Cruiser Command

So, I was thinking, one issue that faces the current cruiser command game is that there isn't that many kinds of engagements that happen. It is usually wraith / corv vs BC (always a loss) or miner. I was thinking of ways that the game could be changed to have more kinds of small ships without creating too much redundancy.

So, here is my idea:

Firstly, I think that non basic ships should be blueprints that have to be researched in the tech tree. This prevents one team from copying another teams ships straight up or hard countering another teams 'party' too quickly. Somehow, the opposing team should be somehow able to detect what the other team is researching. That's not the major idea, this is:

If I was to design cruiser command, I would have small ships be customizable in a similar way that RPG-like games allow character customizations. For example, in WoW, you can have healer classes, tank classes, pet classes, AOE classes, and more. Each character has some kind of basic attack, and then a special attack or ability / role as well. There are roles for every kind of player as well - some people like to line up the perfect shot and get rewarded for sniping, while others might like a more automated approach to their character that requires less APM and precision than other characters (such as warlocks in WoW), and some players like comfortable or safe units, like healers or rouges.

The characters also have talents, which are customizations on the character to give them different roles depending on the type of person is controlling the character. In CC, this could be modeled by having hardpoints on fighters that can have weapons or utilities in them. Each weapon or utility would drain the ships power, so stronger utilities would require a stronger ship. Once a ship is equiped with a utility or one time use weapon, that is the only thing that can be in that hardpoint until the ship itself is salvaged (one time use weapons get replaced on dock). In addition, each fighter would have specific upgrades to fill that hardpoint that only that fighter supports.

What if cruiser command copied this model a little bit? What if the ships were slightly modeled off of RPG roles?

For example, some ships could be:

Light fighter - fast, higher than average sight, similar to wraith, one hardpoint
Medium fighter - well rounded slightly more expensive fighter, one hardpoint
Heavy fighter - similar to corvette, has more armament, has a turret, two hardpoints, strong primary weapon but it drains energy quickly
Bomber - slower, similar to destroyer, has a turret, 3 hardpoints, weak primary weapon
Frigate - slower yet, similar to chomper, can collect resources, three hardpoints
Support fighter - medium fighter armor and speed, light fighter offensive weapon, two hardpoints

Turrets in these cases would be a weapon that could be fired at a target location even if you aren't flying in that direction (similar to the BC attack)

Some utilities and weapons to put in hardpoints could be (these would mostly all need to be researched in the tech tree):

- Torpedo - One time use which ignores ships shields and causes high debris damage, requires heavy fighter or bomber, can be shot down by turrets or any other weapons similar to the current miner 'drone'
- Afterburner - speed burst similar to bc engine boost, compatible with all ships
- Sensor probe - allows player to scan, after a few seconds, a ship's utility load out, or in the case of the battlecruiser what tech has been researched, compatible with all ships
- Nanobots - Ability to heal a player over time, or damage / provide vision of an opponent over time, compatible with frigate and support
- Cloaking device - Ability to shroud, compatible with support fighter
- Dumbfire missles - Weak rapid fire straight line missles, all ships
- Friend or Foe missles - Slower, hit nearest enemy target missles, medium / heavy / bomber
- Flak cannon - Turret which causes small AOE damage and can prevent projectiles from passing its explosions (similar to current CC countermeasures as craft run away), bomber / support / frigate
- Tractor beam - pull something, a group of somethings, or someone near you, support / frigate
- EMP missle - temporarily disable ships in an area of effect for a few seconds, special systems and utilities disabled for 20 seconds, heavy / bomber
- Holographic emitter - makes ship appear differently, or projects an image of another ship, support
- Energy transfer beam - can steal energy from a ship, or give energy to a ship, support / frigate
- Proximity Mines - Support
- Attack Drones - Automated craft that intercept targets - Frigate / Bomber
- Docking Port - Allows ships to land to heal / reload, Frigate
- Iron Curtain - temporary invincibility, Medium / Bomber
- Energy Drill - extracts minerals into energy similar to mining laser
- Magnetic Attractor - pulls nearby enemy projectiles into vessel while active (frigate)
- Basic items for increased hp / speed / energy recharge, all ships
- Light shield (50 point shield with rapid recharge), all ships
- Frequency Nullifier, all ships
- Increased mining laser speed, miner
- Mine while moving, miner
- Ionic transfer, target gains speed and energy, frigate / support

Of course, this could all use refining to not make it overly complicated or imbalanced, but my hope is something like this adds to the customization of player roles as the game goes on.

bbot wrote:So, I was thinking, one issue that faces the current cruiser command game is that there isn't that many kinds of engagements that happen. It is usually wraith / corv vs BC (always a loss) or miner. I was thinking of ways that the game could be changed to have more kinds of small ships without creating too much redundancy.

So, here is my idea:

Firstly, I think that non basic ships should be blueprints that have to be researched in the tech tree. This prevents one team from copying another teams ships straight up or hard countering another teams 'party' too quickly. Somehow, the opposing team should be somehow able to detect what the other team is researching. That's not the major idea, this is:

If I was to design cruiser command, I would have small ships be customizable in a similar way that RPG-like games allow character customizations. For example, in WoW, you can have healer classes, tank classes, pet classes, AOE classes, and more. Each character has some kind of basic attack, and then a special attack or ability / role as well. There are roles for every kind of player as well - some people like to line up the perfect shot and get rewarded for sniping, while others might like a more automated approach to their character that requires less APM and precision than other characters (such as warlocks in WoW), and some players like comfortable or safe units, like healers or rouges.

