Ambrosia Software Web Board: AE - Ship Related / Final Edition - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Maybe we can get this to 'final edition 2' heh heh heh, *cough*. Ok, now, the subject for this topic is ships in AE.

People in AE:

Me
Slug
Pallas
Brook

We can obviously use more.

Ship classes:

50 = fighter
100 = bomber
150 = schooner
200 = cruiser
250 = escort
300 = gunship
350 = carrier
400 = hvd
450 = battleship
800 = transport
860 = assault transport
850 = engineering pod

Storyline:

Player is Cantharan, set around the Boodan war and ends before the conquest of Earth.

Here's a little plot point:

The doomsday weapon of the era is the flak cannon, which is so powerful a convention is formed to relegate this to unmanned drones soon after younger races begin beating up older ones. What do you think?

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Intresting...

550 = Gateship?




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9/11/01...
The saddest day in American history...
[url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2/"]Earth's Journey v2.0 screen shots[/url]

booyah

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Booyah? Booyah yes? booyah no?

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9/11/01...
The saddest day in American history...
[url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2/"]Earth's Journey v2.0 screen shots[/url]

Heh heh, booya.

I'm a bit foggy on what sort of transportation was used back then, whether jumpgates or gateships came first and which was used more (I suspect that gateships were developed first, and then races decided to link up for trade under the Cantharans & Bazidanese).

As to the gateship idea, booyah.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

If I didn't tick too many people off with my last post, I would like to make some suggestions with the ship classes:
Ships of the Line:
Interceptor
Fighter
Bomber
Schooner
Frigate
Destroyer
Cruiser
Battleship

Other Ships:
Cargo Ship
Transport
Assault Transport
Engineering Pod
Assault Carrier
Standard Carrier

OK, Ships of the Line are listed in order of rank: lousiest ship first, biggest and baddest ship last. The 'Other Ships' are listed in no particular order. The two I'm going to clarify are the Assault Carrier and the Standard Carrier. Standard Carrier has practically no shields, and very little weaponry, only some long-range heavy missiles, and to top it off are incredibly slow and have practically no maneuverability. It has a complement of 40 Interceptors, 25 Fighters and 10 Bombers. Yes, that's right. The Assault Carriers are more like the Cantharan Carrier from the original Ares. They're faster, more maneuverable, with better shielding and more weaponry. But they sacrifice size and therefore the number of subships they can carry. They carry a complement of 20 Interceptors, 10 Fighters, and 5 Bombers. Note that there is no HVD. Its role is replaced by the Cruiser, which is a more practical ship. The HVDs were, except for the Gaitori HVD, insanely powerful and next-to-impossible to defeat.

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"Only In America/Where We Dream In Red White & Blue/Only In America/Where We Dream As Big As We Want To/Only In America/"
-- Brooks & Dunn, "Only In America"

I think jumpgates would have come first. It takes less money and rescources to build several jumpgates that it does to build one gateship.

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9/11/01...
The saddest day in American history...
[url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2/"]Earth's Journey v2.0 screen shots[/url]

Ship Classes
Jov: I thought you were using intervals of 50 - wouldn't that place AsltTrans at 900? And I still don't agree that an Escort is an HVC.
If I can make a cool net level to demonstrate my uses of Cargo Ships, would you agree too add them? I'll try and run it up sometime soon.
Finally, I think that the making the Carrier the smallest Capship (Rock/Paper/Scissors) leaves out a lot of strategy. Frigates!

SC: We're debating which ships to add, not how to uproot the entire Ares ship class system and put a new one in. We're dealing with a premade universe, with its own ideas about Ship Classes.
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Storyline:
That's all? There's more we could put in... we could release the Boodan Wars as the first AE plug, and Slug and I both have the makings of other storylines in place (BtS/Liege)
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The Jumpgate/Gateship could be an interesting discussion. I'll lay out the facts here:

1) Jumpgates appear to be composed of 3 small markers, so they look cheap
2) You can only go from Jumpgate to Jumpgate, hence all systems must have them
3) Jumpgates are completely defenseless
4) Gateships are huge, and have massive weaponry in the Ares' time
5) Gateships can transport to locations without Jumpgates

Gateships must have come first. You cannot place a Jumpgate someplace you cannot jump to. Hence, Gateships would have been the first used intersystemically (although not necessarily the first to be developed) in order to get to places where Jumpgates would later be placed.

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"Once, just once, I'd like to be able to land somewhere and say, 'Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel.'"
"I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor."
"Naturally. You could hardly claim to be an angel with those pointed ears, Mister Spock. But say you landed someplace with a pitchforkŅ"

I'm happy that you're not arguing with me

Quote

Sure, in fact, I'm going to leave the ship classes to you Pallas, as you appear to know what you're doing. Just use intervals of 50 when designing your ships, that's all I ask.

Quote

I wasn't describing AE's storyline, just a little plot point (among many others) that I might to put in. As members of AE, we are all obligated to discuss things that might make the conversion more interesting.

I agree with you on the gateships/jumpgates.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

The Gaitori being the most powerful most advanced race might have used their gateship to build jumpgates for the less advanced races so as to increases trade?

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9/11/01...
The saddest day in American history...
[url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2/"]Earth's Journey v2.0 screen shots[/url]

Good onya!

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

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The gatori advanced? haha

I think that building a gateship would come first, i mean to establish jumpgates people have to GET there and it would take forever without a gateship.


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He is no fool who gives what he can't keep, to gain what he can't lose.

