YOU decide what it is!

Well, I've been getting the itch lately to make a new ship, but I don't know what you people out there would want for a new ship. So I ask all you gamers, what kind of ship would you like to be added? A warship? A freighter? A gunship? A giant behemoth ship? A tiny personal speeder?

What race? Polaris? Federation? Auroran? Rebel? Vell-os?

Will it be a common ship? Will it be rare? Will it be valuable? Will it be practical? Will it be specialized?

Let me know what you want' and the most popular ideas, or related ideas, will be eventually made into a new ship and satisfy my sci-fi creativity for a while. Go and give your ideas!

I've always wanted to know if someone could get through Nova with a Civilian Viper.

Someone did, it was in thier signature several years ago.

Make a missile boat. Something with a puny non-turreted blaster but tons of missile launchers. Make it an illegal pirate vessel.

pipeline, on Jul 27 2005, 12:24 PM, said:

I've always wanted to know if someone could get through Nova with a Civilian Viper.
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Add the necessary cargo to it, and yes, it's very possible.

I speak from experience

Fnoigy, on Jul 27 2005, 04:07 AM, said:

Well, I've been getting the itch lately to make a new ship, but I don't know what you people out there would want for a new ship. So I ask all you gamers, what kind of ship would you like to be added?

A very kind one, with the sycophantic tendencies of a toady.

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A warship? A freighter? A gunship? A giant behemoth ship? A tiny personal speeder?

A tiny personal speedo.

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What race? Polaris? Federation? Auroran? Rebel? Vell-os?

A potato-sack race.

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Will it be a common ship? Will it be rare? Will it be valuable? Will it be practical? Will it be specialized?

Yes.

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Let me know what you want' and the most popular ideas, or related ideas, will be eventually made into a new ship and satisfy my sci-fi creativity for a while. Go and give your ideas!
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Okay, seriously, here goes:

I like my ship to be hyperresponsive. When I tap the angular thrust I want to start spinning around so fast my hand flies off the controler and when I touch the accelerator I want to get slammed against the back wall of the bridge. Top speed, contrary to what I used to think, is only really necessary in quantity to outrun unjammable missiles.

When a ship is extremely maneuverable it can dodge almost all unguided projectiles, and even some guided ones that turn slowly, making combat success a matter of piloting skills rather than a matter of seeing who has more shields and guns.

I like my ship's shields to recharge so fast that it takes a constant bombardment from many blasters to hold them where they are, and only by the interspersement of missiles with the blaster bolts can an enemy hope to lower my defenses. However, I don't want to have a lot of shields. Rather, I want to be weak enough that a pair of heavy missiles in quick succession leave me close to death. That way I really have to pay attention to dodging, but if I can dodge most stuff then the damage from the few things I don't dodge will be swiftly healed.

From a gameplay perspective I want to have enough cargo space to do most missions. 20 is the most I'd ever want, and 10 should be fine as long as I can fit an expansion module. I also want a fair amount of weapons space to work with.

Let's say 400 speed, 1000 accel, 200 turn rate, 150 shields with 350 recharge rate, 50 armor with no recharge, 10 tons cargo space, and 150 tons max free mass.

I'm not sure what stock weapons to put on it. Something turreted. Maybe a front-quadrant beam weapon. A 20-ton swivel-mounted biorelay laser or four sounds pretty good. Four fully turreted thunderhead lances at 30 tons each sound even better.

I haven't done any testing recently, but if the ship flies well with 200 top speed, 800 accel, 300 turn rate and inertialessness then that's cool too.

Oh! Before I forget, my other very important criterion is that the ship's graphic be small pixel-wise. That is, don't make it any bigger than a 'bridge or valk. Viper-size is better. Shuttle or cargo drone size is best. The concept I'm going for is weaving in and out of combat.

edit - just looking over what I've typed it seems the ship I describe would be horribly overpowered in the player's hands. To counteract this, I have a further suggestion: give it very high negative fuel recharge that affects the player. I don't know the exact number, but make it so they'll need a fission reactor and two solar panels just to break even.

-(solar panel recharge * fission reactor recharge)/(solar panel recharge + 2*fission reactor recharge) should be the formula for finding the value to put in the ship's fuel regen field, based on the numbers in the solar panel and fission reactor modval fields.

This post has been edited by Qaanol : 28 July 2005 - 06:25 PM

Quanol... why aren't you playing the EVO TC with the cold fusion for nova graphical update?

In any case, if all you wanted was a ship that did this sort of thing, it would be relatively easy to make all the Nova ships behave in this sort of way. The gist I got was Fnoigy would make new graphics too.

We need a pirate shuttlecraft. Then we can have a repeat of the EVO legend with the new ship vs the Raven. Bwahahahaha.

Then again, I defeated the Raven by running away in a RAGE gunboat and letting a bunch of other ships warp in and kill it, so it still wouldn't be quite the same... sigh

Well, I personally have always been disappointed by what are considered the Rebel Capital Ships. I don't know how anyone can actually enjoy piloting a Rebel Dragon or a Rebel Destroyer at the end of the game. They just aren't Capital Ship material in my opinion.
I know that the Rebels have limited money, supplies, etc, but it would be really interesting to see a true Rebel Capital ship. A Rebel Carrier or something along those lines would be really intriguing.
Now, I'm not saying that I want to see a Federation Carrier colored green. Anyone with the most basic of graphics skills could do that. I'm picturing more of a hybrid of Rebel and Polaris technology. After all, the Aurorans have the Thunderforge which is a cross-breed between Auroran and Vell-os technology. Naturally, it would have to be pretty large and menacing.
As for the stats, I think that they need to be something along the lines of the Auroran Carrier or the Pirate Carrier. Maybe a little slower, but with higher shields and armor (due to the Polaris technology). The weaponry and such would be up to you. (I don't think that they would equip the Polaris weaponry, however.)
Anyways, I think that such a ship would be very exciting and would make the Rebel storyline a little more rewarding to play.

