A New Research System

[godsvoice]

posted on March 8th, 2012, 2:17 am

Last edited by godsvoice on March 8th, 2012, 2:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

Taken from variety of already in place game features:

Station that researches system upgrades for free (like borg) as follows: Offensive Profile Upgrade, Defensive Profile Upgrade, etc

Similar to a shield, weapons, etc upgrade.

The free research does nothing for any ships directly, however, after the research is complete, I.e. offensive profile upgrade:

All offensive profile ships get button options like the tavara for her improved weapons, shields etc.

This system now works like the newton. Where the offensive profile button can be clicked say 2-3 times, like the newton, and the offensive profile ship gets upgrades of devs choosing over that period (additional shield weapons system value, etc, or offensive value, hit rate percentage etc skies the limit).

The ability costs when the ships implements the research, and like newton or tavara, it can either be instantaneous, or take time.

So: free research at station for profile ships. Ships then implement  multi tier research ability like the newton onboard ship: these upgrades whatever they are, are profile specific. This could replace shield upgrades or be an add on to them.

I guess that's the basic outline.

I suggest the upgrades be substantive, or very cheap to implement fleet wide. For instance, if I have to upgrade each one of my profile ships, and that costs me resources, either it is extremely worthwhile to do it to any individual ship and gives me great enhancements, or it costs like 50 di 50 tr so that I can upgrade a whole slew of ships for equivalent costs to other current systems. I.e. weapons upgrade might be 600 1200 or something, for an entire fleet. So on an individual basis, it should be quite cheap. Or remarkably more effective. I.e. +16% for 300 di. +20% on second upgrade for 500 di.

Yes, you might almost double that ships effectiveness for whatever the resources costs, don't have to use above example of 300 500, could be more could be less. But the point is it should be high percentage, as it is on ship to ship basis.

I think that would be quite neat. Almost like creating my own super ships in the fleet.

posted on March 8th, 2012, 2:39 am

So Special station costs X-amount of dil and tri maybe even some supply but has free reaserch based on a ships profile but like the tavara and the newton you pay in order to actually upgrade it. Not a bad idea in my opinion but you couldnt make the upgrades too ourstanding. it would make ships too powerful too early. it would be interesting to see whether or not people would use it i mean in the case of the tavara and the newton its worth while. But for each individual ship idk would it be worth upgrading each ship, or wouldnt it be more worth while to just build a second ship or a bigger one. But again if implemented properly could be cool. Maybe instead of each ship give only certain ships like only the soverign and other major offensive, defensive, special ships for each faction such as the tavara.

posted on March 8th, 2012, 2:45 am

You know, this might work if it only applied to Battleships, maybe 3-4 per race or it could be limited to Romulan Warbirds and/or Borg vessels.

For small ships, I think not.  It would have to be pretty expensive to not be unbalanced, and people would probably end up either not using it at all or using it on their entire fleet in which case you could have kept the current upgrade system.

Of course, I would rather see Defense upgrades split into several different ones for the different profiles, and offense upgrades split into beam, torp, and pulse upgrades that only affect those weapon systems.  This would allow players to respond to the enemy's fleet composition better when their own fleet has already been built.

[Tanner_Rosso]

posted on March 8th, 2012, 2:54 am

Last edited by Tanner_Rosso on March 8th, 2012, 2:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Tryptic i agree that for smaller ships its not practical but it would be cool for battleships. Only one other concern is that you shouldnt be able to do it too all ships. Aaaaaa Maybe like warp ins you limit how many ships or upgrades per type of profile. so you have to be careful on to how you spend those points. maybe have a limit so that you could go all offensive, defensive, special, or balace it based on your play.

posted on March 8th, 2012, 5:15 am

Why not for small ships? I would imagine that a couple of cheap small upgrades to a given stat wouldn't be overpowering. I actually consider this a better overall system than the universal upgrades some races get.

[Tanner_Rosso]

posted on March 8th, 2012, 5:27 am

Last edited by Tanner_Rosso on March 8th, 2012, 5:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

Because to start with the upgrade might be free initially but you still have to pay for the station itself in which it wouldnt be usefull in early game taking the time to build an extra station plus the time to research and then more money for the upgrade by the time you completed all that with the time and resources you would have several ships out. But for late game battleships it could be quite usefull. Me personally i wouldnt use it early game and im betting many others wouldnt either unless your doing an ai stomp in which case i skip small ships as fast as i can anyway. so I personally cant see it being used on anything other than battleships.

Unless you were to give the ships free upgrades which wouldnt make sense for a tech tree perspective but could be done

[godsvoice]

posted on March 8th, 2012, 5:46 am

Last edited by godsvoice on March 8th, 2012, 5:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

Hmm.

Well the research station can be as cheap as devs want. They could make it 400 400. That's pretty cheap, and they could make it build able in under a min. Or they could make it more regular like 600 300 or 900 450.

But isn't an easy solution just to make the research customizable per ship?

Ship's resource cost is X. 1st upgrade is 10% of X, for upgrade. 2nd upgrade is 18% of X, for upgrade etc.

A saber then, could get a cheaper upgrade, and so it could be just as useful. A saber could get the enhancements for say 30 di. You can't build any ship for that, but if you've already built 3 sabers, for 100 di, you could give them all an enhancement. I mean, obviously its just a rough calculation with 10 percent, can be 25 or whatever. I dunno.

But the upgrade isn't universal. It doesn't cost 300 for all ships to get it. Some defensive units will pay say 100, others 450 maybe. I dunno.

I think it should be feasible for small and large ships to get upgrades through this research station/system.

