Carrier needs a proper BSG-style Jump ability

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Carrier is in this spot where it, sure, potentially is a strong weapon in the hands of a coordinated group, but still feels like it needs either more offenses (I disagree there), more defenses (maybe), or more utility (definitely this one, for me).

I mean I guess some people can disagree if they must, but they’d be missing out on how stupidly cool this would be.

This does hinge a bit on that I think there needs to be RTS-style controls added for the map and capital ships, as that’s how I see this “Jump” ability aimed to select the point in space you want to wind up at.
It’d be on the weapons menu like abilities are. You select where to end up, and instead of riding a wave of waved space the Carrier punches through to instantly appear there after a spool up time.
Allies would see an outline of where you’re going to end up, and it would show as a spawn in an area. Allies looking to spawn there as it is spooling up would either have their spawn queued up to launch after you arrive, or potentially this Jump ability could pull allies in a sphere around the Carrier to the point as well.
Everyone would see space being pinched where it’s targeting as well.

As strong as this is, I do not think it should have a long cooldown. You should be able to Jump in, spawn allies, Jump out. Though, I do think that if enemies stay in the radius of the Jump bubble, they could warp with it to finish the Carrier off from there, if that’s included (more on that below).
I also feel that the Jump should pull ships in the targeted area to the other side, swapping places, but I suppose that’s a bit ripe for abuse. I’m not sure. But if you’re pinching two points of space together, it does make sense that the Carrier and ships around it would fall through one way and the others on the other side would fall through another way. It’s not as though ships pulled through from the other side can’t just warp back there. At the very least, I like the idea of it pulling ships with it when it warps out. Potentially, you could even jump the defensive platforms around some stations onto an enemy station.
Perhaps it should drain cap, like say 40-50% of it. So you can at least do two jumps in quick succession.
I strongly feel the Jump should not be disabled by taking damage, as warp is. That would kill the potential crazy interesting uses of the ability.

Currently, I feel the Carrier’s big weakness, other than the fact that it can be blown up easily if someone isn’t shooting down torps and mines for you or it’s dogpiled by Cruisers, is mobility. It takes SO LONG to align to warp somewhere, to turn during warp, and to warp to begin with. But I also don’t think it should just turn around and strafe faster and stuff, where is where this Jump comes in to give it unique mobility. Even if you add a considerable spool up time, this would be a lot faster as you skip the whole orienting.
I think this Jump ability would give it the proper support role and capabilities it deserves.
And it’d be cool as fuck. I really can’t think of a more appropriate way to buff the Carrier without making it TOO strong.

And, yes, this includes that you should be able to jump the carrier into the atmosphere of a planet where is struggles against gravity, launch ships, and jump back out before you hit the ground. All complete with the loud clap from the atmosphere disappearing in the hole punched through space around the carrier and that vacuum suddenly being filled back in by the air around it.

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There was talk of another means of traversing space as additional battlescapes would be too far away to be travelled to in a reasonable time even near lightspeed.

What is important for me here are the visuals. The I-Novae engine with its seamless tech should be shown off when possible. An instant jump kind of defeats that.

Gameplay wise I would find the idea interesting. Even with the pulling along of ships, kind of reminds me of eve online and its mechanics.

I would suggest to make the “jump drive” like a physics and even warp drive defying travel mechanic that instead of teleporting ships would instead move them, in a direct line, to the target position. The player looses control and the ship instantly accelerated to ludicrous speeds, making it disappear for onlookers, speed up to several times light speed in the space between points of interest and slow down to like 1/10th lightspeed and then dropped at the target, making it appear as if it appeared out of nowhere.
For the player(s) jumping though, they would be able to see them leaving and arriving at the planet.
As there is no player input and the client and server know what the start and en-position is, there shouldn’t be any not solvable problem with rubberbanding, even with high ping.

The map currently has a cursor that can be moved. As such I assume that can be used as input for the target position.

As for “what if it goes trough the planet”: Either not allow that, requiring that the staging has to be warped to and that it has line of sight or allow for it to go trough planets and apply a “blackout” effect"

Even though it is interesting, it alone would not make the carrier sufficiently interesting in my opinion.

It sure would be awesome to do the Adama maneuvre and other such things, especially if it could be countered and if there would be interesting counter-play.

I like that it relies on a way of direct carrier captain skill though, more so then other proposed features like, letting the carrier sit while taking a small ship out or launching a squadron of fighters.

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I won’t add much more here other than to say both the carrier and corvette are certainly crying out for special, tactical gameplay. Fleet coordination and group jumping would not be out of character for a carrier!

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Cruiser personally feels like a big bomber to me right now.

I don’t think that’s necessarily bad, though. Some people really enjoy Cruisers as they are. They’re big, destructive, and simple.
Only thing I’d really change with them is to be able to allow someone else to control some of the weapons, so someone could control the missile launchers to micromanage shooting down mines, bombers, and torps with them. I don’t even feel they need (strong) PD in their current state, just that.

