General ideas

It means that capital ships can be damaged with conventional guns and missiles unlike WC2 and onward where the only way of doing real damage was with torpedoes.
 
Sylvester said:
It means that capital ships can be damaged with conventional guns and missiles unlike WC2 and onward where the only way of doing real damage was with torpedoes.

Concernig capships -- will there be any carriers in the game or has Landreich only corvette class ships? Are there going to be some Confederation Navy ships/capships?
 
The carriers are all going to be on the frontlines. At most you'll see a Confed destroyer, the bulk of their forces will be corvettes.

The Landreich has an old Destroyer (Valiant) and two corvettes. Falcon and Granicus. No carriers.

BradMick
 
This discussion of cap ship damage and my comments in the turret thread has raised some questions: How detailed will the damage model and ballistics model be? Since day 1 of the public announcement of Pioneer, it was stated that weapons will be individually destructible and you can have your guns shot off. What other parts of the ship will be individually destructible and will there be a detailed damage model to show visible weapons effects? How will the ballistics of the various guns/missiles be handled? Will each shot be tracked individually, a la Max Payne or a hardcore sim like Il-2?

I ask these questions because I just finished playing a session of Il-2. In a given round in Il-2, you will see everything from leaking fuel to smoking, dead engines, to complete fuselage and wing structural failures. In terms of Pioneer, I think it would be a little ridiculous for you to completely vaporize a Kilrathi corvette in a lightly armed transport. But it would be cool to get in a lucky shot to the cockpit or engines and be able to make your escape.

Thinking about the way WC1 handled cap ship combat, it seems to me that cap ships were essentially boss characters - more HP and more ways to shoot at you. All you have to do is shoot them more for them to blow up. Certainly, a lot of that has to do with the technology limitations at the time, so I think we can do better now.

I suppose that the point of this long winded post is that I would like to see more than a massive explosion when I destroy a ship. In fact, I would like to see disabling ships in interesting ways (destroy an engine and send them spinning off into space, etc.) as often as complete destructions, especially when only using guns.

On a related note, and as you can tell by the rest of this post, I would be very interested in the "sim" aspect of the game being played up a bit. Stuff from the books and Claw Marks about power settings, sensor readings, etc. would be very cool to see. I'm not saying that you should need to read a thick manual to be able to take off or anything, but we've been hitting L and blasting away with guns for years now, so some added depth would be a welcome addition in my mind.

That said, being a programmer myself, I realize that some of these things would be quite a challenge to implement. I respect any decision you guys may or may not make about suggestions like these. But this is the suggestion thread, so I thought I would throw them out there.
 
So would capships be a WC3/WC4 type of combat model where you can shoot off individual turrets as well as flying around to a turret-less side and shooting down the corvette/transport/destroyer with sustained fire? (I am assuming that we won't be seeing anything bigger than Exeters and Ralaris given that this is the frontier and the Landreich doesn't yet have its own fleet carriers.)
 
Magnum said:
I suppose that the point of this long winded post is that I would like to see more than a massive explosion when I destroy a ship. In fact, I would like to see disabling ships in interesting ways (destroy an engine and send them spinning off into space, etc.) as often as complete destructions, especially when only using guns.

This is great idea. A ship falling on a planet because its engines are destroyed would be a great view (supposing, that in Pioneer planets will function just like in Privateer 2 -- so that when approached to it you had to ask for permission to land and landed or burned in the atmosphere -- this could be done visually like a ship would just fall on the planet).

Magnum said:
On a related note, and as you can tell by the rest of this post, I would be very interested in the "sim" aspect of the game being played up a bit. Stuff from the books and Claw Marks about power settings, sensor readings, etc. would be very cool to see. I'm not saying that you should need to read a thick manual to be able to take off or anything, but we've been hitting L and blasting away with guns for years now, so some added depth would be a welcome addition in my mind.

