Carriers?

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Redaxe
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Carriers?

#1 Post by Redaxe »

I have to confess that I am a huge fan of the Wing Commander game series.
So that leads me to ask this question.

Are there going to be for want of a better word 'Aircraft Carriers' in the game. The idea being they hold loads of torpedo bombers which nuke cap ships at med-long range with tracking torpedoes. Fighters as well to use beam weapons to swarm and destroy small cap ships as well as enemy bombers + fighters.

MoO2 had this feature but it was very limited and although interceptors with mass drivers very powerful at the start of the game the imbalance of beam weapons on cap ships later killed any use in designing carriers and using interceptors + bombers.

If the feature was included it would be awesome to design fighters. MoO1 allowed you to do this but small ships had little strategic value because large ships still mopped up the fighters easily. If they are included they should be very able to dodge beam weapons. I'm all for good balance.

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utilae
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#2 Post by utilae »

I think there should certainly be carriers.

Not too long ago we discussed this. Some ideas were open hull carriers, having various size of ship be carried (ie bigger than fighter size) and various weapons, eg fighters may have rail guns or lasers or missiles.

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I'm all about the Carriers

#3 Post by Airshipjones »

I think Carriers are a key element in large scale air superiority/naval style warfare. The ability to have many small fighter/bombers which can attack/intercept keeps the fleet safe and adds a huge firepower and tactical advantage to the fleet which uses them.

I agree the fighter and bombers should be harder to hit with beam weapons too, though I think that Point Defense weapons and anti-missile missile should be effective against them. This makes an AEGIS-type cruiser or destroyer valuable further into the game as an escort for larger ships. I think that Heavy Mount weapons should have a huge penalty for firing against missiles and fighters/bombers (or perhaps only be able to if it has a proximity detonation option), and Spinal Mount weapons should not be able to target small objects.

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#4 Post by marhawkman »

I somewhat dislike this, since the way PD has been implemented in most games totally reeked.

The fact that you have to use special weapons that only work for PD is what made it bad. I'd rather have an additional component that is designed for targetting fighters myself. The idea of not being able to use all weapons for PD is good. But SE3-4 went overboard with this.
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utilae
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#5 Post by utilae »

Different weapon mounts should be defined as follows:

Spinal Mount:
Weapons that are fixed along the ships hull. The weapon is only able to target objects that the ship it is attached to is facing. These kind of weapons are massive, often the length of the ship. While the damage and spread of this weapons fire could take out many small fighters in one shot, this is not suggested, as fighters are agile and fast capable of moving out of line of fire. A spinal mount weapon would be lucky to hit a stationary fighter, which would only be likely if the figters engines were damaged.

Heavy Mount:
These weapons are either fixed onto a ships hull or at much greater expense, are able to rotate and cover a full 360 degree field of view. Since the heavy mount weapons are able to be mounted onto medium sized ships and below, these weapons are given more accuracy to their targeting. As it is possible for a medium sized ship to maneuvere faster, it's fixed weapons change direction with the ship and thus are able to acquire or keep targets better.

Point Defense:
These weapons are almost always rotatable with a full 360 degree field of view, mainly because it is extremely cheap to make these small weapons rotatable. To make them fixed would require an even smaller cost. Point defense weapons of the fixed variety are often found on fighters for the full purpose of saving space. Some fighters have rotatable point defense weapons, either type provides very good accuracy and are able to keep their targets all the time, since these weapons are mounted on small fast ships most of the time. It is not unusual for larger ships to have hundreds of point defense weapons, setup in batteries. These ships are dedicated to defense. It is usally assumed that point defense weapons are of a very short range. It is indeed possible to have long range point defense weapons. They may be a little bit bigger, but their long reach and accuracy can slice through many small fast moving targets.

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#6 Post by marhawkman »

Erm... my point was that US battleships use a sophisticated radar system to target and destroy enemy aircraft. To me, a "point defense system" should be more what you do with your weapons that what type of weapons you use on your ship.
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Re: utilae's mounts list

#7 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Spinal Mount: Ship is built around the weapon, and it is integral to the structure and function of the ship. The ship is probably primarily a delivery vehicle for the weapon, with limited other uses and functionality. The weapon is powered directly by the ship's generators, and may actually be the ships generators. The weapon, if direct-fire, cannot be aimed other than by turning the whole ship. Weapon strength is capable of significant damage to targets much larger than the firing ship. Examples: Death Star planet-destoying laser, naval aircraft carrier flight deck

Heavy Mount: Sections of the ship are built around the weapons, and it is integral to their structure, but not to the overall ship shape and function. If applicable, weapon can be aimed freely in roughly any orientation above the plane of the surface of the ship at which they are attached. Directly powered by ships main power grid. Weapon strength is capable of significant damage to ships of equal size to firing ship. Examples: Naval battleship main guns, helicoper pads on naval cruisers, sub-launched ICBMs