I think there’s going to be pre-determined alternate loadouts of ships, right? So there could be another for the Carrier and Cruiser… but I feel they don’t need them. I’d like to see 2 ints (fixed cannon version?), 2 bombers (extra torps and extra cannon, no missiles?), 3 corvettes (ECM corv, and railgun non-repair corv?), 2 destroyers (double railgun destroyer?), but I don’t really see alternate loadouts fitting the two largest ships at the moment.
I saw someone suggest Carrier could get an alternate torps instead of missiles Carrier, but I hate that idea. Cruiser already has both launchers and I think should stay that way.
A ion laser Homeworld style cruiser shooting down the middle would be cool, but I don’t see how you balance that versus the dual torps unless it’s replacing the mk7 guns instead. Last I checked, I didn’t think people cared for the idea of big powerful lasers, just point defense ones.

Maybe I’m big dumb, but can you not travel “faster” than light with the current warp? I didn’t pay attention to the speed numbers. I really was getting the impression that it does, and after all warping space can make you go appear to travel FTL.
So I was figuring it’d be like Elite with how you traverse stations. Just maybe a bit faster once you’re far away from a body if it’s ever made into a binary to trinary system so it doesn’t take 15 minutes to get to the other star(s).

Absolutely agreed.
I read that “jump” was planned for just in general to move between planets, but I rather hate the idea… outside of a rare ability like this which adds its own cool elements and you see it fairly rarely.
I suppose you could keep the Carrier’s unique by giving it enough cap that it can jump twice in a row, and a larger jump bubble that can pull other ships with it

I really think the whole idea of warp for short distance, jump for long, should be clearly scrapped at this point. Warp should be for most ships to travel between planets.

eh here I disagree.
It should just show pinched space on either side as it spools up.
Then when you go through it, you see the other side of space where you’re arriving stretched and pulled TO you.
On the other side, they see your side of space and the ships there stretched and pulled into the other side.
There’s not really speed. It’s like you draw a space ship on a rubber band, and then you shrunk that together to pull it to another point a long it. But that’s a 2d representation.

As far as going through planets, there’s no reason why the path the pinched together space takes can’t be a curved path around it. You wouldn’t even see the path traveled, though, just the start and end points. I figure “Jump” is more like a wormhole, otherwise how do you differentiate it from warp

I disagree here as well, because that currently really lacks scale, precision, and you can’t set a point along the z axis with it… it really needs to be changed into a 3D RTS-style map where you can better target.
I’ve seen really common complaints about the map. It’s just bad and needs scrapped. Not only is the 2D map bad, but the tree hierarchy is bad and would be better served by marking those directly over the map and putting a heatmap of conflict right on the map. At least it’s the only system in the game like that, the others just need improved.

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Maybe as a stepping stone but the aim is to have fully customizable loadouts.

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I know that was the original goal when the game was EVE-like and I’d agree with that there (though I could argue against it… you can’t just order a F/A-18 Super Hornet with unlicensed engines and Russian missiles), but I’d say that’d be a HUGE mistake in a rounds-based PVP game.
It’s not only a balancing nightmare, but it fucks up the competitiveness where you can’t tell at a glance what you’re facing.

E:D might have it, but PVP is also a complete joke in E:D.

I think, in general, there’s a good deal of confusion between what was planned for TQFE and how that doesn’t work well in this game. Like as much as I loved my/our old crafting system idea, and it was heartwarming how much others loved it, it doesn’t fit in this game so I’m dropping it instead of poisoning what I:B could be.

If you add 2 int, bomber, destroyer varients, and 3 corvette variants, that’s 11 ships total essentially. That should really be enough to give variety most players want without making it overly burdensome to learn how to play against each ship and each ship. Currently you have what, 30 combinations of matchups to learn? int vs b, c, d, crsr, crrr, b vs i, c, d, crsr, crrr. etc. Bring it up to 11 and it’s essentially 110 matchups to learn though to a lesser degree.
That’s enough except for maybe one configurable electronics slot or something. I’d like to see that explored after loadouts if there is a great idea that really adds to the game besides just the usual “but it’s a space game so I should be able to configure every little thing because that’s how must space games are!!11” non-argument. But no, shouldn’t be swapping up engines, shields, every hardpoint, etc.

There’s also the design trap of, say, you let cruiser chose between anti-shield vs anti-hull torpedoes. That sounds innocent enough on its surface, why not let them chose torps like that?
You bring a Cruiser because you need a Cruiser. Not because you need anti-shields or anti-hull. By the time you arrive, maybe you actually needed anti-hull because of all the travel time. Why make a noob trap like that to fuck the player up when it really adds nothing except giving people the ILLUSION of having a choice?
If you want better anti-shield torps, a better solution would be to make explosions stronger against the long sides of shields. Since Cruisers are long, they could have stronger shields on the front and rear, and get depleted more from side hits. Especially the top/bottom sides. Then people could simply aim their torps so they loop around to hit the flat sides.

Also shouldn’t have to spend 15 seconds each time I target someone figuring out that they have dumb shields that mean there is no partial penetration, or dumb shields that are resistant to energy weapons so the kinetic weapons might be the only worthwhile, or that they go in a straight line better than strafe so I can’t actually catch them, and other stupid things.
This hurts the competitiveness of I:B.

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