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Ideas for Super carriers.
willomally
Member Posts: 90 Arc User
I keep seeing everyone talking about having a "full" carrier here is my tow cents as to how to do the next carrier type.
First they need to take a page from how "wet navy" carriers and have the air wing as the ships main weapon so I think having four hanger bays but to balance that it should only have two fore and two aft weapons slots. This I think would make the player using the ship to fight the ship defensively using beam arrays or turrets while focusing the fire of their "air wing" to deal out the one hell of an offensive wallop.
My second thought is to have the the ship have a weaker hull probably around 37,000 to 39,000 hit points. I see this as reflecting the nature of how the ship would be constructed story wise as it's structure would be mostly hanger bays. In a game sense I see the weaker hull as a way to balance the offence punch of the "air wing" by letting enemies who can fight through the "air wing" be able to take down the carrier ,and keep carrier captains on their toes.
To rap up my random musings I see the ship having a heavy engineering bias in the bridge officer lay out. The story reason for this would reflect the fact that the ship would have to have a large engineering crew to maintain the "air wing". In game terms it would give carrier captains to effectively fight the carrier defensively by allowing the slotting of higher level engineering team and emergency power to shields or run from the fight with emergency power to engines.
So these are my musing as to how I would build a carrier and my reasoning behind it. What do you think and What would you do differently?
First they need to take a page from how "wet navy" carriers and have the air wing as the ships main weapon so I think having four hanger bays but to balance that it should only have two fore and two aft weapons slots. This I think would make the player using the ship to fight the ship defensively using beam arrays or turrets while focusing the fire of their "air wing" to deal out the one hell of an offensive wallop.
My second thought is to have the the ship have a weaker hull probably around 37,000 to 39,000 hit points. I see this as reflecting the nature of how the ship would be constructed story wise as it's structure would be mostly hanger bays. In a game sense I see the weaker hull as a way to balance the offence punch of the "air wing" by letting enemies who can fight through the "air wing" be able to take down the carrier ,and keep carrier captains on their toes.
To rap up my random musings I see the ship having a heavy engineering bias in the bridge officer lay out. The story reason for this would reflect the fact that the ship would have to have a large engineering crew to maintain the "air wing". In game terms it would give carrier captains to effectively fight the carrier defensively by allowing the slotting of higher level engineering team and emergency power to shields or run from the fight with emergency power to engines.
So these are my musing as to how I would build a carrier and my reasoning behind it. What do you think and What would you do differently?
[SIGPIC]
Look at the pretty mushroom grow
Look at the pretty mushroom grow
Post edited by willomally on
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basically a support ship as it should be, and the allowance of emergency holo-armor if the shields go down.
that's my two cents.
So you have a carrier with 4 hangar bays, each of them can support 2 wings of fighters. That's essentialy 24 fighters per carrier. Now imagine a Fleet Starbase defense with 10 of those, let alone more.
That is waaaay to much pet spam and would probably cause the game to lag as hell, making many instances next to unplayable, if not completely unplayable. It's just too much.
Throw in Battleships too.
they did u could technally consider the avenger class a battleship lol
Let me tell you, it was a blast, both literally and figuratively.
It would be great if cryptic would come up with a point defense turret for the weapon slots.
I can see it as also a way for smaller ships to fight off the fighters and shuttles that are becoming more prevalent in game.
Look at the pretty mushroom grow
Your tow sense... interesting.
