Ship Specifications/Technology

Discussion for the Next Big Thing, which is purely theoretical.
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Arcalane
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Ship Specifications/Technology

Post by Arcalane »

One of the major things we need to do is work out how to balance the ships well. Meta balancing is rather loose, and could probably be done better. A tightened up system should help avoid people piling on as many weapons and modules as possible.

But first, some basic tweakery for ship designing!

Propulsion
There should probably be a couple of distinct methods of propulsion, each with it's own unique behaviour both in battle and in the tactical/strategic system layer.

Certain Artifacts might bestow knowledge of ancient alien propulsion systems that are superior to our own.

Initial propulsion will probably be basic chemical rockets. Further development might involve fusion or ion drives.

Truly advanced or alien technology may revolve around gravitic or teleportation systems.

Armour Types
Something the meta lacked but I kinda want to introduce is specialized armour types. This system could also support stealth armour and allow for special ops behaviour right under people's noses.

The basic armour system in place is 1 mass = 1 hp.

However, as time goes by you may choose to invest in armour research. What this does is it gives you a bigger HP boost per mass point spent, since BSF can handle decimal HP values.

Thus, after some teching up, your armour value might be 1:1.25, rather than 1:1. That means for every 1 mass spent on section health, you get 1.25 health points.

This is pretty insignificant, right? Sure, but ten hp can make all the difference. Suddenly, a ship that had 200 hp on a plate now has 250 hp on that plate. It's easy to bring this forward to new designs, and it means you don't have to mess around with decimal mass values.

Shields
Protection that isn't armour. Amazing! :shock:

Ablative:
These classic high-durability shields can soak up a lot of damage, but that's about it. Standard ablative shields can be penetrated by certain weapons like railguns, making them ineffective against certain ships. Ablative shields were one of the first shielding methods to be discovered, and examples of them are - or rather, were - fairly widespread.

Ablative shielding is essentially accomplished by taking a shield sprite and giving it a bigass helping of HP. Easy.

Phased:
Whilst Phased Shields were a relatively new invention prior to the collapse of the Empire, they were nevertheless making a bit of a stir. A phased shield is made up of two ablative shield layers which interact, forming a tertiary energized barrier between the two, so long as the outer layer is standing. As long as the outer layer remains online, the Phased Shield cannot be penetrated by weapons like railguns. The downside is that the overall strength (that is, the health of both layers combined) is less than an equivalent level Ablative Shield, and power consumption is fairly high.

In reality, with a Phased Shield, the outer layer has an Aegis Generator parented to it that targets the inner layer. When the outer layer falls, the aegis on the inner layer falls, making the ship vulnerable to penetrating weapons and such. Otherwise, each layer is essentially a lower-strength ablative shield.

High-Density:
A middling development of the Empire's defensive technology, High-Density shields are almost the opposite of Ablative Shields. Whilst they have very low durability, they can simply shrug off hits that are too weak. High-Density shields have middling power consumption and space requirements, and are good for ships that need some extra defenses, but probably won't be taking the brunt of the enemy's assault. It should be noted that High-Density Shields are not perfect, and sufficient enemy firepower can overwhelm the generators and shut them down. High-Density shields are also highly effective against penetrating weapons like railguns.

High-density shields have an aegis module targeting them, but have fairly low HP. Sufficient firepower will overwhelm and break the shield, of course.

Segmented:
A fairly niche development of Ablative Shields, Segmented Shields nevertheless caught on in certain circles. They are essentially still ablative shields, made up of several segments (usually six, though the most extravagant have consisted of dozens of tiny "plates" using a rotating emitter system to distribute the damage) that mean a ship's defenses are not fully compromised when it's shields collapse - only one specific facing fails. Whilst overall Segmented shields are not quite as tough as Ablative shields, they are more tactically sound and the choice of more experienced admirals.

These are just fancy ablatives for the more tactically/strategically minded.

Electronic Countermeasures
Technically not a shield by standard classifications or understanding, but nevertheless listed here for providing a similar defensive functionality, ECM systems befuddle the enemy's targeting computers, and lead missiles astray. They use up a lot of power and space, but can be well worth the cost - missiles won't have a snowball's chance in hell of hitting. ECMs should not be mistaken for EMP weapons or the PD-distracting flares.

ECM is simulated by using an invisible rotating section at the center of the ship with several smaller sections rotating around the perimeter of the ship. The more effective/expensive/advanced an ECM system is, the faster the central piece rotates, and the more "decoys" it has.

