MOD Suggestions Thread - Star Trek: Continuum mod for Homeworld 2

You all have ideas of what you want to see in the game or maybe what you don't want in game. Here's the place to post your ideas and suggestions. This is the creative corner because we gather information from the community to help us in our development. We love input and ideas.

The phasers on the Steamrunner have a range of 10,000 meters. The tricobalt torpedoes have a range of 12,000 meters. They do reach farther although not a lot farther. You do bring up a good point and we've discussed it before. torpedoes should be able to reach farther than the short range phaser/disruptor weapons. All the torpedoes reach 2,000 meters farther than other weapons and can target outside their range. Tricobalt is the most lethal of them and also the slowest. The tricobalt is a special weapon that doesn't interfere with the normal weapon balance of the ship. It's an add on weapon. The Fed Defiant is another ship with these special weapons with its mine ability. The Akira, Nebula, and Sovereign sum up the special ships for Fed. These come in handy when coming up against the Romulan fleets. This you'll find out quickly.

This is the first release (ALPHA) of a planned 4 releases. The ships you mention will be making a debut in one of them

Edited by: herbyguitar

Would it be possible to have parts of the ship blow off if the ship has taken heavy damage? You could for example have the warp engines as a subsystem that are already built when you build the ship.

andrew657 wrote: Would it be possible to have parts of the ship blow off if the ship has taken heavy damage?

We are planning to have custom debris for large ships and bases. As for parts flying off a healthy ship... I don't think so. We're going to be implimenting a shield effect and once the shield drops the ship doesn't have much time left. Damage of the magnatude you're describing would effectively dissable a ship permanently and would relegate it to custom debris as mentioned.

Custer85 wrote: I noticed that ships attacking the Klingon outpost use one of the antennas as their target, It looks a bit awkward, It would look better if they would target the base directly.

The col box was set to ignore the antennae but it was changed. We'll look into it.

One more thing i noticed is, that the enemy AI builds lots of turrets instead of spending its dilithium on ships, which makes them very vulnerable against a steamrunner rush.

I noticed this a while back but things got very busy and it wasn't changed. I do agree with you.

Hi guys,
Firstly I'd like to congratulate you on a successful alpha release! Secondly, I believe that this foundation that you've created could potentially rival any previous Trek RTS. And thirdly, there are a few concerns/questions that I'd like to raise concerning multiplayer and gameplay.

1. Stationary bases, are there any plans to enable players to build remote bases or have moveable star bases? Currently players are able to "snipe" opponents production facilities without much need of surveillance.

2. Are there any plans to include destroyable subsystems, i.e. impulse engines, warp engines, weapons? It would be very befitting of the shows and could introduce some interesting gameplay scenarios, especially concerning the larger capital ships.

That's all I can think of for the moment, good luck and thanks!

@ Talynsun
Your input is well noted and we'll be discussing it. These are good suggestions.

It would be nice to increase ship movement speed (maybe 10-20 % so that the game pace is a bit faster considering the map size).

Also, with current speed, attacking an outpost is suicide run. When the outpost explodes, most attacking ships cannot outrun the explosion range. I tried ordering my fleet to move away (impulse only due to outpost warp engine blocking) at the moment that the outpost reaches 0 HP and only a few bigger ships remain after the explosion.

Is current speed setting intentional?

Would it be possible to play co-op in an invasion game type to defend a planet?

Also what about random events on a map like is some other RTS games. Quite cool to run into a derilict ship you could capture or have the crystalline entity or even other space anomaly show up to mix the game up a bit.

But I must congrats you could charge for this mod if it got any better

casojin wrote: When the outpost explodes, most attacking ships cannot outrun the explosion range.

We are working on this to alleviate the problem.

Is current speed setting intentional?