GenuinelyJinxed, on Jul 28 2005, 11:38 PM, said:

I don't know how anyone can actually enjoy piloting a Rebel Dragon or a Rebel Destroyer at the end of the game.

<snip>

A Rebel Carrier or something along those lines would be really intriguing.

<snip>

I'm picturing more of a hybrid of Rebel and Polaris technology.
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Have you flown a Carrier Class Rebel Dragon? It has plenty of free space, unless you plan of filling it with railguns and civvie fighter bays, which would just be silly. It's faster than any other capital ship, and is the best looking ship in the whole game.

It is the only Dragon in the stock scenario I like. Try one for yourself. Just make it as fast as possible, and use your afterburner a lot, just as you should for any ship.

Qaanol, on Jul 30 2005, 10:09 AM, said:

Have you flown a Carrier Class Rebel Dragon?

Yes, I have. It still just doesn't feel like a Capital ship to me. I mean, in the Polaris storyline, the Dragon isn't even one of the three biggest ships. In the Rebel storyline, it is the biggest. Just doesn't cut it for me.

The rebels are tight on money, and supplies. Big ships can't take so much advantage of hit and run attacks like the carrier class rebel dragon can. The dragon may not be very capital ship-ish, but it's got maneuvability in addition to fighters and heavy weapons, though not quite as much of the latter two as the bigger vessels. And that's what the rebels need.

But it would be cool for the rebels to have a tricked out carrier that's been upgraded for more mobile fighting. Perhaps some pretty decent speed- 280 ish- and some more acceleration, maneuverability, and shields, at the expense of some armor and space.

GenuinelyJinxed, on Jul 30 2005, 05:59 PM, said:

Yes, I have. It still just doesn't feel like a Capital ship to me. I mean, in the Polaris storyline, the Dragon isn't even one of the three biggest ships. In the Rebel storyline, it is the biggest. Just doesn't cut it for me.
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Polaris Dragons suck. Seriously. The Striker is much better. Emphasis on "much". CCRD is awesome. I'd still rather fly a Nil'kimas Manta any day, but it's not too bad for a heavy ship.

Qaanol, on Aug 1 2005, 08:34 PM, said:

Polaris Dragons suck. Seriously. The Striker is much better. Emphasis on "much". CCRD is awesome. I'd still rather fly a Nil'kimas Manta any day, but it's not too bad for a heavy ship.
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I realise that this isn't exactly a developer's question, but both in the forums and in some of the guides that i've read, it makes comments about piloting such-and-such a varient, but I've seen neither hide nor hair of any ability to do so short of capturing the things. Is this a plug-in necessary job, or what?

And yes, Polaris Dragons do suck. The best ship that I've piloted so far in my rather limited experience (only done the polaris and Vellos strings) is probably my Mod Starbridge. It can outfly anything it can't outshoot with its 6 FPCs and hellhound launcher, it can take a fair bit of punishment, and 7 jumps isn't bad for a non-polaris ship. Mind you, I've got a soft spot for my old Raven...

Thanks for your input, everybody! I now have an idea on what I will start working on, and hope to someday give you guys a cool new ship. Thanks again for your help.

i think that there should be pirate and/or rebel abominations, which would be faster than auraron abominations and have about 150 tons of weapon space, and would be filled with as much weaponry as possible: hellhound missle launchers, ion cannons, fusion pulse weaponry, railguns, and maybe even a fighter bay.

i also think that there should be starbases, unable to move but would have more weaponry(turrets, missles, and fighter bays) than an entire fleet of warships. you wouldnt be able to buy them, so there should be missions where you have to destroy a starbase.

Definitely a Rebel Abomination. Definitely not a Rebel Aurora carrier... something that falls between a Patrol Boat and a Destroyer... kind of like a RAGE gunboat.

Maybe with a Rebel-tweaked version of FPC/FPB.

I'd like to see a new graphic for a space suit type figure from top down, with large glowy trails from some kind of propulsion field/aura and a massive nasty beam weapon emitting from it's fist. Make it really fast and accelerate well, with massive shielding power and great regeneration. Give it about 10 armor. Make it inertialess. And need a whole series of upgrades to configure for individual taste.

Thats my Vell-Os T0. Doesn't need a javelin anymore. Simply grabs some breathable atmosphere with mind power, and teleports into space. Starship? Yeah, we'll rip that sucker in half. "Crushing TK Fist!"
Hmm, cruiser. Here, teleport the heart of a star, beam style. "Deadly Stellar Fusion Strike!"
Fighters bugging me? Ok, TK grab one, dice it into bite sized chunks and then spew them out along all 3 axis equdistantly spaced. "Expanding Bloom Defense!"

T0 Vell-os should be fearsome. My T0 pilot feels wimpy :rolleyes:

Is there a way to accelerate sideways? Would be neat to have a T0 Vell-os space guy that can strafe...

Well, I guess it's too late for input, but I always wanted a ship that was cooler and better than a Starbridge. Since I have just started watching Firefly on SciFi, that would be a cool ship, but with Guns. I don't know how you'd do it, but it would be neet to have a ship that doesn't have to reverse direction to slow down.

Hopefully you come up with an idea that gives the basic 'bridge a run for its money

bloodpuff, on Aug 2 2005, 02:50 PM, said:

Is there a way to accelerate sideways? Would be neat to have a T0 Vell-os space guy that can strafe...
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Strafing... come to think of it, can anyone confirm whether you can fire to only one side? If so, that would do it, but... no other secondary weapons...

No, it's impossible. But notice that fighters in formation strafe. It pisses me off. Imagine how useful it would be in combat!