Equipping
I'm thinking the new system should be based off the ship's base threat (times something) which you then have room for stuff like crew quarters, reactors, engines, weapons, command and control, shielding, armour, electronic countermeasures, that kind of thing.

~~

AAAAAAAAND I've run out of steam for now. Pitch your ideas at me. Technology of all flavours. Weapons. Engines. Life Support. Ship Control. Mining. Anything and everything. Whilst I'd like a meta-style open-ended tech system, I'd also like a bunch of pre-determined projects so people have a path they can follow if they can't exactly innovate.
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Post by Cycerin »

Okay, I'm just gonna brainfart up a storm and you guys can salvage anything that drifts out of it.

Propulsion:
We have to work out a system to balance speed against armor and loadout, the current meta's system is just too lax and it's easy to come up with overpowered designs.

Fusion Torch: Low accel, low maneuverability, very high top speed. Cheap and gives you somewhat more juice for high-power weapons, but reaction mass gives you less space for shit like ammo bays.
Ion Thrusters: The balanced option, most ships use these.
Focused Ion Thrusters: More expensive, more juice.
Reactionless Drive: Exotic as fuck, restrictive, no external thrusters, just very high maneuverability, almost inertialess acceleration, and low speed. some sort of special section would be associated, imagine the Claudia Engines from Last Exile. Reactionless Drive ships can travel through warp lanes more easily.

Modules:
Sensor Array: Most ships have one. Few ships will have the special ones that are big enough to function as AWACS.
Etheric Jaunt Engine: A special module that allows the ship to teleport small distances. The EM field generated by the module interferes with shielding, making it unusable on vessels equipped with Jaunt Engines.
Shield Booster: A special section that increases the effectivity of the ship's shields by X amount, costs weapon threat to put on your ship. Shield HP is otherwise determined by either the ship's size and core HP and these things will be the only way to make shields more effective. Basically adding them will give you less weapons.
Fleet Nanite Module: A nanorepairer with enough range to heal nearby ships.
Armor Nanite Module: A nanorepairer with very very low range placed near ablative armor in order to repair it.
Tractor Beam: A ship equipped with a tractor beam gains two functions: it can salvage ships who have been disabled in combat, and it gains an Impeder-like projectile stopper ingame.
EMP Projector: Yah. No shields for you if you want to have one of these toys. Will also kick ass against very shielded ships because a hit against the shields will send the entire ship into uselessness.
Fleet Portal Engine: Open a lane temporarily between two systems that aren't necessarily adjacent. The ship that employs this massive fucking thing will have absolutely no space for other stuff.
Stealth Generator: No function ingame, but it has a distinct module and confers advantages in pre-battle and intelligence gathering matters. Different sizes, massive restrictions on ship loadout.

Some weapons:
Kinetic Cannon (big and small)
Rotary Cannon (vulc, big and small)
Missiles (use the current meta's classification)
Torpedoes (fighters only)
Cruise Missiles (Torpedoes for capital ships, biggest missiles around, long long range but low splash radius)
Rockets (Plasma and regular, unguided and fast as hell. no guidance leaves space for reaction mass)
Battle Cannon (r.arty)
Plasma Blasters (blasters~ comes in all sizes)
Antimatter Torpedo (Flashbolt)
Antimatter Cannon (Nukecannon)
Phase Effect Cannon (Tachyon)
Particle Gun
Particle Cannon
Railguns (more sizes than current meta?)
Beams (anti-fighter, light, medium, heavy, super)

leave the more useless weapons like the Plasma Ball etc. up for factions to personalize through research.

Speaking of research, it should be really lax to customize the weapon's behavior without altering its DPS (within reasonable limits) and harder to do exotic stuff like increase range, make a buckshot blaster etc)
Last edited by Cycerin on Fri Nov 06, 2009 11:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by ArcaneDude »

Another idea would be to split drives into two parts: Main Drives and Thrusters. You could combine MD's and T's to get the best balance between thrust, accel., maneuverability, space requirement and energy consumption.

