| Author |
Ship Class Talents |
Danek Ma`arna C`arns
Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 26, 2004
Posts: 102
From: Atlanta
|  Posted: 2013-03-14 11:12
I still cannot figure out the point of most of these talents
"- Scouts
-- Talent: 2 extra E-War
- Frigates
-- Talent:2 extra E-War
- Transports
-- Talent: extra Armor and Bombs
- Engineers
-- Talent: more Armor, Drone bay and Utility Beam!
- Destroyers
-- Talent: always carry a couple of extra Beams
- Supplies
-- Talent: extra Armor and point-defense beam, but lose an engine!
- Cruisers
-- Talent: always carry an E-War device
- Dreadnoughts
-- Talent: extra E-War device
- Stations
-- Talent: Wormhole Drive
Why are Supplies and Engineers separate ship classes. They perform the same basic function. Current models include both capabilities on the same ship. All reason says they should use module for both purposes.
The single, stated, only function of the Scout or Corvette class ship is to teach new players the game. Why are you then bombarding these new players with several different ships (five different Tier 1 single role scouts) that they worry over not picking the "best" one. All the game needs is one scout. 2 Cannons, 1 PD, 1 Bomb. Just the basics of Combat.
Frigates are another class that does not need Tiers, it needs only a single multirole ship... the Support Frigate. You tried, and from, the above mini quote, failed to make the Supply and Engineer interesting. The situation still remained that the those ships would only see starlight when they were directly needed, and the person pulling it would pull the highest tier available to them... we do not have enough ship slots to worry about the needs of more drones verses more engines or any other such complete nonsense.
Build a frigate... give it Build/Supply/Long range PD en masse for fleet support/ and massive EWAR capability. You have a fairly nice thing going on with the multiple different types of ECM/ECCM. The issue, we only use one or two kinds except to "try it out" because they are the most reliable, and we cannot usually change it when we need to. Solution, make the Ship have a set EWAR base value, put ALL of the ewar options on the Support Frigate, and the ship can use whichever it needs, whenever, but only one at a time of course. Need long range ECCM? Done. Targetted ECCM? Longrange shuts off, Targetted Turns on. Carrier or Missile ship getting PDed now, switch to the ECM you need.
Now you have a ship that can EWAR as needed, build plats, resupply ships, and protect them from Fighters and missiles. IE, not completely useless most of the time, not boring ALL of the time. As for a combat frigate... if we had a decade of playtesting experience saying frigates were hard for larger vessels to kill, then the existence of a frigate designed to hunt other support frigates would make sense. We have the opposite... frigates die easily. There is no need of a combat frigate.
Destroyers get beams... for what purpose. Destroyers are combat vessels with thinner skin and more speed than their foes. Destroyers need Long range, heavy hitting torpedos and enough auxgens to keep them going. Mutiple roles are great, but all should have these. However, with closejump, I am still not certain there is a reason any military would bother to build these space coffins that seem to serve no purpose save for ending promising young careers...
For the cruisers and Dreads, skip the EWAR... that is the domain of the frigate. Come up with a different bonus for each. Everyone has a pretty good idea of the combat mechanics of cruisers and dreads, and their current layouts are already pretty good starting points. However, No dread should have the escort role... they should be dependant on Frigates or Escort roled Cruisers/Destroyers. Basically, at some point, you have to offer up a reason for the smaller ships to exist.
As for stations, they kind of pick up where the frigate leaves off, with PD/Build/Supply... but they already get command modules, repair fields, and bristling weapons to replace the EWAR capability. But if all stations are techincally inherently command role, doesn't that make the Station bonus of a wormhole... unneeded?
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Talien
Marshal
Templar Knights
Joined: May 11, 2010
Posts: 2044
From: Michigan
| Posted: 2013-03-14 14:34
Scouts are the most underrated ships in the game. 3 or 4 of them can easily take down a Dreadnought provided the people flying them aren't clueless and get into beam range, but even if they do and get killed it doesn't matter since you lose no pres.
