Furry Commander
Furry Armada
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Posted - 2012.09.15 21:36:00 -
[1] - Quote
I read through most of this thread, and i have seen a lot of points bounced around. If you cut out a lot of the bickering, there is a lot of good and interesting stuff. i like some of the ideas from the half dozen or so perspectives i could see. I like the the lions share of the concept, but i think i have a more balanced, and potentially more implementable proposition, because lets face it, as it stands i do not think CCP would be willing to implement this as is. It does not mesh with current gameplay trends or current development goals (IE ship rebalancing being a major focus)
As for my take. I think the concept of a "between battleship and dreadnaught/carrier" size ship is interesting, but it has been done, so lets look to those first to see the most logical way to have this idea be implemented and developed in actuality.
Firstly, as far as training and such this is the equivelent of a destroyer or battlecruiser. CCP is planning on at some point changing those skills to be racially iterated as opposed to a generalized spaceship command skill. A ship of this size category would be an excelent flagship for the expansion that realizes that change. as such a ship class of this size should definitely have more racially inspired fluff. More on that later.
Secondly, the Orca is roughly that size in game, and although skill requirements are a bit different (industrials don't follow quite the same progression) i think the Orca is the best ship to make a comparison to because freighters and jump freighters are far to specialized. Orcas are very versatile and are used for a variety of tasks outside their intended scope, including mobile exploration and wormhole bases. I am sure people reading this will be familiar with at least some of the nuances and capabilities of the Orca, so i won't go into any more detail, but will revisit the concept in a moment.
Thirdly, the CCP development plans cleary lean towards all ships having clear roles in Both PVP and PVE. some ships will be able to perform in one or the other environment exclusively while most ships will have a certain element of crossover between PVP and PVE, but maintain their intended role fairly uniformly.
Combining these three conepts; Standardized racial training and flavor, Orca like size comparison and clasification, and the need for a clear role that has potential in PVP and PVE, limits our choices and allows us to develop the idea into something that may actually get designed in game. That stated, I believe some of the features and ideas proposed in this thread are more appropriate than others.
I can honestly say that fighters will be something that CCP probably would not put on a sub capital ship. I understand that like the orca, this is a hybrid between the two, but fighters just don't seem to be a reasonable addition, but i could be wrong. This does deviate from the initial concept as a mini carrier, but i honestly think that allowing the concept to eveolve away from that focus will honestly be an improvement. Aditionally, i feel that this ship class, as presented, lacks any sort of racial flavoring. Both Carriers and Logistics manage to clearly show their colors, so to speak, and the same should be true of this ship class. Also, using a Sub cap as a spring board for a capital is fundamentally unachievable as the differences between the two make it equivelent to putting training wheels on motorcycle. Finally, this ship class does not have a very clear role, according to the CCP's new convention, and it needs one.
This still leaves us a ton of options to work with though, and to narrow it down we should really settle on a role. Considering the initial idea, I believe a support role is in order, although other ships of this size category could be developed in different roles at a later date. Given its size (comperable to an Orca), its role, need for more racial flavor, and need for a unique purpose. i would honestly recomend giving it a bonus to racial warfare links, and allow it to fit all three varieties simultaniously. I rather like the idea of a Massive drone bay, even without fighters, and would definitely keep the +1 drone per level, if not increase it to +2 and keep the increase to drone effectiveness as well perhaps making one a static role bonus and the other level dependent. If being used in a logistics role, massively bonused repper drones work rather well and are frankly more interesting. A set of ships like this is far more colorful and interesting than just a mini carrier, and if it has both a corporate hanger and a large (greater than 500,000 M3) ship maintainance bay would see a large amount of use in both PVE and PVP. It has easily forseeable usefulness in several roam and gate camp fleet compositions, and potentially even SOV warfare fleets. In PVE it would perform far better than the Orca for more combat oriented Exploration and wormhole scenarios. If designed in a manner similar to this, it would also fill a role that no other ship is filling, and therefore not be the "bigger" or "smaller" version of some other ship.
I may actually develop this idea a bit further, but for now i will leave it as this and see what feedback i get
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