Edit: Or make it more rewarding the higher up you are in the tech tree. Small ships are small, and even with great enhancements, you can't really boost them extraordinarily. So yes, they get very cheap upgrades, cheaper than having to build 2 or 3 more ships, but it doesn't do a whole heck of a lot. Just makes them maybe one ship slot above what they'd be. So a saber would become more on par with a monsoon or intrepid after the enhancements. If you had three sabers raiding, it might just do the trick to give them all the upgrades to help them take out miners with just that little extra edge. Cheap, with small improvements on the small side.(instead of waiting for a couple extra ships to get built)

For the battleships, more expensive, with significant improvements. Because with those costs, yes, you could probably build a whole new ship, but the enhancements are actually very nice, so you get your moneys worth.

[Tanner_Rosso]

posted on March 8th, 2012, 6:03 am

Last edited by Tanner_Rosso on March 8th, 2012, 6:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

I guess truthfully it would all depend on how much it would cost for the initial station. If the station was super cheap maybe it would be worth it but if it was expensive it wouldnt really be worth it for early game. its not a bad idea to have it for smaller ships but i think that you would have to have a certain cap on how many points you would gain expecially at the battleship level. You wanna keep it somewhat balanced so that your tier 1s are not totally worthless.

The other thing is do you really wanna be clicking through each individual ship to upgrade it. It would be easier to limit it so only a certain ships/ships can get it and you could only use so many of these upgrades. when it comes to game play if im microing my fleet i dont want to be trying to do upgrade/find a ship that doesnt have it yet.

posted on March 8th, 2012, 6:50 pm

From the Fed's perspective, this could quite easily replace the universal upgrades researched at Starfleet Engineering, and could probably be based from that building as well. Make the researches fairly cheap but take a fair while to perform (say 5 minutes).

posted on March 8th, 2012, 9:40 pm

They could make it 400 400. That's pretty cheap, and they could make it build able in under a min.

If the station was super cheap maybe it would be worth it

From the Fed's perspective.......Make the researches fairly cheap but take a fair while to perform (say 5 minutes).

MY GOD PEOPLE, are you TRYING to make feds OP????? RLY????? SEROUSLY????????? AS IF the feds need a cheap resources system, in adition to their cheap ships/free warpin already. AND YOU WANT CHEAP UPGRADES???????

sombody with some since back me up here!!!!!!

Opps, did not mean the smily spam

[Tryptic]

posted on March 8th, 2012, 9:53 pm

Last edited by Tryptic on March 8th, 2012, 9:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Ummm, did you read the part where they have to pay to upgrade each ship individually?  The cheap, slow research they're talking about is simply to unlock this ability and doesn't increase any ship stats at all.

posted on March 8th, 2012, 10:34 pm

Ummm, did you read the part where they have to pay to upgrade each ship individually?  The cheap, slow research they're talking about is simply to unlock this ability and doesn't increase any ship stats at all.

Oh......... Ok i see, i sorta panic'd when i read this....... Still i don't think easy upgrades should be available, as like in star craft, Upgrades are stenciled into every pro strat..... i don't think we should turn fleet ops into 'upgrade wars'

posted on March 8th, 2012, 11:01 pm

Well I think their are definitely ups and downs.

As for needing this to upgrade every ship individually... yes it might be a hassle, but its also much more focussed.

For instance, fleet wide upgrades for shields is like 600 1200 for first, then say 1200 2985 or something random. It costs a lot, takes a long time to research. This would not take that much time to research, or to implement, in my view. It would be fairly quick. The cost is what gets you. But how big is your fleet? It might just do the trick to spend say total of 1000 2000 to upgrade a few specific ships, and be cheaper than getting the one size fits all upgrades. Maybe not, but I think it could be good.

I didn't really mean this to be faction wide. I thought, either a faction could get this as their redo, or a new faction in future could use it, or avatar specific type station maybe.

It could even be tied in with ranks. Perhaps these research abilities are made cheaper when you rank. A green saber spends more resources to get the enhancements then a single gold bar does. It could be an improvement on the rank system. er I mean not improvement like the rank system is bad. I like the rank system. But just something additional. A veteran crew is able to implement upgrade much more cost effective than a new crew. But regardless of how much it costs, the actual enhancements are the same.

This way, you can focus it even more. The higher rank ships get the ability at a discount, and it makes them even more effective, on top of the fact that they are already your best ships to begin with.

Although, this might be quite a bit to coordinate, but they tell us to only worry about the idea, and not how to actually do it right/

Cause... 1) it costs based on the original cost of the ship, and is a percentage of that for each upgrade, getting higher as you go up through the 1st 2nd and 3rd upgrades. and 2) the new part of the idea, maybe give discounts as well for where the ship is on the rank system. This way, you are encouraged to give enhancements to already highly effective ships.

posted on March 9th, 2012, 12:13 am

    Say you did replace this new idea with starfleet engineering and gave each ship the ability to upgrade. I guess an upside would be if you were in a money crunch and couldnt afford the big upgrade you can now give it to a handful of ships depending on the price per upgrade. But you also gotta take into consideration that now that you dont have the big upgrade how much more will it cost to give all your ships full upgrades compared to the way it is now.

    You could possibly raise the price of all ships and put more focus on an upgrade system like this. So now your ships become even more valued from start and expecially when they start ranking up. Plus if you got rid of the big chuck upgrade you have more choices in game play. Use an upgrade for a ship or wait to build another cause the one coming out could use it more for what the opposition is sending itll make you think a little more and plan your stradegy out.

    Or if you would wanna base it off rank maybe make it so that you can only upgrade once it hit double gold. Maybe break up the upgrades ok so your ship is double silver it gets this upgrade, now its double gold and it can earn another upgrade, oooooo now its a vet beeeffy upgrade  something like that. Give your self a reason to defenetly keep this ship a live even though its staranded.

posted on March 9th, 2012, 4:32 am

Still i don't think easy upgrades should be available

A five minute research time is not an "easy upgrade".