I'd like to see a carrier w/ 4-6 hangers. If six (maybe both) you'd have to designate 2 for 'big' ships and the other 4 for fighters/small shuttles. My only concern would be how freaking slow Cryptic would make the carrier. The Atrox is already sooo slow turning, we'd need an 'autopilot' turning option on a super carrier so my fingers wouldn't get tired holding down the A or D keys!
perhaps the Feds would be as the OP described but with more Science stations and forgoing entirely a tactical station, the Romulans would have a cloak for theirs of course (battle cloak preferred but regular cloak acceptable) and the Klingons would have more weapon slots and enhanced hull
all super carriers should get a built in (not a console but built in ability) point defense system similar to the console version
i also support single weapons slots fore and aft, except for the klingons, they should get two fore and one aft (more aggressive after all)
but i think there should be 6 hangar slots, but have them instead of 1 to 1 fighters/frigates, the hangars should be 1 slot taken for fighters, 2 slots for frigates and 3 slots for a new class of hangar (hmmm escort? something else?). this would translate to 48 fighters, 6 frigates or 2 to 4 (probably 2, as they'd be much more powerful than frigates) of the new hangar class
Or we could make carrirers look like battlestars from BSGO.
Star Trek Battles member. Want to roll with a good group of people regardless of fleets and not have to worry about DPS while doing STFs? Come join the channel and join in the fun!
http://forum.arcgames.com/startrekonline/discussion/1145998/star-trek-battles-channel-got-canon/p1
Beyond releasing the Fleet Kar'fi and a Fleet Atrox, this game doesn't need any more carriers. Certainly not a carrier with 4 hangars.
Nope Federation players are never happy no matter what they get no matter how much more they have to other factions they always want more more more. I agree no more Carriers at least for Federation side. Klingons can use 1 new carrier a Escort Carrier of some type as they are only faction without such a ship. Then the Romulans can use a full 2 hanger Carrier after that I don't think their needs to be anymore added to the game at least not for a long time.
Fighter spam is already bad enough without adding even more to it.
In BSG and B5 the most effective carriers had external racks for the fighter where a swarm could launch all at once. I am referring to the Raider class in B5 and the Cylon Base ships. No launch deck just a release clamp to launch the wings of fighters.
Yes there were landing bays for rearming and such but unlike the EA frigates in B5 with only one area for both functions and BSG with the stupid mag rail tubes to launch a single critical hit did not cripple the offensive capability of them only the landing cycle. Getting back to the external clamp it makes more sense combat wise to dump as many as you can all at once we not in a gravity well or atmosphere where a boost is needed but in space.
Just think how cool it would be if instead of waiting 15 seconds to launch all your fighters you dump say 12 all at once. The fighters and carrier would then be an effective offensive ship instead of a support role or a miss mash as they are now neither fish or fowl.
I agree that most of the carrier weapons load be defensive turrets and point defense.
The fighters need to be revamped if this class comes into being with three types that can be picked from at start of battle but once choice is made that's it till end of mission. By doing that it puts the element of planning your strategy out before launching. Taking away the face roll factor to a degree. by picking which of the 3 fighter types the player can choose to be defensive and support for missions like The Cure, be a pure attack factor for missions like KASE or a mix for things like the Red Alert missions. These are just examples to highlight my rational for 3 distinct fighter types carried by the proposed carrier class capitol ship. In R/L a Carrier carries a mixed bag of aircraft to cover all mission profiles.
A pure defense fighter to protect the carrier and bombers from other fighters and torpedo spreads. This type would have heavy rapid fire cannons and a turret not anti-ship weapons and be very fast and agile with moderate shields its speed and agility being its defense. In R/L think f-14 and f-15, Mig Fulcrum, or English Electric Lightening.
A pure anti ship type with at least 4 heavy torpedoes with a long cool down to balance the dps and a defensive turret no other anti-fighter weapons these are pure and simple ship killers. Moderate speed not great agility they are bombers after all very heavy shields and very heavy armor with good acceleration to "get out of dodge". In R/l terms think of the S-3a Viking, b-52, b-1b, b-2 Vulcan, Bear.
And last a multi role fighter (think f/a-18, ) with heavy shields good turn rate and light armor and some anti-ship and fighter weapons.
Each carrier would come with one equipped as standard so its already set up for taking down enemy spam, while launching its own.
people then have to decide do they want to give up a weapon slot for the spam killer weapons.
