Future project: Fighter-class speed overhaul

[Damar Stiehl]

As correctly noted by a number of people, fighter craft's speed is woefully inadequate in comparison to the speeds of larger ships.

I am rolling around some ideas for a small overhaul in my head and welcome any input. I am planning to improve the base speeds of all M5, M4 and M3 ships in the game so as to better reflect their purposes.

Thus far I have this in my mind:

* All ships' relative speed standings shall be preserved (I.E. the Harrier will still be the slowest M5 and the Pegasus the fastest).
* The speed of any given ship shall not exceed 1009 m/s (Paranid Pegasus).
* All M5 ships shall travel at the speeds between 500 m/s and 1009 m/s.
* All M4 ships shal travel at the speeds between 450 m/s and 750 m/s.
* All M3 ships shall travel at the speeds between 350 m/s and 600 m/s.

This creates certain overlap zones in fighter craft speed (I.E. if you drive an M3 you can catch the slower M5s and almost all M4s, etc) and boosts the speed of all fighters so that they actually behave LIKE fighters.

Suggestions, comments?

[Nanook]

I've long been thinking along the same lines, but decided to wait for 1.4 to see what Egosoft has for us. As to the relative speeds of the different fighter classes, I suggest making the fastest M3 able to catch the slowest M4 and the fastest M4 able to catch the slowest M5. I don't think an M3 should ever be able to catch a maxed M5. There's just too much difference in combat capability and it would make that M5 worthless. The current game has too many worthless ships as it is, the Paranid Pericles for one.

Just my ideas.

[GoateeCat]

Great idea. I say do it, I would definitely use it!

[Firedancer]

*nods* sounds nice... but I'd too wait for 1.4 first.


anyway I'd especially make sure the M4's of a race are ALWAYS faster than the M3's of the same race.... otherwise that doesn't really make sense... the descriptions never make it sound like any race would use outdated "budget" fighters.....

[JustHere4Coffee]

something that's just struck me as an interesting idea is a modification of freight classes as well as speeds

seeing as some M3s can only carry M class cargo, and some M4s can only squeeze in S class cargo, wouldn't it make sense if we could make a slow M5 like the Mandalay or Harrier accept M class freight? imagine, an M5 with a jump drive...

[Firedancer]

something that's just struck me as an interesting idea is a modification of freight classes as well as speeds

seeing as some M3s can only carry M class cargo, and some M4s can only squeeze in S class cargo, wouldn't it make sense if we could make a slow M5 like the Mandalay or Harrier accept M class freight? imagine, an M5 with a jump drive...

a real scary thought... I already wonder as is why one would ever buy a carrier, when they cost more than destroyers, but have less firepower and speed. When they can't repair docked ships, nor are needed to transport larger amounts of craft.... as the later could just hop along on their own.... and refuel isn't much an issue either. So far the M5, and one 1 or 2 M4's with small cargo were my only excuse to keep one


Ps: i for my part would wish equipment to eat up cargo far more heavily... e.g. jumpdrives should be a real hitter.... I'd think an M5 with jumpdrive as a courier ship cute.... but then, I guess even if the drive fits in... it should still like use 90% of the cargo space of an M5 that neither has weapons nor shields nor too many engine upgrades...

As it is, I got all my ships maxed out with all equipment possible... and I can't for my life figure why the AI turns a 2 Million Credit M3 heavy fighter into a helpless nutshell by flying it at 10% it's engine power and with no targeting systems installed. It's scary if my centaur still overtakes most all M5's I encounter... why do they even bother to build them then?

[Burianek]

go to the beta folder in the site in my signature.
download the rebalance beta.zip file in there.
the readme is pretty detailed. makes a ton of changes.
full of ideas that you may feel free to keep/discard/plagarize at will
i'm also waiting for 1.4 before i finish/finalize it.
Cheers.

[Damar Stiehl]

I bow down to the magintude of the changes.

I don't agree with all of it, but the amount of work is tremendows.

Burianek, you rock - and twice as much for being so open to sharing.

[Burianek]

if you have suggestions, feel free.
i welcome harsh, unmerciful criticism
i'm also open to collaboration.
(this may stun some people, but i'm not always right )

[LV]

If you speed up fighter ships you will have many more collisions and the fire time will be reduced.

Imo ruducing cap class speed to around the 100 m/s mark would be better and doubling laser fire rates

[Burianek]

I'll actually humbly disagree. IMHO ramming is based much more on turning capability than ship flight speed. (at least as far as the player is concerned, you may be right about npc ships interacting with other members of their world)
Firing times are shorter given large values of relative speed (ship 1 spd - ship 2 spd). Doesn't affect one ship tailing another. But I do see your point.
Reducing cap ship speed is certainly a viable alternative to reposition fighters where they 'should' be in the grand scheme of things. The only problem is that this takes a game in which it can already be somewhat slow to fly across space and makes it slower.