Gameplay: Galaxy Fortress Variant - close range support ship

Zekeen · 2012-06-08, 02:35 PM

After seeing so much stuff on Galaxy Gunships, I decided that even if the GG was installed, the Galaxy could still be changed to fit yet another role: A low flying heavy support craft for more experienced pilots.

Ladies and gentlemen, as always, I now present to you....

The Galaxy Fortress! (bet most of you get the reference)

Yes, a bit of a crude drawing, I know, but it shows off many key features.

So, let's start off with the explanation shall we?

Galaxy Fortress - A heavily armed and armored variant of the Galaxy that carries a small squad in gunners but has no explosive armaments and only fires from turrets.

The Use - It allows for close support and greater survivability in air and ground supportive combat. Essentially, this is brought in to harass enemies by spraying a lot of lead. Most Galaxies have a blind spot, this variant has none, with two ball turrets on top and bottom and a front pilot heavy gatling gun.

The Risk - The Galaxy is one of the hardest craft to pilot. Giving a more frontline combat style makes it much more likely to face pilot error, due to it's non-bombardment weapons. It also has a larger crew than a typical Galaxy and has less options for escape, making it a very juicy target for enemies.

The Potential - This Galaxy is capable of installing a variety of gun types into the turret slots, such as rapid fire miniguns, slow firing autocannons, and a few in between. This alters the way the Galaxy and its gunners fight, going for of an anti infantry approach, or anti vehicular, or anti air. All guns are bullet types (no flak), or else the anti air potential would be far too high.

The Pilot Gun - A difference between all other Galaxies, it has a forward pilot operated heavy gun. This is not generally used for anti ground except as a strafing maneuver, and is generally for any potential attack from the front as to not leave the Galaxy vulnerable. It is also a good choice against easy to hit enemies, such as Liberators or other Galaxies.

So as you can see, rather than having a Galaxy with a mortar gun for long range support, the Galaxy Fortress is made to descend into combat areas and support troops with heavy amounts of firepower. It can be used to help defend a heavily contested point or guard an objective from ground and air assaults alike. The greatest threat to the Galaxy Fortress is not air to air missiles, but dumb fire rockets from infantry, since the role is to generally hover or fly slow over enemy positions and fire down. this makes it an easy target for rockets from the ground, even if it gets too high for tanks, which are also a risk for it.

Demarkin · 2012-06-08, 06:06 PM

So.. it's basiclly a liberator.. but alot more firepower.. harder to kill.. and can carry more people. Two birds for one role? The sacrifice is almost countermanded with the large addition of guns despite that lack of heavy armament.

(I love the idea of a death wielding, lumbaring, oversided hunk of metal scarying the living shit out of me with all of its guns) but, it seems unneeded and out of place since the cert trees exsist to create such of style of play, maybe not on such a large platformed style, but that's for the purpose of control. All of this is my opinion tho, I would very much love to command a fleet of hovering turrets! Ha!

Zekeen · 2012-06-08, 06:32 PM

Originally Posted by Demarkin

So.. it's basiclly a liberator.. but alot more firepower.. harder to kill.. and can carry more people. Two birds for one role? The sacrifice is almost countermanded with the large addition of guns despite that lack of heavy armament.

(I love the idea of a death wielding, lumbaring, oversided hunk of metal scarying the living shit out of me with all of its guns) but, it seems unneeded and out of place since the cert trees exsist to create such of style of play, maybe not on such a large platformed style, but that's for the purpose of control. All of this is my opinion tho, I would very much love to command a fleet of hovering turrets! Ha!

No, the GG is basically a Liberator. The Galaxy Fortress is basically a Galaxy with a little more armor and about 3x the firepower. It's based on the B-17 Flying Fortress of WW2, minus the bombs. The idea is a lot of machine guns to chase off aircraft and take down infantry and light vehicles. It's a suppression vehicle. It drops into a fight to hold back the enemy and chase them indoors and behind cover so that allied troops can regroup and press on.

VelRa · 2012-06-08, 08:05 PM

Could be a good way to "claim" a certain chunk of territory. One landed Galaxy as a spawn point, one fortress defending it with the air superiority fight carrying as normal. I get how it doesn't interfere with Liberator's role. Honestly this is what I'd rather see out of the GG.

edit: that said I disagree that it shouldn't have a blind spot. That spot should be underneath to encourage low flying, even more challenging to fly and guarenteeing its role.

