[Verpine]

I feel that just bigger ships is better is too bland and a bit boring. This makes past types such as the fighter and heavy fighter useless for the most part if you want a good ship and attack people. I would suggest:

Smaller ships use engines more efficiently than bigger ones, to help balance the lack of room.
Some ship types give a increased bonus for weapon types.
A hanger for bigger ships so that they can carry heavy fighters and fighters that would slow the fleet down normally.

The positive gain from these changes would be: more diversity in fleet formations, and increased strategy involved and making smaller ship types useful once more, also making the game a bit more fun and interesting.
On the negative side, this could get too complicated and confuse people, may have a negative effect on how battles are worked in the game as well.

This post has been edited by Verpine: 16 February 2011 - 07:04 AM

[Corporal Aston]

Well it would change quite alot...but if you could possibly suggest something better and give an example?

[Verpine]

Well I mean one of the three, like the hanger alone would be helpful and a few sizes for it, a ex could be:

Small Hanger- 5,000 space 10,000 hull 50,000 steel 20,000 gold 5,000 crystal carries 5 fighters
-tech requirements: 6 spaceship structure, 6 hull
Medium Hanger- 12,000 space 20,000 hull 110,000 steel 45,000 gold 11,000 crystal carries 1 heavy fighter, 3 fighters or 12 fighters
-tech requirements: 9 spaceship structure, 9 hull
Large Hanger- 20,000 space 35,000 hull 180,000 steel 72,000 gold 18,000 crystal carries 2 heavy fighters, 2 fighters or 20 fighters
-tech requirements: 13 spaceship structure, 12 hull

This post has been edited by Verpine: 16 February 2011 - 09:46 PM

[Verpine]

Heres an idea of how much a difference there is between ship propulsions assuming that they all used the same Ameliorated Combustion drives with 10% of ship structure used for engines and be close to the same speed(Note that i used highest tenth of a decimal to get how many would fit in a structure ex. 2.6 in a fighter).
Ship class - 10% of the structure- Propulsion - # propulsion needs to be multiplied-
Fighter : 100 ----- .52 ----- 1518.2
Heavy Fighter: 900 ----- 4.74 ----- 166.6
Cargo Ship : 1,750 ----- 9.22 ----- 85.6
Bomber : 3,500 ----- 18.42 ----- 42.9
Cruiser : 7,500 ----- 38.48 ----- 20.1
Large Cruiser: 15,000 ----- 78.94 ----- 10.0
Destroyer : 30,000 ----- 157.9 ----- 5.0
Flagship : 150,000 ----- 789.48 ----- 1.0
Could have bonus weapon damage for bigger ships to help even it out if its too much of a bonus, but this is just to give an idea of how big a difference there is. Third column was the number that the propulsion needed to be multiplied by in order to match the flagship.

This post has been edited by Verpine: 16 February 2011 - 10:29 PM

[Melutar]

I like the concept of hangers, but I feel like it would still be more advantageous to just put the resources used to make the hangar bays and fighters into stronger spaceships. As to the engines, I do feel that smaller ships should use them more efficiently, but not to terribly so. Generally smaller vehicles will need less propulsion to match the speed of a larger vehicle, but obviously better engines are going to be better. Perhaps cargo loads should also play a role in speed? 10,000 pounds of iron (or anything for that matter) is going to slow a ship down, even if only slightly.

[Mavlin]

Hangars are largely useless as each point of space on a smaller ship would still require drives but would not be put to use in travel. You would simply be paying for extra drives to no purpose. Further more each point of space on the larger ship would then be taken up by smaller ships and would not allow you to fill said space with much needed weapons, hull, shield etc.
While it is an entertaining concept, because cargo space is not fixed and is useful in many other regards, filling it with other ships is simply inefficient.

Keeping in mind that in space mass and size do not provide drag or any other limiting factor to speed, smaller ships being faster does not actually make sense. However, it perhaps would be more reasonable to reduce the fuel costs on smaller ship structures. As the only expenditure of fuel in space is acceleration and not in cruising speed.

[Verpine]

Mavlin, on 16 February 2011 - 11:51 PM, said:

Hangars are largely useless as each point of space on a smaller ship would still require drives but would not be put to use in travel. You would simply be paying for extra drives to no purpose. Further more each point of space on the larger ship would then be taken up by smaller ships and would not allow you to fill said space with much needed weapons, hull, shield etc.
While it is an entertaining concept, because cargo space is not fixed and is useful in many other regards, filling it with other ships is simply inefficient.

Keeping in mind that in space mass and size do not provide drag or any other limiting factor to speed, smaller ships being faster does not actually make sense. However, it perhaps would be more reasonable to reduce the fuel costs on smaller ship structures. As the only expenditure of fuel in space is acceleration and not in cruising speed.