Yes. These speeds are set the way they are to prevent strange and erratic movements. We have already exceeded the RL structural speed limit of ships. By all rights, a Galaxy class turning at this speed would fly apart. The HW2 game mechanics prevents me from increasing forward speeds much more than they already are (HW1 had the same limitations). Things would begin to look very stupid and battles would be extremely chaotic.

andrew657 wrote: Would it be possible to play co-op in an invasion game type to defend a planet?

I don't know if it's possible to play coop in invasion. If it is, this would be a promising avenue to pursue.

Also what about random events on a map like is some other RTS games. Quite cool to run into a derilict ship you could capture or have the crystalline entity or even other space anomaly show up to mix the game up a bit.

Random events are always cool. I'll talk to the others and see what we can do.

Love the mod, cant get enough of it, but a few things come to mind when im playing.

Firstly, (and it may sound a bit silly), but can the battle chatter include them going to red alert? Would be pretty cool to warp them into an area and hear 'Red alert!' over the con...Maybe some of the battle chatter from the DS9 battles, or first contact. I don't know how doable it would be to strip the audio from a video say, and then apply it to the game, not knowing anything about modding, but it would be a lovely feature adding to immersion.

Secondly, the build times on the shipyards themselves is a bit long I feel, making the build phase a bit tedious. Could this be sped up?
On the subject of bases, while i appreciate the inclusion of splash damage from the outposts, could you disable the warp inhibitor when it dies? Only, it seems a shame to lose my entire fleet ;-)

I'm guessing that there are plans to include more ships in future releases, I'd love to see the Klingon Brel making an appearance in skirmishes. I did wonder on and off whether or not it is possible to make the maps bigger? I like galactic conquest on a big scale

Other than that, fantastic work.

Your points are good ones. We'll be looking into changing the voices in game eventually. The 'red alert' would be really cool.

I'll see about modifying build/research time a little. There have been other complaints about this. Between the research and the build it does get tedious.

More ships? ........ Can't tell you. If I did I'd have to kill you

Bigger maps? yes. I've also put this request to the team.

Edited by: herbyguitar

Is it possable to repair ships at the ship yard. Also what about name plates on fed ships with a random name generator when there built, Maybe klingon symbols on their ships and so on.

I'm not trying to say this is rubbish, as I do like this mod very much. But would it be possible to sharpen the texture and make it clearer?

Just a suggestion.

[@ Dave27]
Ships "do" get repaired at shipyards. That's what they're for.
Random names is not possible.
[@ McKane]
It depends on what ships you're looking at. The ships and bases that were created by the team are going to be very crisp and clear. Ships and structures that were used with permissions from other builders are not going to be as clear. You can probably pick out the ones that the team has made without too much trouble.

There's only 3 of us...

@ Herby - I know on another mod, (either REARM or COMPLEX) that they've managed to give you the option of adding letters to the exterior of your ships. Obviously, its player done, rather than random, im just saying the naming is possible. Might be a bit of a stretch to incorporate a random name generator into the game engine though

@ mmlee91
REARM mod implemented ship naming by using hundreds of subsystem list to add name to each capitol ship. However, that technique caused heavy lag on many computers (including mine). Considering the level of graphic in STC, this lag might be more significant than in REARM.

While a lot of people have been working on getting badges to work with shader 2.0 it has been unfruitful and, for now, can't be done. That's why we opted for generic ship insignia. There may be another way though. We'll get back with you on that one.

So after we finally got everything working, my friend and i played this mod for a better part of the night this weekend. We had a blast, it's so pretty and the balance isn't that bad for Alpha release, but as far as changes, we'd like to see the ships be capable of doing more, and if it's possible, the UI needs a drastic redesign to handle all the features of these ships.

So one of the things we enjoyed was when the battle was down to a couple ships, say last man standing style. The micro doesn't get much to take advantage of here, so i'd like to propose some ideas to what the larger ships are capable of. Consider this:

-Probes can be produced and launched from any large ship. I mean every vessel in star trek can launch a probe, huh? Perhaps their range should be decreased.

