| Author |
483 Q&A... |
Gideon
Cadet
Joined: September 14, 2001
Posts: 4604
From: Oregon, USA
|  Posted: 2004-10-26 14:50
Krim: "First off, what is 1.483 going to entail for Darkspace? What broad sweeping changes are being made?"
Gideon: "Phew...where to start... Well, first off, this is a revision that revolves around ships, the most obvious changes ... There are multiple size/power levels to defensive and tactical systems, ship hulls stats are more diverse between the factions, and weapon arcs are used much more heavily, with a definite move AWAY from full arcs. Also, a serious effort has been made to eliminate our current system of component swapping out being a system of upgrading your ship. We have moved it to a system of specializing your ship for a certain task/play style. Those would be the broad changes."
Krim: "Okay, to be more specific now, what kinds of changes are being made to Defensive Systems?"
Gideon: "Okay, Defensive Systems... Shields and armor are their own slots. Armor now drains power. It is considered to be a technological descendant of Britain's current charged armor projects. Defensive systems have three levels of strength, light, medium, and heavy. These levels are not interchangeable, and help differentiate the different defensive capacities of different types of ships. Careful attention has been attempted to make sure that shields are comparatively more effective than armor for defense, while requiring more power to maintain and/or charge. UGTO has a special armor, the Reflective Armor, that is more effective against energy based attacks, but weaker vs. kinetic attacks. K'Luth posses Bio Armor, which repairs faster than normal armor, and doesn't require additional power to recharge (just maintenance energy to keep "alive") but lacks in HP compared to normal armor."
Krim: "And what about Tactical systems?"
Gideon: "Tactical Systems... There are two basic types of tactical system, beam and weapon. Beam is any kind of beam; weapon is any kind of missile, torpedo, or direct fire projectile. Each (Beam and Weapon) has three size levels, small, medium, and large. Once again, you cannot change components from one size level to another, and beams cannot be exchanged for weapons, or vice versa. Effort has been made to make sure that all tactical systems have a relative balance to each other, so each is attractive in different situations. There are small torps, medium torps, and large torps. The same applies for direct fire weapons (Railguns, Particle Cannons, Psi cannons)."
Krim: What are the differences in size? Range? Strength? Ammo?
Gideon: As you move up the scale, range increases, damage increases, power requirements increase, projectile velocity decreases (representing accuracy), rate of fire decreases, and ammo also decreases. Though, over time, weapons still do more damage as you move up the scale.
Krim: What about engine systems, do they follow a similar pattern?"
Gideon: You still have your basic types of engine: IE, AFE, PFE, and AME. However, they are now more specialized in ability rather than increasing as you go up the scale. IE are average; AFE give low speed, low power, very high hit points; PFE gives low speed, high power, low hit points; AME gives high speed, low power, low hit points. Engines now affect max speed, as well as acceleration. And they no longer provide energy storage to the ship they are on. (Total energy capacity)
Krim: Is it true the PCM is no longer a bomb? Won't that make bombing ineffective with the new rotating planets and bomb limits?"
Gideon: Yes, the PCM is no longer able to damage planets. This has allowed us to adjust its stats to make it an effective ship-to-ship weapon. This is also necessary, because of the really shallow design to planets vs. ships. We need to go back to a basic system (one kind of weapon vs. planets) in order for us to boil this down to its most basic level, while we revamp it. We certainly do NOT want to make bombing ineffective. Rotating planets has caused us to make it so that standard bombs home in on targets. This should eliminate the problems with that, and it is logical a bomb should home. We are also adjusting the other stats on bombs and on planetary defenses, to insure that bombing is still effective even with limitations placed on the number of bombs in play due to server issues. And, yes, the K'Luth will have their own anti-building bomb."
Krim: What is going to happen to the Faction special weapons? Flux, Pulse, and ELF?"
Gideon: Okay, Flux Wave, Pulse Shield, and Auto Hull Repair now occupy the "Special Weapon" slot. The ELF has been moved to the medium beam slot, and its stats have been adjusted to assume that people will be using multiples of them on a ship. Special weapon slots are one per ship, and not all ICC/UGTO ships have one. Additionally, the Pulse Shield has had its recharge rate and range tweaked. Also, Flux Wave will be limited to one per ship, as the special weapon slot only occurs once on any ship, and not on every ship in the game."
Krim: What about the Kluth cloak, any proposed changes to it for 1.483?