A multirole Frigate like you suggest is not possible as they don't have the necessary layout points available. It wouldn't be practical anyway, it would be so ineffective at any one role that it would likely never be used.
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Zero28
Grand Admiral
Joined: August 25, 2006
Posts: 591
| Posted: 2013-03-14 14:38
Engi and Supply both have 2 very different roles one builds planets and plats, the other resupply and repair friendly ships
[ This Message was edited by: Zero28 on 2013-03-14 14:38 ]
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Incinarator
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 24, 2010
Posts: 237
| Posted: 2013-03-14 18:36
Quote:
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On 2013-03-14 11:12, Moghedan wrote:
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Engineers have more build drones than supplies, and are more geared to building. Supplies have more rep drones than engineers, and are more geared to repairing ships and tanking damage during a fight. Good enough reason to make two different classes.
Making a "multirole" anything is just begging for that ship to be crap, and that includes corvettes. Besides, bombarding the newbies with a corvette that has everything on it would be disorienting, and some people DO still like to have corvette duels, you know.
Frigates are the same thing as corvettes, only larger. A support all around frigate would suck so much because it couldn't do any of its various tasks well at all.
Destroyers need beams for PD purposes, since they're really the smallest class of ship that ever gets hit by missiles. This especially applies to point defense destroyers. Also, assault destroyers are still viable for killing enemy small ships (non assault cruisers, other destroyers, frigates) and they use mostly beams for these smaller targets.
I can't exactly argue with you that dreads and cruisers need to be dependent on the smaller ships to be effective, but leaving them totally without EWAR defenses would be kind of silly. Realistically, these ships would still have EWAR in real life, but for gameplay purposes you could simply make them far less effective at EWAR (ie give corvettes and frigs far more/effective EWAR modules).
Stations are slated to not be drivable anymore (correct me if I'm wrong) and the WH device makes it possible to cross distances that would take multiple HMA jumps, so if you can't fly it'd be far more effective to just get roughly within where you want to go, then just jump to it. Also, part of the command role of stations is the moving of large fleets through wormholes into and out of hostile battle zones.
[ This Message was edited by: Fatal Incinarator |SoT| on 2013-03-14 19:00 ]
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Danek Ma`arna C`arns
Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 26, 2004
Posts: 102
From: Atlanta
| Posted: 2013-03-14 19:11
Supplies and Engineers are seperate because they have always been seperate, not for any reason. One or the other having more of one type is a pointless arguement. Beside, I am nto sure you understand, I am proposing eliminating BOTH classes as seperate ships and rolling all of their functions into the Frigate. In doing so, you can make one ship that is not completely boring to play and mostly useless except in certain situations.
Regardless of point value, if the modules are being tightly controlled to only a couple of ships, you can make the point value of the build/supply module zero, and just spend the "point value" on EWAR/PD. Since we are tightly controlling EWAR, you can spend ALL the points on PD.
The point is to make the frigate a viable ship, of which it is not currently.
I really don't see the addition of a bomb on a Corvette as making it multirole as much as giving a new player options and making a bomber spawnable at the Scenario gate. You can still duel with it.
Corvettes are not underrated. 4 Corvettes can take down an AFK dread in about an hour and a half. I am, of course, exaggerating. Regardless of the validity of your claims, those 4 people could also kill the dread in 4 cruisers, or 4 dreads... and do it more quickly and far safer. Given that Darkspace rarely gives you the option of having a 4 to 1 ratio in playerbase AND a target that will stick around, your point is fairly meaningless.
No, the Destroyers do NOT need Beams for PD. This just shows you have no understanding of the changes. Beams will no longer be PD. PD will be a seperate module... ChemLasers can no longer PD. ChamLasers can no longer be swapped out for PD. PD laser slots are PD lasers only.
EWAR on every ship just leads to EWAR's current state, being useless. EWAR as a single small ship's role makes it possible to make EWAR meaningful without being OP. Regardless of realism, concessions have to be made to add fun.
