Jump to content

Ship-to-ship repairs...?


Recommended Posts

Good evening!

 

I've been searching for a discussion regarding the repair mechanics of DU, and have come up short. If anyone could point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it.

 

If that discussion doesn't exist, what do you guys think about ship-to-ship repairs? I know JC said in his recent interview something to the effect of "players might have to keep their ftl drive repaired to allow for escape if needed...".

 

Local repairs by players on the actual element would be great but i also think, for example, a ship discharging energy from their construct to help another keep their shields up adds another layer to fleet combat.

 

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mentioned this briefly in another thread, but repairing could be another skill. Whether or not you need a special tool/element to do it, I don't know. Repair skill would give rise to a real occupation of engineer.

 

Ship-to-ship repair sounds too fast and easy. It would eliminate all the gameplay mechanics I mentioned and probably more.

 

I do like the power transfer idea. In yet another thread I suggested that shields could have polygon surfaces to make up the shield. Each surface would behave individually. So to do a power transfer, you would have to drop shields below the power-transfer device on your ship, and on the other ship. Then you could get LoS, then establish the transfer. So it's balanced, since you will have to expose part of your ship to the enemy if you're in the middle of a battle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My suggestion is simple, add modular skeleton parts for machinery to be adjustable for their functions and make reparing act as a "repar the boken part of the voxel mesh". This way, we can have ships that instead of deaing damage, they can repair close-by ships.


The nature of the voxel mesh is easy to grasp for people who know of these things. The repair "weaponry" will simply revert  the damaged areas on a ship's voxel mesh to their original form.


And just like with mining, a machine can do it faster and in larger volumes.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i'd personally limit the range of any repair tools to very short ranges, like a few meters.

 

combined with some system that remembers the undamaged state of a given construct (or just plain blueprint access) it would strongly encourage shipyards (with repair arms) and small repair vehicles that crawl surfaces.

 

neither variant would make it "too cheap" or particularily useful in combat.

 

and would make repair yards and fleet tenders an asset to be protected.

with all the repair equipment and production capacity at hand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i'd personally limit the range of any repair tools to very short ranges, like a few meters.

 

combined with some system that remembers the undamaged state of a given construct (or just plain blueprint access) it would strongly encourage shipyards (with repair arms) and small repair vehicles that crawl surfaces.

 

neither variant would make it "too cheap" or particularily useful in combat.

 

and would make repair yards and fleet tenders an asset to be protected.

with all the repair equipment and production capacity at hand.

I like the idea of ship yard repairs for sure. But with the balance of range, i still think a ship helping another ship can add some more complexity and coordination opportunities in combat.

 

Maybe just on a shield supplement/ energy level? So there's no need to poll the construct blueprint which seems unnecessary at second thought.

 

Since combat, based on what was said in the interview, would likely be target lock eve style (due to the single shard server with many ships), ship repairs seem like it would fit. Just my two cents :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mentioned this briefly in another thread, but repairing could be another skill. Whether or not you need a special tool/element to do it, I don't know. Repair skill would give rise to a real occupation of engineer.

 

Ship-to-ship repair sounds too fast and easy. It would eliminate all the gameplay mechanics I mentioned and probably more.

 

I do like the power transfer idea. In yet another thread I suggested that shields could have polygon surfaces to make up the shield. Each surface would behave individually. So to do a power transfer, you would have to drop shields below the power-transfer device on your ship, and on the other ship. Then you could get LoS, then establish the transfer. So it's balanced, since you will have to expose part of your ship to the enemy if you're in the middle of a battle.

Agreed. The engineer profession or repair skill would be an invaluable line to train in and seems like it would fit well. As far as energy transfer for shielding supplement, I think it could be balanced with range and making the repairer ship more vulnerable (reduces its shields significantly whilst boosting other shields).

 

That way it is taking a risk by being close and "healing". Just as in any fast paced mmo with a skillful coordinated effort, to switch to softer targets quickly and come back to the main target can make a difference in the battle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the broken/breached hull is made with voxels then surely it would just be a case if 'plugging' the breach?

 

How would you tell the difference from fixing a breach in battle with the repair skill to just filling in a hole with the normal nano tool?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If the broken/breached hull is made with voxels then surely it would just be a case if 'plugging' the breach?

How would you tell the difference from fixing a breach in battle with the repair skill to just filling in a hole with the normal nano tool?