Gideon: Well, we are of the opinion that the cloaking device is both too weak, and too strong. This dual issue is tied to it being affected by the overall sig system. So, our solution is to separate it from the sig system. ECM or ECCM of any type will no longer affect the cloaking device. As a trade off, cloaked ships are incapable of using devices other than armor, sub-light engines, reactors, and the special weapon slot do not function while cloaked. Also, having the cloaking device turned on will consume a good deal of power, though all K’Luth ships should be able to generate enough energy to keep the cloaking device up, while being able to move at least at half speed. Another aspect is, once the cloaking device is deactivated, it must stay deactivated for a specific period of time. This time is initially fixed at abou 80 seconds, but we can adjust it to whatever values we want, and adjust it on a ship-to-ship basis if we wish. This means that once the cloaking device is deactivated, the K'Luth ship is committed for a certain ammount of time. A ship has to de-cloak to use any devices not in these categories. We feel this will make the cloaking device an excellent first-strike device, but will not allow K’Luth ships to function with impunity while cloaked.
Krim: You mentioned changes to hulls of ship types, what other general changes are being made to the ship classes themselves, will we see more potent dreadnaughts, more nimble frigates? What kinds of changes are going to be made to each ship class?
Gideon: Okay, well, general changes... The two weakest ship classes in DS are the Frigates and the Dreadnoughts. So, those have gotten particular attention. We've made effort to turn the smaller ships (Frigates and Scouts) into high speed skirmishing vessels. The larger ships (Cruisers and Dreads) are slow speed formal warships, and so have had their designs adjusted to reflect this. Destroyers are sort of a middle ground. In a nutshell: As you go up the scale, your survival relies more on defensive components and hull points, and less on maneuverability. So, hull stats have been adjusted to reflect this."
-Scouts have two basic types: Scouts for Intel (lots of ecm/eccm/scanners), and Corvettes for combat (weapons rather than electronic warfare devices).
-Frigates are intended to be high speed and highly maneuverable attack and escort ships. Get in, hit your target, and get out.
-Destroyers are the first of the warships. They have probably more variety than the other classes of ships. They are fast and maneuverable, but significantly slower and less maneuverable than frigates. They have good defenses, but a great deal less than a cruiser. An all around class of ships."
-Cruisers are primarily combat ships. They are designed around heavy combat, against heavy targets
-Dreadnoughts are very slow, but pack the largest wallop of any ship in the fleet. They are the backbone of a fleet, but their lack of speed and maneuverability limits them in what they can do. They are still probably the nastiest ships in the game, for straight up one on one combat."
-Stations are too slow to be effective combat ships The particulars of a combat are generally defined by the fastest ship, and stations are NOT the fastest. So, their devices are arranged more around point defenses, and taking down smaller ships that can zoom up to them. They also have fighters for long-range combat support, and reloads and builds, for support and planetary engineering. Stations also have, by far, the most defenses and hit-points out of any ship
Krim: You mentioned reloads and also builds on stations. What about supply ships, engineering ships and the Command ships: Ganglia, Command Dread, and Command Carrier. How will their roles change?
Gideon: Supply ships and stations have reload slots. Engineering ships and stations have build slots. The dreadnoughts have neither. Instead, they have been adjusted to make them combination combat/bombing/carrier ships."
Krim: What about Special slots, Tractor Scouts, and reactors?
Gideon: Special slots, as we know them, are gone. Pulse shield became special weapon ECM/ECCM/Scanner became EW (Electronic Warfare) Tractor beam became Tractor slot. ELF beam became Medium Beam Additionally; there is only ONE reactor now. The Auxiliary Power Generator. Since upgrades to components will be handled through a different method, the need for three reactors (each one a progressive upgrade from the ones below it) was redundant. Also, ships destroyer and up have a reactor or two...or three. Though, the K'Luth ships lack in numbers of reactors. Tractor beams only appear on certain ships, and there is only one per these ships. This is temporary, until we build rules in the game engine to handle tractor beams more logically. Then, they will be redistributed through appropriate ship classes again. Oh, and supply ships each have one tractor beam.
Krim: What about the new Fighter Interface, and New (Old) Platform systems, how do you foresee them altering game play?"