Maybe you do not fully understand the concept. Do you know why Darkspace has population that can be counted on the digits of the average family of four? It's because most people will not put up with then endless BS that is Darkspace up to the level of about the assault cruisers. There is a little leeway in some factions, but from the time you start to about 1st rear, you are absolutely useless in the DS universe. That kind of design might fly for old UO and EQ players, but that was 12 years ago. It is far past time to modernize that thinking.
Every single ship on the loadout needs to have a defined purpose and fill a need that actually exists in DS. Not some fanciful idea of dualing frigates... every single ship needs to have a reason that the faction would build it in the era of Dreadnaughts... either it can fight Dreadnaughts, or it can provide some service the Dread cannot for itself... AND... yes, AND it has to be able to do enough that the player does not log out from boredom. It has to be fun.
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Incinarator
Chief Marshal
Joined: May 24, 2010
Posts: 237
| Posted: 2013-03-14 19:20
Quote:
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On 2013-03-14 19:11, Moghedan wrote:
Supplies and Engineers are seperate because they have always been seperate, not for any reason. One or the other having more of one type is a pointless arguement. Beside, I am nto sure you understand, I am proposing eliminating BOTH classes as seperate ships and rolling all of their functions into the Frigate. In doing so, you can make one ship that is not completely boring to play and mostly useless except in certain situations.
Regardless of point value, if the modules are being tightly controlled to only a couple of ships, you can make the point value of the build/supply module zero, and just spend the "point value" on EWAR/PD. Since we are tightly controlling EWAR, you can spend ALL the points on PD.
The point is to make the frigate a viable ship, of which it is not currently.
I really don't see the addition of a bomb on a Corvette as making it multirole as much as giving a new player options and making a bomber spawnable at the Scenario gate. You can still duel with it.
Corvettes are not underrated. 4 Corvettes can take down an AFK dread in about an hour and a half. I am, of course, exaggerating. Regardless of the validity of your claims, those 4 people could also kill the dread in 4 cruisers, or 4 dreads... and do it more quickly and far safer. Given that Darkspace rarely gives you the option of having a 4 to 1 ratio in playerbase AND a target that will stick around, your point is fairly meaningless.
No, the Destroyers do NOT need Beams for PD. This just shows you have no understanding of the changes. Beams will no longer be PD. PD will be a seperate module... ChemLasers can no longer PD. ChamLasers can no longer be swapped out for PD. PD laser slots are PD lasers only.
EWAR on every ship just leads to EWAR's current state, being useless. EWAR as a single small ship's role makes it possible to make EWAR meaningful without being OP. Regardless of realism, concessions have to be made to add fun.
Maybe you do not fully understand the concept. Do you know why Darkspace has population that can be counted on the digits of the average family of four? It's because most people will not put up with then endless BS that is Darkspace up to the level of about the assault cruisers. There is a little leeway in some factions, but from the time you start to about 1st rear, you are absolutely useless in the DS universe. That kind of design might fly for old UO and EQ players, but that was 12 years ago. It is far past time to modernize that thinking.
Every single ship on the loadout needs to have a defined purpose and fill a need that actually exists in DS. Not some fanciful idea of dualing frigates... every single ship needs to have a reason that the faction would build it in the era of Dreadnaughts... either it can fight Dreadnaughts, or it can provide some service the Dread cannot for itself... AND... yes, AND it has to be able to do enough that the player does not log out from boredom. It has to be fun.
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If you are just going to throw the point system out of the window like that, there's no point in ever using it in the first place. Assuming we AREN'T going to throw it out, there is no way a frigate would be as effective as either a supply ship or an engineer. I'd like to see a support frigate though, it would be pretty cool.
Yeah, I'm not really going to argue the corvette anymore, simply because you are right in that they don't ever really get used anymore, sadly. I'd still not like to see the corvette be a hybrid ship so it maintains a degree of functionality though. Corvettes need to get super torpedoes that kill dreads, lol.
Yeah, I forgot that they were changing that, but yes ASSAULT DESTROYERS would still need beams for the reasons I mentioned. PD destroyers would not need them anymore, no.
