The Problems with Space

I’m sure everyone has their own little beefs, now is a good time to discuss them.

Imo, problem#1: ship survivability.

Anything short of a corvette can be fried by one turbolaser blast. Some suggestions: remove turbolaser rooms from anything bigger than a freighter. Maybe double the hull/shields on all ships. Make for fewer caps now that we have satellites.

Another problem: blockades.

They’re too hard to evade. Some of the suggestions up there will help but additionally, give smugglers a skill similar to evasion to jump early or dodge fire (a level 150 skill would make it unobtainable to all but the twinkiest of pilots). Put pturrets back in, beef them up and give them the same range as blockade requires the ship to be within. Make it so the turret will only hit caps.

I’ll keep thinking on it, hopefully I come up with more.

Oh! A way to see what is in orbit would be golden too. And various anomalies in systems to hide your ships in/behind.

How about blockade reports in showplanet, so you don’t launch yourself into a blockade you didn’t know was there?

You can already see what’s in space in a pturret room.. and there are pturret rooms in game you just need to find them.. just because pturrets don’t work atm you can still type target on its own to do a radar of space on the ground.

also it’s way too easy for a pilot to get 150 smug/piloting for that skill to be a good idea IMO

Also, I agree with Oteri… but only put it in showplanet after the initial GNI report to make it a little more realistic

There’s only one race that gets that and I’ve got no doubt that those levels will change when imms start seeing them rolled.

I have nothing to add to this discussion other than what I said in a different post about no one class of ship should be the end all, be all against any other class. Currently, Capital Class ships can just run amok over any other ship… even ships that it should not be able to…

Fix please.

The main thing I’d like to see work is more from a rules point of view than a code one, but I hate that piracy isn’t an option. The most you can do is disable somebody and then threaten them and even then they’re likely not to play scared because the rules prohibit you from doing anything else.

There’s nothing you can do with a stolen ship. The owner can always find it, you can’t ever get access to half the things the ship can do, you can’t sell it for parts… Meh.

Give pirates a chance!

That being said, a way to see larger ships that are in orbit and whether or not there’s a blockade without launching would be awesome. Anomalies would be awesome. Pirates being more fanned out instead of only close enough to the planet for the orbiting cappies to shoot down would be cool too.

You can do a lot as a pirate, next TL I will prove it! Mwahaha!

however, I agree about ships. We tried a system where Lydor paid us for ships and it’s just too dependent on someone always being available.

Uh… any pilot with space combat 2 will be able to hit a starfighter from a turret EASILY. I’ve done it and I’ve had it done to me.

I think Fishy was talking about main ship batteries, and everyone else was talking about turrets.

That’s why I said "main turbolasers" and "turrets" separately. Turrets fire regular old run of the mill lasers, IIRC.

If you want me to be more specific – anything fired from a turret on a capship can destroy a smaller ship in one burst.

A lot of good ideas here so I’ll just go point by point

[quote:1xjkswze]Anything short of a corvette can be fried by one turbolaser blast. Some suggestions: remove turbolaser rooms from anything bigger than a freighter. Maybe double the hull/shields on all ships. Make for fewer caps now that we have satellites.[/quote:1xjkswze]

In terms of canon, turbolasers SHOULD fry anything smaller than a corvette in 1-2 blasts. The problem was, turbolasers tracked so slowly they were useless against smaller ships (remember, that is why they deployed TIE Fighters in A New Hope). I can’t speak of the accuracy right now but if it is an issue maybe turbolasers hitting small ships should be toned down.

[quote:1xjkswze]Oh! A way to see what is in orbit would be golden too.[/quote:1xjkswze]
A deleted scene in A New Hope had Luke watching the opening space battle with binoculars! Maybe a new goggle type?

Showplanet indicating blockades should be no problem.

One idea I’ve always been fond of is essentially ‘view distances’ in space for when you look. I’ve probably mentioned it before but it works basically like this:
X-Wing XW01 is 500 or less distance from me: I see XW01 (like you do now)
XW01 is 501-1000 distance from me: I see ‘A starfighter’
XW01 is 1001-2000 distance from me: I see ‘a metallic object’

The actual distance numbers I said are arbitrary and would be tweaked. It would scale up with the size of the ship (IE You would see capital ship names further than 500).

Building on that would be giving ships radar ranges based off the sensor array stat; the higher the stat, the further away you would detect a ship. If a ship is sitting on the opposite side of the sector you would never notice it unless you sent a scout ship or had a battlegroup’d satellite out there.