons for some reason
Edited by - Dreyus on 3/20/2005 11:43:01 AM
Sat Mar 19, 2005 9:38 pm