Gideon: Well, I foresee the fighter changes letting smaller number of fighters be as effective, or more effective, than the numbers we currently see in game. This is important, since the number of active fighters at any one time is now limited by the server. I foresee platforms being used to both shore up defenses in some areas, and to establish supply bases in deep space. Possibly in enemy territory. There are many challenges to overcome with platforms, however. Aside from the many exploits that could come out of their use, platforms would be arranged on the flat plane like player ships. They would shoot each other when trying to hit a target. So, that will be our most challenging addition to the game. Platforms will also let engineers have a more ready supply of build points in the MV. Since planets are generally fully built, and in the relatively near future building up planets will be handled a little differently than now. Our real enemy on this issue is time. We want to start moving the patch process a bit fast. Our goal is to include platforms with 1.483. Fighters would get a general overhaul, but the specific AI and command changes to them would probably have to wait until a later patch. If we wind up running out of time, then platforms will have to be pushed back as well. We will see.
Krim: What about mines, are they changing at all for 1.483?
Gideon: Mines are going to be medium weapon slot. The ICC no longer comes with one mine on every ship. This is in anticipation of several changes to how the game treats mines and minefields post v1.483. Also, we will be experimenting with a "homing mine". One for each faction, corresponding to each type of mine. Finally, we will be careful in the balancing of mines. They will be starting off very weak in the beta, and when we have balanced straight up ship combat, we will then be tweaking their power up as necessary to make them more effective."
Krim: All right, we've talked about general sweeping changes of systems/gadgets as well as ship classes, but how will the factions differ from each other?
Gideon: Well, let me see... UGTO ships have good power systems. Moderate hit points, low maneuverability (due to the mass of their armor), and good top speeds. They tend to field well-rounded ships. ICC ships have moderate power systems (due to slightly lower power distribution tech), high hit points, moderate maneuverability (due to shields having less mass), and low top speeds. They tend to field ships that concentrate on staying power over offensive punch. More of their power is dedicated to their defenses (due to shields), so there is less to go around for offensive components. That's why they still use railguns and such (which are effective weapons in their own right). K'Luth ships have poor power systems (much of their power is generated psionically rather than from engines), low hit points (lighter construction), and the best maneuverability and highest speed. Their ships tend to concentrate their firepower on the fore arc, with much less to the port and starboard, and practically nothing aft. Their defenses follow suit, providing them with the most on the fore, less on the flanks, and least aft. Their tactics tend to concentrate on approaching quietly (through the cloaking device), striking hard, and if they should have to fall back, relying on their initial strike to damage their target enough that their flanks and rear are not over exposed, while their speed and maneuverability sees them safely away from the enemy. Additionally, K'Luth technology possesses weapons (components) that do the most damage per shot, and take the least power to charge. However, they have very long charge times, making them actually weaker in a standup fight over time. Hit and run, and wolf-pack tactics are what they live off of."
Krim: And the biggest question on everyone's mind. When will we be graced by v1.483's changes?"
Gideon: Heh, well, this interview won’t be posted, until Faustus officially starts coding in changes for it. I don’t know how long that will take, but I do not suspect it will take too long. After that, the dev team has to assemble the ships in our resourcer, and then we can bring it to an open beta. It will remain in beta for a good amount of time, while it is thoroughly tested by the player community. After that, it will be moved to live.”
Krim: Well, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions as you already have so many times over, I’m sure I speak for most of the Darkspace community when I say thanks for all the hard work you're putting forth to try and balance the game effectively and fairly.
Gideon: No problemo. I'm glad to help."
[ This Message was edited by: Gideon on 2004-10-27 10:21 ]
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...and lo, He looked upon His creation, and said, "Fo shizzle."
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Xilaratu
Cadet
Joined: May 06, 2004
Posts: 745
From: Florida
| Posted: 2004-10-26 14:54
omg that was long, yet just what I needed.
EDIT: Woot, first post.
[ This Message was edited by: The Darkspacian {=FI=} on 2004-11-13 23:30 ]
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Move like water.
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Tbone
Grand Admiral
Joined: July 21, 2001
Posts: 1756
From: Vancouver
| Posted: 2004-10-26 15:06
Quote:
| Gideon: Heh, well, this interview won’t be posted, until Faustus officially starts coding in changes for it. I don’t know how long that will take, but I do not suspect it will take too long. After that, the dev team has to assemble the ships in our resourcer, and then we can bring it to an open beta. It will remain in beta for a good amount of time, while it is thoroughly tested by the player community. After that, it will be moved to live.” |
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So I assume from that that 1.483 has been officially started and is in the process of the initial stages of the code?
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Gideon
Cadet
Joined: September 14, 2001
Posts: 4604
From: Oregon, USA
| Posted: 2004-10-26 15:12
Quote:
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On 2004-10-26 15:06, Tbone {Hammer Time!} wrote:
So I assume from that that 1.483 has been officially started and is in the process of the initial stages of the code?
