The Carrier concept

[Sandtrooper]

Okay we're getting to the point in development where the fun additions such as carriers will come into play sometime in 2.0x's newfound life.

Now most of you would probably be familiar with "CARRIER HAS ARRIVED", and would want something to the tune of SF ships spitting out small fighters in less than 5 seconds and all hell breaking loose and expect a StarCraft-esq battle.

What we may want to discuss is how we want carriers to act, whether they are weakly armed and let the fighters duel for them or have Imperator Star Destroyer-like defenses and dual carrier roles by sicking a legion of fighters on their target while able to fend off most threats.

Obviously we know for a fact that the initial plan was to fill the ships by occupying MODULE slots, as there is a max limit of 24 modules, therefore this would be pretty limiting to some (like me and my mods for example LOL), therefore I have tried to draw concepts of a different system while making it easy to modify (but expect some abuse in the process, everything has a con in life as far as I've learned)

Code:

* To make "spaces" for names, highlight a character and hold ALT and punch in 0160 on the numpad.
#ECHO *** SF Carrier design section (v.01.16)  DRAFT **********
#IF DOCUMENT
#ECHO * this section accepts the following parameters        *
#ECHO * \[race\] to specify the design class                   *
#ECHO * \[mr\] to specify the design race id                   *
#ECHO * \[nr\] to specify the race id of the user              *
#ECHO *   (e.g., pirates using terran design would have      *
#ECHO *          \[mr\] = pirate id and \[nr\] = terran id       *
#ECHO ********************************************************
#ENDIF
#IF SHOW
#ECHO * the value for \[race\] was [race]
#ECHO * the value for \[mr\] was [mr]
#ECHO * the value for \[nr\] was [nr]
#ENDIF

*                         ship      max 
*  class    ship id   capacity    ships    ship classes
*  ---------------------------------------------------------
  [race]   [nr]1006      25000       60   ([nr]1001*32,[nr]1011*6,[nr]1002*2)

This is a concept of a carrier design file. "1006" is the Terran Starbase design. "1001, 1011 and 1002" is the Scout / Corvette, Frigate / Marauder and Destroyer respectfully, and the Starbase would be able to carry 32 Scouts, 6 Marauders and 2 Destroyers for it's own defense along with the weapons it uses to defend itself.  (Currently that counts as OVERKILL, but this is an EXAMPLE!)

HOWEVER, there could be a LIMIT on how many ships it can hold, whether by DECK VOLUME or MAX SHIPS, as we can count CAPTURED VESSELS in this total (if they're small enough or in the same starship class).


Moving onto the UI part of things, as we have to try and incorporate some control over our "fighters" in a starship or installation...

(0000 /// 0012 = No ships out of 12 max in the shuttlebay / hanger / carrier deck)
Accessing the carrier menu would be done by pressing the ~ key (well any key because we have to find a key first)


This is another Starbase carrier example, where we have space for 68 vessels besides serving 4 starships as a dock.

"Adjust Battle Tactics" - Here you could probably "take control" of ONE ship while your player is SAFE in the mothership. You could also change the tactics to "circle" an enemy, direct assault it or many other tactics.
"Show Volume" - This would probably show one of your limits of carrying vessels.
"Resupply Stock" - Get ammo for your vessels. Orbiting would automatically do this but if you were in deep space, you could "donate" your ammo to your fighters.
"Recall Ship(s)" - Simple, recall your entire fighter group back to the mothership, they would probably disregard enemy fire to get home at all costs.
"Launch Ship(s)" - Self-explaining.  LAUNCH IMPERIAL FIGHTERS! </Captain Orion>

There would need to be a hardpoint on the mothership to have fighters launching from that area of the ship (either below the ship bitmap or above the ship bitmap), and be aware it can and WILL be damaged like every other system on the ship! The hardpoint would have to also have an "angle" property where the ships launched will fly a certain angle. If there was more than one hanger on the ship (such as the "Midway-class Carrier" from Starfleet Command 2), there would be more hardpoints allowing more places to launch the fighters, although this may or may NOT circumvent the launching time limit (the period where a ship launches before another one, we don't want Starcraft-esq fast interceptor launching now do we?).

If the player was in a fighter and the mothership dies, the player logs a DEATH, regardless if he/she survived in a fighter or not.

Discuss, ladies and gentlemen.

[Conker-]

I'm a little sleepy, but if it counts, here is my opinion.
 
May i first say I think this idea is epic and really needs to be implanted. Secondly, I don't think there should be any ships available in the carrier that are available in the game right now. That said, there should be a newly designed ship specially made to only fit in the carrier. A scout like ship that is pretty fast, but has weak armor and a weak offense system (it may be upgrade able with the cost that the power of main ship will be cut of?). And with a capacity of 10/15?

