Helping larger ships to be more viable

kiiyo

Veteran endo
Joined
Jul 11, 2020
Messages
136
#1
I'd like to preface this by saying that this is simply my opinion, and it may very well be that I am wrong. If you disagree with anything here, or have anything to say on things like formatting, please do tell me and I will gladly discuss the issue with you and if applicable, do my best to fix it. Now as for the post itself, the reason I write this is because I've been lately bugged by a lot of worries about Starbase's future; The devs have created an amazing game engine and I really want this game to succeed, so this is written in the best of intentions. I know quite a couple of players look forward to flying capital ships with large crews and menacing sizes, and as the leader of a scrapping faction I personally really want to go wreckdiving through the skeleton of an enormous and once glorious behemoth one day.

As of right now in the closed alpha (Wave-0 gang, anyone?), the current general "meta" for combat is small-medium ships with 1 crew each, with some 3-6 layers of armor on their outside and a wall of thrusters behind them. These are what I would describe as "heavy fighters", the smaller and speedier ones maybe as "interceptors" or "spasse superiority fighters". However, there aren't really many ships being used that could described with the general understanding of "bomber", "gunship", "destroyer" or "capital-class". I believe that the construction and wide(-er) usage of these ships is, in general, restricted by such factors:

  • SSC Limits (Especially so the pipe limit, oh god the pipe limit)
  • Costs (You wouldn't haul/buy some 1K stacks of ore for a single un-viable ship now would you)
  • Fragility (In a pirate attack, you cannot run, fight nor hide)
Space Ship Creator Limits
This is the only thing that I think is fairly simple to expand on. Just increase 'em so long as the server hamsters are still running, I suppose. While there are things that could be done for performance's sake (E.G getting rid of bolting as a mechanic), or for QoL (Make glass less invisible, I beg you), we just kind of need to wait for the eventual expansion of the SSC limits.

Costs
I think that this doesn't really needs to be tuned much. While the ridiculous amount of zeroes in credit cost numbers does need to be abolished to the shadow realm, if speaking in purely ore terms, a thousand ore stacks for a big(-ger) gunship seems fairly reasonable (I haul around 30 stacks/hour of mining, so some 30 hours total from a group of endos). The current prices for a big ship seem a bit ridiculous because of how volatile the economy is, and, partly, because of how un-viable larger ships are.

Fragility
Well here's something I can talk about. As of now, large ships are really fragile and dangerous to fly outside of a safezone; A miner ambushed in the field by a couple heavy fighters has quite literally zero chances of survival: It can't run, it can't fight back (even with turrets) and it sure as hell can't hide (the devs are making a radiation mechanic that makes ships detectable, and larger ships will give off more radiation since their generators are way larger). I believe this can be combated in many ways; Some of them I list below.


-- Warp Drives
Now, the only thing large ships have over small ones is their size; I mean, it's in the name. Something that could be done with this space is a warp drive, or some sort of device that allows you to fly faster than others. This would allow larger ships to run away in case of an ambush; Maybe create some interesting gameplay and mind games with intentional dropping out of warp and such. All cinema-like. But in a nutshell, this is a suggestion of a device that would allow ships to fly faster, tied to space usage in a way that larger ships are able to use this device for longer than small vessels are.

-- Shields
Woah woah, put the pitchfork down. Put. The. Pitchfork. Down. The torch, too. Now take a step away from them and hear me out. Shields, or some other sort of protective device, could be used to - take a guess - yeah, protect ships. In general, I like the idea of projected directional shields more; Ones that you can decide the projectional distance, size, maybe power of. It would allow for some fun gameplay both from the bridge of the defenders ("POWAH TO FRONT SHIELDS!") and on the comms of the attackers ("Focus on their rear shields, everyone!"). Yes, there are good arguments against this, however, I haven't really heard a better suggestion for a device that would allow big ships to use their space to prolong fights, which would in turn allow them to defend for longer and have better chances at survival through battle.

