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energy support

#1
Aswell as damage ships and the like there should be support/logistics ships. While repairing / shield boosting is pretty straightfoward, energy transfers will work differently (as energy/power is utilized differently in lt)

Behold the energy surge:

targets a friendly ship and boosts it power output for a set amount of time (maybe 40%?)

The person piloting the recieving ship would notice its speed surging forward, guns firing faster and shield recharging faster (somewhat, shouldnt replace shield transers)

There could also be speciallized versions that target a friendlys specific subsystem and lowers there power usage, boosting its usefulness far powerfully than the stardard surge.
You could combine the two, and the two different surges would stack exponentially, turning a cruiser (or whatever) into a firespitting fortress of death.

The option would be do i have a fleet of mostly damage ships? or a fleet with few, but powerful damage ships supported by logistics.

edit:
another thing is instead of a constant % boost, it could start of high then decay, for example it could start at 40%, decay to 20% then recycle, or it could start at 40%, and the cycle time would be based on the energy your ship has put towards the module (more power, less cycle time, higher % for the target)
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Re: energy support

#2
Definitely an interesting concept. Reminds me some of Red Alert 2 with the prism tower that you could stack to be able to add more firepower or the laser structures in the tower defense game Onslaught.

I like the idea. While usually it seems more of a tower defense type mechanic, I think it can work in RTS as well.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: energy support

#3
Say you transfer the energy of one ship to another (say about 40%). Is this based on the ships base energy level (or base level + equipped hardpoint boosts)..? Does this just temporarily boosts all of the ship's stats, or will you be allowed to choose which stat you would like to boost the energy of? Is there a cap limit for the # of transfers / amount of energy one ship can possess. Cool-down times? And the percentage of transfer relative to the ship's superior? Say 2 fighters give a battleship an energy boost, that might only account for a 1-2% increase per ship.

Just exploring the idea more..

I like the idea as well.
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Re: energy support

#4
Can I?

I would not make this capability universally available. For example, a Fighter should not be able to gift its energy to another ship, even if another Fighter.

By limiting the availability of this capability to specific ships classes you could introduce a new type of "utility" ship. A Utility ship could be weaponless, but able to mount a number of modules: each module meant to enable the use of some kind of special technology/power. In this specific case there could be a module to enable the transfer of energy to a target ship.

I would make the transferrable energy finite. The module may autonomously recharge, over time, by detouring some slice of the ship's reactor's energy to the module's capacitors (maybe the pilot could also decide how much energy to detour over time, so to have a slower/quicker recharge).

If we want to add complexity to the mechanism, I would also force the targeted ships to mount a dedicated device able to channel/receive the energy from the Utility ship. This device can be small in size, and I think would be acceptable if it took a weapon slot (the device must not be necessarily visible externally as a weapon would).

How about making so that multiple Utility ships can gift energy to the same target ship at the same time? Then we could have multiple classes of Receiver modules (those mounted on the target ship), the difference between classes being the amount of sources they could simoultaneously receive from. Cheaper modules will receive from just 1 source, expensive modules may receive from N sources. Capital ships should -of course- only mount the expensive ones.

Or maybe we could work by the assumption that a capital ship requires just too much energy for the contribute of Utility ships to be any significant (unless the Utility too are of capital size)?

I remember an interesting take on the matter of Fuel, in the Homeworld game. Smaller vessels (like Fighters, Bombers and Corvettes) had too small a chassis to mount an engine that could spark a self-sustaining vectoring torch. Thus they required periodoc refueling. But capital ships (Frigates, Destroyers, Cruisers and Carriers), in their big chassis had all the room they needed to mount such eternal engines and thus they never could run out of fuel (at least not in our lifetime). A phylosophy along these lines could be applied to the ships of LT (not necessarily applied to the subject of fuel).

