Megaships

from Sins Forums
I'm going to expand on Riptide572's idea of megaships. WWW Link

I've been thinking of this actually almost since I first started to play. However, I'm unsure of exactly how close he is to my idea. Here is mine.

I've heard of few people talking about how they would like factions to be more unique than just a color and an emblem. And I've been thinking that most RTS games have some superweapon, or superunit, or hero unit, or whatever that kicks everything's ass. Well, why not here too? Why not make it unique (per game).

What the player would do, is they would pay a massive sum of money to someone (for the Vasari, it would maybe be a grand council or something, the Advent would have psychics, and the TEC would hire private contractors) to design a megaship. The computer would then choose from say 10-15 premade designs (maybe that is a bit over ambitious), at least one carrier, one battleship, and one support (not sure how you could make a mega support ship but...) would be in there for a full range of options.

The player would then choose the design they wanted, and their homeplanet would begin construction, which would take a long time. This could be done at any point in the game, however stats would be completely fixed. Further techs would have no effect on this megaship. This would be so a player could build a megaship early in the game to get a head start, but the megaship would be outclassed later in the game, vs someone who waits till late game, or till their last hours, to completely flip the balance of power.

The megaship itself would be able to conceivable be able to fight off an entire similarly equipped fleet. Thus it would take either someone with a massive economy, someone who is extremely lucky, or more likely, a concerted allied effort to stop such a ship. Or tech up. Or build one of your own. Of course, they would need unique special abilities, although I wouldn't be asking for a 10-15 possible ones, just 10-15 possible combinations. The need for large cash reserves would prevent one from being made the moment the game starts, allowing players to build up some sizable fleets to counter early bloomers.

Not only would this make games very interesting, would increase the element of strategy (ie when to pull the ace), but would add variation to factions because each faction would eventually have a unique megaship.
53,520 views 27 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I think they should make the flagship eventually become like a megaship in endgame, by one of the below:

1) letting it get better upgrades(dmg, movement speed, hp) from investing more materials/income into it
2) making its stats increase significantly more with level ups.
3) make it the only fully customizable ship in the game, where you have 3 weapon slots, 5 device slots and 3 armour/shield slots and you upgrade it at a specific structure.

would be nice to at least customize one ships wpns and so on and since its one ship only per game(per side), it doesnt add the complexity of having to build x type ships from scratch.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Make it so that you specify which capital ship you want to be the flag ship, and then give it a 20% boost to HP, Shields, Weapons and Antimatter each.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
3) make it the only fully customizable ship in the game, where you have 3 weapon slots, 5 device slots and 3 armour/shield slots and you upgrade it at a specific structure.


Excellent idea! All of the battles near the beginning seem to identical as is. A lot of scout frigates, maybe an occasional flak or siege frigate, and if the AI is being really ambitious, a Kol Battlecruiser.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
This would be a cool idea, kind of like a customizable Flagship. It would be cooler, if one could design it before the start of the game. And then each faction would have their own unique customizable flagship.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
i personally think if your'e going to have a mega ship it needs to be darn big... something that might inspire words like "thats not a moon, thats a space station."

honestly the heavy ships from homeworld 2 give a mouch better sense of being massive than the capital ships of sins at least at the moment, having a shipe with destructible components made them feel massive to me.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
i like some of what Advalary is suggesting.
I think (maybe 5 megaships) should be buildable, WHEN the research is possible. It would require many research stations.
Like the tiers we have now, so all the megaships would be in one tier and more research into that tier, the better and maybe bigger megaship you would get

The megaship could come in different versions (larger carriers, battleship and so on) or there could just be one. Like in EVE with the mothership. It would have ALOT of power, and can destroy everything very easily. But its downside would be it cant hit smaller ships, as they are faster, and the megaship has to large guns to track them.

Just a thought
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I was under the impression that there was going to be a Death Star sort of ship in the game already - apparently there is not. With that said I must say I'm 100% behind this idea.

I am also completely behind a fully customizable flagship. However since it is supposed to be the pride of the fleet I think its base stats should be at least 50% higher then the standard ship of that class. I also think that when it is built it should use what ever tech you have at that time; but if you want at a later date you can upgrade it. The upgrade penalty should be something like twice or triple the standard time to build a new ship of that class plus the same in cost for the upgraded systems.

I also hope that the level cap of 10 gets boosted. For an epic game I can easily see 25 levels or more for a conservative player such as myself. Maybe after level 10 each level achieved improves one selected system by maybe 3% or something like that.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Multi, I was actually suggesting (maybe I forgot to add that part) that you could only have one. So you would have to choose between what type you wanted.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Id love to see bigger ships in the game. Destroying \ losing one would definitely be a blow to a faction.

They should also have insanely high maintenance penalties so that its not feasible to build many unless your faction is REALLY wealthy.