-Vessel Subsystems? I remember the carrier and some other ships in HW2 one would research subsystems that would be added onto the ships. If a subsystem was destroyed, that vessel could no longer take advantage of their properties. So what if different bits and pieces of say a Galaxy class were modular and upgradable. You could have the shield gen, the impulse engines, warp nacelles, deflector dish (sensors?) all upgradable. If it got down to it, you could target a ships' individual phaser array to knock out their weapons, or slow it down with a blast to the nacel subsystem module, once you've bypassed the shields, naturally.

-Certain class vessels are capable of docking fighters and miners. Alot of the larger ships in star trek have shuttle bays, and a number carry squads of fighters. Perhaps Vessels like the Sovereign could dock and repair fighters, but they'd have to be manufactured from home base. At the same time, vessels outside of the Scouts should perhaps be incapable of warp, and preferably manufactured in squads? On a side note, why arn't the scouts capable of say a low powered phaser burst?

-New Special abilities, or situational vessels?
- Ability to detect Warp Inhibitor Fields, the ability to create such fields, destroy them and so forth.
- Ability to create a tachyon sensor net between fleets of large ships to detect cloaked vessels for the Federation?
- Ability to fire from a held position. Alot of times i'd like a ship to just sit outside of another vessel's range and just pound something with it's weapons. No fancy flying.
- Romulan Vessels perhaps have a different explosive after effect more reminiscent of their quantum singularity? Perhaps destroying particularly large ships creates interphased illusions of ships nearby? ( That's crazy talk! )
- Klingons are set to Red Alert tactics by default?
- Federation has the ability to capture other ships using "diplomacy" powers?

I dunno, i'm pretty much brain storming, but there's alot of potential in this mod, and my main point is that a single ship, especially flag ships, should have some ability to do some serious damage if micro'd appropriately.

@Vicious3745:I Like the Idea of createable Warp Inhibitor Fields. Somthing like a Probe not moveable after set up and only aviable after a Research "Miniaturisized Inhibitor Field generator" or so. Would be great for bigger Maps where Warp is more needed.

Thanks for the huge comment vicious! Let me go through it so I don't miss anything.

So after we finally got everything working, my friend and i played this mod for a better part of the night this weekend. We had a blast, it's so pretty and the balance isn't that bad for Alpha release, but as far as changes, we'd like to see the ships be capable of doing more, and if it's possible, the UI needs a drastic redesign to handle all the features of these ships.

We're thrilled you like it! The UI is unlikely to change as it may increase the possibility of multiplayer desyncs and is horribly horribly tedious to change.

So one of the things we enjoyed was when the battle was down to a couple ships, say last man standing style. The micro doesn't get much to take advantage of here, so i'd like to propose some ideas to what the larger ships are capable of. Consider this:

-Probes can be produced and launched from any large ship. I mean every vessel in star trek can launch a probe, huh? Perhaps their range should be decreased.

We have a test in right now where the K'Toch'Vah can build probes, it's not really a very Star Trek style because you should fire a probe to a location instead of build and then send on its way. We're looking into this, but it's likely to be scrapped.

-Vessel Subsystems? I remember the carrier and some other ships in HW2 one would research subsystems that would be added onto the ships. If a subsystem was destroyed, that vessel could no longer take advantage of their properties. So what if different bits and pieces of say a Galaxy class were modular and upgradable. You could have the shield gen, the impulse engines, warp nacelles, deflector dish (sensors?) all upgradable. If it got down to it, you could target a ships' individual phaser array to knock out their weapons, or slow it down with a blast to the nacel subsystem module, once you've bypassed the shields, naturally.

Homeworld 2 can certainly modularise (is that a word?) ships to the nth degree, but instead of making this a very high level game, or a micromanagement game we've gone for following the middle path. We're using subsystems where they're interesting, like with the Nebula and Negh'Vah and K'Toch'Vah, but one bug identified is that subsystems don't warp with the ship, and we have a research item now replacing everything but the Nebula subsystems because of this. We're unlikely to follow that path.