Yeah, that would realy be great and I see it just the same. Just setting a course of your ship to some destination with some realism-like auto pilot/navigation system and then be able to fire up your ship sensors and search for other vessels in the system, scanning those close enough (probably with some special sensor devices being sort of extra equipment) and attacking them (if you are a pirate or something), hailing other merchants to agreeing on sort of escort missions done for them (all in a space), exploring asteroid fields or gas nebulas for possible resources. Launching some exploration sattelites or drones to do some research for you. Bounty hunting open missions like you just buy some rather expensive BountyHunter Guild DB which allows you to recognize some ship signatures and/or markings and then knowing that this or that guy flying that craft is some wanted criminal and chasing after him with your Phalanx ship. Making cargo runs with your Camel and bandying (while on a space station or already in space) with other merchants on the same course to improve your chances in surviving some deadly pirate squadron attack. And many, many more. That's the feel of a "real" privateering game for me...

Magnum said:
That said, being a programmer myself, I realize that some of these things would be quite a challenge to implement. I respect any decision you guys may or may not make about suggestions like these. But this is the suggestion thread, so I thought I would throw them out there.

The probability, that all our wishes will be fulfilled is pretty low -- it would mean to much work and to much time to do it and Pioneer would never be released. However it seems to me, that those wishes, ideas, suggestions will hung here on this thread for a long time (if not forever ;-) ) and so Pioneer developers will always have the possibility to get some new inspiration for improvements in case that theirs will go low (not going to happen anytime soon -- I guess).
 
Colonial Marshall

I just had an idea, and it finally beat me into getting account here. I've been meaning to for ages, but this finally lit the fire under my ass to get an account.

ANYWAY

The idea I had uses the Prestige points you guys mentioned earlier. (Other thread. Not sure?)

How about you can become sort of a "Colonial Marshall". Like a member of the Militia with less rules, and you get access to Military craft. You have to purchase them still, and the prices may be exorbitant for the higher tier craft. But once you become a Marshall you recieve special "Marshall" missions. These will be much more dangerous Damsel in Distress and pirate hunting (etc.) missions. You would have to do one of these missions in a certain amount of time or maybe you'll have a certain world under your jurisdiction or something and you'd have to do all the missions in that area. Or something along those lines.

I think this is a good way to grant accessibility to Military Ships, but with enough of a pain in the ass to balance it out.

Hope you like the idea...
 
Sounds neat, but I think that you would have to be barred from committing piracy while you are a registered Marshall (since you are supposed to be on the side of the law). If you committed an act of piracy while acting as a Marshall, you would lose your Marshall status and lose a big chunk of goodwill from the Marshall's office, which you would have to rebuild (by performing Militia/Military/Bounty Hunter missions) before you could sign up for it again.
 
How about you can become sort of a "Colonial Marshall". Like a member of the Militia with less rules, and you get access to Military craft. You have to purchase them still, and the prices may be exorbitant for the higher tier craft. But once you become a Marshall you recieve special "Marshall" missions. These will be much more dangerous Damsel in Distress and pirate hunting (etc.) missions. You would have to do one of these missions in a certain amount of time or maybe you'll have a certain world under your jurisdiction or something and you'd have to do all the missions in that area. Or something along those lines.

I think this is a good way to grant accessibility to Military Ships, but with enough of a pain in the ass to balance it out.

Hope you like the idea...

I like that idea very much. But since it would force Howard to do more cockpit art for militia crafts I don't see it being the part of nearest Pioneer release. But I strongly vote for this idea otherwise.

Sounds neat, but I think that you would have to be barred from committing piracy while you are a registered Marshall (since you are supposed to be on the side of the law). If you committed an act of piracy while acting as a Marshall, you would lose your Marshall status and lose a big chunk of goodwill from the Marshall's office, which you would have to rebuild (by performing Militia/Military/Bounty Hunter missions) before you could sign up for it again.

It should be even more complicated to get back into justice's grace IMO. As I see it, it should be virtually impossible to (re)join the militia force after law has been severely broken by your character during or before serving as a militia pilot. It's the same as with police recruits, who need to have clear rap sheet in order to join the force. Only possibility I see in that situation would be some militia crime database hacking -- idea which is not new in this type of games -- which would cost us much sweat, blood and money.
 
Perhaps a random story arc for the "Redemption" thingy, like where you infilltrate a major pirate base (A la Pentonville) and like lead the law to the base, and thus remove it from game continuity. I'm glad people like the idea.

Yea, I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't in the initial release; the cockpits in them would be a large pain in the ass. But these guys have moved so incredibly fast, that they could pull it off. (Compliment)

Hope it goes well...
 
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