The idea that the fighters will explode if the main ship gets destroyed, excuse my language, is bullshit. Some things in life just has to be facts in a game. Let them explode if the time limit is exceeded/ if they don't reach a planet or a starbase in time. The player itself like this will be limited, will it continue to destroy its target with a risk to be blown up with the lack of power from its main ship? Or will it flee, and see another day? It may be hard to program, but its kind of 'lame' if it would explode.

And my next subject is a question for you my dear fellow human being.
Will the carrier be freely to launch the ships while shooting stuff? Or can you only |fire -> launch -> then fire|? (which I think is a better idea)
Also, will it cost the main ship any power to launch ships?

Thanks for reading, and again, if i misunderstood something it because I'm pretty tired

[Sandtrooper]

I'm a little sleepy, but if it counts, here is my opinion.
 
May i first say I think this idea is epic and really needs to be implanted. Secondly, I don't think there should be any ships available in the carrier that are available in the game right now. That said, there should be a newly designed ship specially made to only fit in the carrier. A scout like ship that is pretty fast, but has weak armor and a weak offense system (it may be upgrade able with the cost that the power of main ship will be cut of?). And with a capacity of 10/15?

Well we were supposed to get new ships made for this purpose, the mothership and it's fighters for each race. We probably need to donate more $$$ to Nite for this to happen.  Each fighter may have their weaknesses but I am probably going to assume they'll be as weak as a scout, and have much less volume to spare but their weapon loadouts will have to be discussed.

The idea that the fighters will explode if the main ship gets destroyed, excuse my language, is bullshit. Some things in life just has to be facts in a game. Let them explode if the time limit is exceeded/ if they don't reach a planet or a starbase in time. The player itself like this will be limited, will it continue to destroy its target with a risk to be blown up with the lack of power from its main ship? Or will it flee, and see another day? It may be hard to program, but its kind of 'lame' if it would explode.

The fighters dying when the mothership explodes is a Protoss thing in StarCraft (If Carrier dies, the robotic Interceptors self-destruct after 3 seconds of the Carrier dying), we might try and do an elasped time limit if the mothership dies like you suggested, but in other games beyond SF seem to support a "self-sufficent" fighter (TIE Fighter for example, the Assault Gunboat can be launched from a ship and act on it's own w/o the mothership's supports for prolonged periods of time) , so its possible...

And my next subject is a question for you my dear fellow human being.
Will the carrier be freely to launch the ships while shooting stuff? Or can you only |fire -> launch -> then fire|? (which I think is a better idea)
Also, will it cost the main ship any power to launch ships?

Thanks for reading, and again, if i misunderstood something it because I'm pretty tired

Unless it gets too lame to fire and launch at the same time, it depends on who thinks it wrecks the balancing of the game. I personally think the carrier can launch stuff and defend itself at the same time, therefore giving covering fire to it's supporting craft.

[Mars]

My my.   ok my two cents worth.

1. A the carrier should either A. be able to take a starbase easy or B. have as much of a hard time as a dread doing so. 

2. The carrier should  be able to dock ships up to a cruiser for supply and have a factory onboard. But yet not be able to dock other ships like a starbase.

3. The carrier should be able to have several lasers vs you have one already installed. 

4.  The carrier should NOT be able to have a person act as one of the fighters,  first this would lead to all kinds of problems like "change me from a fighter to a starbase mars"  using I that could be a reality if it works the same as other ships,  secondly the fighters should be like smarter AI or dumber AI depending on what would more balance the game.   They should only have one hardpoint apeice.  imagine if you can 20 players in a battle and 4 on each side have carriers upon launch of fighters say one or two carriers have their fighters armed with mines only,  can you image the graves?  it would be devastating.  and nice :=)

5.  With a factory on board you should be able to regen new fighters upon loosing the old ones in slow time.

6.  Carriers should have some big disadvantages but speed should not be one of them.  They should be able to go at least as fast as a dread to get to a battle theater and launch fighters if they only go as slow as a sb then that alone will keep most from playing it.    There should be some other flaw they have such as a. low shields and no armor ability.   b.  lack of credits for killing someone with fighters.   or c. lack of prestige for killing someone with fighters. 

7.  Carriers 'Could' have restrictions on play such as 2 players must be on one team for one player to have one so that acts likes its escort or b. that a player who has a carrier cant change it at a starbase.  This will slow the use of such weapons to larger battles.

