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31

Suggestions / Re: Squadrons

« on: May 29, 2020, 02:15:11 PM »

Would be interesting. Though those squadrons/groups should IMO be set using the deployment UI (currently it only allows player to choose ships for this initial deployment and for reinforcement).

By the way, another solution to...

Individual ships can easily become isolated and overwhelmed

...is: set defence point(s) using the battle map. Ships then stay close to the defence point(s).

I get what you mean, but this demonstrates why this'd be valuable - Rally points anchor ships to a point on the map rather than to one another, while escort generally limits the escorts' capacity to contribute to attacking a given target.

32

Suggestions / Crippling ships

« on: May 29, 2020, 02:11:34 PM »

A ship status between alive and disabled/destroyed.
Currently upon a ship's hull integrity reaching zero, the ship will explode and be rendered dead instantly.
Instead, ships would have an "overkill" threshold - Upon reaching zero hull integrity, the ship would be crippled - its weapon mounts and shield emmitter are blown out, its engines are barely functioning, but it can limp back and retreat under its own power, just about. Essentially, its CR has been set to 0 with some accompanying fireworks.
A ship that manages to retreat in this state would gain D-mods.
To be completely destroyed as they currently are, the ship would have to take damage beyond that overkill threshold - leading to the possibility they are irrecoverable. Obviously, eating damage beyond the threshold in one hit would still kill them outright.
Different ships, their faction/tech-level, their size class, D-mods and hullmods would influence their fragility in this state. It would have to be values that necessitate a degree of luck in escaping after being crippled.


This would have implications on progression and campaign difficulty - Obviously, with ships able to retreat post-death you will have to replace ships less frequently. I find that desirable, as it makes difficulty more elastic. You can still lose a battle but crawl away with more than you'd be able to now - it'd also help avoid instances where you've won a battle handily but still lost a valued ship that RNG decided is nothing but dust now. That's the most important part for me - making a ship's survivability past its capacity to fight much less arbitrary.
It also adds value to Low-tech ships which typically have greater hull integrity, while high-tech tends to be more fragile, further distinguishing the doctrines.

TL;DR, a second health-bar before a ship is killed, which upon being reached disables a ship's shields and most/all their non-PD weapons, enabling a ship to be defeated as far as the battle is concerned, but give them greater opportunity to retreat and remain intact (with D-mod(s) as penalty for "dying") for the campaign layer.

33

Suggestions / Re: Squadrons

« on: May 29, 2020, 10:26:04 AM »

Bump. TL;DR is, let us put ships into groups that will try to stay together and concentrate their fire, but otherwise behave the same. These could be set through the control groups you can already create.

34

Suggestions / Re: Reload missiles like bomber wings

« on: May 28, 2020, 10:41:05 PM »

I think near-universal missile regen is a must at this point. If carriers can essentially print fighters, why can't basically any ship do so with missiles? In a fight between one or the other, carriers will win because as mentioned, fighters tend to outlast missiles and overall tend to not only deal out a lot more damage on their own, but also help create even more opportunities to deliver further damage - EMP-armed fighters especially.
This is where Frigates could be given another distinct advantage over larger ships - smaller ones reload missiles faster. I can't pull a good in-universe explanation for this, but for gameplay purposes it'd help them keep punching above their weight class.

The hardpoint/launcher's charges could still be limited overall, by CR would probably be easiest but a Harpoon rack could have its 3 missiles and say 27 in reserve (maybe reserves are larger for larger ship classes) - it'd have to be a protracted fight to burn through all those given a sufficiently long reloading period.

I think buffing things generally has better results than nerfing - With fighters being so powerful, and especially if missiles are going to be rounded up rather than fighters rounded down, PD and anti-missile, anti-fighter equipment capabilities would benefit from a buff too.

