| Forums | Chat | News | Contact Us | Register |
PSU Social
|
 |
| Home | Forum | Chat | Wiki | Social | AGN | PS2 Stats |
|
|
|
||||||
|
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread | Rate Thread | Display Modes |
2012-06-10, 06:19 PM
|
[Ignore Me] #1 | ||
|
Sergeant Major
|
Pre-emptive caveat (again): Again, I apologize for my terribly unorganized and rather colloquial writing here. Just trying to get these busted out and up here for discussion as quickly as possible. Also I would like to quickly link to basti's thread which at this point would be a huge necro to post this whole thing in (and honestly, though our posts are similar, we have some different ideas and I don't want to just make this a comment on a different post as some things have changed; i.e. resources). Here's the link to that topic: http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=37173
There is also another thread which was sliiiiiightly less popular, but again I wanted to link to it so that it doesn't look like I'm trying to steal the show with the whole "I WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO THINK OF THIS AND WRITE ABOUT IT" bit. http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=36283 And finally, I'd like to dedicate this post to the most amazing person in the world: Me. PSU post: Space Combat and Outfits. Each empire will have a sanctuary space station which is protected by magical fairy rainbows and NO YOU CAN'T GET THROUGH IT (this is basically the same as the old sancs -- only NC could get into the NC sanc, etc...). The space station sanctuaries will have the usual stuff as from the first game: Virtual reality training centers, drop ship access (bring back the original HART system with some nerfing/buffing), and equipment terminals. No vehicles may be purchased here (except for space variant flight craft -- more on that later), as the space station is in outer space....duh. The space stations will also have a ship yard and docking bays. More on that later as well. Each continent will have a space zone "above" it. Or perhaps a cluster of continents will have a space zone "above" it (for example, Amerish, Searhus, and Solsar might have one space zone "above" it). I put "above" in quotations because it won't literally be above it -- they will act independently as their own continents in a way, so you can't just fly up in a reaver and be in the space zone, but they are connected in a logistical/tactical/strategic way, just not directly in-game. These space zones will be on an xyz axis (of course, for the fact that space is 3 dimensional....let's not get into a theoretical physics conversation here please) and will have multiple capture points. Capture points will be similar to base/tower/bunker/hex capture points on the continents and will vary in style from, say, asteroid mining facilities to smaller space station outposts and etc... There won't be 10 capture points, maybe like 3 or 4. I'd also like to, at this time, say that I think the space zones should be smaller (perhaps not physically) in terms of population cap and points capturable, so as not to take away from the bread and butter of PS2 which of course will be the continents. Nobody wants this to end up like SWG when they introduced their space expansion (which had space areas that were waaaaaaaaaaaay too big). So for example the population cap for one of these space zones might be 500 and above 3 continents (if we get 10 continents total there might be a larger zone above 4 continents with a cap of 700) so that way for each cont cap of 2000 that's 6k total for 3 conts and only 500 could go into the space zone above. If one empire can capture all 3-4 capture points, they will dominate the space above that continent which will give certain tactical/logistical/strategic advantages (can be discussed and of course all of these can be balanced and/or eliminated -- play testing is the name of the game here  ).The capture points themselves will also give resources and/or other bonuses to gameplay. For example an asteroid mining facility might give a huge bonus to Auraxium production (or whatever). The combat in space will be on two fronts, so to speak: Between ships such as space-variants of reavers, mosquitoes, etc... and on the surface and interior of the capture point structures. The Capture points may only be captured by Infantry (duh...also, don't worry -- everybody will have space suits on and none of this "I shot your face shield so now your organs are gonna be sucked out through your anus" crap -- realistic, yes; fun, no). Infantry can only operate in certain areas and can only be delivered to those areas (the surfaces of mining asteroids, docking bays on small space outposts, etc...) through transport ships, such as space-variant galaxies or whatever. There could also be spawn tubes on the capture point structures, but I won't go down that route as it's getting kinda picky and we're discussing an overall concept here, not nerfing something before it even gets to the devs Once docked or landed (no hot dropping) the troops may be unloaded and will fight on the surface, much like on the continents. but if the troops are "above ground" (not within the structures themselves but on the surface) they may be targeted (and fire back, of course) by enemy ships. These space zones are not contiguous with each other (just like the continents) and can only be accessed through wormholes that have opened in space above Auraxis (chance for some good lore here), much like the warp gate system on the ground. Or we could have just put some warp gates up in orbit over the planet, idk, either way the mechanics will be the same. I've been thinking about the possibility of having some ships be customizable with a "warp drive" or equivalent, to allow them to warp anywhere into the space zone, much like how the drop pod HART system worked in PS1, but I'm not sure if that'll be a good idea and/or how to balance it. But wait! There's more! Individual Outfits may use outfit resources to purchase, customize, and upgrade large ships which may be used in these space zones! Remember the ship yard and docking bays mentioned earlier? The ship yard is where