8. Fighters should not die when the carrier blows but have some time limit for fuel ie must land at some col as a modern day such would happen if the fighter cannot land on its own deck.   other carriers should be allowed to land fighters of a dead carrier. 

9.  This brings me to my final thought and that is about starbases,  there is not much room for a ship between a starbase and carrier or carrier and a dread as far as crew and other things concerned so will you also beef up the starbases and add new rules to them aswell and restrictions prehaps a starbase can have even a bigger bmp than it currently has say x2 of now.  a longer reaching laser or some other thing that makes a starbase more a base than current as the carrier will sure be used in my respects of play as a starbase is now being the fighters will make it what some would like starbases to be now.   i would even go so far as to say besides increasing the size of a starbase to make it a bigger target as to have like in starwars example,  where even a starbase has and can launch say 2 or 3 fighters.   or even 2 or 3 corvettes.    thus the carrier will have ROOM to fit into a existing system and not be crowded between the mass and abilities of a dread and current sb. 
The idea of making the starbase bigger and meaner even it it means more restrictions would make the carrier much more of a awesome ship to play.   
I feel a great imbalance if the carrier resides in a place close to what a dreads mass, cost, weapons ect has if the starbase is not made bigger or more exclusive to use.

if you check out the mod that ren made called OE koth 'outer belts'  ren made such a ship that is a mini base yet it was very hard to find a spot for it beneath the ability of a true sb,  when folks come to play that mod they like the mini base cause its much faster and has one more laser.   if you see that ship, then you would see how underpowered the real starbase become.  and how close the mini base was to really being a dread with a new bmp.

im scared this is what the carrier and starbase will become if the starbase is not increased with both size and restrictions so that the carrier will 'fit' right in.

Mars

[Sandtrooper]

I'll respond to the dime you spent there so...

1. A the carrier should either A. be able to take a Starbase easy or B. have as much of a hard time as a dreadnaught doing so. 

Most likely option B.

2. The carrier should  be able to dock ships up to a cruiser for supply and have a factory onboard. But yet not be able to dock other ships like a starbase.

I'm sure this fits with the "Star Destroyer" hanger facilities seen in Star Wars, where it's main hanger bay is over 150 metres big in length.  And yes, we will have a factory module that doesn't allow docking (this will help ships that aren't meant to have shielding and rely on armor and hull). I do not know how big the carriers that are going to be made will be. Currently I can run ships as large as 128x128 pixels without running into problems with DX complaining that the height of the image is over the limits.

3. The carrier should be able to have several lasers vs you have one already installed. 

Nite's problem, not mine.

4.  The carrier should NOT be able to have a person act as one of the fighters,  first this would lead to all kinds of problems like "change me from a fighter to a starbase mars"  using I that could be a reality if it works the same as other ships,  secondly the fighters should be like smarter AI or dumber AI depending on what would more balance the game.   They should only have one hardpoint apeice.  imagine if you can 20 players in a battle and 4 on each side have carriers upon launch of fighters say one or two carriers have their fighters armed with mines only,  can you image the graves?  it would be devastating.  and nice :=)

I see your point, as you have to remember this is just at the CONCEPT stage, not in the CODING stage.  The AI would probably be able to respond to what your "Battle Tactic" was set at, but I'd have to say they could be 1.2x dumb instead of (possibly) adaptive 2.0x.  The hardpoint question lies within what the carrier carries, as my concept would make the ship carry whatever ship class is available (preferably scouts or fighters) and they retain whatever hardpoints they had (2 or 1 weapons), but their weapons would probably NOT be changeable.

5.  With a factory on board you should be able to regen new fighters upon loosing the old ones in slow time.

This itself poses the "supply" problem, if you lose a fighter, you lose it forever until you get new ones fabricated at the Starbase (or later, in a Shipyard), I don't want the "immediate replacement" problem from StarCraft where players can revive their dead interceptors in seconds (tedious task but helps keep their war machine running), but we'll have to wait and see if this is worth our time or not, or else it just inconveniences players that the enemy carrier can revive their dead at will.

6.  Carriers should have some big disadvantages but speed should not be one of them.  They should be able to go at least as fast as a dread to get to a battle theater and launch fighters if they only go as slow as a sb then that alone will keep most from playing it.    There should be some other flaw they have such as a. low shields and no armor ability.   b.  lack of credits for killing someone with fighters.   or c. lack of prestige for killing someone with fighters. 

Carriers are pretty much slow as a Dread, if not at most 0.03c less speed. (I could argue that the current Aircraft Carriers go at 30+ knots and that's fast in its own right).  Unless the race designed it to be armored as fuck and make it partially invulnerable but shieldess (no room for it) in the process, I can see that being the carrrier's own con right there.

