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:
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
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)
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.
-- 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.