Zekeen · 2012-06-08, 09:07 PM

Originally Posted by VelRa

Could be a good way to "claim" a certain chunk of territory. One landed Galaxy as a spawn point, one fortress defending it with the air superiority fight carrying as normal. I get how it doesn't interfere with Liberator's role. Honestly this is what I'd rather see out of the GG.

edit: that said I disagree that it shouldn't have a blind spot. That spot should be underneath to encourage low flying, even more challenging to fly and guarenteeing its role.

The bottom Ball Turret is most important. It's not an anti air, it's an anti everything, limited by various functions, but it's all about being able to pelt a base. Not to mention it can easily fly over a battlefield and strafe enemies with a machine gun, much like a Liberator with it's mortar. This gives up singular firepower for area firepower potential, since all guns cannot fire in the same direction, and provides a sort of drop in solution to boost firepower in a firefight.

Ohanka · 2012-06-08, 09:22 PM

+1 Love it. Anything that adds more variation and versitility to the game is fine by me

Toppopia · 2012-06-08, 10:45 PM

That is an awesome design, awesome work. Would love to see that.

OutlawDr · 2012-06-08, 11:06 PM

I like the concept, though honestly this is how I envisioned the gunship idea to be like. Your basically fleshing out the details, but its in the details that you run into some trouble. How exactly would you go about 'side'-grading the galaxy like this? Remember there are no true "upgrades" that leave new players at a disadvantage, so the fortress has to have drawbacks and tradeoffs.

With what we've seen recently, vehicle customization consists of two weapon slots (primary and secondary) and 3 non-weapon slots (utility, defense, performance) plus appearance customization. So the trick is how to create your galaxy fortress variant idea within this customization framework.

Your basically adding two main weapons on top and bottom, plus a forward facing weapon mount in addition to the 3 turrets it already has. With only 2 weapon slots and 3 different weapon types, this becomes problematic.

In the defense slot you can add a 'more armor' sidegrade or maybe a shield similar to infantry..that way there is no issue about the gal not looking more armored graphically. That leaves utility and performance for other things you can think of.

Then comes the question of the tradeoffs of the fortress's sidegrades. Of course beta will nail down the specifics, but for example thee galaxy loses those 6 back seats, or the ability to deploy a spawn point, its slower, ect...

Zekeen · 2012-06-09, 01:09 AM

Originally Posted by OutlawDr

I like the concept, though honestly this is how I envisioned the gunship idea to be like. Your basically fleshing out the details, but its in the details that you run into some trouble. How exactly would you go about 'side'-grading the galaxy like this? Remember there are no true "upgrades" that leave new players at a disadvantage, so the fortress has to have drawbacks and tradeoffs.

With what we've seen recently, vehicle customization consists of two weapon slots (primary and secondary) and 3 non-weapon slots (utility, defense, performance) plus appearance customization. So the trick is how to create your galaxy fortress variant idea within this customization framework.

Your basically adding two main weapons on top and bottom, plus a forward facing weapon mount in addition to the 3 turrets it already has. With only 2 weapon slots and 3 different weapon types, this becomes problematic.

In the defense slot you can add a 'more armor' sidegrade or maybe a shield similar to infantry..that way there is no issue about the gal not looking more armored graphically. That leaves utility and performance for other things you can think of.

Then comes the question of the tradeoffs of the fortress's sidegrades. Of course beta will nail down the specifics, but for example thee galaxy loses those 6 back seats, or the ability to deploy a spawn point, its slower, ect...

The way a Variant works, as in PS1, was it'd be the same vehicle, but in the vehicle selection menu, it'd pop up like another. Such as you'd see a scroll down with Galaxy, Galaxy Gunship, Galaxy Fortress, ect. Granted, this is mostly a hopeful mod for the gunship variant, or to change the gunship into this entirely (it doesn't need a mortar).

Tradeoff - Can't transport passengers or use extensive bail out abilities of typical Galaxy. It's not a fortress with carry everyone ability, it's a more baseline form of gunship. There's also the fact that unlike other vehicles, the turrets of the Galaxy don't usually have sight of the same enemy. We have 2 side guns, 1 bottom, 1 top, 1 forward, one rear. To top off this trade off, each gun requires a crewman to use, making it a 6 man gunship. Is 6 too many? It's only 2 crew members more than a basic Galaxy, which has 2 side guns and a tail gunner.

A liberator has 3 guns you know. Heavy forward gun, mortar bomber gun, and tail gun. Far as the Galaxy Fortress would go, the ball turrets would be a secondary gun type, while the rest may have to share the primary together, including forward, whatever makes it work. But if the Liberator has 3 weapon slots, then this can follow that too.