-- More guns
Aye, everyone's happy when there's more dakka. I think that guns of various sizes would help differentiate big and small ships: An example of such system could be Star Citizen's implementation of hardpoint sizes and gun variations. While many of their management decisions could be questioned for many hours, I think this is one of the things they did quite well. Something similar could be done in starbase: Larger gun mounts hold larger guns, larger guns do larger shoot. Quite simple. Or, if I put it in fancy words, a device that would allow larger ships to fight back more effectively that is inaccessible to smaller ships because of larger power and/or space requirements.
These were some of my suggestions for what could be done to make large ships more viable and fun from a gameplay perspective; While I think performance of them is something that should also be worked on (cough cough the thruster walls and cough cough the bolt madness), that's for a different post. I hope you enjoyed reading through this, and please let me know if I misspelled anything (yet again :c) or if any of my statements are factually wrong or something like that. Uh.. yeah. Wear your seatbelt, pray to Pip, and wash your hands. kiiyo out.
 

sweer

Active endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
38
#2
Only small issue with warp drive tho, someone could easily make a miner to go straight out of safezone get the most valuable ores, then head straight back in less then an hour, and if it wasnt this OP nobody would use it.
 

kiiyo

Veteran endo
Joined
Jul 11, 2020
Messages
136
#3
Only small issue with warp drive tho, someone could easily make a miner to go straight out of safezone get the most valuable ores, then head straight back in less then an hour, and if it wasnt this OP nobody would use it.
Yeah that's fair. Didn't really think it through that far, but maybe something could be done along the lines of the drive only being able to activate outside of the sz or something.
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2020
Messages
17
#4
maybe you could make the warp-drive consume an absurd amount of energy, so there is little to no way for a fighter to have one. if you have a warp-drive, you would have to ``spin it up´´ for like 30 sec or a minute. I would give the warp drive some kind of efficiency rating that would be determined by the size of the warp-drive and the size/weight of the ship, kinda like the warp class, but this time really for warping. the closer this value to 1, the more efficient the warp drive would be(max speed/acceleration/energy consumption). for shields, I really like the idea of being able to distribute power and strength accordingly to the situation. and for those who still want to see destruction, you could make some kind of regenerative armor plating or something. for SSC limits and costs, I totally agree with you.

o7
 

Verbatos

Veteran endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
220
#5
maybe you could make the warp-drive consume an absurd amount of energy, so there is little to no way for a fighter to have one. if you have a warp-drive, you would have to ``spin it up´´ for like 30 sec or a minute. I would give the warp drive some kind of efficiency rating that would be determined by the size of the warp-drive and the size/weight of the ship, kinda like the warp class, but this time really for warping. the closer this value to 1, the more efficient the warp drive would be(max speed/acceleration/energy consumption). for shields, I really like the idea of being able to distribute power and strength accordingly to the situation. and for those who still want to see destruction, you could make some kind of regenerative armor plating or something. for SSC limits and costs, I totally agree with you.

o7
The spin-up idea is really good. If warp drives were to be implemented the would have to be powerful enough to be used, large enough or costly enough to not be used on small fighters and slow enough to not be get out of jail free card.

I was thinking more on the lines of size to manage for small ships not using them, but I could also see power becoming a big factor, maybe warp drives need a certain kind of thruster to work that would be large and costly?
 
Joined
Oct 21, 2020
Messages
17
#6
maybe warp drives need a certain kind of thruster to work that would be large and costly?
yeah, you could either make the warp drive and a warp drive thruster or just an all in one warp drive thruster, or make it so you can build it from segments that each have their own function like generators, so you could for example add more speed or less charge-up time, at the expense of higher power cost
 

kiiyo

Veteran endo
Joined
Jul 11, 2020
Messages
136
#7
Yeah, I think the spin-up idea is a good one. Making the warp drive be modular like the generators could be a lot of fun to play around with, as long as the visual language gives a clear indication of the generator parts being different and incompatible with the warp drive parts (although if it didn't it'd be fun to see people complaining their generator doesn't work because they used Warp Drive Units and not Generator Units)
 

ChaosRifle

Veteran endo
Joined
Aug 11, 2020
Messages
226
#9
Please, no shields. Starbase has the satisfying response of dealing physical damage on impact, and adding shields works to eliminate/mitigate that element of dynamic damage that was so painstakingly put in and enables jobs for combat engineers. Shields are also not fun to fight against either, as you are just watching a number decrement until the fun begins. StarBase's physicalized damage system was built for the purpose of things taking damage, and while some things may take less damage than others (where I think larger ships should go with this, by allowing thicker armour, because at a certain point even hitting cables becomes difficult if the target is big enough), at no point are you outright told 'no, sorry, but I have a magic number that says otherwise about your last attack' in the current game. That is a beautiful thing that should be preserved.
 

