On 2007-09-20 08:42, Diabo|ik wrote:
Had these ideas waking up in the bed today, thought I'd share them.

About...

*Remote detonation and PD activation*

Remapping PD activation to something else than "shift-spacebar" so that when remote detonating torpedoes you don't completely mess up your PD setup.

*Beacons and you*

We all know they've been abused in this build and now we know how usefull, but overpowered they can be. And we thought they we're useless...

Limit to 1 per ship, to it's own slot, forward/right/left facing arcs would put them back into balance.

*Beacons and the Kluth*

After all these fights, you would've thought that the Kluth had learned and devised a module capable of twarthing at least one ship, but not a whole fleet, trying to beacon it. With all the knowledge they have with beam weapons, they could've come up with a fast firing ( enough to protect from one beacon launcher, maybe 2 if you're going at high speed and they're behind you ), close range disruptor with minimal power usage. Max of 1 per ship and like the beacon, can't be triggered by the spacebar, default on PD mode, forward/right/left facing arcs.

*Psi cannons underused, we can fix that*

I remember Faustus saying that cannons should be "the bread and butter" of DS ships. Let's give them a little something special that fits the name "psi" so they get more mainstream usage and be a decent mod to the standard disruptor beam.

Without fiddling with the damage, we could give them some special abilities that would fit with the story and the "psi" name. To that end, I propose a few tweaks, not all should be used at once, unless it is deemed "balanced":

- Since it's the crew's psi energy, it should barely use any energy, if none at all.

- Reduce the range to 600GU ( torp range ) max for a lvl10 psi cannon as to avoid exploits.

- Since it's psi energy, and we know how it's pretty hard to do any damage on the first strike with a Kluth ship VS an ICC ship, pretty much negating their hit&run advantage to be able to do damage over time by hitting, cloaking, then hitting again since shields repair too fast. I propose that psi cannons and only psi cannons would bypass shields and hit directly on the armor.

This needs to be tweaked and playtested to insure balance. A way to balance it would also be to have the shields take a certain percentage of the damage, without being able to completely absorb the blast, the underlying armor would take the rest of the damage. The percentage that is absorbed by the shield could be tweaked.

- Since it's psi energy and isn't a beam or matter/standard energy blast. Have the psi cannons do exactly the same damage to any armor type. IOW, even if you have ablative or deflective armor, a psi cannon blast would do the same damage in HPs as if it had hit a standard armor.

*Smart torpedoes*

I think that would actually detriment gameplay but if the "remote detonation / PD" issue can't be resolved with a remapping. This could fix things, albeit it would probably also increase the stress on the server and may cause more lag :S.

Have the torpedoes know when they get nearer to their target and as soon as the distance begins to increase from it's intended target, have them detonate ( much like flak ).


I know some of these ideas would be pretty hard to implement, while other's would be pretty easy. But as you read them, you may have been surprised that some did sound like they would benifit the gameplay and are in line with the developer's vision so that you will think them throught.

I'd be happy to hear any comments about them.

On 2007-09-20 16:50, Smartin wrote:
Forget to add this but wasn't trying to shoot you out of the air there. I think it's good people are trying to come up with new ideas for Darkspace.

On 2007-09-24 01:40, Drafell wrote:
Intended:
PSI = faster projectiles, more damage per volley, slower recharge, lower range, high energy use, damage fall off.
P cannon = Medium projectile speed, medium damage per volley, med range, med recharge, med energy use, damage falloff.
Railgun = low projectile speed, low damage per volley, high range, low recharge, low energy use, no falloff.
Gauss = Very high projectile speed, high damage per volley, high range, low energy use, high recharge, only two projectiles per volley, less total dmg at high levels.