Capital ships are cool and all, but they're not really ships, they're a lot closer to stations that can teleport.
And while capitals have a need and use, I do wish for larger ships, eventually.
I propose that we get a middle ground between ship and capital ship, that is actually a ship. I'm just going to call it a carrier for now.
Carriers would be designed in the SSC, same as any ship would, they have access to the same parts and everything.
But new parts are introduced, bigger, heavier and stronger parts. So that we still get to keep part limits low for the game to handle them. Say, a new variant of the 24x24 corner beam, is now a 96x96 corner beam, and so on.
(Maybe throw in a toggle for 'sizes' while you're at it, for people that don't want menus cluttered with parts they know they won't need for the ship they are designing)
You are probably wondering: Kap, why do we need bigger ships, small ship already make big pewpew and big ship bad.
You're not wrong.. so let's make big ship not bad.
I propose that carriers (Thanks to their larger beams, stress tolerance, and everything that comes with a stronger ship) are sturdy enough to wield and power new devices. Devices that are naturally gated behind a bigger ship. Maybe they need a ton of power. Maybe if the devices are activated on a ship not designed for them, they would send shockwaves of stress down the frame, splintering the beams and cracking the ship in half.
These devices could be bigger weapons for attacking capitals, other carriers, stations. These larger weapons might obliterate a fighter in a single shot, sure, but good luck hitting one. Perhaps one of such devices is something capable of easily mining titan asteroids.
And the main reason for this suggestion: I think 150m/s is slow, I understand that collisions is a problem at such speeds, but I think waiting 72hours to teleport somewhere is a bit meh, and also cheaty. I want to go fast.
So, a device that would let you jump into hyper-space or whatever you'd call it, and cruise the carrier at some variable speed, maybe 500m/s to 1km/s, depending on how big/juiced up your device is, and fuel types. It would be incredibly expensive to use this device, so using it takes both preparation and hard resources (some types of fuel).
If you travel like that into the belt, or too close to a station, it should just bump you out of hyper-space and do some damage approximation near the front of your ship, to simulate that you hit the asteroid or station. Maybe it should even just disintegrate most of the carrier, I mean, smacking into a station at 1km/s?
Not sure what it should do if it traveled through a normal small ship though, ignore it? Maybe not. Push the smaller ship out of the way? Sure! We can say that the hyper-travel-thing expands the space-jelly temporarily, whatever.
Observers wouldn't see the ship, they'd just see a comet looking thing zoom past fast, with some pretty effects. It would be LOD anyway, this is better.
Perhaps you can see the carriers 50km-100km off, when they're in hyper-space. This would give an observer enough time to warm-up your own, and pursue should you want to. It would also make the universe feel more alive. As right now you can only see ships 5km off. AND it would be a risk using it, because now someone can see where your juicy bigboi ship is, and come after you.
Ok, next on the menu is how do you fight something moving at 1km/s? Well, you don't. You follow it in your own carrier capable of hyper-space travel, and asuming your drive is better than theirs, then you catch up and knock them out of hyper-space with yet another device. But what if my drive is not better than theirs? Well, you still have a chance to catch up, because you can overcharge the drive for a limited time.
This allows you to go faster than the drive normally would, at the cost of more resources burnt, as well as risk of permanent damage to it, that you'd have to repair. (A feature normal thrusters should have, else you just go 150m/s and you're safe, forever).
Will this make smaller ships obsolete? Not a chance. Carriers will be naturally expensive to both buy and maintain. Losing one will set you back **a lot**. We should probably also make it **very** hard if not downright impossible to reach speeds exceeding 100m/s, or lower, outside of hyper-space travel thing.
So to do all this, you'd probably need a lot more parts in the SSC, but I think it'll be worth it.
So, TLDR: Big carrier ships, that are very expensive, but pretty good for transporting squadrons of smaller fighters, for sieging other carriers, stations and capitals, or for end-game mining ships / haulers, if you're feeling very brave and can afford it.
