Stuff I've done: Pg 9 Jormungand + Helot

[Talhydras]

So, here's how balancing went down. I could stand to do some more balancing, but after literally about a dozen hours I'm ready for a break / someone else to take a look at it and give me a different point of view.
Stock PTs are worth 1, stock DDs are worth 2, stock BBs are worth 3

As it turned out, Faladhi PTs and DDs are more or less comparable with stocks now, at 1 and 2 point each respectively. Faladhi BBs are big and bad enough to merit a 4 point cost. BBXs are new and shooty enough to warrant a 5 point cost. Faladhi DNs come in 8 points, and the Shrike costs 20 ish.

Also, I managed to stuff some SB2s in there, so if you feel the need to tool around with them, be my guest. http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... cedSb2.rar

Tech Update: Marvel, as I switch in and out of proper tone!
Faladhi ships now occasionally feature a smattering of Decoy Missile Batteries, which launch large swarms of 0 damage missiles. The advanced decoys are almost impossible to pick out in the current short ranged combat environment. Highspeed optical and IR tracking computers could in theory pick the missiles out, but without advances in sensor fidelity Faladhi decoys remain for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from the lethal originals.

Furthermore, several Faladhi ship now feature damage control modules, one shot repair systems that can offset heavy damage early in a fight but quickly run out of resources. Jormungand and Daphne class ships both feature variants, one designed for fleet level repairs and the other for individual ship repair activities. Mostly 'cause standard nanomatrices heal even when they're low on power sometimes.

Additionally, Faladhi close attack craft now feature gravbeam emitters. Tiefling Assault battleships mount two, while Cruithne assault destroyers mount one. Mostly done to make gameplay a bit more interesting, these short ranged ships can't succeed without intelligent and persistent use of the gravbeams. There were a few tweaks to bring the DPS of Alary blasters back in line, and now every single section on every single Faladhi main ship (Shrike and stations excepted) should be specified.

New Stuff:
It's dueling season in the Denan system, and the old favorites are at it again. The current conflict is somewhat low-intensity, so there's plenty of idle shipyards just waiting for a wealthy duelist to approach with a tempting offer!


Crowd favorite, Hurricane. Famed for her long ranged swarm of projectiles and attack drones! Download your simulated copy of Hurricane's personalized ship here: http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... ricane.shp


Up and coming Broken Tooth. Unafraid to show his scars, his ship features heavy Shock Lances and a highly customized hull. Broken Tooth closes ferociously with his foes and unleashes murderous blasts from his heavy weaponry. Download a painstakingly reconstructed version of his ship here: http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... _Tooth.shp


And visible here, along with two incomplete hulls, is last year's champion Damasc. Using an unusual converted Commoner hull, Damasc chooses to adorn his craft with salvaged weaponry from his conquests.
Available now for a limited time only! http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... Damasc.shp

Hope ya enjoy it! I reserve the right to edit this as I take more interesting screenies.

[TheBlueEcho]

Crowd favorite, Hurricane. Famed for her long ranged swarm of projectiles and attack drones! Download your simulated copy of Hurricane's personalized ship here: http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... ricane.shp

Finally something that looks like it has bat wings!

[Siber]

Smart money's on the Hurricane this year. Four pulsars? Win. It's not a sure bet, but what is?

That, and it looks freaking awesome

[Talhydras]

WE CAN'T STOP HERE!



THIS IS BAT COUNTRY!

Serious: Mostly looking for feedback on the wings... trying to do some "artsy-fartsy" nonsense with the civvie type straight lines hull contrasted with the wings. I could justify the teensy gaps in the wing sections as intentional, but really this is just a rough draft I couldn't resist throwing out there. Hence, no DL link yet.

Gotta do up the HP and tweak up the paintjob a tad, too.

EDIT: Shit, I forgot to do this earlier. The core-shield plate idea is totally stolen without permission from Lizzie... or somebody. I'm not really sure. I saw it somewhere around here and decided it looked nice... I'm a bad person. Don't hate me! Well... okay. It's cool if you hate me. But hate me for like a good reason or something.

[Wilbky]

Looks nice and a good concept. Only problem is that the blue "netting" looks messy.

[TrashMan]

It's a BAT(tle)SHIP.
quick, someone call BatMan, his cave has been raided!

[Water_and_Wind]

The dreadnoughts are a bit fragile for 8-point ships considering that I do not consider the point system to be linear (one battleship probably costs a lot more and has a lot more displacement, weaponry, etc than 3 patrol craft). Also 2 Arcas can bring down a Daeva, although all the DN's are vulnerable to demeters. Your fleet is awesome to play against though, functional and aesthetic = absolute win.

[Talhydras]

Ah. Well... I was working with something approaching a linear point system. Unfortunately, really the only eightpack of Faladhi PTs to put a dent in a Faladhi dread would be 8x Jacinth. Do NOT underestimate those buggers. 16 pulsars firing at once will make your ship sit up and take notice.