-Certain class vessels are capable of docking fighters and miners. Alot of the larger ships in star trek have shuttle bays, and a number carry squads of fighters. Perhaps Vessels like the Sovereign could dock and repair fighters, but they'd have to be manufactured from home base. At the same time, vessels outside of the Scouts should perhaps be incapable of warp, and preferably manufactured in squads? On a side note, why arn't the scouts capable of say a low powered phaser burst?

The fighters in Continuum are 20m to 30m long, whereas auxiliary craft that fit into standard shuttle bays are 4m to 7m long, the fighters just wont fit!

We originally had the fighters in squads and without warp, but they were under utilised and wasted then, now they are an integral part of your fleet. At any rate, small ships in Star Trek are usually able to warp anyway!

The scouts are unarmed because of an agreement during development.

-New Special abilities, or situational vessels?
- Ability to detect Warp Inhibitor Fields, the ability to create such fields, destroy them and so forth.
The Hyperspace inhibitor field may have been co opted for use in our mod but it's not an "inhibitor" as such, we're going to be changing the unit sounds eventually and they wont mention fields of any type. It's actually going to be just that you don't go faster than light less than 15km from a space installation

- Ability to create a tachyon sensor net between fleets of large ships to detect cloaked vessels for the Federation?
The Nebula sensor "raydome" has cloak detection abilities

- Ability to fire from a held position. Alot of times i'd like a ship to just sit outside of another vessel's range and just pound something with it's weapons. No fancy flying.
Steamrunner and Raptor class ships are the only ones that are really "artillery" ships in the game, they take an appropriate attack style if they are shooting at something larger than themselves or a station and fire from a distance.

- Romulan Vessels perhaps have a different explosive after effect more reminiscent of their quantum singularity?
We're thinking of revamping explosions, this is an interesting idea

Perhaps destroying particularly large ships creates interphased illusions of ships nearby? ( That's crazy talk! )
That's crazy talk!

- Klingons are set to Red Alert tactics by default?
Another good idea, but not sure how to set this... Will need to see!

- Federation has the ability to capture other ships using "diplomacy" powers?
The Klingons are the only capturers as a balancing thing right now, as will be Borg be, but that's not for balancing

I dunno, i'm pretty much brain storming, but there's alot of potential in this mod, and my main point is that a single ship, especially flag ships, should have some ability to do some serious damage if micro'd appropriately.

Stay tuned!

C.A.M. Crazy Awesome Mod is how I would describe this project. The installer is slick, menu, music, activation even the .big files I explored when I d/ld this mod have an elegance to them. Still, I can sort of see why this is still considered an ALPHA release and I had two crashes, but those were probably related to some tests I was doing. I know I've written effectively written an essay, but I figure if I can dump my ideas you can pick and choose which you like. As far as I'm concerned, if you like game development, the best way is to make an impact is mod an existing game so that it catches developer's attention. So that's my prayer for you guys as you labour though the modding process- that you will be noticed and if game design is your dream, you can get that opportunity. Perhaps some of my ideas can help you do that.

Installer: I wasn't able to implement the fix you suggest for overcoming the Win 7 problem but I'd run in to this before and found using the german1.1 exe works just as well. It might be something useful to include for simple installation down the road. I really liked the use of the launcher also, it's something most mods don't make use of.

Balance: Picking up from the Normal Gaming Mode thread, I really felt like the balance wasn't absolutely true to the ST, but I'm no ST expert so I'll just come from the RTS perspective.
So right now it seems like it's balanced off armor, maneuverability/speed and firepower. Additionally, it was mentioned there's some kind of formula stating mass = more weapons on the ship.

