Ship models/components/module suggestions.

RocketCat

So with the focus being on space this month, this is a thread for suggestions for ship models, components, and modules, new ones and  existing ones. I‘ll kick it off with my suggestions which mainly consist of modules. I‘m pretty heavily influenced from my years in EVE, many modules here will look familiar. Ship design in Starmourn already looks a lot like EVE so I think it‘s a decent fit.

First, the tweaks:

Cannon III: My understanding is that there is currently no point to having these, since MC1 outperforms in every way. My understanding is that target tracking is tied to the module size at the moment. Cannon IIIs should have more tracking but less damage output than MC1, making them more generally more effective than MC1s against fast-moving/small targets but less effective against slow/large ones.

Tractor beam: Was previously used to stop moving asteroids. Best way to make it relevant is to pull an object towards your ship, regardless of that object‘s current heading. Works on rocks and ships but not stationary things like generators.

Cargo expander: Should probaby expand cargo space more meaningfully.

Mines: Just an overall increase in damage, damage radius, and trigger proximity should be sufficient.

Now, the suggestions:

Weapons:

Bomb launchers: Like missiles but for handling clumps of enemies. Like a combo between missiles and mines.

Lasers: Like cannons, no ammo required but serious capacitor drain. Take it or leave it.

Interdiction:

The interdiction beam is a good start, but...

Skipdrive interdiction generators: Drop one of these out the back and now everyone in a 25 tile radius cannot use their skips until the gen is destroyed or x minutes have passed. Something like this is honestly super necessary for ship pvp to ever be a real thing.

Support:

Modules which allow logistics/support ships to be a thing:

Shield/hull/capacitor transfer modules: Target a friendly and repair their shield/hull/cap/systems.

Generic modules

A range of modules to customize the performance of your ship for different situations, covering nearly every aspect of ship design. For instance:

A passive module increasing capacitor size and regen rate

An active module to boost your capacitor on demand

A module to increase the tracking of all weapons

A module to decrease enemy tracking against you

A module to increase the effectiveness of your sensors, allowing for faster target locks

A module to decrease the effectiveness of enemy sensors against you

A module to use your cap to drain their cap.

A module to steal their cap if their cap is greater than yours.

A passive module to increase your acceleration

An active module to greatly increase your acceleration at capacitor cost

Active and passive modules to increase resistance to damage types

Active and passive modules to increase overall resistance to a particular system.

Active and passive modules to increase

Modules which increase the damage your weapons deal to particular systems.

Fitting modules which increase your cycles and halons.

Modules to improve turn rate.

Modules to hinder the enemy‘s turn rate, acceleration, max speed, etc.

Passive modules to flat improve your hull and shields.

Modules to improve your missile flight time

Modules to improve the effectiveness of your countermeasures

Modules to reduce the effectiveness of a target‘s countermeasures

Modules which allow you to exceed your ship‘s cycles at the cost of periodic hull/component damage.

Mining/gathering:

If scooping, tethering, and refineries were gone and replaced with mining lasers, gas collectors, and new classes of mining ships which just deposit the refined materials into your cargo, would you really miss the old way of doing things? Not me! The most satisfying part about scooping and tethering is hunting the Sector for the damn things. The part where you fly back to a station is not fun nor satisfying. This is obviously part of a larger discussion but I‘m putting it here.

The next big ship:

Admirals get Carriers. Nuff said.

eel

RocketCat said:

Mining/gathering:

If scooping, tethering, and refineries were gone and replaced with mining lasers, gas collectors, and new classes of mining ships which just deposit the refined materials into your cargo, would you really miss the old way of doing things? Not me! The most satisfying part about scooping and tethering is hunting the Sector for the damn things. The part where you fly back to a station is not fun nor satisfying. This is obviously part of a larger discussion but I‘m putting it here.

I certainly wouldn't mind that, though it may slightly devalue the voidgate permit artifact (still very good though). There is also the hyperscan artifact (plus the cosmpiercer survey power) that basically finds the stuff for you.

In essentially the same vein (but as an alternative to completely doing away with refining), maybe a set of modules that allows someone to have refineries placed on their ships? Size would affect how many could be placed (S = 1, M = 2, L = 3). You could have it consume tethers and scoops as normal, but instead of having to travel to a refinery, you could just REFINERY X QUEUE GAS and it would go in on the spot.

Probably would want an increased base refine cost, maybe with a penalty to refining times as well. Could also cost more marks when actually buying the refinery to place it. If you run out of marks while refining it would incur debt where if the debt surpasses a certain threshold the refinery stops working - I don't know, this might already be how refining works if you run out of marks for it in the middle of the process.