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So then, for non-combat:
750: Cargo Ship (For trade-based profit, Hyperiums-style; interesting experiment)
800: Transport
850: Eng. Pod
900: Assault Transport

Then, we put the HVC back in slot 250, and reserve slot 400 for the Escort, should we choose. The HVD, Carrier, and Battleship are put back were they were in the original, and give 350 to a Frigate.

Slot 1000 is reserved for any special Stations we should add, and 10 is, of course, the EVAT.

Unfortunately, I believe that the Frigate would require a lot of playtesting to be a balanced ship, but I'll try and outline an Ishiman one just so we get the idea:

Shields: 1500
Speed: 3.000
Turn: 1.500
Price: 2000 (10 resources)
Build Time: 3000

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Well, I think it's been established that that's the _major_ plot point, but then, it's an interesting idea. AE could be less of a singular expansion than a brand given to "officialised" scenarios; we release "AE: Zeal" to chronicle the Boodan Civil War (Zealots), "AE: Gaia" to develop the original plot further, "AE: Liege" to cover the Obish/Gaitori War... booyah or no booyah?


A few cool ideas to improve AI:
[list=1]
[*]Generally we don't use Build Flags much... but I believe we could implement them along with kMatchingFoe and HardMatchingFoe to allow the computer to "intelligently" build ships along the lines of the Rock/Paper/Scissors theory.
[*]To get the computer to rally big fleets around powerful flagships, we could instruct smaller ships to cluster with "HardTargetIsFriendly"[/list=a]

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"Once, just once, I'd like to be able to land somewhere and say, 'Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel.'"
"I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor."
"Naturally. You could hardly claim to be an angel with those pointed ears, Mister Spock. But say you landed someplace with a pitchforkŅ"

It was a suggestion, and one that attempted to work with the technology of AE - and the current U.S.N. names for ship classes.

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"Only In America/Where We Dream In Red White & Blue/Only In America/Where We Dream As Big As We Want To/Only In America/"
-- Brooks & Dunn, "Only In America"

Got a cool weapon for the Gaitori. I've never seen a weapon do this before...
It Should be on my iDisk (Click the link in my sig) when you read this. The file name is Arcade One.


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9/11/01...
The saddest day in American history...
[url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2/"]Earth's Journey v2.0 screen shots[/url]

It has some potential.

Pallas, could you outlined in more detailed part 1 of AE? I don't want to have it in segments, rather parts.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Thanks. Of course it will probably have different sounds and sprites.

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9/11/01...
The saddest day in American history...
[url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2/"]Earth's Journey v2.0 screen shots[/url]

Just a second Pallas.

My intervals were based in relative ship firepower, with the weakest ship having 50 and the strongest ship having 350. Logically, this is the best and most comprehensive system, but I'm not going to stop you from doing something else. Also, you've added a frigate ship, bringing the total combat ships for each race up to 10. I'm happy to provide it, if you can prove it has a role which is none of the below:

Fighter: Cannon-fodder.
Bomber: Fighter that can take on warships.
Schooner: Anti-fighter.
Cruiser: All-round warship.
Escort: Superior warship.
Gunship: Light capital destroyer.
Carrier: Supports with fighters.
Heavy D: Heavy capital destroyer.
Battleship: All-round capital ship.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

I suppose your system does make sense, but mine isn't completely disorganized either. It's size-relative
Smallest ship 50, Biggest ship 550

And I thought I'd mentioned the weapons on the Frigate, I guess I didn't.

Shields: 1500
Speed: 3.000
Turn: 1.500
Price: 2000 (10 resources)
Build Time: 3000
Pulse: F-Pulse
Beam: PK Turret
Special: CMissile

The general idea is to put a low-cost Capship into the mix, efficient at killing Schooners and the like (pulse turrets don't seem to be quite fast enough) and providing a primary target for the Bomber. The results would be something along the lines of
Squadron: Fighter, Schooner, Cruiser, HVCruiser
Destroyer: Bomber, Gunship, HVDestroyer
Capship: Frigate, Carrier, Battleship

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"Once, just once, I'd like to be able to land somewhere and say, 'Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel.'"
"I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor."
"Naturally. You could hardly claim to be an angel with those pointed ears, Mister Spock. But say you landed someplace with a pitchforkŅ"

It does not sound distinctive enough Pallas.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

What doesn't sound distinctive enough?

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"Once, just once, I'd like to be able to land somewhere and say, 'Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel.'"
"I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor."
"Naturally. You could hardly claim to be an angel with those pointed ears, Mister Spock. But say you landed someplace with a pitchforkŅ"

The frigate!

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

And what doesn't sound distinctive about it?

It's a cheaper ship, meaning that low income won't cripple the Capship branch of the RPS theme.
It's got faster weapons than the larger carrier/battleship, meaning that it can track schooners and fighters better.
Its weapons are low-power and energy-based, so you're not wasting valuable ammo on a fighter swarm.

Look at the human Gunship. Does that compare well to any other ship in the game? It's definitely distinctive, and the Frigate is designed to be even further apart from standard gunships.

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"Once, just once, I'd like to be able to land somewhere and say, 'Behold, I am the Archangel Gabriel.'"
"I fail to see the humor in that situation, Doctor."
"Naturally. You could hardly claim to be an angel with those pointed ears, Mister Spock. But say you landed someplace with a pitchforkŅ"

Joveia, at least let him make a preview of one of these frigates so we can try out his ideas first hand. If it doesn't work then we will all know and it won't be a problem anymore.

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9/11/01...
The saddest day in American history...
[url="http://"http://homepage.mac.com/brookeview2/"]Earth's Journey v2.0 screen shots[/url]