>Balancing based off armor creates a feedback loop because it buffs regen at the same time. If you up armor, regen rate becomes more significant for the sole reason that less damage is done, so really *buffing armor is two buffs whenever a regen effect is present*. As it stands, I think some of the ship battles are too quickly over and rather than turfing Romulan armor, *I'd suggest upping Fed Armor while buffing Klingon firepower*.
>Maneuverability is nothing if not properly used. Saying Klingon maneuverability counterbalances Rom/Fed only matters when weapon attack angles sufficiently give an advantage by finding blind spots. I remember there being an advantage of where your weapons impact in HW so, *if you upped that bonus,* it would indirectly buff flanking maneuvers, pincer attacks and so on. That, is what I as an RTS player, really appreciate, bonus damage because you attack indirectly. Static armor on all sides is also a way to buff one race versus another.

>Firepower - It's a pity so much damage is based on Torpdeos. I've watched the health bars and phasers do squat. It's just the series (sort of). In the series, they're like "Fire Phasers!", no effect, “try again!”, nope- ship still on screen, “try again, fire phasers-” Captain! shields .5%, “fine launch torpedos”- enemy ship destroyed. This is especially true considering tricolbat, quantum and transphasic torpedos. As a result *would it be possible to implement special attack fire abilities?* Like the Defiant mines but targetable and possibly limited supply (perhaps RU costing/time delayed) regenerating like the old Missle System in HW/Cata? Make phasers/distruptors the staple (and more powerful as a staple) and torpedoes a costly weapon attack. Targeting all torpedoes one one target to respond rapidly to a threat is a rts win, imo.

>Mass = More Weapons - This was something I thought was logical but in the Fed Case, many ships systems are dedicated to doing other than attack functions. Sure this is logical for Romulans and Kligons but not Federation. And yet the current state of affairs does not reflect this mass=weapons formula.

For example, the Intrepid is almost destroyer sized, but it's shield and weapon layout reflected in the Alpha of the mod render it easily destroyed and immediately out gunned. It is not powerful/nor well equipped with weapons even though it's mass might demand that. Plus, even if you add more weapons, it doesn’t matter if they nearly no damage. I opend up the big files and sorta laughed at it's firepower. There's no way it would survive an episode in the Delta Quadrant.

So basically, I don't think those balancing characteristics work very well across the board. For one or two races yes, but if you want diversity I have some ideas to balance other factors. If you want Romulans to be the Bees and Kingons to the Butterflys (lol I could be lynched for saying that), make Federation rely on micro. How? One way is through battle stances. I know "Divert Power to" is a research option but you could go way further with that concept.

Often you see the Federation adapting so you could ->*make the battle stances really matter for Fed starships*<-. While Red = increase a damage of 5% for Rom & Klingon, it could up damage by 25% for federation but decrease engines/shields by 30%. In the same way, going to Neutral, would give a significant change to shields at a loss of weapons/engines. If implemented you could honestly leave the current balance the way it is and get what you wanted to a greater. Have some ships set to max shields, while the ones the enemy is not paying attention to are at max weapons damage. Then you could make the third stance be shunting power to thrusters and aft shields so your ships could retreat.

All I can say is, this would be a very viable and strategic way to balance while keeping Fed diversity and making the game match the series. I only stress that *the effect would have to be noticable, if you waver with a mere 10% change, it won't be significant enough to matter.*

Subsystems are the other thing. I echo that other guys point- it would be awesome if you could take out engines and main weapons, but you already responded to that so nevermind.

Then there is the Kamikaze. Honestly, that would have been how to defeat the Borg- make ships of solid duranium with warp drives and go near warp into a Cube. Nevertheless, I think this should be an option (it used to be in HW1) especially for Klingon ships. What I personally would envision for a total war scenario is frantic targeting as a ship careens toward your station/flag ship while the rest of it's fleet escape. Kamikaze should be for all, but *with the maneuverability and speed you've already given to Klingon, Kamikaze would be a buff to the butterfly race.*

Yet another thing which I would see as awesome would be improved cloaking. At present cloaked ships decloak to fire. *A very important upgrade in my opinion for Romulan and Klingon is attacking while cloaked.* It would emphasize the racial diversity AND enable you to justify nurfing Rom/Buffing the other races as I feel you should. True to the series inexplicable disruptor fire would terrify any fleet and connect Romulans with the guile they love to employ.