Regarding your comments on displacement and weaponry... in the time I spent smashing my fleet up against the stock ships, I had a few realizations. Firstly, generally speaking the stock PTs have more firepower than battlecruisers of equivelant weight. Sure, an Athena has more guns overall than three Aedons, but three Aedons can fire six railguns at one target while the Athena only throws three of the magical rape-goobers per volley. Similarly, three Thetises quite soundly trump an Arcas, having an impeccable six pointbeams as defense and six Demeters of their own to hurl back. Speaking from the point of view of hard SF and plain old common sense / logic, you are absolutely correct - there is little sense assuming that a craft 1/3 the length and much less volume than a battleship has roughly the same combat capability. I find that the stock balancing is a bit iffy at times, but it's the only truly neutral meterstick to gauge my ships against. Plus, it helps other people tooling around in the same 'universe' ( http://www.wyrdysm.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... sc&start=0 ) do inequal balancing with mine. Dalvitan battleships clock in at 3 points, whereas Faladhi battleships, clearly larger, come in at four. Now we have a way of doing the race vs race balancing, so that he can take a BB and a PT out against one of my BBs and do the tweaking necessary to make it work.

Now, on to the pricing of the Dreadnoughts. I have absolutely no doubt that the commoner dreadnoughts are vulnerable to the Arcas. If you find the Jormungand or Asura similarly vulnerable to Arcae, then something's gone wrong. Dieterling ships like the Asura laugh at the Arcus's puny salvo of drones and then blow the fragile ship to flinders. Meanwhile, the Jormungand has repair capability and 12 demeters of its own, meaning that it really can go toe to toe with the Arcas on the Arcas's own turf.

The Daeva is meant to be part of a fleet. Deploying it alone will get shit killed, but is not its optimum fighting configuration. Daevas are meant to be the anvils for the more mobile hammers (Asura, Perseus, PTs and DDs). Like Reconquistas, they serve as nasty monsters you herd your enemies towards. Get an enemy inside 400 pixels of one of them and watch the fireworks.

In conclusion, thanks a lot for playing around, and even more for giving me your opinion on the balance. I know that the first time I tried to balance my fleet, not having the point system led to a lot of very awkward moments where we were trying to balance a small, non Faladhi BB to a Faladhi BB and having the small ship exhibit a power level of over 9000. It's still a bit rough around the edges, but the more viewpoints I get the better it will become.

[Talhydras]

Sorry for double post...

I made this late at night. I've taken to making ships as I fall asleep, just opening up SM and throwing down sections, seeing what happens. This is the result, and I'd like to know what people think of it (firstly), and what kind of stats, weapons, and modules it should have (secondly).

For reference, it is called the Drunken Frat Boy, named after the most destructivest thing known to its creators.


Next to hestia to scale, complete with typical solar backlighting.

SB2 for download here. Not that I suspect anyone here would ever do it, but just in case, please credit me if you want to use it: http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... _Boy_2.rar

It uses at least two of every single section in shipmaker... I think. If anyone can find one that I've missed I'll try and find a place for it. It started as a testbed for new stuff, then turned into an attempt to replicate other stuff I've seen online (hence the description text... the nose is inspired more than a bit by Aralonia's space-navy), and then kinda turned into a wannabe Jovian ship from Nadesico, of which you can find no pictures on the internets. The wings are there cause, hey, you gotta have wings.

Note: In the download, I've fixed the missing pointbeamer visible in the screenshot and shuffled around the centerline sections to make them not twisty and awful looking.

[Kaelis]

Thats neat, i really like it. Great use of colours,layering and negative space, don't see much of that here. and the whole back is just sweet. Not too sure about the wings, though.

[Lizzie]

Thats very awesome for your first "big" ship.

[Talhydras]

And now, a tribute to what may be one of the greatest games ever made. It came on floppy disks. Mightier than any of its descendents, this game is Master of Orion I. And what would Orion be, without a Guardian?



Destroyers and usurpers of the old technology approach and meet their doom! Weak races are powerless against the Guardian's advanced defenses and mighty weaponry. Only a large fleet of high-technology ships stands a chance against such a dire foe as the Guardian of Orion*.

There's a few inconsistencies, most notably the head didn't have that long neck. The original can be viewed blowing some poor bastard to flinders here. http://www.jonsullivan.com/misc/gifs/orion11-bg.jpg

.sb2 available here in .rar form: http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... dianv1.rar

*: This isn't meant as a challenge, it's a paraphrase of what the manual says. While I am fully aware that a 900000 damage mining beam will snap the Guardian like a brittle twig, I have no particular need to see copious visual proof of it.

[derekiv]

Never heard of the game but the ship looks awesome!

[Talhydras]

Some kinda probe droid looking thing. Scale here is 1 pix = 10cm ish, making this probe-ship around sixty, maybe eighty meters in length. Features chemical tanks for welding lasers and modular heads for the tool arms. Claw heads are not capable of damaging military hulls, though in theory capable of damaging weapons. Often seen skulking about the edges of inhabited space, these craft are nimble and maneuverable. Several have been destroyed by light patrols and their wreckage salvaged, but we have few answers there. We've put out a bounty for their recovery, and for now we can merely sit and see how it turns out.



Avalokitesvara class Man'o'war, shown next to the WCW7 that inspired it. This was done with permission from and inspired by Lizzie. Her Templar-class dreadnought ( http://www.wyrdysm.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... 99&start=0 ) looked kinda like a baby ship to me, so I expanded on it a bit and got the Avi. The Avi is quite comparable in terms of stats to the WCW7, possessing greater armor and firepower, but also greater vulnerability to strategically placed weapons fire. Avalokitesvara-class ships are best used to make slashing passes, utilizing their mobility and pinpoint targetting to inflict damage on undeflectored enemy sections. Tight turns are recommended, keeping the vulnerable rear quarter away from enemy fire.

[TheBlueEcho]

The Avi is Hot. I like it alot.