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You assume correctly.
[ This Message was edited by: Gideon on 2004-10-26 15:14 ]
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...and lo, He looked upon His creation, and said, "Fo shizzle."
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Fattierob
Vice Admiral
Joined: April 25, 2003
Posts: 4059
| Posted: 2004-10-26 15:34
and then, their was much cheering.....
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Xilaratu
Cadet
Joined: May 06, 2004
Posts: 745
From: Florida
| Posted: 2004-10-26 16:13
^ there*
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Move like water.
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BackSlash
Marshal
Galactic Navy
Joined: March 23, 2003
Posts: 11183
From: Bristol, England
| Posted: 2004-10-26 16:23
*Breathes a sigh of relief*
Gideon, you've done so much for DarkSpace and have never really seen the thanks you deserve...
*Kisses Gideon*
Sorry Coleen...it had to be done...expect many a kiss for Gideon now  .
THANK YOU GIDEON!
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Axianda The Royal
Fleet Admiral
Terra Squadron
Joined: November 20, 2001
Posts: 4273
From: Axianda
| Posted: 2004-10-26 16:30
Hot dang that was just what the Docter ordered...
man that was a great read..... realy nicely done Krim.
oh and foryou Gid awesome how you explain it.... now get back to work 
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- Axi
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Pope
Fleet Admiral
Joined: June 11, 2002
Posts: 2449
From: World of tomorrow
| Posted: 2004-10-26 17:12
And the peasants rejoyced
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Xilaratu
Cadet
Joined: May 06, 2004
Posts: 745
From: Florida
| Posted: 2004-10-26 18:08
And then Trogdor burninated them.
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-RevenG-
Raven Warriors
Joined: March 03, 2004
Posts: 2673
| Posted: 2004-10-26 18:22
And a million voices screamed out at once.
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Fatal Command (CO)
Chief Marshal
Fatal Squadron
Joined: November 27, 2002
Posts: 1159
From: Back in Texas and noticing some ppl are like canoes.....they need to be paddled.
| Posted: 2004-10-26 18:27
HOT DAMN.....CANT WAIT FOR IT TO GET TO BETA>>>>>FS WILL BE THERE>
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Avernus
Vice Admiral
Joined: September 12, 2004
Posts: 81
| Posted: 2004-10-26 18:33
Will Kluth be able to fire while cloaked?
Will each faction be able to use the others build modules still?
Any restrictions to the organic/psi weapons in relation to ICC and UGTO? This includes Bio bombs.
Will fighters be a fixed number per ship?
Will fighters be deployable to guard your ship and will they have more hps?
Will item decay be reduced in starports?
How exactly will bombing work with no PCM and Bio Bombs not being able to penetrate shields. Will Mirvs have no minimum range?
Since when are railguns usefull?
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Xilaratu
Cadet
Joined: May 06, 2004
Posts: 745
From: Florida
| Posted: 2004-10-26 18:36
Will Kluth be able to fire while cloaked?
No.
Will fighters be deployable to guard your ship and will they have more hps?
Possibly, read it
Since when are railguns usefull?
Heavy Railguns 
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Novacat
Grand Admiral
Joined: October 30, 2001
Posts: 2337
From: Starleague Cache
| Posted: 2004-10-26 19:02
Avernus, answering based on what I know.
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Will Kluth be able to fire while cloaked?
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As the previous post said, No. No devices will be able to activate while cloaked except Sublight Drives.
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Will each faction be able to use the others build modules still?
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No.
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Any restrictions to the organic/psi weapons in relation to ICC and UGTO? This includes Bio bombs.
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Yes, Disruptors, Psi CAnnons, Psi Missiles, are limited to K'luth only. Bio Bombs, I am unsure of, very likely it is no, however.
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Will fighters be a fixed number per ship?
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Yes.
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Will fighters be deployable to guard your ship and will they have more hps?
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Unknown, depending on how much gets done on terms of Fighter AI. However, Fighters will become immune to pulse shield and will receive actual HP.
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Will item decay be reduced in starports?
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Also another Unknown. Gideon will have to answer this
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How exactly will bombing work with no PCM and Bio Bombs not being able to penetrate shields. Will Mirvs have no minimum range?
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Bio bombs going through shields was reactivated, however, I expect it will be made so that Bio bombs can damage shields while retaining its purpose. That would be the best solution to keep both bombs useful.
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Since when are railguns usefull?
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Since Gideon modified them extensively.
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