Or if they implement faction leaders you could put them on board, and thus losing the capital ship would mean game over? I guess the danger of that would be that most players wouldnt want to risk fighting with it and so it'd end up being just a drain on the economy.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
i know this has been said before but the starting kol is a bit on the small side, considering its supposed to be a battleship, its more like a battleshuttle,

i always thought cruisers were smaller than battleships, for me if im flying around with a couple of cruisers and an enemy battleship jumps in i should instantly be crapping myself in fear,

in terms of scale i really love the ship size in eve, but i do realise its not realisticly going to be like that in this game, it would be nice to have a resized battleship (maybe higher specs too)

and one thing that people have not really mentioned is to make cruisers smaller! making the kol a bit more impressive, just an idea

J
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
What about a mobile battle/command station? It could be something that you could move into orbit around a newly conquered planet to rapidly establish your foothold. Huge expense can be a possible drawback. It could also be limited to a certain number of them at any given time. The last would present a sound tactical decision.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
oh em gee...

definitely, do the words SUPER STAR DESTROYER mean anything to the people here? i pray to God that they do.

if a megaship is to be added, it would be amazing. HUGELY (pun intended) amazing.

fully customizable, yes! flagship of the empire, yes!
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
I think if the size gets boosted more then 300% of the current caps things will look bad.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
I think that if all of the current capital ships get enlarged 300% things would look bad because all of the ships would be way to large.


I think the game definitely needs larger ships though. Right now it feels like I'm building frigates, then destroyers.....then just more destroyers. It feels like we're missing at least three more classes of ships.

Cruisers, Battleships, and then Mega class ships, with Carriers falling under a separate category.

Frigates would be built in a large number, then destroyers in a fairly larger number, with some cruisers, a couple of battleships, and then one Mega class type ship.


Seriously, it's easy to compare SOASE to Homeworld 2, but what it really is like and should emulate is Freespace 2, Starlancer and Wing Commander.

All games that recreated fleet combat and ship logistics. Fighters did sweeps around ships to take out other fighters, cruisers destroyers and battleships worked in unison creating an amazing spectacle of space opera combat.

Every time I play SOASE it almost recreates that amazing space dynamic but not quite. Fighters kind of attack enemy bombers, bombers attack cruisers, ships just sort of sit there floating in space opening up fire on enemy fleets. They sort of form a line not really doing anything.

Carriers need to be souped up. You watch the Battlestar Galactica or the Tigersclaw and they can go toe to toe versus tons of other ships. Right now all capital ships just feel generic and the same. The only real purpose of building any of them is to have variety in their special buttons.

The reason people build so many capital ships and frigates is because the individual ships are just too weak, if they were more powerful and expensive then they would be more useful. Two to three capital ships should be enough to patrol four planets. Not massive capital ship fleets with hundreds of ships.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
I'm actually not terribly worried about variety with the ships. This is only beta 1 after all, if everything stays the same in the next beta though...

The only reason why I brought this up was because if IC/SD aren't already planning something like this, they need time to figure it out (although they probably won't add any new game elements that weren't already planned at this point).
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
@dork - I did not mean for the current capital ships to be increased. My comment was for the megaship size.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
For the sake of the comment and the bumpage;

I am not opposed to megaships per se, but some additional options should IMO be added;
-it would have MORE hull points and operational expenses than the same weapon power in capital ships
and/or
-it would be possible to destroy parts of it.

Otherwise the increased hull would make all it's weapon systems work for a much too long a time. This way they would look cool but IMO wouldn't shift the game balance.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top
I had an idea about this a little while ago and posted it here "https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?aid=174535#1438217"

Ya know how some games have a technology victory? Like in gal civ 2 where you reserch along a certain line and then you win? or in some games you build somthing and defend it for a certain amount of time and then you win, etc... Well instead of having a tech victory where you just win, you get a mega ship like what was posted above and it completly bowls over your enemies fleet. This could lead to some awsome battles with 2 of these or a group of players who got together to take it down.
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top

I had an idea about this a little while ago and posted it here "https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?aid=174535#1438217"

Ya know how some games have a technology victory? Like in gal civ 2 where you reserch along a certain line and then you win? or in some games you build somthing and defend it for a certain amount of time and then you win, etc... Well instead of having a tech victory where you just win, you get a mega ship like what was posted above and it completly bowls over your enemies fleet. This could lead to some awsome battles with 2 of these or a group of players who got together to take it down.



I was kinda bummed reading that victory conditions were out...with total genocide of your enemy as being the condition for the win, is fine and all, but it could be so much better.

Economy - the first to reach X number of pop/credits/whatever...Strategize the best way to stop your enemies growth, all the while increasing yours! That would be challenging!

Destroy Flasgship - each player assigns a cap as their flagship and you can figure out the rest.

Tech Level - reach a particular number of tech levels...

Most culture...You can think of any number of conditions and or combinations of these conditions to win. Just a thought...

Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
Most of those wouldn't work too terribly terribly well in an RTS, Slimp (alas).
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top

Most of those wouldn't work too terribly terribly well in an RTS, Slimp (alas).


HEHE! But what RTS are you playing? Sins is a RT4X!!!! ;-p

Sorry to go off-topic...

Oh yeah, Megaships...I wouldn't complain if there were some!
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
Economy - the first to reach X number of pop/credits/whatever...Strategize the best way to stop your enemies growth, all the while increasing yours! That would be challenging!

Destroy Flasgship - each player assigns a cap as their flagship and you can figure out the rest.

Tech Level - reach a particular number of tech levels...


maybe this could be different for each race
like the vasari get enogh resourcess to leave
or the TEC reasurch a super vasari anti technology and buy the advent off
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top
That's not a ship :NOTSURE:


Anyway, I love the "Megaship Idea!"
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
megaships?? how come nobody is talking about the AI?

if there is something which is gonna make/break this game is the AI...

if the AI is stupid u wont play SP/co-op because it just wont be a challenge to play..megaships or no megaships...

improving the eyecandy is great but if the AI sucks u can have meagaships and death starts and whatnot and u still wont play the game.

AI AI AI!!!! focus on the AI