They wouldnt require drives, since you can make a ship without any and it will just become a defense platform, so the ship could just push them out of the hanger and pick up the reminders. As for the space, the idea is that the hanger takes up said space on the structure, and and used for the fighters, not even more space is needed. This could work well with cruisers and up. 12,000 space out of 75,000 isn't that much out of it. I assume you mean that you'd need to leave structure space for fuel?

This post has been edited by Verpine: 17 February 2011 - 08:18 AM

[Mavlin]

Verpine, on 17 February 2011 - 08:18 AM, said:

They wouldnt require drives, since you can make a ship without any and it will just become a defense platform, so the ship could just push them out of the hanger and pick up the reminders. As for the space, the idea is that the hanger takes up said space on the structure, and and used for the fighters, not even more space is needed. This could work well with cruisers and up. 12,000 space out of 75,000 isn't that much out of it. I assume you mean that you'd need to leave structure space for fuel?

no, lets say a you have a cruiser which has 75000 space.
on it you could put up to 75 starfighters each of which take up and have 1000 space
on each starfighter you can put up to 500 machine guns for a total of 500 fire power each and 37500 total fire power for the cruiser full of starfighters
or you could simply put 37500 machine guns on your cruiser for the same power
and yet, you will have paid the 75x structure cost of starfighters for nothing

[Verpine]

Mavlin, on 17 February 2011 - 01:18 PM, said:

no, lets say a you have a cruiser which has 75000 space.
on it you could put up to 75 starfighters each of which take up and have 1000 space
on each starfighter you can put up to 500 machine guns for a total of 500 fire power each and 37500 total fire power for the cruiser full of starfighters
or you could simply put 37500 machine guns on your cruiser for the same power
and yet, you will have paid the 75x structure cost of starfighters for nothing

No, the rest of the space can't be used for fighters, only the hanger itself, so the medium hanger(12,000 space) will only hold 12 fighters, if you wanted more, you would have to build more hangers on the cruiser. So, you would have the 63,000 space on the cruiser left to do with as you wish, u could add more hangers if you want.

This post has been edited by Verpine: 17 February 2011 - 10:36 PM

[Mavlin]

Verpine, on 17 February 2011 - 10:36 PM, said:

No, the rest of the space can't be used for fighters, only the hanger itself, so the medium hanger(12,000 space) will only hold 12 fighters, if you wanted more, you would have to build more hangers on the cruiser. So, you would have the 63,000 space on the cruiser left to do with as you wish, u could add more hangers if you want.

Regardless, the point stands. At no point is additional space gained therefore you do not gain additional combat efficiency. Furthermore, it is only logical that fighters even in a hanger be required to have drives otherwise they'd be stuck in said hanger shooting eachother.

[Verpine]

Mavlin, on 17 February 2011 - 10:48 PM, said:

Regardless, the point stands. At no point is additional space gained therefore you do not gain additional combat efficiency. Furthermore, it is only logical that fighters even in a hanger be required to have drives otherwise they'd be stuck in said hanger shooting eachother.

And as i mentioned before, they could just be pushed out of the hanger and fire. Theres already a example of this by having defensive ships that can't attack without drives on planets. Its logical for hangers to have crane lifts or a mechanism to push a ship out of the hanger in rapid succession. The only real problem is that if theres too many ships left, and some hanger ships were destroyed, then they'd either have to be counted as lost and destroyed, or sit there.

This post has been edited by Verpine: 18 February 2011 - 05:04 AM

[Mavlin]

Verpine, on 18 February 2011 - 05:04 AM, said:

And as i mentioned before, they could just be pushed out of the hanger and fire. Theres already a example of this by having defensive ships that can't attack without drives on planets. Its logical for hangers to have crane lifts or a mechanism to push a ship out of the hanger in rapid succession. The only real problem is that if theres too many ships left, and some hanger ships were destroyed, then they'd either have to be counted as lost and destroyed, or sit there.

The point still stands, you've gained no efficiency in firepower.

[Verpine]

Mavlin, on 18 February 2011 - 03:22 PM, said:

The point still stands, you've gained no efficiency in firepower.

True theres no real gain in attack power, however, its not a loss, just makes things more flexible and interesting .

This post has been edited by Verpine: 19 February 2011 - 11:43 AM

[Mavlin]

Verpine, on 19 February 2011 - 11:42 AM, said:

True theres no real gain in attack power, however, its not a loss, just makes things more flexible and interesting .

actually there is a loss, since you would be paying for additional spaceship structures.

[Akenzeru]

I'm for the idea of more variety in spaceships, but I don't think that hangars are the way to go. I'm thinking more of an x percent bonus for each different thing in a certain zone.