It occurs to me that there's another way to do the whole weapons and outfits thing than what we do currently. Currently, most weapons require no energy from your batteries, batteries replenish slowly if at all, and movement (without using afterburners) is free.

Now, I don't know how to change the movement rule, but the rest can be changed. Consider: every ship has inherent energy replenishment that works reasonably quickly, and every weapon uses either energy or ammunition. When you fire your main weapons, your batteries drain slightly; if your reactors aren't up to snuff then you'll only be able to fire a few times before having to wait for the batteries to refill. Add more weapons without upgrading your reactors will just make it worse. Outfitting your ship becomes a balancing act between firepower and sustainability.

You could also have every outfit reduce your ship's speed. This would reflect the difficulty of accelerating heavily-armed ships and make for actual tradeoffs between the "fighter" class and the "heavy gunboat" class.

Jumping effectively becomes free with these ideas, but then again I've never seen a case where ships' range limits could do anything worse to you than forcing you to sit around for a while waiting for your ramscoop to let you jump again, so I don't think that's a big problem.

Incidentally, the reactor idea is not new in the slightest. The first time I saw it was in Tyrian, but I wouldn't be surprised if it shows up elsewhere as well.

This post has been edited by Derakon : 23 March 2006 - 12:00 AM

@derakon, on Mar 22 2006, 05:59 PM, said in Alternate approaches to outfits:

You could also have every outfit reduce your ship's speed. This would reflect the difficulty of accelerating heavily-armed ships and make for actual tradeoffs between the "fighter" class and the "heavy gunboat" class.

This idea would work really well if instead of Acceleration we had Engine Power. This number is the strength of the ships's engines and would be used along with the mass to calculate acceleration. Adding more mass to your ship (outfits, cargo) would automatically reduce your acceleration. It could also come into play when tractor beams are used - rather than one ship latching on to the other and getting towed along, both ships could use their engines and the vectors would be added to see where they actually end up going.
Ah well, dreams are free :rolleyes:

You may find it interesting to read up on Sephil Saga (ev-nova.net thread, very outdated website) as they are doing most of what you are talking about, and a fair amount more. And yes, as of a couple months ago they were still alive.

'Tis a shame about the hypothetical "Engine Power" field, though. It would be quite useful in a number of situations, especially if it was applied properly to AI ships.

Edwards

If you do this from the ground up when you design your plug it's not that hard to do. Just have a guiding idea in mind as you work.

Note that in deep space and even in orbit the effect of an object's actual "weight" (which is a percieved value dependent on nearby gravity sources) is negligible. "Mass" in-game refers to volume.

Edit: Preface: mass is not weight. Weight is a factor of mass and gravity; mass is a factor of density and volume. Weight depends on where you are. Mass is constant everywhere.

Ehh...I always assumed that "mass" was indeed mass. Consider what happens if you're in freefall next to a baseball. You push the baseball. What happens? It moves significantly and you move slightly. Now, replace the baseball with the Empire State building. If you push on that, then you'll get shoved off while the building itself barely moves. Mass doesn't weigh anything in freefall, but it still has inertia (which measures the amount of energy that must be expended to move an object).

As an alternative, consider a light fighter. The ship masses in at five tons, and its engines are capable of generating several gees of acceleration. Now, put a small black hole in the fighter's hold (ignoring the unpleasant side effects involved in black holes; we just want something small and massive). The black hole's sitting there floating in the middle of the hold. When the fighter turn's on its engines, it'll accelerate at several gees...until the black hole, which hasn't moved yet, encounters the rear wall of the hold. At that point, assuming your fighter's hull is strong enough, the fighter comes to an abrupt halt.

You see what I'm getting at? In theory, there's nothing against you getting a cargo expansion pod, then sticking another pod on top of the first, and so on until your ship looks like a huge bumpy banana with an engine and some living quarters tacked onto one end. However, long before you reach that point, your ship will become so massive that its engines aren't capable of manuveuring it at any reasonable speed.

This post has been edited by Derakon : 23 March 2006 - 11:08 PM

@derakon, on Mar 24 2006, 03:07 AM, said in Alternate approaches to outfits:

...until your ship looks like a huge bumpy banana with an engine and some living quarters tacked onto one end...

Who's going to be the first one to create the sprite for this ship?

This post has been edited by Desprez : 23 March 2006 - 11:49 PM

@derakon, on Mar 24 2006, 04:07 PM, said in Alternate approaches to outfits:

Ehh...I always assumed that "mass" was indeed mass. Consider what happens if you're in freefall next to a baseball. You push the baseball. What happens? It moves significantly and you move slightly. Now, replace the baseball with the Empire State building. If you push on that, then you'll get shoved off while the building itself barely moves. Mass doesn't weigh anything in freefall, but it still has inertia (which measures the amount of energy that must be expended to move an object).

You are not alone in that assumption. I'm holding to it, on the basis that it affects knockback and time in hyperspace.