EWAR is broken anyway, so the EWAR argument is kind of invalid. However, I DO agree with you, I don't know why you don't seem to realize that.
Darkspace is dying because players are lazy these days and don't want to have to deal with a dynamic game like darkspace is, working their way up ranks to the point where they are ever useful. Yes, the smaller ships need to be buffed so that noobs can actually partake in the game while making any kind of real contribution... but that's an argument that has been beaten dead against the devs heads.
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Ignorance
Grand Admiral
Joined: October 27, 2012
Posts: 85
| Posted: 2013-03-14 21:19
Ow. Me head herts...so...much...contradiction in this arguement.
So, if I am hearing this right, you want a supply frig, to leave the PD to the assault ships that actually use them, throw EWAR in the garbage can for incinerator to eat, and ignore corvettes completely?
Come on, you gotta give the new players SOMETHING to work with.
Seems to me like the command station AT LEAST should keep the EWAR, given 3 ECCM'S is enough to reveal shrouds; and at least the command dreadnoughts for the factions.
Supply frigate? What difference would that make? You have a beginning supply ship with good armor and a fast top speed, with 1 drone. Then you have an advanced one with 10inch thick duct tape armor and a slower top speed and 2 drones. What would the frigate have? More speed and more armor and 2 drones or something? Sounds like the tier system solves this issue.
And umm...if its a destroyer with NO PD, dont call it a PD destroyer!
Just sayin...
[ This Message was edited by: Pip squeak on 2013-03-14 21:20 ]
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DiepLuc
Chief Marshal
Joined: March 23, 2010
Posts: 1187
| Posted: 2013-03-14 22:11
Quote:
| On 2013-03-14 19:11, Moghedan wrote:
Maybe you do not fully understand the concept. |
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I would suggest you to read Ship tiers and You again and put question there. For your comprehension.
You ask why there are going to be many ships serve a single purpose and you confirm a multirole is enough. The "multirole" you say is actually the tier III ship, and it does not cover all the purposes we need. As ship serves a single purpose, it excels at that role much better than the multirole does. Say, you have a tier I bomber frigate with 2 bomb gadgets and tier II bomber frigate with 1 bomb gadget, it means it will take double the time to bomb a planet with tier II in compare with the tier I. Longer time = higher risk.
You think there is no need of combat frigate, beam destroyer... because you seldom meet the guy who love them and the guy who exploit them. You also forget there is a scenario that combat frigate does not meet cruiser/dread. In a nutshell, you ignore circumstances which exist in all DS servers. Developers have to care all of them.
Does that cover your issue?
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Novacat
Grand Admiral
Joined: October 30, 2001
Posts: 2337
From: Starleague Cache
| Posted: 2013-03-15 08:45
The main factors that bother me about ship class talents....
1: On its own, it fails to solve a lot of the metagame problems that Darkspace has.
2: Some talents are absolutly necessary no matter what your playstyle and fleet composition, which results in people being forced to pick talents they may otherwise not want to. The main culprits are Engineer and Supply Ship.
3: There are not enough players to have a well-rounded fleet of mixed talents. The average number of players online per faction is less than the total number of available talents in this new system, and many talents are completely worthless without secondary support.
4: Some talents give very little or no prestiege, which makes them especially unviable for newer players.
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Ignorance
Grand Admiral
Joined: October 27, 2012
Posts: 85
| Posted: 2013-03-15 15:53
Sounds like every complaint ends up with someone saying something like "fails to solve many of the problems DS has".
Here's my idea:
Create a new post labeled something along the lines of: List of problems DS has.
Then the developers and admins have something condensed to work with, instead of all the complaints scattered among the forum. I HIGHLY recommend that said post be LOCKED by the author so that the devs aren't overloaded, and so nothing is repeated by people who are too lazy to read. Simple list of the problems that you have in a single post, thats all.
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Zero28
Grand Admiral
Joined: August 25, 2006
Posts: 591
| Posted: 2013-03-15 16:51
Quote:
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On 2013-03-15 08:45, Novacat wrote:.