7..  Carriers 'Could' have restrictions on play such as 2 players must be on one team for one player to have one so that acts likes its escort or b. that a player who has a carrier cant change it at a Starbase.  This will slow the use of such weapons to larger battles.

I don't think I like this idea. If you're alone in a server, you're pretty much STUCK with the carrier and must be logged out (losing all prestige bonuses in the process).

8. Fighters should not die when the carrier blows but have some time limit for fuel ie must land at some col as a modern day such would happen if the fighter cannot land on its own deck.   other carriers should be allowed to land fighters of a dead carrier. 

As I argued with Luiegreen before your post, the fighters could possibly stay alive for about 2 minutes. Plus the carrier deck ITSELF is a hardpoint and CAN be damaged, possibly preventing any other fighters from returning or landing (you could say whatever stock you had inside could be trashed).  Colony landing? Possibly, but I'm guessing the game will remove the units and probably give your new carrier it's fighters back as if they were transferred back to you.

As for #9, I cannot really respond to it, I don't have the ship models, therefore I cannot increase the Starbase bitmap sizes from 80x80 to 128x128. Dreadnaughts are 64x64, and we can try 72x72 or 80x80 for the Carriers, but would probably go against whatever  the hell I wrote for most ships' scale on the Wiki.

EDIT: Just for fun here, I wrote this to the wiki for the Terran Starbase:

Armament    

    * "Rapid ZX" Plasma Torpedoes (4)
    * Rail Gun turrets (48)
    * 14 Stinger-Class Corvettes (Fighter wing)
    * Type 3 Laser (2)
    * Tractor Beams

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I would make a quick point here that before discussion on carriers continues, my original thread bringing in the concept be reviewed:

http://stellarfrontier.ss-network.net/index.php/topic,322.0.html

[Mars]

Since the fighters will only carry one weapon, will they be able to carry or would you be able to buy any kind of fighter that could carry any of the smaller already listed weapons.. (for the carrier)

ie.    fighter class a :  lazer 1
        fighter class b: stinger
       fighter class c: mine
        fighter class d: rail gun
       fighter class e: rapid 1  ect.

Mars

[ChillFactor]

Just a quick note, since it's a bit late:

If we're talking about carriers, why do I see destroyers included in the operations roster? Aren't they too big?

Also, since this is a carrier, perhaps we can take the current desing to space. Carriers have light weapons, mostly anti-aircraft cannons and missiles, so why can't our own carriers. A few 3 or 4 rapid 1's, a 2 laserPD's and 2 dart or heat tubes. Nothing to hurt capital ship, but perhaps will work for defense, especially when you have a hive of fighters ready to attack for you.

Also, I'm merging this topic with ATC's.

[Sandtrooper]

Just a quick note, since it's a bit late:

If we're talking about carriers, why do I see destroyers included in the operations roster? Aren't they too big?

Damn it, its an EXAMPLE, NOT THE REAL THING.  (Ships probably bigger than 10 KM can possibly hold that type of ship).  My idea is to make a modder-friendly system of making ships able to carry whatever (while not making it too god-like).

Also, since this is a carrier, perhaps we can take the current desing to space. Carriers have light weapons, mostly anti-aircraft cannons and missiles, so why can't our own carriers. A few 3 or 4 rapid 1's, a 2 laserPD's and 2 dart or heat tubes. Nothing to hurt capital ship, but perhaps will work for defense, especially when you have a hive of fighters ready to attack for you.

We have seen giant starships in MANY sci-fi movies/shows with carrier capabilities perform combat that seem to overpower their opposition, now don't take that as an insult to what you just stated, but there are many places where you can find a ship bigger than 500 metres in size that can beat the shit out of their enemies just by their weapons alone while the fighters do the dirty work by sweeping the area and weakening their opponent.  While we can make carriers weak, it is best we find a REASONABLE way to make them not seem so weak to fly around with.

Also, I'm merging this topic with ATC's.

Why? IMO uncalled for, ATC's idea was more complex than mine.

[NiteHawk]

Technically there was no point to merge, but eh, Let's just continue.

I like the general idea of Sandtroopers idea to make it simplistic, while I like some of ATC's ideas. There will probably be a fine line of keeping it simplistic but having some key features (such as being able to tell what fighters are out/etc.)