(Might want a set of artifacts that increases the number of refineries you can have, in conjunction with above.)

To keep the freighter/superhauler bonus (since being able to tow 4/8 asteroids wouldn't mean anything with these modules), maybe the refine costs and speed penalties aren't as large for these ship types? Though honestly, you could probably just have these mods be only for freighters and superhaulers and that would be good enough.

This would probably make it so that in-station refineries are much less desirable, but would still be needed by folks in interceptors. I think it would make for an interesting qol improvement overall, and really smooth out the feel of a mining trip.

Of your list of other suggestions, my highlights were the lasers and the module for improving turn rate. Lasers consuming capacitor rather than ammo is an interesting idea for sure, I'd be keen to see how that would be balanced out against other weapon types that did consume ammo. Though I'd be uncertain about them for the same reason. For all that we complain about iriil, ammo usage feels like the only thing that really drives production in the space economy.

As for turn rate improvement, I would definitely want this in my battleship and superhauler, no question at all. Personally speaking, the 4s turn times for battleships make me really uninterested in using battleships regularly, despite all the time/effort invested to actually get the ability to pilot them. So a turn rate module (depending on the extent of the improvement) would help assuage my personal pain there.

Steve

I've got lots of ideas. Here's an alternate take on a carrier class of ship.

The Hangar module. Here's how it works in a nutshell:

• Requires admiral rank to use.
• There are two ranks of this module: Hangar 1 and Hangar 2.
  
• Rank 1 occupies 3 medium module slots. It is, therefore, compatible with all 4 battleships, all 3 superhaulers, and 2 freighters.
• Rank 2 occupies 3 large module slots. It is, therefore, compatible with 2/4 battleships and all 3 superhaulers.
• No ship, currently, would be able to hold two rank 1 modules or two rank 2 modules.
  
• Allows storing an interceptor aboard the ship. (Each module can hold 1 interceptor, so that a battleship or superhauler can hold up to 2 interceptors.

Alternatively, if we do add another class of ships, I'd like to see it have more large module slots (at least 6) and fewer large weapons (so that it's not packing greater firepower than a battleship using just its own guns). If this occurs, then we could do something like this:

• Rank 1: 3 large module slots. 1 interceptor.
  
• Rank 2: 6 large module slots. 3 interceptors. (Note that there is a superhauler with 5 large module slots. It is the only extant ship with that many.)
• Can only have one hangar module.
  

In any case, here's some syntaxes.

SHIP HANGAR BOARD <SHIPNAME> to board a ship docked in the hangar.

SHIP HANGAR DISEMBARK to disembark from a ship docked in the hangar. This moves the character from the docked interceptor to the host ship.*

SHIP HANGAR OPEN|CLOSE to open or close the hangar doors. When the hangar door is open, it functions like a space station and can be docked and launched from.**

SHIP LAUNCH to launch an interceptor when the hangar door is open. Must be in the interceptor.

SHIP DOCK to dock with a ship that has an open hangar door.

SHIP CONNECT, SHIP DISCONNECT, and CARGO LOAD|STORE, ideally, would be usable by the host ship pilot to manipulate cargo. (Battleships could This opens up a very cool opportunity to make superhauler supply ships.)

*Eventually, can add a special room for this purpose that must be added with REFIT.

** However, it is not entirely like a station in this state. REPAIR is not free while docked with a ship.

That's what I've got for today on the hangar module idea.

Steve

Harvest Drone Control Unit: I think we ought to have a mod that allows for use of Harvest Drones to accommodate visually impaired (VI) players. Because accessibility is important (both in terms of VI and in terms of getting people into the space system), I propose making this a small size mod that occupies 1 slot. Of course, plenty of people would want to take this just because it makes playing in space better.

• I strongly recommend reducing the captaincy level required for using harvesting drones from 32 to 10 or under.
• Having more than 1 harvest drone control unit would permit for faster gathering.
  

Let me take a moment to look at the landscape of which ships have 1 small mod slot (or less). Bear in mind that a skipdrive occupies a small module slot.

• 3/4 interceptors (including the starter) have exactly 1 small module slot. The other interceptor -- the one with 3 small weapons slots -- has 0 small module slots. 
• 1/5 corvettes have only 1 small module slot. The other have 2 or more.
• All 5 cruisers have only 1 small module slot.
• All 4 battleships have only 1 small module slot.
• The other classes of ships have at least 2 small module slots.