I'm not so concerned with the "pet spam" tho (and I hate the term 'spam' being coined for it by players who don't like carriers)
Not everybody is going to be able to handle a busy map. Sorry, thems the breaks. Your average computer being sold, has a basic graphics chip in it, or a very low-end 3d-capable one. If your bandwidth can't handle it either, sorry... but I, for one, am getting pretty frustrated at constantly having to play down to the lowest common denominator. High time for the pendulum to swing the other way for a while, and you guys don't get what you want for a change.
As for the server being able to handle it, it doesn't have to do all of the processor/gpu-intensive calculations involved with rendering, so when all you're left with is computing positional data along with timers for cooldowns and the cheap way they're doing hit/miss calculations, it really isn't all that much to do.
If it can handle maps like Starbase 24, it can handle this too.
Not so sure if I agree with just 1 fore and 1 aft weapon. Carriers are still pretty well armed and can take a beating, as they're typically the largest ships in the fleet. Although, if Cryptic ever gets around to implementing a more flexible weapon mount system, that should compensate well. So... say a carrier has 6 beams... 1 fore, 1 aft, 1 port, 1 starboard, 1 on top, and 1 beneath, with the normal overlap a beam has, you still get good coverage.
Introduce a new weapon type specifically for point-defense, and give the carrier a toggle to turn it on or off, and they independently fire at whatever enemy fighters or missiles/torps/mines are in range, at say, a 1 second cycle (reloading time). The point defense effective against small craft and projectiles, but less so against larger ships.
One thing is for sure tho, if we ever get any kind of full-fledged carrier capability, we're going to have to be able to target any enemy within our scanner range, and order a fighter wing to go intercept it. This 10/12km limitation for fighters is a joke. What's the point of even having fighters if we can only tell them to attack a ship that is already within our weapons range? I'm sure the pilots themselves are annoyed to no end about this too.
Seriously, Cryptic (if you're watching, and you probably aren't)... get rid of whoever is handling the 'balance' in the game, and hire someone who actually knows something about tactical issues. Balance should never be "all weapons have the same range, and all weapon types do the same relative damage"...
And since I'm ranting, I'll wind down with... the cooldowns... I don't know why the lessons from the past seem to keep getting forgotten, but star trek games from the 1980's got weapons right, and they had barely any of the computing power we have now.
NO shared cooldowns for weapons, and you have too many shared ones for tray powers too.
For weapons, your fixed 'cooldown' should only reflect the time it takes for that weapon to 'reload/reset' for another firing, or how long it takes that weapon to charge back up based on the power you are sending to the weapons grid, whichever is longer for energy weapons, and cumulative, for projectiles.
Also, beams and torpedoes (AND FIGHTERS) should not have the same firing range, and while a torp doesn't care much what kind of ship it is being fired from, energy weapons should have some kind of variation depending on what class of ship it is mounted on combined with the engines (and power relays) in it.
With the Defiant class always being the exception, the larger a ship is, the more power it is typically generating, the larger energy weapon mounts it can support, and will usually have a longer range than, say, a fighter, and it would pack more of a punch.
Nothing drastic here... small escorts with a 9.5km range, and a battleship with a 10.5km range. The escort's advantage is it is a smaller target much more maneuverable (which is meaningless with the way you're handling hit/miss calculations) and is better at getting inside a large ship's knife-range. The closer in you are to the target, the harder it is for that target to be able to get an angle on you to fire at you (unless you're dumb enough to keep your ship on top of the beam emitters, then you deserve the slagging your ship's hull is about to receive).
Anyways... that's all I have to say about that... just hoping for a more tactically oriented game, instead of the gamey oriented game we have now.
-- Smoov
Look at the pretty mushroom grow
but this won't happen due to game engine limits.