The characters also have talents, which are customizations on the character to give them different roles depending on the type of person is controlling the character. In CC, this could be modeled by having hardpoints on fighters that can have weapons or utilities in them. Each weapon or utility would drain the ships power, so stronger utilities would require a stronger ship. Once a ship is equiped with a utility or one time use weapon, that is the only thing that can be in that hardpoint until the ship itself is salvaged (one time use weapons get replaced on dock). In addition, each fighter would have specific upgrades to fill that hardpoint that only that fighter supports.

What if cruiser command copied this model a little bit? What if the ships were slightly modeled off of RPG roles?

For example, some ships could be:

Light fighter - fast, higher than average sight, similar to wraith, one hardpoint
Medium fighter - well rounded slightly more expensive fighter, one hardpoint
Heavy fighter - similar to corvette, has more armament, has a turret, two hardpoints, strong primary weapon but it drains energy quickly
Bomber - slower, similar to destroyer, has a turret, 3 hardpoints, weak primary weapon
Frigate - slower yet, similar to chomper, can collect resources, three hardpoints
Support fighter - medium fighter armor and speed, light fighter offensive weapon, two hardpoints

Turrets in these cases would be a weapon that could be fired at a target location even if you aren't flying in that direction (similar to the BC attack)

Some utilities and weapons to put in hardpoints could be (these would mostly all need to be researched in the tech tree):

- Torpedo - One time use which ignores ships shields and causes high debris damage, requires heavy fighter or bomber, can be shot down by turrets or any other weapons similar to the current miner 'drone'
- Afterburner - speed burst similar to bc engine boost, compatible with all ships
- Sensor probe - allows player to scan, after a few seconds, a ship's utility load out, or in the case of the battlecruiser what tech has been researched, compatible with all ships
- Nanobots - Ability to heal a player over time, or damage / provide vision of an opponent over time, compatible with frigate and support
- Cloaking device - Ability to shroud, compatible with support fighter
- Dumbfire missles - Weak rapid fire straight line missles, all ships
- Friend or Foe missles - Slower, hit nearest enemy target missles, medium / heavy / bomber
- Flak cannon - Turret which causes small AOE damage and can prevent projectiles from passing its explosions (similar to current CC countermeasures as craft run away), bomber / support / frigate
- Tractor beam - pull something, a group of somethings, or someone near you, support / frigate
- EMP missle - temporarily disable ships in an area of effect for a few seconds, special systems and utilities disabled for 20 seconds, heavy / bomber
- Holographic emitter - makes ship appear differently, or projects an image of another ship, support
- Energy transfer beam - can steal energy from a ship, or give energy to a ship, support / frigate
- Proximity Mines - Support
- Attack Drones - Automated craft that intercept targets - Frigate / Bomber
- Docking Port - Allows ships to land to heal / reload, Frigate
- Iron Curtain - temporary invincibility, Medium / Bomber
- Energy Drill - extracts minerals into energy similar to mining laser
- Magnetic Attractor - pulls nearby enemy projectiles into vessel while active (frigate)
- Basic items for increased hp / speed / energy recharge, all ships
- Light shield (50 point shield with rapid recharge), all ships
- Frequency Nullifier, all ships
- Increased mining laser speed, miner
- Mine while moving, miner
- Ionic transfer, target gains speed and energy, frigate / support

Of course, this could all use refining to not make it overly complicated or imbalanced, but my hope is something like this adds to the customization of player roles as the game goes on.

Okay, let me just get this out of the way first--

There is something to be said about a degree of simplicity in a game. If you have to sign a rental form, pay three months upfront, and requisition the presidents permission just to take a ship out, nobody is going to have any fun. The ability to simply 'start and go' should be a key feature of a game. If you have to spend five minutes preparing yourself to launch your first ship and only get a minute or two of real fly time out of it, that will not leave a very strong impression.

RPG elements work in RPGs because you are customizing a singular avatar that comprises your entire existence. Moreover, RPGs are designed to last for hours upon hours -- not thirty minutes.

A degree of customization would be interesting. A degree of customization exists, in fact, in items. And I think expanding upon items alone to a certain extent might be interesting, since we're already enforcing 'spam buy flares' at the start of the game. However, I think this may be taking things a bit too far to be perfectly honest.

That's my opinion.

Good point, red-rocket said something to the same effect as that to me as well.

I think I'm modeling the idea more off of Aeon of Strife style games (Dota/LoL/HoN) than a full fledged RPG. Really, all that the proposal comes down to is having some items or choices on ship configuration prior to launch. This could all be done in the ship launch screen as a simple toggle, like:

I think the customization is a bit overkill lol, i prefere the current way where you have 6 inventory slots and you customize how you want to use or how much you want for your ship. Well...also at the moment we have very few items and the only real customization is the minelayer....=P need more items xD
as for standalone, i think that we can just keep the basic inventory and customization will be through upgrades and items like we have now...but its certainly a good idea, many of those "equip" ideas are good as items in their own right =)