Just throwing ideas...
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Re: energy support

#5
Another idea came up with these comments. What if it is more like Return of the Jedi (Star wars reference :squirrel: ) with the shielding of the new Death Star, and you have a ship projecting something like a shield onto another ship? I can imagine that would play some strategic importance in many scenarios. You specialize one support ship to provide the protection so you can move your beam frigates within firing range and you get the best of both worlds.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: energy support

#6
DWMagus wrote:Another idea came up with these comments. What if it is more like Return of the Jedi (Star wars reference :squirrel: ) with the shielding of the new Death Star, and you have a ship projecting something like a shield onto another ship? I can imagine that would play some strategic importance in many scenarios. You specialize one support ship to provide the protection so you can move your beam frigates within firing range and you get the best of both worlds.
Cool! +1
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Re: energy support

#7
im not sure about ship classes there are (i dont have the prototype, posted it here by mistake,if a mod could move it please :D ), but i agree it shouldnt be used fighters, i was hoping something allong the lines of cruisers(or destroyers) and above, so something a bit smaller than a capital ship.

i think there should be 2 versions, a generic booster that boosts the targets energy generation by a certain amount (depends on how much power you send to it) of the ship using it, (it would be a bit silly if a small cruiser could increase a battleship/titans energy by 40%, sorry didnt think this through as much as i should have), not sure whether it should transfer more than the module uses (kinda like what can happen in eve), or maybe if it decays over time it will transfer more at the start then drop off.

the second version would would target specific subsystems, perhaps using some kinda of ammo (script?) loaded in like in the recent monthly video, and would make it so that the ship target has the same amount of energy going to the module, but the base energy need of the module would go down.

for example lets say i target a weapon system that uses 10 energy, and everything is set on the target ship to 100%, if i use 50% module on it, its base energy usage will go down to 5, but since 10 is being sent to it, it will go too 200% power (although i think sending additional power to stuff gets diminising returns).

the next issue is if you target weapons, which weapon gets the bonus? all of them? or just one?
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Re: energy support

#8
codeape wrote:
DWMagus wrote:Another idea came up with these comments. What if it is more like Return of the Jedi (Star wars reference :squirrel: ) with the shielding of the new Death Star, and you have a ship projecting something like a shield onto another ship? I can imagine that would play some strategic importance in many scenarios. You specialize one support ship to provide the protection so you can move your beam frigates within firing range and you get the best of both worlds.
Cool! +1
would the shield be independant of the user ship, or would it redirect damage onto the users ship shields?
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Re: energy support

#9
kelkel60 wrote:
codeape wrote:
DWMagus wrote:Another idea came up with these comments. What if it is more like Return of the Jedi (Star wars reference :squirrel: ) with the shielding of the new Death Star, and you have a ship projecting something like a shield onto another ship? I can imagine that would play some strategic importance in many scenarios. You specialize one support ship to provide the protection so you can move your beam frigates within firing range and you get the best of both worlds.
Cool! +1
would the shield be independant of the user ship, or would it redirect damage onto the users ship shields?
I was thinking more of an ultra-powerful shield independent of the ship that forces you to take out the shield generator on Endor--I mean, on the other ship before the shielded ship is vulnerable.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: energy support

#10
DWMagus wrote: I was thinking more of an ultra-powerful shield independent of the ship that forces you to take out the shield generator on Endor--I mean, on the other ship before the shielded ship is vulnerable.
I like this from a strategic standpoint.

I think one thing to avoid here is having to micromanage your power levels from ship to ship in order to transfer a certain degree of energy. If it becomes a hardpoint asset that you can use from one ship to another that seems to make a little more sense and slightly more manageable.
the next issue is if you target weapons, which weapon gets the bonus? all of them? or just one?
It seems as if a spread of energy would prevent the micromanagement issue, but this doesn't allow the user to take full advantage of that awesome new weapon they've created...

Need to give this more thought.
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Re: energy support

#11
One other thing - more from a visual standpoint, and just an interesting conceptual standpoint.

A large shield (circular for the sake of discussion) that covers a certain radius & strength depending on the amount of energy provided. Each ship can contribute, and ships are protected inside this shield until it is destroyed.

This might just be a special case, as I'm still interested in the idea of transferring energy from ship-to-ship.

Just tossing more out for discussion.
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Re: energy support

#13
AndyThompson wrote: It seems as if a spread of energy would prevent the micromanagement issue, but this doesn't allow the user to take full advantage of that awesome new weapon they've created...

Need to give this more thought.
A good solution seems to be to spread energy according to equipment type instead of each slot.

If you have 3 bad weapons and one good weapon you distribute between the two different types.
Just as you I logically can't see why anyone would ever want different energy levels on identical equipment.

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