 

Blueprint-baked voxel mesh. When you build something, you click "Save" on it. Then it's a static mesh of voxles of a model. If a voxel is damaged and you "Repair" that empty air where the voxel was, it will replace the voxel lost dto damage or replenish the HP of the damage voxel.

 

 

JC explained that in GrayStillPlays interview, the part about "information is not lost". Your shuip migt be missing a part of its hull, but you can repair that area to "heal" the voxels there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh right, that makes sense then as it was one of the worries i had when building something that it would be lost if damaged.

 

Do you have a link to that interview? Wouldn't mind giving it a listen to be honest.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh right, that makes sense then as it was one of the worries i had when building something that it would be lost if damaged.

 

Do you have a link to that interview? Wouldn't mind giving it a listen to be honest.

 

 

Here you go.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wouldn't be opposed to something like the ship welder from space engineers, but remote repairing like in Eve would be very weird.

Well, that's why I want modular skeleton Elements to build repair arms for repairing-ships :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i'd personally limit the range of any repair tools to very short ranges, like a few meters.

 

combined with some system that remembers the undamaged state of a given construct (or just plain blueprint access) it would strongly encourage shipyards (with repair arms) and small repair vehicles that crawl surfaces.

 

neither variant would make it "too cheap" or particularily useful in combat.

 

and would make repair yards and fleet tenders an asset to be protected.

with all the repair equipment and production capacity at hand.

 

I like this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the more fundamental question is what does a support role look like? What does it play like? There is also two levels - support role as a human avatar and the support role as a ship in a fleet. There is agressive "crowd control" support such as sensor jamming, and defensive support like healing or buffs. So is there a way to give a support ship crew interesting gameplay in a fleet battle.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the more fundamental question is what does a support role look like? What does it play like? There is also two levels - support role as a human avatar and the support role as a ship in a fleet. There is agressive "crowd control" support such as sensor jamming, and defensive support like healing or buffs. So is there a way to give a support ship crew interesting gameplay in a fleet battle.

You won't be repairing during the combat. That's suicidal. This is not EVE's pseudo "healer" class ships that healed armor with the magic of Sleeper-tech :P

 

 

Repair ships roll in after a battle to repair damaged ships so they can move once more. Engineers can also scavenge destroyed enemy ships, destroy their Core Units to harvest the rest of the ship and stuff.

 

 

You people need to stop thinking you'll be Captain Kirks or Han Solos. If you don't, you'll end up in a fleet with many guns, but not people to repair them during combat.

 

 

During a battle, in DUAL, you have something you don't in EVE. It's called a "crew", they are those things called "people", you have tot manage in a ship, let alone the crew of the bridge, crewd by those things called people, the Mittani would roll in a corner and cry if he ever had to manage all those things actively. He can't even manage calling targets in fleets in EVE, can you imagine that tool having to command his bridge and a fleet? Would be hilarious just to hear someone on the bridge recording his QQ. 

 

 

The crew are the ones repairing your ship from the inside, possibly scavenging broken equipment to jurry-rig functional ones.

 

 

You want a big dreadnought? Get a crew, there's no magic EVE healing and buffs in DUAL.

 

 

As for sensor jamming... again ,this is not EVE. There's no way you can jam optical sensors, as they are no radar, you can't flush the radar array wih microwaves to fuzz the read-outs. 

 

 

Welcome to Six Degrees of Freeedom stranger, you'll have to actually have to maneuver to not get hit by enemy ships, you'll actually have to have a crew for your dreadnought and you'll most likely have to treat the lower members of your org with dignity, unless they mutiny and take over the ship from you.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As for sensor jamming... again ,this is not EVE. There's no way you can jam optical sensors, as they are no radar, you can't flush the radar array wih microwaves to fuzz the read-outs. 

 

yeah, for cameras you need the highly secretive technology of flashlights.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

yeah, for cameras you need the highly secretive technology of flashlights.