35

Suggestions / Military Markets - reputation, commissions, blueprints

« on: May 28, 2020, 08:49:42 AM »

The player should be able to access the majority of goods, weapons and ships sold in factions' military markets with high enough reputation.
 If you're buddy-buddy with high-level officials of a faction as the description implies (or your two factions have such a positive relationship), I'm sure they'd be willing to pull a few strings to let their faction sell you high-end stuff - in practice largely eliminating the need for a commission to access equipment you can otherwise only get through salvage or by finding/raiding the faction in question for blueprints.
Speaking of which, factions' blueprints could and should show up on the market - especially on the black market, at penalty of relations. This could be influenced by the markets' stability, the lower it is the higher the chance of blueprint showing up.

36

Suggestions / Re: Customizable Armor Plating

« on: May 16, 2020, 04:08:50 AM »

I tend to agree, there'll almost always be an optimal amount of armour for each ship according to its role, shield strength/coverage etc.
That said, a hullmod that sacrifices armour for extra OP or better maneuverability would be cool.

I was turning over the idea of Mechwarrior-style armour types (ie. 25% more effective vs ballistic, 25% less effective vs energy or vice-versa) which might make granular armour adjustment more worthwhile, but I'd imagine players would just default to whatever best counters the weapons of the factions they expect to be fighting.

37

Mods / Re: [0.9.1a RC 8] Metelson industries: 7.0.2 03/25/2020 RC1

« on: April 17, 2020, 05:59:54 AM »

I checked the modding forum just to see if Metelson had come out of stasis, glad to see you've returned. I missed my space tanks!

38

Suggestions / Re: Max Crew affects Peak Performance Times

« on: April 17, 2020, 05:57:21 AM »

It stands to reason that crewmen who become exhausted, incapacitated or are otherwise operating at diminished capacity through the course of battles could be refreshed with those "spare" crew. Translated into game terms, lengthened PPT and/or reduced CR degradation. In reality I imagine the benefits of excess crew would be even greater - Those crew who have been replaced then have an opportunity to rest, eat, be treated and potentially take over for those they were replaced by in the first place.
Of course CR/PPT is also a simulation of the condition of the ships' systems, so no amount of crew would be able to offset it completely but I digress. I'm all for more trade-offs for the player to decide on - PPT/CR vs Logistics vs Minimum crew requirements.

39

Suggestions / Re: Combat Orders for missile usage.

« on: February 27, 2020, 06:51:34 PM »

Would also be useful as part of rules-of-engagement you can change on the fly

40

Suggestions / Re: Planetary Invasion - It's war, not a battle

« on: February 20, 2020, 08:40:47 AM »

I can't say I'm fond of the idea of running a planet invasion spreadsheet simulator. The main meat of the game is always about the exciting space battles. If the gritty details of planet combat don't make space battles more fun and satisfying, then what's the point?

To me, something along those lines would make space battles more fun by being another possible context.

41

Suggestions / Re: Planetary Invasion - It's war, not a battle

« on: February 19, 2020, 04:26:25 PM »

The only prerequisites are 1: Destruction of the station if present, 2: Exceeding the defenders' force strength with Marines and Heavy Equipment.

3. Having the Nexerelin mod installed.
I think you can see an issue here.

I think the issue is I'm a dum-dum. If invasions are ever implemented though, I'd hope it's something along these lines. In any case call it food-for-thought.

On raids, these could be similarly changed up. I don't like that there's no way for the faction whose planet you're raiding to prevent you from successfuly carrying it out once you've destroyed the station and orbital fleet, again assuming you exceed the threshold of marines. Of course a raid is of a much smaller scope than a full-on invasion, and is meant to be completed within hours I'd imagine, but I think it could be reasonably extended to a few days - Finding a suitable, safe landing zone, assaulting the facility/ies, extraction. This would give both players and NPC factions that window of opportunity to stop a raid-in-progress - if they're able to destroy/foce retreat of the raider's fleet(s), and have marines of their own to counter-deploy.
Once the raid is complete, the player is given the option of having the marines stay on the planet and conduct another - increasing the payout, but increasing the rate at which marines are lost, risking that the raider's forces are wiped-out and all the loot is reclaimed by what's left of planetary defenders.