construction, upgrade, and customization of these ships will occur, and the docking bays will allow these ships to dock with the space station to load or unload troops, equipment, and supplies. Examples of ships that can be built by outfits includes frigates, cruisers, destroyers, stealth ships (equivalent to submarines), battleships, and carriers. Much like the vehicle or infantry class system in the continental game, these classes of ships will have various certain upgrades (purchased using outfit points [to unlock] and resources [to equip]) and customizations to add variety and depth to the space combat. These ships are huge. They're practically bases/towers in and of themselves. Many will have spawn tubes and perhaps launch tubes (for doing hot dropping -- yes I know I said no to this earlier, but this isn't your random guy grabbing a galaxy -- it's a big ass ship that took time and effort to bring up) and all will have generators, engines, etc... which can be separately targeted by other ships, and of course a bridge with a helm (control center). That means these ships are capturable, allowing a new dynamic of enemy boarding parties and internal-ship combat! Their hulls are massive (again, think floating base) and can withstand a lot of structural damage, but it is possible to destroy them. If damaged in battle, they can be repaired back at the sanctuary ship yard. Good comparison to a lot of these ships would be the multiplayer titan-mode of BF2142. I would like to say, again, that these ships can come in different shapes and sizes. A Patrol Craft might be a smaller ship with a hull armor of 7,000 (in comparison if a reaver has a hull of 500; yes I am just pulling these numbers out of my ass) and would have a crew spot for the pilot/captain (actually steering and accelerating the ship -- no need to split the role of pilot/captain especially for a craft so small) and it might be 2-2.5 times the size of a galaxy with, let's say, 3 big turret positions and 5 small turret positions. These turret positions are part of the upgradable/customizable portion of the ship yard construction thingy (so for the big guns you might want ship-to-ship capabilities so this ship would be really good at engaging enemy-outfit ships) and for the smaller ones perhaps "anti-air" cannons to fend off those pesky mosquitoes [space variant of course[). In comparison, a carrier would definitely be the largest ship with a hull armor of, say, 120,000 and would have the pilot/captain position, docking bays/flight deck (it's a carrier, duh) with, say, 18 fighter slots (9 per wing if we're thinking BSG status), 7 large guns (3 per side and 1 forward) for players to operate, and maybe 20 small guns (for keeping them mossies away again!). The carrier obviously isn't going to boast a ton of guns, as it's purpose is to bring in fighters, so by contrast the battleship class (largest fighting-ship) might have 20 large gun positions and 12 small guns (can't make it TOO invincible to everything -- remember the BFRs? Yeah, I wish I didn't either). Speaking of BFR's I want to point out the counters to put in place so this doesn't turn into a BFR type game. First of all, this is just the space side of things; these ships cannot go to the continents. Second, with the resource system in game it will be a strategic decision by the outfit commanders (outfit leader + officers) as to what ship, if any, to unlock/purchase and what upgrades/customizations to add. I'm not sure how the resource system will work, but let's say you've got an outfit of 150 players or whatever and you play the game a lot and get lots of good kills and base caps and whatever it takes to get resources for the outfit (we can discuss how this particular system will work in a different thread). So let's just say that a good outfit like the one above generates 230 auraxium per day. To use the above ship examples again, let's say a Patrol Craft size ship (the smallest) might cost 1,200 auraxium (and of course other resources as well) just as a base cost, that doesn't include any upgraded weapons or abilities which will cost more resources. So basically it would take several days before this hypothetical outfit could even think of purchasing the lowest possible ship. Let's take a look at the carrier then. Maybe this beast costs 50,000. That would be over 200 days at 230 auraxium/day. Perhaps that's a bit excessive, a few of you might think that's too frequent to be getting a carrier. We can mess with the number side of things all day long, but you see my point here? It won't be super-BFR sunday every day of the week because it will take so long just to get the resources together to even build any of these ships. This was something that was lacking in PS1 and it didn't work out just to have cooldown timers. Combining cooldown timers WITH resource costs (especially ones as high as stated above) will turn this into a much more strategic decision, one made by outfit leaders and their officers (good outfits need to have good leaders: Perfect example, EVILPIG from 666th Devil Dogs. Another method of balancing it out could be construction timers. The bigger the ship, and the more bells and whistles you put on it, the longer it'll take to construct in the ship yard. Perhaps a patrol craft with nothin fancy will only take 20 minutes, and maybe a completely decked out battleship will take 8 hours. Or 1 hour. Or 5 days. Or whatever. The specifics aren't important, it's really the concept I wanna bring forward here. Also I think it's pretty obvious but just want to state it that these ships will be safe from harm as long as they are in the sanctuary space station area. Only once they're in a space combat zone can they be targeted by enemy ships. Love you guys, thanks for putting up with my long ass tangent filled ranting posts. |
||
|
|
|
2012-06-11, 08:52 AM
|
[Ignore Me] #4 | ||||
|
Sergeant Major
|
Last edited by Saifoda; 2012-06-11 at 08:54 AM. |
||||
|
|
|
|
2012-06-11, 11:37 AM
|
[Ignore Me] #5 | ||
|
Corporal
|
OH GOD, THE NUMBER OF NEW, GREAT GAME MECHANICS THAT COULD BE ADDED TO THE GAME LIKE THIS IS GIVING ME A BONER (not really, it's just some kind of a bad rapist pan or something).
