I'd like to make a few suggestions dealing with how one can customize their ships equipment, on how to make it better and more interesting. And yes i know that if all of these were implemented it would probably TRIBBLE up current pvp tactics. Personally i think itd be worth it. While i do hope for all of these i doubt all the suggestions here would be easy to implement, but i still think it's worth looking at. so i hope whoever goes over this froum for ideas and suggestions and etc will see this.
Ship basics:
1) either remove weapon facing restrictions, or better yet, add more mounting options for weapons such as cannons, torpedoes, and mines.
2) Introduce external armor as part of the hit point system, how this would work is at the basic level 1 damage would remove 1 armor point. to keep things balanced i'd suggest divide every ships hitpoints between the armor and the structure (i'd say the easiest would be a 50/50 division, however i'd be fine with having that rate differ between ships for more variety)... while there is armor the crew and systems should be much more resilient to damage, and when the armor is gone, they should be more vulnerable to it than before. If this is done then there could be additinal slots for material types for both (for instance you could have phasor resistent exterior and a general energy damage resistant interior).
3) the ability to buy and/or swap additional console stations and boff stations, possibly even weapon placements.
... altho what i'd really like to see is the removal of consoles and rather have module slots next to or just under the related system for enhancements- so youd have module slots for forward/aft weapons, dish, shield array, engines. to this add the systems of armor, structure, possibly power (altho that could be lumped in with the engines)
4) the ability to swap visuals between systems of the same type, and more hopefully the abilty to swap visuals between ships. (ie i really like how the constitution class looks but i can't really use it for what i do because its too undervalue- not enough weapon slots, not enough hitpoints, etc...). Or find someway to be able to increase the value of earlier tier ships so that they will be worth using at top level for things other than roleplay/looks.
Weapons and gear:
Weapons (and equipment in general) have so much potential with this game yet are extremely identical with about 1% difference between them both in types and not much more between levels.
To change this I suggest
1) need a better ramp up between MK levels and/or rarity
1A) I'd suggest for the weapon type specialy to start at 1% and increase by 1% each mk level or every other mk level (if you want to be stingy about it)
2) need more randomness in green or bettter weapons - you have all these variables in addition to damage, accuracy, crit damage, and crit (for instance i wouldnt mind finding a forward cannon that has significantly higher damage at the cost having reduced arc or increased cooldown);
a) the cooldown
b) the Arc field of fire (and not only does it have to be in one direction but you could have items that do both 90* forward and 90*
c) which facing it can be mounted on (come on you'd think thered be some halfbright engineer who'd mount their cannons or torpedoes to be fired portsides or to the rearinstead of the permanent forward mounting for anything above a beam array >.<)
d) Special effect(s) rate
e) range
3) need energy weapons that do more hull damage than shield damage and vice versa with torpedoes. And some that do equal amounts in both hull and shield damage.
4) need to see more effects with weapons, either added to existing weapons or with completely new ones such as
a) hit all 4 shields simultaneosly
b) auto hit weakest shield
c) some extrem shield penetration balanced out by itty bitty hull damage and vice versa
d) healing instead of damage (to use on allies)
e) combo strikes (which means say a weapon emplacement starts making repeated hits in a row it would start getting some sort of buff or applying some sort of debuff more and more up to a certain extent)
e) jumping (like the ghostbuster gun secondary fire from the devidian missions)
f) more use of repel
g) more use of shield bleedthru
h) higher damage or better chance of special effect at the cost of some sort of hazard to self
i) more specific system inhibitor specialies used (like the chroniton mines)
j) have damage related to the power alloted to the weapons system (or any other system)
k) range damage modifiers (for instance some weapons have significant drop over range and others increase over range)
l) more use of shield and hull specific DoTs
end of part 1.
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