The final thing about balance is unit cap. Federation span such a large area that they're often seeming to do things in small amounts with big results. You could increase the unit cap on their ships (like steamrunners) while buffing them to series/movie worthy levels. However more than anything else, I really hope you consider dramatically increasing the effect of stances on Fed ships because it is unique, strategic and is true to series.

Gameplay / Gamemods: I'd bet that everyone here has wished they could use ships like Enterprise, DS9 (yes I know it's a station), Voyager and there's got to be some Romulan/Klingon Ships of note I'm not hardcore enough to know off by heart. *It would be interesting if there was a mode where ships like these were the command vessels of your starting fleet and fulfilled hero like roles.*

For instance, the Enterprise could be a flagship that jumps in with the station and rather than destroying the station for a victory, a enemy could claim it (as they normally would) by defeating the defending fleet and boarding the station.

This could work two ways, on the one hand, you have what I described, the command ship jumps in at the start of the game, serves as the players ship and thus can migrate around with the fleet for improved firepower or survivability. On the other hand, you could have it serve as a reinforcement hub. This could result in a new kind of game where there's a station in the middle of the map, and players try to capture it and hold it for more RU/Victory much like king of the Hill. Another concept could be where you have a ship like this that's damaged, placed randomly in the map and the players race to find and repair/capture it before the other one does and add it to their fleet strength.

You're already creating scenario type situations (it would have that effect) with the Black Hole shown in the video, so damaged ships for capture/repair could add another level of feature. Please understand I know this is probably hard to do, and I'd love to help, but these scenarios are some of my RTS dreams/favorite memories from HW;CATA and movie series. They would also provide suitable additions to the Invasion scenario where you have to find a ship and repair it amid patrols passing through the region. I shudder the think of how fun that would be- rescue a damaged *wink* Intrepid with limited engines with minimal repair ship(s) while Borg cubes patrol nearby. (lol ok it may be too much work to do, but that would be fun).

Moving on, the Warp In time out is rather long. It's a sweet effect, I know the strategic thinking behind it but would be better if it didn't take that long without research. At least in my opinion.

Also the squadrons of small ships mentioned before would be a nice touch. The massive starships don't seem so massive without smaller ships to compare them to. I would love if you put fighter/shuttle class ships back into the game but I understand the difficult. I wish I didn't have my Calc classes or I'd offer to help and learn the HW2 Scripts/Tools.

Then there's repair and regen. When I would play invasion, I would constantly be trying to recycle damaged ships to the back for healing/docking and then return to the front. This pointed out two problems, firstly the docking mechanic is very slow. So is the launching, keeping ships docked for rapid deloyment is not logical simply because they deploy one at a time and each ship gets picked off by attackers easily. However one way to fix this, would be give each station/ship yard, multiple dock/launch points.

Even if the script for classes of ships was different, the concept should alleviate jams. The other thing is remove the need for it. So many times ships would repair themselves but with the mod, the regen is SO long, nothing like the shields in the series and I really think a stronger out-of-combat shield regen would be very important. Still you could counter ballance this with Engineering Ships.

I'm not saying make up ships, but what you could do is take ships which rather weak weapon stats and have them use a "Boarding" like function on friendly ships. Drawing to boarding distance, these ships could fix up damaged ships quickly and then pull away. Often in ST, ships would draw in close proximity and repair other ships. So maybe this should go in balance, but you could overcome what I would call Romulan OP by having engineering ships like this. A damaged ship can pull away from battle, warp to a ENG ship and return in the fraction of the time needed to build a new one, dock the existing or wait for regeneration. Or, you could decrease the time between regenerations and decrease the amount.