Personally, you'll be able to mod the carrier however you want in retrospec, minus a few things you guys stated. But for the most case I see default carriers being plenty of armor, moderate weapons (won't be a warmachine like a dreadnought), and have a good amount of fighters to protect itself. It should keep it balanced and bring in a new role, the SUPPORT CLASS. Though it should be able to handle its own via having the fighters 'run around it' and protect. To launch/dock fighters, will not be a instant thing, (unless you mod it to be) so that if you need to warp away, you need to grab your little guys before doing so.  Warping won't be a instant thing I'd say in the future too, to help balance large vs small ships. You'll be able to 'set' the warp x amount of seconds before warping, perhaps, but that's all future stuff that I need to determine what would be good or bad. This is not set in stone, that is.

A simple thing is that they would have a better PD laser, settable to only them. In the next release you can define credits per module and groups, if you want. I'll explain this with the release that should be tonight.

Fighters will be there own define. They won't be ship defines. This would be waaay to tedious and very much of a hassle to add too many useless fields for ships just to define the fighter properly. You can define what you want but our ships I believe are somewhere between 18x18-20x20, I don't have time atm to check out the one fighter ship we actually got. You'll be able to define virtually any sized ship or whatever, since it technically just spawns it, thats up to your mods though, not mine. Balanced for my own.

Factories can respawn ships, if thats how needed, or it can be a second parameter you define on factories. I want to technically split 'spawning ships' and 'repairing ship' though, so that should virtually fix that. the 'spawning ships' module, (factory prob) will most likely have a few variables you can set, and the repairing ship module will be like a self replenish module. Nothing else. It would be easy to just add to the 'repairrate' variable and it should work well.

No, players won't be able to dock on carriers or actually be fighters. At least, not for a long time. This is far too complicating things. Sorry.

Fighters can use fuel or energy, it slowly degrades and when X amount of fuel has been hit, they fly back. Simple. Fighters probably will have to DIE OFF because if they don't after a carrier explodes, someone could send fighters, explode, send more fighters, explode, more fighters, explode, etc.. Balance issues and a cheap hack. Just make them die when the carrier dies. Let's say 10 seconds after, even.

P.S. Starbases will be tanks, thats how they should be. They take every hit due to not being able to fly around, but have heavy firepower and hull. They could have a couple fighters, but nothing extreme. Doing this then we can lower the amount of firepower on them just a SLIGHT BIT.

[ChillFactor]

Oh well.... topic is back split then....

On topic:
does this mean we're gonna have our own StarDestroyers up in this thing? Because what you said sounds like we're using that as a model.

I must have failed to explain myself. Carriers could have the ability to take down other ships with use of their fighters, but their fighters being their main weapon. I suppose this is not the case for space, since here, fighters are just support ships that take down tactical targets. If that's the case then the size of our ships in-game is muuuuuch bigger than I thought.

[Sandtrooper]

Oh well.... topic is back split then....
If that's the case then the size of our ships in-game is muuuuuch bigger than I thought.

Scale has been a major problem since 1997 (when Stardock made the 1.2x ships).  One could mistake half the Drengin ships as being small as B'rel Bird of Preys (110 M) if you consider the "white thing" as the bridge, while the Terran ship dwarfs them in scale.  In many places, scale can be a big factor, or else it suffers in the sense it's unrealistic.

As for your thought on whether fighters do all the work or not is a work-in-progress, we need to find a middle ground so carriers must rely on their fighters instead of flying around as a tank. (although other mods might reverse this)

[Mars]

A typical carrier today has as much protection as a light cruiser without a single plane on its deck.  It the Ronald Regan arms are still classified today however it is fair known that they have

8 MK 15 Phalanx and 2 back up phalanx that can be moved mobile for a novice that's 3 DU 20mm shells every square inch of a football field in one loading!

2-4 (red wolf) classified or Sea Sparrow missile launchers (RIM-7 Sea Sparrow is a ship-borne short-range anti-aircraft and anti-missile weapon system)  designed vs china made or russian made sizzler and other anti ship ect.   This system, a single one, can fire 8 radar and laser guided at once.

 Sea Wolf upgrade to Sea Sparrow mach 4 interceptor

(the George Washington has the new anti missile laser on board (altho classified) and or a moded kc135 gun ship with the same laser on board.

85 various aircraft  (and 12 to 22 depending on the carrier NUCLEAR plane launched cruise missiles) from 1meg to 55 kt in three classes.

and a speed of about 35 miles per hour (land speed)

Since they are always upgrading this protection i can assume safely that such a carrier even in space far in the future would have at least this level of protection.

Mars.

[NiteHawk]

It's hard to scale properly to make a 2D game enjoyable too. I think theres a point between realistic and gameplay that needs to be said here, anyways.  They can be scaled a bit differently, but not too much. We don't need starbases the size of the screen, nor scouts thinner then a gun fire, you know what I mean?