Cruiser Command

Originally this was in response to this topic, but I decided to start a fresh thread since I'm opening up something a bit more expansive.

Caladbolg wrote:Im not saying small ships are useless. it comes down to who wins the initial warfare as buying more small ships is simply not a viable choice.

That I can agree too -- it is a bit disappointing that the 'worth' of small ships is primarily defined by upgrade value, so a team falling behind on small ships essentially 'loses out.'

A rant is about to begin!

... a thought on that matter. A while back there was an idea to 'recycle' ships in your hanger to make space for new ones.

What if something close to the opposite of that was taken -- if a ship died, rather than the ship being removed from the hanger slot there was a 'reconstruction' phase? What I mean is something similar to the automatic ship creation that occur if there are no combat ships or miners available, except you attach this mechanic to all ships that die.

AKA if the opposing team's small ships simply come in and destroy your entire small ship squadron, rather than the loss being your entire army it becomes a loss of time -- a miner dies? You lose out on mining time. A wraith dies? The enemy team's miners suddenly become safer. It also helps ensure a way that new people won't necessarily be stuck doing nothing the entire game by ensuring that even if ships are lost, there will still be others available in due time.

Obviously this sort of idea would require a few work arounds --

1) The previously suggested 'Ship Recycling' system would have to be implemented in some way in order to have a method of 'removing previously bought ships' -- unless, of course, it would be intended such that you could only make 5 unique purchases to your team.
2) Generally would have to make other changes to the hanger in order to safeguard the slots of the lost ships -- not to mention representation of ships under reconstruction and what not.
3) Would likely have to design certain 'reconstruction timers' for every ship type. What I mean by this is that clearly a Destroyer would take longer to reconstruct than a Wraith, by a long shot. Once (and if) everything else was implemented it probably wouldn't' be too hard, but it's more a balancing matter.

Honestly, the most advantageous part of a system like this would be that 'the loss of small ships is no longer completely fatal.' It would allow people to utilize small ships more freely, and make them a much larger aspect of the game by ensuring their existence throughout rather than the battlecruiser being constantly prioritized over them. It treats them as something closer to an 'available income,' something that can be constantly drawn upon for productivity, rather than a 'unit' that can be readily lost. And frankly, when the game play hinges almost entirely upon these 'units' that can be lost in the blink of an eye, wouldn't it be better to create a system where they're more readily available?

... that's just my take on it. Maybe I'm wrong to think so, but I think it creates a system where it creates more for the players to do and makes small ships far more readily available for use during all stages of the game, rather than the hanger just being a depo for mass chompers, destroyers, a couple of miners, and maybe corvettes and a minelayer.

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EDIT: After some discussion in the skype chat, a tentative list of suggested respawn timers came to mind should the system be looked into.
Miner: 2 Minutes
Chomper: 2 to 3 Minutes
Wraith: 1 to 1.5 Minute
Corvette: 4 Minutes
Minelayer: 2 Minutes
Infiltrator: 3 Minutes
Destroyer: 5 Minutes

or just nerf all small ship upgrades (or reduce amount) so that upgrades wont make such a large difference in ship to ship battles

But i like the idea, definitely should have the recycle component though

Aye.

Red-Rocket wrote:or just nerf all small ship upgrades (or reduce amount) so that upgrades wont make such a large difference in ship to ship battles

To me, I don't feel like that really addresses snowballing. I think it goes beyond a bit more than 'tweaking one or two numbers' is all.

well the "recycle" ship was so that you can say buy a destroyer even after you have a full hanger.. without having to like go and suicide a wraith or something

slapshot wrote:well the "recycle" ship was so that you can say buy a destroyer even after you have a full hanger.. without having to like go and suicide a wraith or something

but, theres an art to suiciding your wraith, how quickly can you do it and how much damage can you do it for?

slapshot wrote:well the "recycle" ship was so that you can say buy a destroyer even after you have a full hanger.. without having to like go and suicide a wraith or something

The recycle concept was suggested for this because even if you suicide a wraith, it would not open up a hanger slot.

Red-Rocket wrote:but, theres an art to suiciding your wraith, how quickly can you do it and how much damage can you do it for?

In that sense there is also an art refining - and to breathing for that matter.

While we are on the topic, small ships should retain their health when they dock, and repair over time. I'm kind of bothered on the auto heal on tanking small ships, like the chomper.

I'd love to try to implement these changes myself, I'd even sign a legal NDA that I wouldn't publish or otherwise distribute the map except back to the author to vete and make live my changes...

It would require some way to see the HPs of the ship you are about to launch before you do. Then you would have to make it newb proof. (meaning a nice visual that's so easy to understand only 1/3 newbs will make a mistake)


I'd just like to say that this, while maybe not a bad idea, shouldn't be a priority at all, IMHO

or add a 5 second delay when launching a ship when you docked like the same thing when you launch, you have 10 seconds before you can dock again, which was really good because people were abusing that and could take any sort of damage, but now they can dock then relaunch really fast wasting little or no time....

consider destroyer, its making its bombardments, and the enemy BC eventually whittles down the destroyer due to good navigating, the destroyer docks then immediately relaunches and wastes almost no time in dealing support dps (and leech and chronitons) making the effort and energy put into trying to take out the dessy pointless...unless your lucky and destroyer spawns on wrong side, but pros are good at that sort of thing.