I'm currently stuck at an annoying Problem and I would like to hear your ideas what to do:
Situation:
I noticed that the default EVE shipyards are too small for most ship they are used to build.
The result are stupid looking clipping errors while launching ships from the yard.
Same Problem for Titanyards. -.-' no titan really fits the yard. Similar problem for Gallente Gates. They are closed objects 0o ... who would have a Gate closed on one side .. well ignore it.
Only the real big Stations have docks wich can really dock up to battleships and frighters and those are not really useful for active gameplay.
If you know HW2 collision box and avoidance you know what I mean. Having very big unmoveable objects in a playable area will mostly result in ships getting stuck or have serious problems with navigation.
Your ships will never get around it correctly.
The original idea was:
- Having the shipyards and Stations build your ships and they undock from them.
- keep original EVE size for all stations.
- Stations are side objects of sectors with docking exits pointing into a sector.
- Asteroids and other objects in sectors to have some cool eyecandy and something to harvest
- Megastations as passive objects connected to some sectors wich provide benefits to the owning player. (Like better Buildspeed, Technology, Income, whatever.)
Options to make it playable without clipping (I hate if it looks not right) now:
- make Shipyards about twice the size or even bigger so everything fits in them and risk movement problems and maybe have it look too big.
- limit defalut shipyards to Battlecruiser size
- cancel the idea of in sector shipyards and use an object to warp all ships in. Shipyars become an Object with effect to owning player.
- cancel shipyards completly and only go for warp in from markers / towers
- Go for Carriers / Commandships - so they can warp in / build all (HW2 mothership style / Orca)
- Now you, any other ideas? Whats your favorite? What do you think will work or simply work better ?
As this keeps me pretty much stuck at the moment and is a damn motivation killer, I like to get around it.
My favorite is the idea of a single controltower / marker per sector with stations like refinerys and assembly arrays in the sector to influence buildspeed, tech, available ships and so on.
I'm looking forward to see your thoughts about it.
Regars
Mr.Thi
Being able to make up to battleships in stations would be really nice for playabilty. As capital ships usually cost many times more than a battleship, having capital ships bridge in would be appropriate. As capital ships have the ability to use cynosural fields (titans can make their own jumpbridges, black ops battleships can jump themselves, etc) having them warp in via a beacon or tower, i think, would be a nice middle ground. You still get the effect of most of your fleet undocking, but the big stuff comes in as support. If you want to stay really true to EVE, you could even have the beacon as an option for T2 recon cruisers(amarr-<a href="http://www.eveonline.com/universe/spaceships/curse">Curse</a> or the covert ops frigates, as both of these ships are used primarily in game to light cyno fields for capital jumps. Lastly, a way to put a control to the warp in/cyno in for capitals would be to either have a stationary beacon that would only allow you to bring them in on your own sector, or if not, the other option would be to take another idea from eve. In eve they have cyno jammers that you can put at a POS to prevent cynosural fields from being activated in that system. With your current sector gametype, that would fit really well if you can code it somehow.
BTW, all the shipyards look great and loving the ideas presented so far... keep up the great work.
I agree with Cingularity. You don't need to have every ship undock from a station OR warp in. Having the capital class ships made 'off-map' to be warped in (like the shipyard in HW2)and the smaller ships made in stations would be an appropriate compromise. What the requirements are for beacons or being able to warp them in though is something I myself am not sure of as technology seems to be construction based as opposed to research based.
Currently it seems to get this way.
With the new Shipyards It should be easy to Build All up to Supercarriers in Shipyards. Dreadnoughts and Titans should be warped in in most cases simply because the Shipyard would need toom much space in a sector.
I'm not this big fan of active technology research. As a fan of the first supreme commander I like the system of beeing able to build hightech if you have the money and the needed factory.
"Research" will most of all only be integrated in form of boosts, you can gain from captured sectors. Because they have sleeper tech or something like that.
At start - small and well defended space station which can build fighters and other small ships. Capital ships and other big stuff can warp in after some researching and constructing. Shipyards become an object with effect to owning player.
Personally, I think you should avoid beacons for warp ins. They are usually far to small and you easily loose track of your production thanks to HW2s outdated interface.
Small yards which can bild more compact shipclasses are still a good idea. For the bigger ones, i have a suggestion:
Instead of giant yards, just place specialized factories for components needed by battleship and let them warp in beneath these structures.
So you have neat, shiny and moderatly sized space stations and still a comprehensible explanation why you can't just warp in bigger ships from the beginning, something even HW2 lacks.
Otherwise, you could use yards like the gantry in the halo homefront mod. Yards dont have to enclose Ships on every side.
Moddb.com
I like the warp in idea. Not many mods use that and it is more realistic. Instead of building the ships in seconds you call in reinforcements. That would be good and be more like what real space warfare would be like.
Ok, thank you all for your ideas.
I think we have a pretty good combination of those ideas now.
Status is like that at the moment:
- We can not have a construction effect so
- All ships are called in as Reinforcement
- They can be called from Gates and some other ships (no easy to get)
- Sector buildslots can "build" Gates, Defenses or other functional stations
- Sectors are some sort of small map on their own - but on your real map
- Industrials "harvest" at platforms and later unload at industrial dropoff stations or Frighters
- Owning a Sector will grant access to the objects connected to it
- Owning this Objects may also generate Income
- You travel at least 10 times faster if not in a Sector
- You can only call in Reinforcements inside a sector
- You can only fight inside a Sector
- You only can see enemy players Stuff inside a sector if one of your ships is inside
As always I'm still open to new Ideas, critics . . . wahtever.
P.S. Should I try to set up a forum here?