Ain't Nobody Got Time for That
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
1. Allow device slot ships to have carrier commands (and create device slot versions of each frigate/fighter/healer in the game). I wish I had carrier commands on the device slot scorpion. Please remember no one will be forced to put a healer/frigate/fighter on their beloved cruiser, thus making it a carrier. So let's not get into that discussion please. I understand how touchy this is for some people.
2. Convert the device slot to be more universal. Where it can be be renamed to universal slot or device/hangar slot.
3. Every 3rd through 6th hangar pet will 50 charges. If you're carrier came with 2, then they will be immune from the pet charges. When you run out of your 50, you'll have to buy more of them for Dilithuim. This is to keep people from going spam happy. And also to allow some defense/offense for carrier pilots.
4. Every hangar pet PAST your 2nd you will give up one fore and one aft weapon slot,...automatically! This is for balance reasons. So pilots of that sexy giant called the Odyssey and other cruisers will be able to have 2 hangar pets without loosing any weapon slot. But soon as they use a 3rd pet they will give up one for and one aft. Pilots of the 2 hangar carriers will also be forced to loose a weapon slots if they decide to get a 3rd hangar.
5. If you run out of fore/aft weapons the game will block you from adding another hangar pet. Therefore you will have no defense for yourself other than your pets and keeping them alive. As drastic as that sounds, it'll be a be motivator to prevent someone from having 6 hangar bays.
6. Ships that have 5 forward weapon slots and escorts will not be able to use this system.
For example using my Atrox which has 2 hangar bays & 4 device slots:
Default Hangar bay 1- Advanced Scorpion
Default Hangar bay 2 - Advanced Delta Flyer
device slot 1 - Advanced Peregrine
^ The game engine will know this is my 3rd pet. Therefore one of my fore+one aft weapon slot turns grey. I can't use it. So now my Atrox has 2 fore/ 2 aft weapons.
device slot 2- Advanced Stalker
^ The game engine will know this is my 4th pet. Therefore one of my fore+one aft weapon slot turns grey. I can't use it. So now my Atrox has 1 fore/ 1 aft weapons.
device slot 3- Armored Shield Repair units
^ The game engine will know this is my 5th pet. Therefore one of my fore+one aft weapon slot turns grey. I can't use it. So now my Atrox has No fore/aft weapons. Now I must rely solely on my pets.
So my Atrox is now a "super carrier" with 5 pets. Pet's 3-5 will have 50 charges. After which I will have to spend dill do get more. Every time I remove a pet from my device slot I regain a fore + aft weapon slot.
Using my Mirror Star Cruiser for example, which has 4 device slots.
Device slot 1 - Advanced Peregrine
^ This is my first pet. So now weapon slots will be lost.
Device slot 2- Advanced Delta Flyer
^ This is my second pet. So no weapon slots will be lost.
I do not want any more device slots to be used. So now my Star Cruier has 4 fore/ 4 aft + 2 hangar pets. As much a cruiser pilots would oppose my idea, they will benefit the most. They will be the only ship class to be able to have 8 weapon slots AND two hangars. Thus making cruisers more appeals (since we're playing escorts online).
Look at the pretty mushroom grow
It isnt just about the players PC or ISP being able to handle it or the server being able to handle it. Can the game engine handle it?
I built a PC about a two weeks after guild wars 2 came out. 3.9ghz quad core, Sandisk SSD, Team Vulcan 16gb ram, and a 4gb MSI 680gtx. But even with all that a certain cave in guild wars 2 would lag me out. It's been a long time but IIRC the devs admitted that GW2 wasnt optimized for GEFORCE cards, some players even did some benchmark tests confirming this (said that the game was too CPU intensive instead of graphics card intensive).
The same PC plays STO on ultra with shadows off, but in space STF if there is a lot of scrolling text, torpedos going off all at once i get some minor lag. I went to post something in the graphics issues subforum to find out that other people with high end PCs are experiencing similar things. There was talk that it was a UI and scripting related issue...go to post #51 on the link below.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=702821&page=6