There are not enough players to have a well-rounded fleet of mixed talents. The average number of players online per faction is less than the total number of available talents in this new system, and many talents are completely worthless without secondary support.
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you cant attemp to balance a game over the number of player you have. If you balance the game for a low number of player and then withing few weeks/month/year ou got a large ammount of player that got in, wich means the balance no longer works since you got large amount of player, and therefor have to redo the system again
so stop sayign anything bout low player base, they can't work with that
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Novacat
Grand Admiral
Joined: October 30, 2001
Posts: 2337
From: Starleague Cache
| Posted: 2013-03-15 19:32
Quote:
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On 2013-03-15 16:51, Zero28 wrote:
to balance a game over the number of player you have. If you balance the game for a low number of player and then withing few weeks/month/year ou got a large ammount of player that got in, wich means the balance no longer works since you got large amount of player, and therefor have to redo the system again
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If the game is not fun with the few players it has, people are not going to stay long enough for the playerbase to build up to a point where there are enough people to fill all the roles.
Also, my main argument is not to build the entire system around having only a few players, but that there should be multirole ships that cover mandatory jobs. For example, you need a supply ship and an engineering ship no matter what, it would be better to have a ship that does both as it would free up manpower. The current Command dreads can somewhat do this with build drones, tractor beams (towing supply plats) and decent armor/firepower, but the future Command Dreads lose their tractor beam.
Like it or not, the game does need a few stopgap measures in order to allow a balanced force with only ~5 players in a faction.
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Create a new post labeled something along the lines of: List of problems DS has.
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Point taken.
[ This Message was edited by: Novacat on 2013-03-15 19:34 ]
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Zero28
Grand Admiral
Joined: August 25, 2006
Posts: 591
| Posted: 2013-03-15 19:43
Quote:
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On 2013-03-15 19:32, Novacat wrote:
Like it or not, the game does need a few stopgap measures in order to allow a balanced force with only ~5 players in a faction.
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Well that is what you beleive 
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Novacat
Grand Admiral
Joined: October 30, 2001
Posts: 2337
From: Starleague Cache
| Posted: 2013-03-15 19:49
It is what I know. Darkspace has already gone through something like 3-4 ship layout overhauls already. All of them have gone under the assumption that the game would automatically gain more players and thus be self-sustaining, but it has never happened.
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Danek Ma`arna C`arns
Fleet Admiral
Joined: March 26, 2004
Posts: 102
From: Atlanta
| Posted: 2013-03-16 07:47
I'm not immune to the plight of the Scenario server. Please note, the the Corvette still has anti ship weapons.
I just do not see the point of any shipyard building the slightly larger Cannon Armed Frigate with one more gun... or an Assault Frigate that requires a glass hull to get within mating distance. Such ships might be viable for what... the first 30 minutes of the server before the Destroyers become available?
Be honest. How many of your priorly 6, currently 8, ship slots do you have currently, and are willing to fill with a support ship? There only needs to be one. That ship needs to be reasonably viable.
Your point value system may or may not need to be scrapped. It comes down to what is the point system based upon?How much is each ship worth? How much does each component cost? Why are ship class locked items like build given a point value? Does the point system take into account the incredibly stupid level system created in 1.483? IE... do level 10 cannons cost more than level 4 cannons? Does it cost more at the same ratio that the levels add power, in raw damage and range? Don't forget the longer the range, the faster the projectile, making higher level weapons more accurate as well. Does it account for all those things?
If you aren't aware, the "level system" should never have been applied to weapons... just to armor, hull, and shields, and to should not affect regen.
And yes, I know we have been beating the devs over the head with "Make smaller ships viable" forever. Seems like every time we get one to even think about it, they quit.
And, I am sorry, but if you still believe that there are people out there like us, that will play for a period of time against the odds while totally useless until you get to a dread... there aren't. How many of those games from 2001 still exist?
Viability and fun needs to be in every level of the game.
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