But yeah, the Galaxy Gunship will be having armaments added on to it's 3 guns which will most likely be a mortar like they had in PS1, so having a Galaxy similar that has 2 double gun machine gun ball turrets, it's more than balanced because I based this design to be LESS powerful than the Galaxy Gunship, but maybe some more armor to meet the balance a bit.

OutlawDr · 2012-06-09, 01:37 AM

I figured the customization system took care of any need for a separate variant like in PS1. I'd rather have a more robust customization system than a long list of variants.

Thats true about the liberator having 3 different weapon sytems (unless the front and back are actually the same weapon ). I was under the impression every vehicle had the same type and number customization slots, although its seem some have less than 'standard' (flash and others only have one weapon slot and only the defensive slot besides that..maybe). 10 fake dollars to anyone who can get a SS of the liberator customization screen.

Zekeen · 2012-06-09, 01:45 AM

There's also time for them to change/update the system. Besides, I can't put down a full game design document for a vehicle in a suggestive idea section, nor would I, unless I got some sort of private message from Higby himself telling me he wants to see a full on design document for it, I'm just going to suggest the basics and let the devs figure out the specifics. Takes a lot of work to make something in an idea work 100% without knowing the details of the game system that only the devs know.

OutlawDr · 2012-06-09, 02:09 AM

But we are close to beta, and vast majority of changes will be within the realm of current systems, so it helps to see how far off or close it is to the current system (that we know). Gauging feasibility is always a good idea. Pie in the sky ideas are generally ignored by devs. Delving into it and refining the idea is good way to pass time (until beta!11), and help to increase the chances that the idea is taken seriously. Adding variants, while not totally far fetched, does step outside the current system. Its not something to just now start messing around with in the stretch to beta and release.

Found a screenshot of the liberator
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/6636384/PS2...ust-screen.png
The tail gunner is basically the utility slot. Note that this is an earlier video and at this time the defensive and performance slot were called utility 2 and 3 respectively. So that can take care of the 3rd weapon system.

However, one thing I noticed in that video is that tradeoffs are within the weapon/item slot itself. The tradeoffs don't affect items/weapons/abilities outside that slot. Adding certain weapons will not 't affect the vehicles abilities. For instance, adding top/bottom turrets wouldn't affect passenger count. Not unless they both shared the same slot, and taking one meant you couldn't take the other. But with current system, I don't see that happening. It would mean that taking 12 passengers in a gal was via a sidegrade that came stock with the galaxy....and that the top/bottom turret shared the same customization slot (possible solution, but really stretching it).

We'd really need to look at the galaxy's customization screen to know for sure, but Im thinking to make this idea really work you would need a slight reworking of current customization system or addition of variants. Requiring this extra work does lower the chances of this idea getting implemented. You could refine the idea to better fit with what we've seen, but I think it would mean dulling the differences between the stock gal and the fortress.

Zekeen · 2012-06-09, 02:59 AM

I say, don't worry on the specifics like where the mods go where and such. If the case was all the trade offs were within the weapon selection itself, there would still be the issue of them releasing the Galaxy Gunship. They will probably change and update stuff eventually, maybe a button in that selection to select vehicle variant?

Talek Krell · 2012-06-09, 02:59 AM

I think it's too superfluous. With the GG and this we'd basically have three different aircraft for the role of "heavy air support". To be fair I have mixed opinions on the GG as well. I always felt like GG had more survivability than it really should have in PS1, and it didn't help that I'd so often see them running with a half crew and doing more than fine.

Using all non-explosive weapons was an interesting choice though...

Zekeen · 2012-06-09, 03:43 AM

Originally Posted by Talek Krell

I think it's too superfluous. With the GG and this we'd basically have three different aircraft for the role of "heavy air support". To be fair I have mixed opinions on the GG as well. I always felt like GG had more survivability than it really should have in PS1, and it didn't help that I'd so often see them running with a half crew and doing more than fine.

Using all non-explosive weapons was an interesting choice though...

Well, this is also just putting forward a Galaxy concept that could very well replace the gunship, seeing as the Liberator has the mortar. Also, the fact is that this is a Machine Gun only craft, meaning explosives, cannons, ect, will not be equipable. This pretty much means it doesn't have the raw TTK of a fighter aircraft with the appropriate weapon loadout. It's a suppression craft, meant to take out infantry in the open and lighter vehicles.