Otherwise stated:

Main Drives: drives mentioned by cycerin.
Thrusters:
Chemical: Very high added accel and thrust, but almost no added maneuverability. A simple rocket engine. Large amount of space needed.
Plasma/ Ion: middle ground thuster, decent accel., thrust and maneuverability. Low space requirements.
Focused Ion: Like the Ion thruster, but better. Also requires more space.
Pulsed Reactionless: A large plate-like assembly on the ship's outer hull. Instead of delivering it's power continuously on a low rate, such as the Main Drive does, this thruster stores energy in a capacitator to release it in pulses, delivering less thrust, but more accel. and maneuverability. Energy capacitator makes this a large system, but certainly worth the while because of it's fairly low power consumption.
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Post by LukeRM »

Bored.

Starship Control:
Command Interface: An advanced ship-control system based on neural networking and AI. Takes up less space than classic control due to the reduced crew requirements and etc. but requires additional costs.
Classic Control: The traditional system of commanding starships. -
Automation: The ship is totally controlled by an AI. This method of controlling starships allows greater space for equipment, and allows a more efficient way of weapon control. However, AI generally act like real crew if given free will, and their loyalty to you is not guaranteed.
Modules:
Research Laboratory: Allows study of alien artifacts away from populated planets. On larger ships, this is essentially granted for free.
Scanner Array: More of a modified sensor array, the scanner array can provide better information about a target. Also used to scan planets.
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Lloyd16
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Post by Lloyd16 »

I think we should start with just a basic set of systems and such.
that way each faction can research what they want, and would make battles more interesting. Weapons i am thinking just laser cannons, machine guns and missles(module name ingame)
I reckon crew limits for each threat rating, along with a reactor (upgrable), so every other system has a crew and power need, so maybe each laser cannon needs 10 power and 2 crew to operate, and your ship might have enough space for 12 crew(simple stuff would be seperate) and a reactoir that generates 50 power(after engines), so you could run 5 laser cannons, and have 2 crew left. armor will likely not have a crew or power need, but shields would (limiting them from smaller ships, unless you want almost no weapons on them)
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Post by Silverware »

I think Lloyd has the idea for a long running game, each faction gets the basic propulsion, hull, armor,power plant, and one or two weapon techs, and all the rest are researched after that.

Hull techs improve the size your ships can be built to.

Power Plant techs would improve the power output of a ship, in relation to hull size.

Armor techs allows the ships to start with more sections in relation to hull size.

Propulsion increases speed, acceleration and turning, inversely proportional to the hull size.

Weapon techs improve the weapons, upping damage, refire rate, range, and all the other useful attributes.

Shield techs allow larger shields of different types and stronger ones.

If a ship has level 2 Hull but only level 1 power then it can only carry a few more guns than a level 1 hull with a level 1 power plant.

Something like 5 points per level of power plant, multiplied by the hull size level.

Hull size levels would be like level 1 are between 60 and 40 size. level 2 are between 80 and 60
ect

Idk, its an outline of my ideas for this sort of thing.
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Post by Bad Boy »

Another type of shield, Nanobot Induced (Ablative) Shield (feel free to come up with a decent name, this one was the product of half a second's thought).

Basically, an ablative shield with a short range, slow repair rate, cost free nanomatrix parented to it and placed in the center of the shield. I've tried it and it works pretty well, at least with full circle shields.
The shield could perhaps have less hp then a regular ablative, or simply be more expensive or advanced tech. The repair rate could also be increased, either by research, or inversely proportional to the shield's hp (too much and it'd basically become a high density without the railgun stopping, so the trick would be in finding the happy medium).
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Post by jwa8402 »

I definitely think factions should develop technology along different lines. What I would like to see at the basic level is a 3-way split that all 'imagined' technologies can be classified under: for example weapons can be refined to fire further, or faster, or pack more punch but only at the cost of one or both of the others. Likewise, a faction can choose to refine missiles, or beams, or projectiles to their highest level, but not all of them. The exception to this might be if they capture enough infrastructure to enable additional research, or reverse engineer it from a captured enemy.

This would make for easier balancing, more diverse factions and ships, an additional level of decision making for leaders. imo
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Post by Droid »

hmmm...
can't we have a more "standard" type of shield?

A Critical-Existence failure style that will regenerate itself given time (even if it gets completely depleted!)
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Post by Arcalane »

The problem is, shields have to be done as sections right now, unless a new system is coded, so 'reappearing' shields are not really going to happen.
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Post by Droid »

So reappearing sections are an impossibility. :(
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Post by Silverware »

At least until we get an Trigger for %damage to a section,
having it collapse at 10% hp remaining and reform at 80% or something.
And have that parented off of the generator.
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