42

Suggestions / Planetary Invasion - It's war, not a battle

« on: February 19, 2020, 12:21:09 PM »

Something that hasn't sat right with me is how trivial it is to take a planet. The only prerequisites are 1: Destruction of the station if present, 2: Exceeding the defenders' force strength with Marines and Heavy Equipment.

I propose that invasions be changed into months-long endeavours - You only destroy the station to deploy your first wave of Marines. Both you and the defending faction can reinforce and resupply their planetside troops throughout the course of a planetary invasion, with victory determined by control of simulated "objectives" both sides' troops fight over, those being industries, structures and a couple other things. Every few in-game days a battle can be fought to decide control of a given objective - both the native force and invaders can attack or defend. Fighting over an industry can result in varying degrees of disruption to it. Capturing all the objectives results in the invasion succeeding, but if the invaders are pushed back to their drop-zone they can no longer receieve reinforcements.

There's a lot of possibilities in the details of how it works. Things like investing supplies, crew, heavy weapons and machinery to fortify objectives. Determining the disposition of your troops, ie are they acting defensively because you're bringing them reinforcements, or are they launching assault after assault because your marines outnumber the civilian population? Launching an orbital assault wave from your fleet for a bonus against an objective, or providing fire-support throughout a battle increasing the risk of disruption. The capture of a planet, but failure to wipe its defenders resulting in an insurgency that reduces stability, increases demand for marines and heavy armaments. Mid-invasion tactical bombardments that risk damage to industries and friendly forces. Passively reducing the population of the planet via recruitment and collateral damage.

Long story short, the invading faction must maintain a presence in the target-system as if they already owned that planet, to prevent reinforcement of the enemies' troops and maintain open lines of supply and reinforcement to their own. Planets no longer change hands in the blink of an eye, their capture must be a sustained effort from the faction (or individual) conducting it - making invasions themselves dynamic; They take time to complete which affords both sides the ability to take actions that influence of successfuly capturing a market or repelling an invasion of one of their own. I know some of the ideas I have above are convoluted, but this paragraph is the ultimate aim.

43

Suggestions / Re: Sensor Mechanics

« on: February 18, 2020, 06:07:52 PM »

I've found it kinda pointless putting HRS on anything that doesn't have it built-in. Unless you sacrifice a great deal of your combat capability for an exploration-oriented fleet, the additional range feels too negligible to matter. There are better logistics hullmods to spend that OP on.

44

Suggestions / Re: EMP effective against Phase-cloaked ships

« on: February 18, 2020, 10:40:59 AM »

Phased Afflictor could dodge most of TL/PL burst duration as well - most beams have very low tracking while firing.

Enemy phase ships are not enough of a threat to reduce performance against conventional targets. Player piloted phase ship would find them only a minor inconvenience unless they are ridiculously overpowered (and you could simply switch to non-phase player ship for particular battle).

For that reason, such weapons would work well for phase-hunting frigates where turn-rate is generally offset by maneuverability - most phase-ships are able to time their cloaks even when near maxed-out on flux, to completely avoid being hit by it currently. Giving them the ability to perhaps not damage, but disrupt ships that are phase-cloaked would make them all the more attractive. Lore handwave: Not all the particles fired by the PL are passing through the same dimension as the cloaked ship.

45

Suggestions / Re: EMP effective against Phase-cloaked ships

« on: February 18, 2020, 09:48:09 AM »

Biggest thing is it doesn't jive with lore. The ships are in an entirely different dimension , i dont think would be normal for most weapon to have transdimensional attack capability

I mean, Phase Lances exist - they ostensibly fire a trans-dimensional beam - and ships' sensors can still detect phase-cloaked ships within combat ranges. Whether EMP weapons "in general" would plausibly have that ability per the lore I couldn't say, but in gameplay terms I think the concept would better apply to dedicated, special-purpose weapons; Ones that trade some usefulness, damage output etc. against regular targets, for the ability to offset the threat/ease of cloaked ships.