More along the lines of resources, is tractor beams. At present a collector picks up debris and brings it to be salvaged. One interesting way to add to the game is seed low pixel/dull looking ship and station debris in maps as a second type of resource. I'm sure, this could lead to Borg special attacks- like the beast in HW-Cata taking health directly from ships in a beam.

Finally, I think there should be more damage to explosions. Given how large (and impressive) the explosions are, a scuttle could be a strategic way to damage an enemy formation, let alone death revenge when blowing up a Capital Class ship. A cloaked Romulan Battle Cruiser self-destructing could really punish an unsuspecting Fed/Klingon fleet.

I notice how you've hinted at 5 races. Yes, yes you've said like Chris Christie “NO! NO! NO!” but with those photos of Dominion and the Borg invasion mode, no one can be blamed for speculating. If you did include them your balance would become harder. In such a case, Dominion would be the best race with ship diversity, not Federation and Borg being the race of raw armor and firepower. Still 5 way balance is artistic, it's beautiful- and I am confident that's possible. All you have to do (I know that expression doesn't do the effort required justice) is emphasis the racial strengths.

Unlike the color based racism we have on earth, they actually all are different races so it would make sense they come at everything uniquely. Emphasis the Klingon desire for glorious death with high damage, speed and low armor. Make Romulan cloaking matter by letting them attack cloak! Federation should require micromanagement (like I've pointed out with stances) and Dominion become the diverse ships of all functions race.

It's all doable, so I encourage you guys not to give up- but no matter what you do, go for the platinum quality and you'll be noticed. Best wishes, don't feel like I deserve to responded to because I know I've rebuilt Troy with this post, still I hope you find some of it interesting.

Edited by: Andrelius

Many of your comments and suggestions have either already been implemented or are on the ToDo list. A small number of your ideas can't be implemented because of engine limitations. This second reason also kills more of your ideas by way of collateral damage. Some of your suggestions will completely upset the balance of the game. Firing while cloaked is an example. Romulans would have complete dominance of any early game. Changing build restrictions is another item we can't follow if we're going to keep weapon stats somewhat balanced and predictably strong. One of the rules of balance is that if a ship is worth a set amount, say 5000, then doubling the quota would mean that two of the same ships are now worth 5000, not each but total, bringing their value down to 2500 each. If the stats were kept the same then an imbalance will arise. This will not be received very well in a community that thinks every ship should be able to win the game all by its self. We all have our favorite ships and races and "that" is the problem with balance.

Our strategy is to take balance "away" from humans as much as possible. Human intervention is counter productive to blind indifference. There's no way we will trade this in for more chaos. We continually add more and more to the calculations to free us up for other more pressing pursuits. Initially the tuning sheet (program) was suggested by me to take the burden of balance away from us and bring the mod into a coherent and predictable format. We had ships and weapon stats ranging from sublime to ridiculous. Impossible to keep track of. Understandable because of the sheer amount of data and balance issues; it would be a full time job for one person. Now that we have added a second set of weapons the number of files to keep track of has risen to over 300 individual weapon and ship files. We re-tune everything from time to time when a new development arises to force this. We (I) find the tuning sheet to be invaluable. To re-tune everything can take days even with all the hard calculating work already done. I have also thought of trying a balance approach using ship class instead of ship size. Still debating this though.

The regeneration is calculated per ship size but not in the way you would think. It's actually reverse from what you would expect where the smaller the ship, the faster the clock runs. There is a mass variable in the tuning sheet that simulates structural deficiencies with larger items The effects of centrifugal force on an object. A large body cannot swing around as easily as a small one without flying apart. This procedure is carried into the regeneration stats as well.

Suffice it to say that you have some very good ideas that we will be putting into the next release

Edited by: herbyguitar

The valkyrie class fighters (type-1, i think) would be an excellent addition to fed fighters, if not to replace the hornet. Its design, in my opinion, fits nicely with other fed small craft.

Valkyrie? It's not a Canon design, and we already have the Javelin, post some images or links for consideration please