Special purpose vessels

posted on June 3rd, 2012, 4:28 pm

Disclaimer: I'm using Federation examples simply because the Feds are easily the best known faction. I also realize that the redo may shuffle existing abilities/specials, but this is purely meant to showcase an idea.

Currently we have common ship types with known abilities and specials. A good example of this is the Saber with the tiny ECM suite and Hyper Impulse Drive. All this is tailored to allow this type of vessel to raid/kite opposing forces.

During wartime vessels are sometimes adapted for special mission such as Intelligence gathering.
Such modification would result in e.g. a lower speed/weapons-output but increased sensor range or added sensor probes which can be launched.

What i propose is the addition of a high tech special purpose yard (separate from mixed tech to avoid confusion) to allow a limited number of these special purpose vessels.

Examples:
Saber - Fast Tracking Computers and sensor probes (former Canaveral special)
Nebula Class - Vector Calculation
Intrepid - Ability effective against Support vessels + hyper impulse drive

Some shuffle in ability/special could "suddenly" mean that the usual counters to a type aren't effective and with that introducing an element of surprise.

Thoughts/suggestion?

posted on June 4th, 2012, 10:42 am

So you want ships with different stats than they usually have to surprise the enemy? Hmm, I don't see why not simply build the vessels that are designed for the missions you mentioned( for example a canaveral instead of a different sabre).

posted on June 4th, 2012, 11:26 am

So you want ships with different stats than they usually have to surprise the enemy? Hmm, I don't see why not simply build the vessels that are designed for the missions you mentioned( for example a canaveral instead of a different sabre).

Off course it's possible to use the ship designed for that mission, but with the current weapons triangle battles become predictable.

The opponent builds an intrepid you build a ..
By allowing a small number of vessels to have different properties you allow for a real element of surprise which can turn the tide of a battle.

Also a little variation is a good thing.

posted on June 7th, 2012, 5:01 pm

i think it would be a really cool idea to be honest. It would definetly catch someone off gaurd, and could become very irritable to someone trying to defend against it.

But would it turn the game into guessing and microing instead of a "stradegy" even though what we are discussing would be stradegy it would be impossible to defend against unless you got lucky and built a ship that was able to counter it. It seems like if you would do that the guy thats better at microing would come out on top. I mean even now someone whos very good at microing can turn the tide of a game but if you did it this way theres no difinitive counter.

All in all its a great idea but balancing it so its fair from an offensive and defensive stand point i think would be hard.

posted on June 7th, 2012, 5:29 pm

They could require research like a Mixed-Tech ship so that spend some extra cash to get them, you'd know if you have to look out for this if you're against someone you know is willing to get the research.

Or they could get more weaknesses (or amplified ones) compared to regular ones, since it's not the tech designed for them.

posted on June 7th, 2012, 5:49 pm

Actually I think that's a pretty cool idea!

The notion of ships switching around their intended purposes in battle or out is a concept I've always liked . I hope I don't go too far out in saying that there are some new mechanics that allow just that and may take your idea a step further .

Trust Dom and the Devs when they say they truly do read the forums and consider ideas that come up

posted on June 7th, 2012, 6:32 pm

They could require research like a Mixed-Tech ship so that spend some extra cash to get them, you'd know if you have to look out for this if you're against someone you know is willing to get the research.

Or they could get more weaknesses (or amplified ones) compared to regular ones, since it's not the tech designed for them.

The extra weakness is an option, but i think the high tech needed and the limited numbers in which the vessels would be available are enough to balance them.

For the federation it could also be an option to build some warp-in vessels with different properties e.g. a nebula hospital ship.

posted on June 7th, 2012, 10:15 pm

I wasnt trying to deminish the idea i think its great i was just trying to look at it in a balancing point of view.
I guess in truth if both people/teams did swap specials both would have an advantage.

posted on June 7th, 2012, 10:33 pm

Actually I think that's a pretty cool idea!

The notion of ships switching around their intended purposes in battle or out is a concept I've always liked . I hope I don't go too far out in saying that there are some new mechanics that allow just that and may take your idea a step further .

Trust Dom and the Devs when they say they truly do read the forums and consider ideas that come up

Missed this post earlier. Nice to hear and itching to find out exactly what those new mechanics will be.

@Tanner: Micromanagement will always be a part of RTS, but look at the bright side: When the new version arrives everyone will have to learn how to use the new mechanics and how to micromanage them.

IMO this will level the playing field. Experience in the current/older versions is only worth so much.
Having to learn how to deal with the new features, having to develop new tactics and so forth will be worth the wait (although everyone here wouldn't mind if the new version was released like yesterday)

posted on June 7th, 2012, 10:57 pm

I like this idea, however I think that there would need to be some form of penalty to do this, i.e. some form of extra cost. Maybe you could build the ship, and then have to put in in a yard for some form of refit, or special assignment overhaul. This would cost time and some sort of resource (nothing super major). But then you could have specially refitted ships. Perhaps this could fit into the future star fleet intelligence avatar, ships refitted by starfleet intelligence to do special assignments. This could be a really cool feature for a future avatar.

posted on June 8th, 2012, 1:41 pm

Looking through some news posts //www.fleetops.net/news/item/214-scout-me-in it was mentioned that the line of sight will match the weapon range.

An option would be to give a vessel a sensor package to increase the line of sight.

posted on June 8th, 2012, 2:27 pm

Or to add on to rays idea you could have to build a yard strictly for refitting and you could select what refit you wanted if you were given the options between some.

Just an idea to go with it and it would probably suck but if the ships are refitted at a special yard your specialty ship would have to repair at a refit yard cause its the only yard with the ability to refit.

You could also have the ability to unrefit your ship if you wanna change one or a couple of there abilitys/duties to the fleet so they can play a different role.

posted on June 11th, 2012, 12:12 am

Multiple possible refits. Interesting.

Quite a load to script/balance though. If the special purpose vessels make it ingame (which i hope they do) it'd be best to start to only one possible refit.

How the refit would be made (vessel made from scratch or and existing vessel which goes to a yard to be refitted) is up to the dev team.