I don't think you can hit a flashlight with a high enough intensity to hit a disc roughtly 10 meters in diameter from the other side of the star system. :V

 

Plus, it's an optical sensor, not a camera :P The Hubble Telescope does it fine, I believe FutureSpace tech can do it much better :P

 

 

And if you can hit something like that small with light, you can pretty much hit it with a laser beam and take it out altogether :P

 

As I said, EVE had taken the classes of mage, rogue, priest and put names of warships on them :P DUAL is not like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Plus, it's an optical sensor, not a camera :P The Hubble Telescope does it fine, I believe FutureSpace tech can do it much better :P

 

and what is a camera if not an optical sensor, genius? :P

 

 

I don't think you can hit a flashlight with a high enough intensity to hit a disc roughtly 10 meters in diameter from the other side of the star system. :V

 

hitting isnt hard, saturating the sensor harder :P

 

but then nobody said across the system. only you :P

 

 

 

As I said, EVE had taken the classes of mage, rogue, priest and put names of warships on them :P DUAL is not like that.

 

and that invalidates EWAR ... why?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You won't be repairing during the combat. That's suicidal. This is not EVE's pseudo "healer" class ships that healed armor with the magic of Sleeper-tech :P

Repair ships roll in after a battle to repair damaged ships so they can move once more. Engineers can also scavenge destroyed enemy ships, destroy their Core Units to harvest the rest of the ship and stuff.

You people need to stop thinking you'll be Captain Kirks or Han Solos. If you don't, you'll end up in a fleet with many guns, but not people to repair them during combat.

During a battle, in DUAL, you have something you don't in EVE. It's called a "crew", they are those things called "people", you have tot manage in a ship, let alone the crew of the bridge, crewd by those things called people, the Mittani would roll in a corner and cry if he ever had to manage all those things actively. He can't even manage calling targets in fleets in EVE, can you imagine that tool having to command his bridge and a fleet? Would be hilarious just to hear someone on the bridge recording his QQ. 

The crew are the ones repairing your ship from the inside, possibly scavenging broken equipment to jurry-rig functional ones.

You want a big dreadnought? Get a crew, there's no magic EVE healing and buffs in DUAL.

As for sensor jamming... again ,this is not EVE. There's no way you can jam optical sensors, as they are no radar, you can't flush the radar array wih microwaves to fuzz the read-outs. 

Welcome to Six Degrees of Freeedom stranger, you'll have to actually have to maneuver to not get hit by enemy ships, you'll actually have to have a crew for your dreadnought and you'll most likely have to treat the lower members of your org with dignity, unless they mutiny and take over the ship from you.

 

Nice inflammatory word salad. You seem to make many assumptions about an undecided future of development, and use that " evidence" to troll and "debate" in a condescending way. You can still have a crew repairing things AND have ship-to-ship energy transfer (for shield aide, not voxel our element repairs). That way combat isn't as short-lived and only based on damage output and voxel thickness of target. AAAAAnd JC said combat WOULD have targeting like in Eve (please correct me if this isn't the case). Six degrees of freedom doesn't mean Star Citizen flight and targeting, just 6 degree flight. "Targets will be locked on." That to me says targets will be locked on to fit a certain amount of time, and they will still be locked on if it moves a bit. Which furthermore negates any aiming concept.... So yes; like EVE.

 

Cornflakes, Croxis, Velenka, Anfros, and Shogun, Thanks for your feedback in this thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nice inflammatory word salad. You seem to make many assumptions about an undecided future of development, and use that " evidence" to troll and "debate" in a condescending way. You can still have a crew repairing things AND have ship-to-ship energy transfer (for shield aide, not voxel our element repairs). That way combat isn't as short-lived and only based on damage output and voxel thickness of target. AAAAAnd JC said combat WOULD have targeting like in Eve (please correct me if this isn't the case). Six degrees of freedom doesn't mean Star Citizen flight and targeting, just 6 degree flight. "Targets will be locked on." That to me says targets will be locked on to fit a certain amount of time, and they will still be locked on if it moves a bit. Which furthermore negates any aiming concept.... So yes; like EVE.

 

Cornflakes, Croxis, Velenka, Anfros, and Shogun, Thanks for your feedback in this thread.

Welcome to geometry, have some "cone of fire".

 

 

What? You think your left battery of turrets on top of your ship will be able to hit through your ship? Nope.

 

 

Energy transfer for shields? Cool. Enjoy this working the other way around, since people will be able to drain your shields and go like "lelelelele , L2P scrub". 

 

 

Magical ship to ship repairing? Nope. That's EVE's way of justifying magic in their setting, the way repairing armor works in there.

 

 

Also, those 6 DoF play a role. You can submerge beneath a ship's cones of fire. Mind = blown (and you might start having panic attacks of having to use two hands while playing the game, instead of EVE's one hand on the mouse, one hand on the Big Mac).

