Hi, so i was thinking about ship classes and figured why not document my ideas here. Not realy a “suggestion” per se since i’m sure INS already has a set plan for this, but anyway… Please note that the pictures provided aren’t actual examples but are more aimed towards the FEEL OF PLAYING with one in its role.
There’s 6 types of basic ship design:
- Utility
- Fighter
- Corvette
- Frigate
- Cruiser
- Capital
Utility - these ships are not self-sufficient. Carry zero or one pilot. These kinds of ships provide a specific task and are not customisable or upgradable. Examples of this are: Unmanned repair drone, inter-ship shuttle, asteroid scanner probe. Your typical “pet” in games.
Fighter - probably your first “real” spaceship. It can fly, take off and land and carry you, the meatbag, around. High-tech models may include an FTL drive or even shield generator but it does not have interstellar capabilities. By definition carries only one pilot and at least one gun. Is usually deployed or transported between stars by larger ship. Examples: Assault Fighter, Stealth Bomber, Interceptor.
Corvette - a bigger version of the fighter, if a Fighter is a nimble sports car then this is a Humvee. By definition it needs two or three players to operate and can carry heavier equipment and is usually specialised in a specific role. Like Fighters it does not have interstellar capabilities. This will often be used by a group of 2 or 3 friends.
Frigate - probably your first true independent spacecraft. It has a cargo hold, configurable weapons and systems and, most importantly, an autonomous interstellar drive (figthers and corvettes have none of those). Also serves as a very basic “player housing” platform, allowing you to customise the exterior and interior of the ship by buying designs from the market or real-money shop (monetisation model!!!), probably in the form of an item that, when used, changes the entire look of the ship (different colour, textures). All frigates by definition require only one pilot to operate but additional staff is welcome (as opposed to AI control).
Cruiser - the first team effort of a group of players, it requires SOME resourses to manufacture and has a minimum crew of 4 to operate and while it can be operated with less players it suffers tremendously. Usually it has a helmsman that is piloting the ship, a captain giving orders (like eve online piloting), an engineer that manages all internal systems and a weapons specialist that actively operates the weapons.
Each of those will have a sort of minigame in their own role such as the helmsman simply piloting the ship and following the captain’s orders, the engineer plays with the UI to keep the ship alive, the gunner playing the shooting gallery with turrets and their targets and captain’s job is pretty much the same as playing eve online (only your orders are displayed on everyone else’s screen and THEY execute them, you just sit back and watch). These ships has little to no customisation options but players are still free to find all the variety of ships. This is your typical 5-man party ship to play with friends on the weekend. Most players have their own ship and a group of friends may leave one of these docked for when they plan on playing together.
Capital - These are your end-game ships. Require entire guilds/corporations to manufacture and operate. The smallest ship probably requires at least 10 players to operate, the command trio (captain, helmsman and engineer) plus a player on each weapon and one on shield generator. Each of these roles will have their own UI minigame that is relevant to the role. A lone player cannot pilot this ship at all and requires at least two to simply move it (with no functioning shields or weapons).
Customisation is tied to corp/guild progress.
Vanquished a very dangerous enemy? New paint job unlocked!
Destroyed a player enemy corp in a pvp war? Fancy armor or engine trails!
Explored every dangerous “space dungeon”? Unique-looking antennas!
Ship Mechanics:
The “stats”. In a typical MMO there is Strength, Charisma or Dexterity. Here we have CPU, Power and Cooling systems. Various equipment requires different amounts of these “stats” to run it.
CPU has a total amount of performance measured in Flops and each piece of equipment may require a certain amount of Flops to complete its task and the lack of Flops simply translates in that task taking longer to acomplish.
An example of this would be an FTL jump: Your ship CPU has 10 Petaflops of power, your equipment takes 2 Petaflops to maintain and the (long) jump takes 10 seconds at 10 Petaflops. This means the fastest your engine can enter a jump is 10 seconds but due to your ship’s slower CPU it will take 12.5 seconds instead.
Power is your basic Electric Power Generator and is measured in Gigajoules. There is also a separate system (item) called the Capacitor that basically holds all energy generated. Those two can be managed separately. The ship and all its systems take energy from the Capacitor and the generator replenishes it. Upgrading the capacitor may lead to a bigger pool of energy to draw from and upgrading the generator increases the speed it fills up.
An example of this would be four Plasma Cannons on your ship: Each shot takes 12GJ to fire and deals a LOT of damage but your ship’s capacitor holds 70GJ so upgrading your capacitor to 100GJ would allow you to fire two volleys and most likely destroying the enemy instead of waiting longer between shots. Upgrading your generator will lead to higher DPS over time but the burst damage is still low
Cooling works by taking heat away from modules that need cooling and is measured by an arbitrary 0-100 heat bar (some modules may have 0-250 or 0-5000). The cooling system takes away heat from these bars at a passive rate split among all modules so if two modules need cooling each module gets cooled at half the speed. There is also a maximum cooling rate ofc. This is where managing your heat is important for gunner players in cruiser/capital’s.
Example: Each shot of that Plasma Cannon generates 30 Heat thus the first shot puts it at [30/150] and the Heat is being cooled off at 15 per second. If all four cannos are shot at once then each cannon gets only 3.75/sec cooling and will take longer for all 4 cannons to cool off. The player can unlock the heat limiters and allow the weapon to fire past the limit but each shot will do damage to the weapon proportional to how far over the limit the weapon is heated and is possible to wreck the weapon and needs a repair at station (partial repairs can be done in space if you have a Utility repair bot). Trivia: most cloaking systems reduce the cooling rate of your ship while active, so while you are allowed to fire while cloaked you will very quickly stop because you can’t vent the heat.
CPU is also used for Hacking (the equivalent of CC (crowd control)). There are simply Viruses and Anti-Viruses. Each V and AV have some stats but both the V and AV require CPU power to work - this means even if you have a small and weak ship but it has a really powerful CPU you can hack the enemy ships that have slower CPUs and disable their shields or engines or weapons and defeat them in that way (there is more to it but i’ll leave it at that).
Power and Cooling can be affected by combat. Each ship has bits of hull surface that, when precisely shot, deal damage to Power or Cooling systems. As you can imagine dealing damage and wrecking the cooling system will prevent the enemy ship from shooting or afterburning away. These are usually protected by armor or are hard to reach.
can’t forget those