Light Mount: Weapons have no effect on overall ship appearance. Have limited aiming capability; usually able to adjust somewhat around a fixed orientation, but much less freedom than heavy mounts or PD mounts, and largely dependent on ships orientation to aim. Connected to secondary ship power grid. Weapon strength is capable of significant damage only to ships somewhat smaller than firing ship. Examples: Age-of-sail broadside cannons

Point Defense Mount: Weapons have no effect on overall ship appearance. Mounted in freely-targetable enclosures on surface. Able to track and fire quickly. Connected to secondary or tertiary power grid. Weapon strength is capable of significant damage only to very small ships, or fighters / bombers / missles. Examples: Airial bomber tail gunners, CIWS systems on naval ships

Notes:
* weapon strength estimates assuming equal tech levels, etc.
* indirect fire weapons generally more powerful than direct fire if hit, but may be intercepted
* power grid comments not relevant to modern or earlier era examples... and really irreilvant in practice, but just for illustrative technobabble purposes.

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#8 Post by Redaxe »

I like this idea of having 4 general weapons types.

It might be a good idea for any spinal mount beam weapon to take 1 or 2 combat turns to charge as it does so much damage. And maybe a few other things as well to reduce the advantage of firing a super weapon which can destroy a cruiser or battleship sized warship in one hit. Maybe the superweapon drains the shields when the main gun is fired...Personally though Im not in favour of making weapons like this too powerful. The Stellar Converter in MoO2 was a real pain in the ass when entire fleets of deathstars were armed with them.

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#9 Post by utilae »

marhawkman wrote:Erm... my point was that US battleships use a sophisticated radar system to target and destroy enemy aircraft. To me, a "point defense system" should be more what you do with your weapons that what type of weapons you use on your ship.
My point was to show what I think PD should be like, ie not necesarily short range, not necesarily weak. It's not that spinal mount can't damage fighters, but they are lucky to hit them, etc.
Redaxe wrote: The Stellar Converter in MoO2 was a real pain in the ass when entire fleets of deathstars were armed with them.
When I first played Moo2, for a while it was common to see the enemy with a fleet of 100 doomstars. There were times where I would play and win all the time, then times where I couldn't. But that was a long time ago. Now, I am playing on hard and wiping the enemy with a fleet of cruisers (10 in the last game full of fusion beam cannons). Lately the enemy doesn't get anywhere near that powerful. The worst I have seen is 10 battleships to fight. In most cases one ship can wipe out four of them, if not more.


I forgot about normal mount. Light mount.


And, back to carriers now, aye.

Fighters were very powerful in Moo2, I have yet to focus only on using them, but they always do massive damage when they get to the enemy ship. But they seemed to take ages to get there.

I would like fighters to behave like the Protoss Carriers in starcraft. The fighters swarm and fly around, that was cool.

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#10 Post by marhawkman »

Hey... Fighters that can do boarding! We need those! I LOVED what you could do if you had 100+ ground combat capability. One assault shuttle per enemy doomstar..... And poof they're yours.
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#11 Post by utilae »

The big idea I had way back for Carriers was to have custom sized ships carried, eg a carrier (size Titan) with 2 Battleships inside.

Ways to make this work involved making engines really expensive and take alot of space, so that if you took the engine off the battleships and put on on the Carrier you could have more weapons on your battleships.

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#12 Post by marhawkman »

That works too I guess.
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#13 Post by Redaxe »

I get the impression from reading other threads that the possibility of designing specific fighters + bombers is not going to be implemented. Instead the MoO2 method looked to be the most efficient option where the latest light weapons + armor etc was installed.

If I can make a small request it would be that some major techs u research also have minor upgrades to fighters. This was already applied in MoO2 but I think it needs a bit more. Eg if u research a tech say Multiphased shields (which was in MoO2) it may also have a minor tech that comes with it called Miniaturized Shielding. This would give fighters some shields or upgrade existing shield strength. Other major techs might do other things like impove fighter velocity, evasion to beam weapons, longer range torpedoes which are important in response to more accurate long range beam weapons in cap ships(which killed any point in using fighters in late games of MoO2).

It just seemed to me that fighters were heavily penalized in late games of MoO2 cause you didnt get any benefit of them using less space as all other weapons would when u advance in technology. A continous auto fire phasor with +125% chance to hit would cost maybe 6 points of space after numerous upgrades in Physics which when u can mount 10s of them on ships would decimate any poor fighters (which take from 30-80 space points) before they had a chance to do anything.

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#14 Post by marhawkman »

Well... fighter designs MIGHT get implemented. If they do it'll be designX*quantity though. Which is how Stars did ship designs.....
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