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#10
Before you start adding new mechanics (especially those intended to avoid combat, like warp and shields) first fix existing mechanics. And maybe new ones won't be needed at all.

Turrets are laggy, which makes multi-crew ships bad by default.

Turntables are too weak to carry decent armour, so big ships are trivial to disarm.

Controls are choppy (keyboard), which gives huge advantage to small and nimble fighters.

Rail canons are almost impossible to armour against, so they one-hit kill ships no matter their size.

Fuel density is so high and thrusters are equally efficient, so every ship can be made super long range, not just big ones.

Ship-based respawn doesn't exists yet, which makes big ships easy to disable with a "head-shot"

Repair system doesn't work properly (0 armour after fixing, no indication for pipe leaking, ect) which makes all combat ships single-use. And mid-combat repairs are domain of large, multi crew ships with interiors.
 

Kmank

Well-known endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
80
#11
Agree with everything CalenLoki said, always look to fix mechanics you have before adding more (game design 101). I really think having responsive controls would fix a lot of the problems. Also making it much harder for small ships to have good armour (maybe a sized based structural bonus for larger ships).
 

kiiyo

Veteran endo
Joined
Jul 11, 2020
Messages
136
#12
Loki, you raise a really good point. I suppose before buffing large ships we should see how they will behave once out of their current state into a more servicable one... I guess this thread might be a couple months early then, ha.
 

CalenLoki

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Aug 9, 2019
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741
#13
Nah. It's never too early to identify gameplay flaws and suggest solutions.
I did the same with gun-brick meta.
But it's better to start with simple tweaks before introducing new gameplay mechanics.
 
Joined
Nov 12, 2019
Messages
576
#14
I think you all make some good points. I do like the idea of the "warp drives" as a form of defense for the slow lumbering hulks that may be out there. However, everything Calen said is true. Those are all problems that need solutions. Having armored internal turret controls would be great. Engineering one is a pain in the butt. I spent more time on armored turret design than I did on the ship carrying the thing.
 

STEALTH

Well-known endo
Joined
Sep 10, 2019
Messages
73
#15
Please, no shields. Starbase has the satisfying response of dealing physical damage on impact
1000% Agreed, love that STARBASE has no freaking shields...such a tired space deal in video games and tv/movie. One reason I love "The Expanse" miles over Star Trek or Star Wars because the ship combat carried a lethal weight that's translated so well. This is the same in video games...the whole "shield combat" is so utterly boring.

I like what CalenLoki stated on some of the problems with large ships that if dealt with would make large ships viable. I'm hoping FB does address these things so large ships can be much larger threats on the battlefield. We already have the dogfighting space games (Elite Dangerous & Star Citizen). I want the more fleet combat (not expecting dozens of ships but just a mix)!!!
 
Joined
Nov 27, 2020
Messages
14
#16
Different weapon sizes is interesting where "big" ships have big weapons that require more power and components, too big for fighters to carry. But big weapons usually shoot big ships, not fighters.

I think a good solution would be when fighter are used to destroy components and weak spots on big ships, not punch through their armor. So with fighters you could cripple a big ship and board it or wait for your own big ship/bomber to break through armor.

Fighters just punching through a battleship or cruisers armor with the same weapons used to fight other fighters seems unrealistic and boring.

I wonder how missilies and maybe torpedos change things
 

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#17
There is no way to prevent small ships from using big guns.
You'll always get those ships built just big enough to carry a single big gun.
Also big ships are usually to clumsy to aim with spinal weapons, so they'd have to be either small enough for turrets (so for fighters as well) or guided.

I'd rather go further with "easy to disable surface objects, hard to destroy internals" by increasing longevity of armour. I.e. by making bullet holes have smaller diameter. So destruction of big ships by pure firepower would be much slower than boarding.

But since we have no combat viable big ships to test, it's hard to say if such changes are really needed.
 

CalenLoki

Master endo
Joined
Aug 9, 2019
Messages
741
#19
With all the missing or broken mechanics, you just can't have big combat viable ship. IMO.

By big I mean 600MV+, multi-crew, armed with turrets.
 
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