I decided to think of a new system of unit balance. Here it is...

Basic Unit: Medium Carrier
- turreted ammo-based weapon
- good shielding (for a capital ship)
- decent maneuverability, good speed
- vulnerable to bombers, fighter missiles
- refeuls fighters and bombers

Fighter:
- high maneuverability, high speed
- medium shielding
- forward-firing energy weapon
- small number of guided missiles, which are agile, good damage
- vulnerable to gunships

Bomber:
- high maneuverability, medium speed
- good shielding
- turreted, weak energy weapon
- ammo-based forward-firing weapon, low speed but high power
- very low number of powerful forward-firing torpedos, long range
- vulnerable to fighters

Gunship:
- medium maneuverability, medium speed
- energy-based turret, high power and speed but medium range
- decent shielding
- vulnerable to bomber torpedos, medium carriers

Gunship mk 2:
- only in special missions
- also launches 2 heavy fighters
- can refuel ships

Heavy Fighter:
- fighter with more ammo, shielding
- also has bomber torpedos

The basic target is the medium carrier/gunship 2. The fighters and bombers will have small reactors and the shielding will be proportionately dropped (each ship has half the shields, each shot does half the damage) so that each percent of shielding costs more energy. So, if you lose your carriers, you're screwed. The refeuling isn't feasible yet - that's next on my agenda as a Hera feature - but it would be very interesting.

And no, the medium carriers don't launch fighters and bombers, they support them. There aren't enough weapon slots for refeuling, a turret, and two launch bays. It would also let them be even more support-oriented - that free weapon slot might become a minelayer or an assault team... whatever.

Feel absolutely compelled to comment.

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Replicant
www.axis.n3.net

Interesting. But surely you could have a Medium Carrier, which can launch the fighters, and an Assault Carrier, which launches the Bombers? And then maybe a Light Carrier which launches Neither, but behaves more like a smaller ship while still refueling them.

Am I making sense here?

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Sundered Angel ,
The One and Only

How about some more major ships?
Super Carrier:

• very slow, slower than an average carrier
• extreme shielding, 2x that of an average carrier
• can launch 10 cruisers, to make up for its close to non-manueverability
• very high powered turreted weapon, also to help make up for its slowness
• an ultra high energy forward weapon, any ship dumb enough to get it front of it probably deserves to be destroyed
  These monsters should probably be about as rare as gateships, but im not sure, these would probably not be as powerful as they sound. They are practically just mobile moons with built-in defenses. I also think it would be cool if "Super" were a classification for each type of ship, just like "heavy" and "light" are. I dunno, I just like looking for excuses to desighn more ships, and powerful ones at that!

What I really want is more high end capital ships. Not necessarily more power, but more turreted weapons. Low level combat with fights and cruisers is cool, but I always loved the big lumbering battles in EV/O with lots of capital ships.

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Pax - Drew Harry
sagitar@earthlink.net
(url="http://"http://www.axis.n3.net/")Ares Axis - axis.n3.net(/url)

"...they say that every five minutes someone dies in a car accident, but how often are there seven hundred and sixty one armless and legless corpses in one hangar?" - Terminal 2, Where are monsters in dreams, Marathon Infinity

Have you ever seen 20 human carriers battling 20 human carriers with no fighters, gunships, destroyers, etc...
just carriers?

It's awsome. I made a fake little scenario to simulate this, and it was pretty cool.

I love catital starship combat! So massive, so organized, so... lumbering!

-Second-in-Command Commander Slug

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Sorry about your starship, Captain ga'Krüg, but as we say on Earth :
'C'est la vie'!
-Admiral Williams,
Shortly after the defeat of the 3rd Gaitori fleet.

I agree, but what is even better is the same 20 on 20 ship arrangement accept around 200 little fighters flying arround in between, zapping each other.

I always thought that a ship arangement like this would be cool:

Fleet carriers
large, unmanueverable, slow, they have a rapidfire, turreted defence cannon and then the remaining spaces would be used for bombers and fighters.

Assault carriers
smaller, faster, more manueverable, carries a smaller number of bombers and the fighters are replaced with a turreted missile or some sort of anti capital ship weapon, perhaps a beam. (four spaces for weapons would be nice here)

Escort carrier: essentialy a scaled down version of the fleet carrier, has mostly fighters but a few bombers.

Supply ship

only 4 fighters and two bombers with manueverability and speed equal to that of the fleet carrier. (horrible) weak shields and no defensive weaponry. The perpose of them is that they can regenerate fighters and bombers at a slow, yet steady rate (or, "manufacture them") The idea, of course is that since fighters are so small, the matterials that are needed can be mined from small asteroids and parts that can not be created from space garbage can easly be stored onboard supply ships. In this manner you could keep your supply ships at a defended point, say by your planet and orbital defenses, and have them launch all their fighters and bombers to join your fleet. Of course, at the rate you loose fighters you will not have an overabundance of them for long after you enter battle so it would make sence to be able to build them with out tieing up any of your shipyards.

-Walter-

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If I ever make a plug, every ship will be capturable to make ATRs more useful... That'll hopefully be possible.

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Do you go to the country?
It isn't very far.
There's people there who will hurt you
because of who you are.

-Coffee and TV

I started making a plugin a long time ago....

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Sorry about your starship, Captain ga'Krüg, but as we say on Earth :
'C'est la vie'!
-Admiral Williams,
Shortly after the defeat of the 3rd Gaitori fleet.

The first time I saw that Gaitori carrier I thought that it would be a masscannon orbital bomber or something like that, but it turned out to be the worst carrier in Ares. So I have been thinking of this super(dupermegagigaeksapetatsettajotta (am I over acting?!?)) powerful ship with somewhat apocalyptic (but slow firing) weaponry, maybe a planet killer or atleast an orbital bomber. I have one called Harmagedon in this boardgame my friend had made up (GREAT GAME).