 

 

You want slugfests like EVE? Nah, won't be a thing most likely. You'll have to use some other form of tactics than blob. Sorry. Your crew will run out on repairing materials. Your crew will be able to seal a hull breach, sure, but don't expect to have people flying around your ship during combat to patch up armor during combat. You better learn to use your ship's bow to take the brand of an attack.

 

 

When JC said it's like EVE, he meant the tab-targeting, meaning the game doesn't treat projectiles like physical entities. Missiles won't be shot off the sky, if you don't get the lingo involved.

 

 

Also, please don't bring Star Citizen as an example of realistic combat. That game has dog-fighting frigates. It's as realistic as an Iron Man comic movie is. Entertaining, but not realistic by a wide margin.

 

 

I know you don't like the hard truth, that DUAL is not EVE 2.0 with Lego in space, but please, don't claim I "troll" because you have zero way of proving I'm wrong in my estimates.

 

 

Also, since you seem like the average EVE player, have fun people placing C4 inside your ship and detonating them during an engagement. You seem like the person that trash-talks a lot, so I can't wait on your post about "make my paranoia go away, make ships like EVE, one player = one ship" thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Energy transfer for shields? Cool. Enjoy this working the other way around, since people will be able to drain your shields and go like "lelelelele , L2P scrub".

And.. why should it be that way? Transferring power between two cooperating ships, using equipment thats designed for it, is a bit different than sucking power off another's ship.

 

 

And by the way: stop being a farking cloaca.

You can talk to people in a normal way, regardless of them agreeing with you or not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

And.. why should it be that way? Transferring power between two cooperating ships, using equipment thats designed for it, is a bit different than sucking power off another's ship.

 

 

And by the way: stop being a farking cloaca.

You can talk to people in a normal way, regardless of them agreeing with you or not.

IT's simple game mechanics. Throw in some "hacking logic" in it and your ship can siphon energy off of another.

 

 

Pirates would pretty much ave such things on-board their ships and simply drain a giant ship of energy.

 

 

Problem? Yes, but this kind of mechanism has marit, since it can power-off a Stargate for a short period as well, so, there goes your "no warping"  lockdown from EVE as well. It pretty much opens a pandora's box of situations.

 

 

Havin g the ability to take power cells or fuel in general from one ship to give to another and having pretty much EVE magical replenishment of sshields is a totally different thing. 

 

 

Wireless transfer of power? Cool. But expect it working both ways. It's a balancing thing. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

IT's simple game mechanics. Throw in some "hacking logic" in it and your ship can siphon energy off of another.

 

That assumes that the receivers are transmitters as well.

 

Which is far from being a given.

 

Its also far from being done "just so", you'd have to hack a lot of different systems to make that siphoning happen in the first place.

The transmitter, the on board energy transfer systems, /understanding/ how the targets energy net looks like to do the transfers in the first place.

Hoping that the engineers dont just cut the wire, hoping that theres no cutoff between the shield power supply and the transmitter...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's your *assumed* simple game mechanics. Unless you are a developer you have just as much knowledge of the mechanics as everyone else on this forum. Dual can be coded with shield boosting mechanics, shield draining mechanics, both, or neither.

 

"No magic healing buffs in dual." Really, show me the quote from the devs. It is one thing to argue for or against a mechanic or you like or dislike an idea, it is another to state something as fact when it is not.

 

The flavor of the mechanic can be whatever it needs to be -- sleeper tech, mana, nanites, etc.

 

One of my criticisms of Eve is that combat seems mostly decided when you launch from the hanger with the ships and loadouts brought. If a game is a "series of interesting decisions made by the player" then most of those decisions happen before the fight. Combat should be fun for everyone. Without support roles the only actionable items in the fight itself for multicrew ships is piloting and weapons.

 

Support gameplay is something I am more interested in as both a player avatar and even as a multi crew ship. I love being the mechanic in Guns of Icarus -- prioritizing repairs, the tool I use to repair, and the types of buffs added to the different elements. I would enjoy similar mechanics being an engineer on a multicrew ship.

 

If we want to go with the nanite flavor a support ship could be equipped with nanite bombs. Shoot them at a baddie to do some damage or debuffs, or shoot them at a friendly to do some repair or buffs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...