Hangar normalization, expansion and customization

stirling191

Preface:

As it stands now, carriers are remarkably varied, yet extremely limited, when it comes to what they launch. In a lot of cases that results in a lot of confusion, angst and general crankiness that you have to fly a certain ship to use pets that have certain abilities.

I've been giving it some thought, and I think I've got some thoughts as to how to remedy that. Obviously this is all conceptual, and I know there's probably some aspect I'm overlooking, but I'd like to put this out there and see what comes of it.

Please note: this is not an AI related concept, though pet AI desperately needs reworking.

Purpose:

To allow Carrier pilots more flexibility with how they build their ships, so that they have full control over the appearance, weapons and abilities of their hangar-launched craft, and to generally remove some of the clunkiness of flying a carrier.

Part 1: The Flight Deck

For each hangar slot on a given Carrier, that ship gets 4 "points" to build a flight wing. "Fighters" (To'Duj, Peregrine, Stalker, etc) would be 1 point each, "Bombers" (Danubes/Delta Flyers) and Utility Ships (Shield Drones/Syphon Drones etc) would be 2 points each and Frigates (BoPs, Kar'Fi frigates, Mesh Weavers etc.) would be 4 points each.

Thusly, a wing could comprise two Fighters and a Bomber, Two Bombers, Four fighters, etc.

Each hangar would still support two waves however, so each wing gets launched twice.

Part 2: The Armory

Instead of having set loadouts (as current pets do), each hangar ship would have a BOFF-like sub-screen that allowed for complete weapon, equipment (engine, shield, deflector) and ability customization.

In addition, players would advance their fighters in two ways: by purchasing skin unlocks (with either dilith, EC or perhaps as part of reputation projects) that added different appearances to the player's hangar (think of it like purchasing costume parts), and by purchasing "schematics" for lack of a better term, that unlock more advanced templates with more equipment slots.

For example: instead of purchasing an Advanced Peregrine Hangar, one would purchase the Peregrine appearance, and an Advanced Fighter schematic that would allow them to use the Peregrine skin on any fighter, and the Advanced Fighter tier of equipment slots.

All players would start with basic skins and schematics for Fighters, Bombers, Utility Craft and Frigates, but would still be limited by the ship they fly as to what they could deploy (IE: HECs still can't launch Frigates).



Part 3: The Abilities

As time goes by, more and more powers get added to certain carrier pets. Most of the time they aren't at all mirrored. Instead of copying and pasting power templates, allow for full BOFF-like ability customization for each specific ship-type.

Basic level schematics would have limited to no power usage (I'm thinking none given what the capability of gear selection and slightly larger non-frigate wing size would do to balance)

Advanced tier ships would have Ensign level power capability

Elite tier ships would have LT. level power capability.

For the sake of balance, and to keep some form of progression, I'm thinking individual powers would need to be purchased/unlocked. This could extend to Reputation systems by allowing pets to use sub-faction based abilities.

Conclusion

Obviously there are multiple wrinkles to work out, especially in regards to how many of what kind of gear and ability slots are available. But at the end of the day I, as a carrier pilot, would greatly, greatly enjoy being able to make my squadron as opposed to slapping in what is effectively a cookie-cutter selection.

The groundwork already exists in the BOFF system, simply apply some of that goodness to Carriers.

Commence the nit-pickery.

tenkari

interesting ideas, but i think unless these changes end up at a cost nearly as much as the hangar bays that are currently in stores, you most likely wont see cryptic changing to something like this.

I for one owuld love to change pet weapon/equipment to that that macthes or compliments my ship.

stirling191

tenkari wrote: »

interesting ideas, but i think unless these changes end up at a cost nearly as much as the hangar bays that are currently in stores, you most likely wont see cryptic changing to something like this.

In theory, combined costs should actually be higher than existing costs for hangar items. These unlocks wouldn't take up inventory space, wouldn't need to be dragged and dropped from one ship to the next, and would be (in my opinion) considerably more versatile than the existing hangar bay items. That makes me perfectly ok with spending a bit more on them.

canis36

As awesome as the idea is I don't think it's really all that viable for an MMO, especially a F2P. That's a LOT of variables that have to managed and accessed on the fly per character and with the recent proliferation of carriers it's possible to have as many as twenty carriers on a single map, all with differently customized loadouts for a potential total of up to 40 hangar decks all with totally different, non-standard launches.

The game engine has problems with too much going on at once now. Introducing that level of complexity is only going to make those problems worse. With the current set of pets, even if it can get a bit bewildering keeping up with what goes where all the pets are standardized and so each time somebody launches a wing of Advanced To'Duj fighters it only has to check the files for "Advanced To'Duj Fighters" and that's it. In your proposal it'd need to check each character's individual set-up and drill down to each ship launched in that wing to check equipment and abilities. That's a number of extra steps, and will quickly add up when you have five or more players all launching hangar wings as fast as they can.

stirling191

canis36 wrote: »

As awesome as the idea is I don't think it's really all that viable for an MMO, especially a F2P. That's a LOT of variables that have to managed and accessed on the fly per character and with the recent proliferation of carriers it's possible to have as many as twenty carriers on a single map, all with differently customized loadouts for a potential total of up to 40 hangar decks all with totally different, non-standard launches.

The game engine has problems with too much going on at once now. Introducing that level of complexity is only going to make those problems worse. With the current set of pets, even if it can get a bit bewildering keeping up with what goes where all the pets are standardized and so each time somebody launches a wing of Advanced To'Duj fighters it only has to check the files for "Advanced To'Duj Fighters" and that's it. In your proposal it'd need to check each character's individual set-up and drill down to each ship launched in that wing to check equipment and abilities. That's a number of extra steps, and will quickly add up when you have five or more players all launching hangar wings as fast as they can.

I think you're forgetting that the game engine has to remember every inventory item, reputation power, BOFF, BOFF gear, BOFF skills etc. And that's on top of multiple unique player ship loadouts per character.

Keeping track of what players have isn't really a problem.