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Strange just a moment ago I was flying through a dense asteroid field but now I feel quite cold And just what happened to my
H-Cruiser?!?

Orbital bombardment would be amusing, but problematic... should it actually damage the planet? Or should it take away resources, acting like a real bombing run? A Death Star weapon would be possible, sure, but probably not a good idea, in single player or multiplayer.

A much more realistic possibility would be long-range flak. I've tried it out as a highly innacurate spread weapon that only works at a certain range - flak shells simply pass through enemy ships without harming them. Only the shrapnel does damage. It's actually very nice, although only a human would be able to use it correctly. A far more long range bombardment is impossible - there's no way to find the right range except by trial and error.

Here's an intersting thought - with the use of filters, which change whether a script is carried out, I could make it so certain weapons did more damage or less damage against certain ships - as if ships had armor (real armor that weak shells would bounce off of) and there were different kinds of weapons. You could fire an armor-piercing rocket and practically take out an armored carrier in one hit (a good armor-piercer makes a building look like swiss cheese after it hits), or try your dinky laser and wait a few millenia while it burns through. This would really be cool, although I would think that applying masses of scripts would slow down weak processors. Imagine that.

Massive filtered scripting = own.

Patrol craft: A little larger and less manueverable than a cruiser, but more maneuverable than a gunship. Medium-power turret, missles, two fighters. No hyperdrive.

Fighter Delivery Rack: A big rack which can hold 20 fighters, but can pick them up as well as release them. No weapons. The purpose of this vessel would be to hyper-ferry fighters to a battle and immediately go back for more fighters.

Shieldship: A giant shield. Very large with five to ten times the shields of a carrier. No hyperdrive. A couple of laser turrets for weapons, perhaps. The point of this vessel is to protect transports and assault transports from flak drones. It would fly in between the flak drone and the transport and absorb all the fire.

Raider: About the size of an HVD. Its main forward firing weapon neutralizes ships for a short period of time. During this period of time, the Raider would pull up next to the enemy ship and use its special weapon: A boarding crew. If it delivered the boarding party before the time was up, the enemy ship would become under the Raider owner's control.

Interdictor Vessel: Just like in Star Wars. Any ship passing near the interdictor vessel while in hyperspace must drop out.

Also, an idea for a device you could build:

Slingshot: Consisting of two spheres. Build them parallell to one another and a beam of energy forms between them. Any ship in normal space that passes across that beam is thrown into hyperspace for about two seconds, even if those ships are not hyperspace capable. You could use this to send transports across long distances very quickly. Also, it can be used as a trap. The beam is only visible to you. one thing that would be handy about this little baby is that the length of the beam is up to you.

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-Traek Cicion of the Taeskor

"Never tell me the odds!"
-Han Solo

Interesting ideas, but Im not sure that very many of those are possible. But something like some of those would be pretty cool.

(quote)Originally posted by Taeskor Cicion:
**
Fighter Delivery Rack: A big rack which can hold 20 fighters, but can pick them up as well as release them. No weapons. The purpose of this vessel would be to hyper-ferry fighters to a battle and immediately go back for more fighters.
**(/quote)

Too bad that's not actually possible. You can't make fighters get picked up.

(quote)
Shieldship: A giant shield. Very large with five to ten times the shields of a carrier. No hyperdrive. A couple of laser turrets for weapons, perhaps. The point of this vessel is to protect transports and assault transports from flak drones. It would fly in between the flak drone and the transport and absorb all the fire.
(/quote)

Too bad that essentially destroys the strategy of levels with flack drones. The whole point is that they're an obstical that has to be overcome not just gone around. Think how easy location location location would be with these. And Replicant, I mean the legitamate way, not the attack rush way.

(quote)
Raider: About the size of an HVD. Its main forward firing weapon neutralizes ships for a short period of time. During this period of time, the Raider would pull up next to the enemy ship and use its special weapon: A boarding crew. If it delivered the boarding party before the time was up, the enemy ship would become under the Raider owner's control.
(/quote)

Now that's a cool idea, but why not just make every ship go neutral when destroyed and let ATRs take them over? That'd be cool, imagins a swarm of gaitori gunships capturing a salrilian carrier...

(quote)
Interdictor Vessel: Just like in Star Wars. Any ship passing near the interdictor vessel while in hyperspace must drop out.
(QUOTE)

Possible and a very cool idea.

(QUOTE)
Slingshot: Consisting of two spheres. Build them parallell to one another and a beam of energy forms between them. Any ship in normal space that passes across that beam is thrown into hyperspace for about two seconds, even if those ships are not hyperspace capable. You could use this to send transports across long distances very quickly. Also, it can be used as a trap. The beam is only visible to you. one thing that would be handy about this little baby is that the length of the beam is up to you.
(/quote)

I don't know, I personally don't really like it, but it's not possible so I'm not worrying.

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yeah, it's gone
fireworks and blown speakers
strobe lights and hurricanes
i'm not here
this isn't happening
i'm not here

-Radiohead, How to disappear completely (and never be found)

Cicion: I like the Raider idea. But instead of an assault team, how bout it docks with the ship like a engineering pod?

Newt: I think if you made it so all the ships are disabled when they die it would make it to easy to capture ships.

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Sir! Our shields are dropping!
_What?!?
They're firing! _ says the lieutenant as a torpedo appears on the view screen.
Well, it seams you won't have the last laugh today Therg. Says Captain Fullers voice over the speakers.
Dang.
The torpedo strikes the ship removing it from the sky in a violent explosion.