Freighters, shields and armor + some features.

Wed Mar 12, 2003 8:31 am by Xaanix

If any developers read this. Please keep the following things in mind for game balance and improvement of multiplayer & singleplayer.

Freighters are not balanced out with the rest of the game. They are supposed to be these huge cargo ships with armor and shields. As it is now, they have little of each but a billion guns which you cant use, because you will die before you get the chance. Freighters are not meant for fighting or killing a hundred other ships in 30 minutes. IMHO, they need to be balanced with the rest of the ships.

They need an improvement in armor and shield ratings, other than (freighter shield and fighter shield classes). I would guess at least 50-100% more armor and shields than a fighter. They are far too clumsy and slow to get away from any half decent fighter. Even a few rogues can put a serious dent in your trade expedition. I would say for a Dromadery and Humpback, at least 13,000-17,000 hull HP (armor) and about 7,000 shield strength. Take away some of the turrets. Maybe 5 guns max. Its not a battleship. Give freighters 2 countermeasure slots, and 2 mine launcher slots.This would make it a far less offensive weapon and more of "trader only" defense oriented ship.

Give freighter pilots (and ONLY freighter pilots) the ability to hire escort fighters, if you plan on traveling across the entire sirius system to get 1200 credits profit per item, you aint gonna make it if a decent pirate faction/bounty hunters/military are pissed at you. In multiplayer it would help a lot. Price of escort depending on the escort skill level and player level. Cant have a level 10 player hire a level 30 escort. Max of 2-3 escort fighters. Make these escorts expensive but worth the money.

Also, for freighter shields, allow pilots to direct energy to shields. Front, rear, port, and starboard shield arrays. To balance this, have it drain power from the weapons (yellow bar). This way you cant keep your rear shield, reinforced forever, if you are being chased by Corsairs and they are all shooting missles up your tail. Freighters, especially the very large, expensive ones, need to take quite a bit more pounding than a fighter thats 10 times smaller.

What do the other players think about this?

"Impossible" is just a word...

Wed Mar 12, 2003 8:44 am by aerundel

You've just asked a whole rework of the game =P The shields aren't divided in quadrants. The weapon energy regenerates at a constant rate, so you'll get infinite shields by diverting power. Escorts would require more code, etc etc.

I was with you for the value increases to shield, hull, and cargo (THAT would be balancing), but you lost me after that. I'm pretty sure A LOT of people would be pissed if their turrets suddenly disappeared off their favorite gunboats. More mines and countermeasures wouldn't necessarily make up for that. A specific reason is the turret-like function of ALL guns in the game. Enemies could be flying at an angle behind and above, below, or to the side of your ship, where mines may not even register their presence. NPC AI may be fooled, but say goodbye to freighters as a viable PvP ship...

Wed Mar 12, 2003 9:09 am by mrdefender

I havent personally tried the freighters... But aren't they supposed to be weak?

I've seen lots of Star Trek and other TV shows with freighters or transports and their weapons and shields/armor are always outdate (old.. 'suck').

That's why they have escorts...... The first mission in the SP campaign (SPOILER! well.. if you didn't play the demo...). has this, King and Trent escorting a convoy cause the previous convoys kept getting blown into space dust....

Though... I can't see myself playing the SP Campaign with a freighter... :-/

(ofcourse, this is all IMHO)

Wed Mar 12, 2003 9:11 am by Xaanix

Im not saying take away the turrets, im saying to take away some of them from freighters, and give them extra hp and shield instead. It would be pointless to give freighters huge armor and shields, and let them keep 8/9guns. They would be mobile fortresses. Thats not balance. Its a freighter (CARGO), not a gunboat.
Freighters should be made to help you get your cargo to your destination, not kill everyone and everything in between.

As for shield reinforcement, i was thinking of energy drains at a sick rate. Like 1000+/second. That would drain your power in no time. So you can only use it for like 5-6 seconds before you have to let it recharge, but long enough to give you half a chance to get to the next jumpgate. If you reinforced your rear shields, you would lose a lot of the other shields (sides and front).

Coding shield quadrants would not be a big endeavour.

Escorts however would be heh, would be nice tho.

"Impossible" is just a word...

Wed Mar 12, 2003 9:18 am by aerundel

You may want the freighter to have a singular role, but some may not. Right now it fills a dual-capacity. It has more cargo space than any other playable class of ship by leaps and bounds. It also has the weapons to make itself a threat to its enemies, but with limits in maneuverability to compensate (you can't change direction other than strafing in Turret View). Do you really want to be running away from every fight you encounter?

Also, do you know how to code shield quadrants or are you just talking out of your you-know-what"? =P

And escorts WOULD be nice, barring the effort needed to get them in the game. But wouldn't that make multiplayer teamwork a thing of the past?

Wed Mar 12, 2003 11:34 am by Easy Rhino

Another option (and I'm just speaking theoretically here) would be to have "virtual gunners" so that you could turn on turrets to auto-engage enemies independently. I think the Privateers did this. You'd have to be careful with the accuracy with the guns, or you might have rhinos wiping out entire fighter squadrons in one pass

Even then, this wouldn't be perfectly effective vs the AI, since the AI doesn't get "scared" when lots of lasers come at it, throwing off aim or whatever. It does get scared when near dead, but that doesn't count.

This would probably be easier to implement than Tie Fighter-like energy redistribution, since the AI transports already have turret AI (not sure if they engage more than one target at once). And the toggle to turn auto AI on/off could be a modification of the current method used to turn weapons groups on/off.

I'm not going to hold my breath for it though

ER

Wed Mar 12, 2003 10:21 pm by Zem

My two bits:

Freighters are NOT transports. Transports are the bulk cargo haulers of the FL universe and they DO have weak weaponry and they DO have escorts. Some of you may have a different idea what freighters should be, but it's pretty obvious they are (and have been since Privateer) modeled after something like the Millenium Falcon of Star Wars w/ the privateer/freelancer being a Han Solo type character. So yeah, it's no attack ship, but it's meant to be able to hold its own in a fight if it has to.

I've found the freighters to be capable of handling everything I've run into so far in the SP game, though I'm getting to the point (mission 10) where I'm thinking I'd prefer a fighter from now on. I've made enough money on cargo by now.

Wed Mar 12, 2003 11:34 pm by aerundel

I think you're right Zem. Switch to a heavy fighter as soon as you can. It'll be very obvious when to do so, if you haven't gotten that far yet. And very cheap too =)

Wed Mar 12, 2003 11:49 pm by Zem

Just got there... and yeah, they couldn't have done better with a flashing neon sign reading, "Buy this ship, stupid."

Wed Mar 12, 2003 11:55 pm by dmwnz

I've with a frieghter mostly up to now but switched to a HF when it came to the Arch mission. I still like to use the frieghters though and if you spend all that hard earned money on upgrades, and search out the best shileds and guns, then thay can hold their own.

Sat Apr 12, 2003 10:00 pm by Lt Cmdr. Ajim

wait a minute... GUNBOATS! thats it! Freghter can be Gunboats! and Gunboats can be Freghters. in the game those Gunboats are quite hard to take down unles your level is higher than 18. lets use Gunboats.. surely they pack more Cargo and they are LARGE enough to fit in Jumpholes. not that battleships cant...

I hate Wasp Missiles[!

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