And while capitals have a need and use, I do wish for larger ships, eventually.
I propose that we get a middle ground between ship and capital ship, that is actually a ship. I'm just going to call it a carrier for now.
Carriers would be designed in the SSC, same as any ship would, they have access to the same parts and everything.
But new parts are introduced, bigger, heavier and stronger parts. So that we still get to keep part limits low for the game to handle them. Say, a new variant of the 24x24 corner beam, is now a 96x96 corner beam, and so on.
(Maybe throw in a toggle for 'sizes' while you're at it, for people that don't want menus cluttered with parts they know they won't need for the ship they are designing)
You are probably wondering: Kap, why do we need bigger ships, small ship already make big pewpew and big ship bad.
You're not wrong.. so let's make big ship not bad.
I propose that carriers (Thanks to their larger beams, stress tolerance, and everything that comes with a stronger ship) are sturdy enough to wield and power new devices. Devices that are naturally gated behind a bigger ship. Maybe they need a ton of power. Maybe if the devices are activated on a ship not designed for them, they would send shockwaves of stress down the frame, splintering the beams and cracking the ship in half.
These devices could be bigger weapons for attacking capitals, other carriers, stations. These larger weapons might obliterate a fighter in a single shot, sure, but good luck hitting one. Perhaps one of such devices is something capable of easily mining titan asteroids.
And the main reason for this suggestion: I think 150m/s is slow, I understand that collisions is a problem at such speeds, but I think waiting 72hours to teleport somewhere is a bit meh, and also cheaty. I want to go fast.
So, a device that would let you jump into hyper-space or whatever you'd call it, and cruise the carrier at some variable speed, maybe 500m/s to 1km/s, depending on how big/juiced up your device is, and fuel types. It would be incredibly expensive to use this device, so using it takes both preparation and hard resources (some types of fuel).
If you travel like that into the belt, or too close to a station, it should just bump you out of hyper-space and do some damage approximation near the front of your ship, to simulate that you hit the asteroid or station. Maybe it should even just disintegrate most of the carrier, I mean, smacking into a station at 1km/s?
Not sure what it should do if it traveled through a normal small ship though, ignore it? Maybe not. Push the smaller ship out of the way? Sure! We can say that the hyper-travel-thing expands the space-jelly temporarily, whatever.
Observers wouldn't see the ship, they'd just see a comet looking thing zoom past fast, with some pretty effects. It would be LOD anyway, this is better.
Perhaps you can see the carriers 50km-100km off, when they're in hyper-space. This would give an observer enough time to warm-up your own, and pursue should you want to. It would also make the universe feel more alive. As right now you can only see ships 5km off. AND it would be a risk using it, because now someone can see where your juicy bigboi ship is, and come after you.
Ok, next on the menu is how do you fight something moving at 1km/s? Well, you don't. You follow it in your own carrier capable of hyper-space travel, and asuming your drive is better than theirs, then you catch up and knock them out of hyper-space with yet another device. But what if my drive is not better than theirs? Well, you still have a chance to catch up, because you can overcharge the drive for a limited time.
This allows you to go faster than the drive normally would, at the cost of more resources burnt, as well as risk of permanent damage to it, that you'd have to repair. (A feature normal thrusters should have, else you just go 150m/s and you're safe, forever).
Will this make smaller ships obsolete? Not a chance. Carriers will be naturally expensive to both buy and maintain. Losing one will set you back **a lot**. We should probably also make it **very** hard if not downright impossible to reach speeds exceeding 100m/s, or lower, outside of hyper-space travel thing.
So to do all this, you'd probably need a lot more parts in the SSC, but I think it'll be worth it.
So, TLDR: Big carrier ships, that are very expensive, but pretty good for transporting squadrons of smaller fighters, for sieging other carriers, stations and capitals, or for end-game mining ships / haulers, if you're feeling very brave and can afford it.
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