But really, I don't remember any kind of MMO games that used the outer space theme, and this one in the game would make it even better. I really don't think that all attention should be centered at ships. Space infantry would work great in this environment. Considering there is zero gravity in space, every little jatpack blow, could push you at running speed in space. That does not mean, that only light assault should be able to freely float in space, go ahead and give this ability to every class, even MAX. Make infantry as mobile as any aircraft, but slower and you done. otherwise the whole space thing will become a spaceship VS spaceship or infantry VS infantry with nothing else, and considering how rare would spaceships be due to high resource cost, it will probably narrow down to inf VS inf only. Making spaceships cost so much would be a bad idea because this game is designed to be a dynamic shooter, and loosing a ship, knowing that you will be able to use another one (the worst one), only in a week, would be very frustrating. Maybe make the biggest ship, to take 3 days to gather resources for, and to be constructed, but nothing more then that. Side stuff: 1.Considering that there is no gravity, there also should not be any bullet drop. 2.Infantry can be limited by an oxygen bar, forcing them to renew their supply about every 5-15 minutes through an oxygen supplying machine at any base. I don't know how much would this idea be useful but it is just for the sake of providing a limitation on infantry if needed. 3.Make em' spaceship fights be more in the direction of dogfights, in space environment those would have the potential to be more intense and interesting considering there are less random obstacles, and that allot more ships/infantry could participate in those. 4.On the other hand you can also make them massive-battle centered, having a bunch of BIG ships fight each over, while mosquitoes fly around trying to land some shots and run away as soon as possible, and flying infantry, hoping in between, trying to take over one of the ships and occasionally shoot down any mosquitoes or galaxies that pass by. Loving the idea, and would be really happy to see it in the game.   :g roovy:
|
||
|
|
|
|
2012-06-11, 12:49 PM
|
[Ignore Me] #6 | ||
|
Sergeant Major
|
Yeah, I can definitely see where having such high resource costs would make it a non-game, as it were, but it's something that can be play-tested and easily nerfed or buffed; my concern with going the other way is that you would end up with a space combat zone that has 20-some-odd carriers and a billion frigates and cruisers and it's just a mess. I definitely think it can be balanced pretty easily, and would be a blast to play (haha, pun and all).
I would like to re-emphasize that the large-ship (the battleships, frigates, etc...) would be Outfit-specific. So that is to say that your outfit will earn resource points (not sure how that system would work but it's definitely doable) and then use those resource points to purchase these large ships. Having the massive resource cost would make it much more of a strategic decision than, say, spending resources on some grenades as an Infantryman. The other thing that I think would be great about this is that it would allow outfits to have more, I guess, propriety, pride, and make them a larger part of the game, rather than just another communication and coordination vessel. This would also encourage the day-to-day zerger to want to join an outfit -- you can have more fun when you're blasting away an 18 inch cannon at another massive ship to bring it's hull down. Another thing to consider that I didn't want to put in the original post (cause I haven't thought about the risk/reward and balancing etc... of it) is having locational hull damage. We all remember the star trek episodes "decks 13 through 17 and 19 through 21 have hull breaches and have been sealed." Not sure how that could be implemented, but maybe some of you guys have ideas about it? Or maybe it's just a bad idea altogether -- I won't cry about it if this isn't something that ends up being part of the gameplay EDIT: And MightyMan, in regards to 3 and 4 on your post, that was kind of my general idea. You can have it be primarily dog fights (the every-day zerger can just hop in a space-variant reaver and head out to the combat zone with some buddies to fight off the EVIL VS OR TR) and if any Outfits plan to get into it, they can amass resources over several days (or weeks or whatever it might be for good balance) and then BOOM! You've got the 666th showing up with 2 fully decked out carriers escorted by 3 battleships and 8 patrol craft! VS or TR would have to respond (if they wanted to) with a shit ton of fighters and maybe a few hastily constructed patrol craft and cruisers and it would just be epic. The other great thing about this idea (I think, and I hope) is that if you've got 666th rolling in and overpowering everything, well, then, on the ground......it's not going to matter THAT much. It's not like owning all of the space combat zones will automatically give you bonuses equivalent to certing everybody for BFR's, it'll just be some good things like resource production bonuses, possibly some "spy" satellite abilities (want to take a look at a base? You can get a live-feed of it from a satellite for 20 auraxiam/minute or something like that, if you own the space zone above that continent and you have unlocked that cert -- maybe we can even consider having a cert tree specifically for Outfits?) and other things like that (more examples might be increased OS capabilities, reduced spawn times [not by much, of course -- spawn times make or break the game], etc...) Last edited by Saifoda; 2012-06-11 at 12:54 PM. |
||
|
|
|
|
|
| Bookmarks |
|
|
Re: Space Combat and a bit on Outfits
Linear Mode