Steve

Damage Booster 1:     +20% damage; occupies a Small mod slot; links to a Small size weapon; max 1 per weapon

Damage Booster 2:     +20% damage; occupies a Medium mod slot; links to a Medium size weapon; max 1 per weapon

Damage Booster 3:     +20% damage; occupies a Large mod slot; links to a Large size weapon; max 1 per weapon

Reason: if we're adding more modules, we need to take advantage of all the module slots and also create more meaningful decisions within each superstructure. One of the best parts about this system is that the superstructures have variety and appear balanced accordingly.

Steve

Turrets. Link a turret mount to a weapon to increase firing arc so that the turreted weapon can fire in the front, left, and right sides. However, a weapon's accuracy penalty is increased substantially, giving smaller ship targets a chance to not explode horribly while further balancing cannons and massive cannons.

Turret Mount 1:     Firing arc increased to 270 degrees; Small size module slot; Links to a small size weapon on; Accuracy penalty

Turret Mount 2:     Firing arc increased to 270 degrees; Medium size module slot; Links to a medium size weapon only; Accuracy penalty

Turret Mount 3:     Firing arc increased to 270 degrees; Large size module slot; Links to a large size weapon only; Accuracy penalty

Note: If I had the numbers, I'd know what to recommend for accuracy penalty. I don't have those numbers, but the goal in implementing this is to ensure that massive cannons aren't massively buffed with turrets. Therefore, I'd suggest, as a placeholder number, 2x or 3x current accuracy penalty.

Steve

Ship weapon balance pass.

Functionally, there are three weapons: Cannon I, Massive Cannon I, and Massive Cannon III. That's just not good enough. Balancing their performance is a challenge because there aren't many variables to adjust, presently. Primarily, we can work with damage, accuracy, fire rate, and reload speed. Secondarily, we can adjust ammo economy (shots per battery). After that, there are weapon slots and other shipforge considerations.

Here are some suggestions for balance:

Cannon 2 size changed from Medium to Small. This way, Cannon 2 is not competing with both Massive Cannon 1 and Cannon 3 while giving people a choice of what to do with Small weapon slots

Accuracy pass across all weapons. The lower power weapons for each size need to have higher accuracy to compensate. This would make them better turreted weapons (see above). Accuracy is one of the only variables available to protect smaller ships from sure, swift death against larger ships.

Small Weapons

• Cannon 1 needs to have the best accuracy of all battery weapons.
• Cannon 2 needs worse accuracy so that it's not automatically better in all situations.

Medium Weapons

• Cannon 3 needs better accuracy to compete with Massive Cannon 1.

Large Weapons

• Massive Cannon 2, similarly, needs better accuracy than Massive Cannon 3.

We could have a fire rate/reload pass. If so, I'd suggest changing Targeted Missile weapons to help them compete with battery weapons or with each other (hello, TM2 and TM3 -- TM2 is currently strictly worse than TM3).

For ammo economy, could look into changing ammo economy for the less powerful weapons. A drastic change might look like Cannon 1 having 20 shots per battery and a Massive Cannon 3 having 10. This also implicates reload speed.

RocketCat

Modules to increase acceleration at the expense of max speed, and modules to increase max speed at the expense of acceleration.

Steve

Mining rework

• Remove refineries. They're a hassle and add needless complexity. Remove refining spec, too.
  
• Asteroids can be tethered and taken straight to stations, converted to cargo commodities on dock.
  
• Asteroids have health in proportion to their mass which is proportionate to how much comms they may have in them. Can be broken into smaller parts when damaged, which are cargo commodities stored in the ship.
• Gas harvest drones can be used on any ship through a harvest drone control module -- I wrote something about this above
  
• Mining class of ships, lower storage than freighter class of ships, more weapon slots so that can pack one or more mining lasers and, for better ones, a tractor beam. First one is available at a captaincy similar to corvette, second class similar to freighter captaincy requirement.
  
• Mining laser: blast an asteroid to break it into parts. Store the commodities directly in hull. No batteries required. Capacitor drain. Optimal range of 1, 2, and 3, 50% falloff. Damage.
  
• Tractor beam: gather cargo at range, drawing it closer to the ship to be CARGO RETRIEVed. Drains capacitor. Targeting using either cargo ID or local coordinates? Optional stuff: has a weapon power, optimal range, falloff, and things have different masses that function kinda like health. It's pretty quick to pull in something that's small, and can be pretty slow to pull in something that's large.

another idea about asteroids: shooting them with conventional weapons damages their commodity payload.

Rylek

We do need more medium and large modules.

What happened to gas harvesters for all? Make a harvester bay that takes a module outside haulers