| Author |
Suggestion for ship system descriptors |
Captain LlamaPajamas
Vice Admiral
Joined: November 24, 2007
Posts: 76
From: Virginia, USA
|  Posted: 2014-03-05 15:15
Hello developers, any chance in a future update we could see a change to the way ship systems are described? At the moment descriptions are poorly worded in terms of function. For a quick example, the three human sublight engines - the Proton Fusion Engine, the Ion Engine, and the Atomic Fusion Engine. The differences in performance in these three engines do not seem to be very well understood by average players, and the information is hidden in the wiki, but the basic differences in each choice should be highlighted in game.
The AFE's in-game description states that it uses "older but reliable atomic fusion to generate propulsion", which is good for lore and everything but not at what makes it different than IE or PFE engines. To fix this I recommend some basic stat info be given in the in-game descriptions. I would not be surprised if some players reading this post did not realize that AFE is the fastest human engine but produces the least power for other ship systems, producing up to 30 units of power at 0.44/s (compared to IE's 32u at 0.52/s) but moving at 105% IE speed.
The engines I am highlighting are only an example of the problem though. There is not much straight information when selecting ship parts. Another change I would like to see is a small tag in the description of weapons to mark what type of weapon it is. For example, in the wiki I can find that particle cannons do kinetic damage, but that is not displayed in-game. This is very simple information that would make choosing various systems or weapons easier on the average player.
This seems like a doable project with some time, since it is a rewriting of existing descriptions and not the creation of a new feature, and so I hope this can be completed to make our game a bit easier to understand and uniform!
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Kinthalas
Chief Marshal
Army Of Darkness
Joined: January 01, 2003
Posts: 60
| Posted: 2014-03-06 14:57
First off, suck a big fat chocobo with your extra energy engines! I love kluth (obviously) and think we have the best engines.. yea we're faster than you! It would be sweet to have that slower high energy engine, but.. if I had those, I'd be twice as deadly as I am now!
I do agree though the general description is a bit vague though. You don't need stats for everything 100% of the way, leave some mystery.. and make a player try stuff out to learn I'd say.
All of that taken into account, please use a standard system for all weapons/fighters. I know some stuff has damage listed for a single shot, or the full burst fire.. and some fighters look super overpowered compared to others, but that's because they only launch 2 instead of 3 when you send them out.
Also.. ICC gets number specific regen on their shields, but not their armor. None of the rest of us get regen numbers on armor also.. but since you have it on some def, why not all of it?
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Fluttershy
Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 24, 2011
Posts: 778
From: Fluttershy
| Posted: 2014-03-06 23:54
There is a time and place to hide details about things.
We're talking about official equipment refits for starfleets here.
It would make sense that such weapons would be well documented and properly explained.
"This is the psi cannon, it goes pew pew pew pew pew"
"And this, this is the plasma cannon, it goes poof poof poof"
"Any questions?"
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Chewy Squirrel
Chief Marshal
Joined: January 27, 2003
Posts: 304
From: NYC
| Posted: 2014-03-07 01:25
I mean.... isn't this what the tooltips are for? They tell you exactly how much energy is being produced...
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Captain LlamaPajamas
Vice Admiral
Joined: November 24, 2007
Posts: 76
From: Virginia, USA
| Posted: 2014-03-08 13:58
There is already some information given, but it feels very incomplete. For example, I often have to check the manual just to figure out what damage type certain weapons use. We had a big discussion last night in the MV about whether ICC armor resists EMP cannons, and it turns out no - because EMP cannons don't use Energy/EMP, they use EMP damage, which is a different damage type.
On that topic, armor; it's not readily apparent in-game that reflective armor is absolutely torn apart by K'Luth projectile weapons. Why, you may ask, since the K'Luth use Energy-type weapons like beams? Psi is a separate damage type, and reflective armor is very weak against it.
I do greatly enjoy the intricacy of our space combat and the drive to try to estimate and plan for what weapon type our adversaries will bring to the table. All I ask is to give us the straight information - say EXACTLY the damage type in the tooltip, rather than just implying, or tell us exactly the resistances of armor to different weapons. Let us worry about how the enemy will outfit their ship when we outfit ours. I'd rather be blown up because the enemy surprised me by changing their weapons and giving themselves the advantage than because I had no clue if my equipment worked like I thought it did.
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Fluttershy
Fleet Admiral
Joined: September 24, 2011
Posts: 778
From: Fluttershy
| Posted: 2014-03-09 01:30
honestly, EMP, ELF, and Normal would be the only damage types that this game really needs.
If there was a different technical status-like behavior between Kinetic, Energy, and PSI, then there would be a point.
At the moment they just interact differently to different armors, which simply makes things a guessing game.
Homeworld 1 managed to balance units, weapons, and roles without using any damage types or bonuses at all. Instead, the weapons and ships had their benefits and downsides determined by the outwardly obvious traits of the weapons and the ships who wielded them.
Ion Cannons were good against large ships because it was powerful but hard to aim.
Multi-Gun Corvettes were good against fighters because their bullets were very very fast, and the Heavy Corvettes even had AoE attack.
Assault Frigates were cost effective against Corvettes because they had far more armor per resources spent, and ample weaponry to deal with them.
Darkspace is similar in several ways. Torpedoes are good against larger ships because they do high damage but are more difficult to land hits with. Lasers are best against similar sized vessels because they aren't too fast nor too powerful for you to face so closely. Cannons are good against smaller ships because they have a high velocity and rate of fire.
[ This Message was edited by: Fluttershy on 2014-03-09 01:31 ]
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