Loadout Design

Originally posted by GrandpaTrout

I think Joco's point is that a slow involved process may be soon feel more annoying than fun. It might be the best long term (meaning when someone else codes it) solution would be have a GUI that lets the player choose the loadout and gives lots of data and feedback so it is easy to see the choices being made are smart. After selecting is done the actual parts are swapped by drone. This two step process is how cargo loading is done now.

If weapons are able to over heat a ship, or power is limited, or anything is limited, then the player will want a GUI and not have to swap and test.

What he said.

I am not totally anti drone. But the player needs to have all the detail on the load out he/she is chosing BEOFRE intiating a drop based swapping system.

I think I was assuming that should we include a loadout, and a very limited one (being limited to weapons only, and the handful of ships that support a visual loadout; the heavy corvette, advanced patcom, and tug), all weapon combinations will work. Meaning that no matter what you slap on your ship, it should be designed to work with that ship. Thus there would be no need to check before hand whether something will overheat, have limited power or whatnot. If they were designed to work together, then they should work.

That being said, Grandpatrouts long term solution sounds ideal. It also sounds like a lot of work though...

It is not really a question of a single weapon "working" with a ship, they all work. But the question is if you put two high powered weapons on a ship with a smaller reactor, is the combination usable?

We need the higher damage/effectiveness gear to have some higher requirements, otherwise it is just a straight progression. Sword +1, +2, +3, +4 etc. Instead of a player saying - To take down cap ships I want beams, cause they go through shields, but they use a ton of power, so I better purchase the corvette with the bigger reactor and thinner armor. I think well constructed/balanced subsystems are the highest priority. The first pass at loadout (the one I code) will not use GUI or drones, so the systems will be everything.

Actually, I realise that and the +1,+2,+3 kindof progression is what I was thinking of. Sometimes simplicity can be nice. I would rather just build the plus/minuses right into the weapons. So you have a faster firing weapon with low damage, or a slower firing weapon with high damage. Or a high powered beam weapon that penetrates shields, but has a very short capacity. Approaching it this way in no way limits the kind of decisions you might need to make when planning to go up against an enemey.

Although, ideally I would rather not have the player making frequent loadout changes. The idea doesn't really strike me. I view the whole 'loadout' progress as more of a simple refitting process that you do maybe a handful of times throughout your game. Don't forget the little secret I revealed to you. I never once used the loadout in the original I-war. I just fought my battles with the weapons I had (did I just loosely quote someone..?).

Also, with our whole shift to 'wingmen' supporting the player, do we really need this old I-war2 style super-hero loadout? As I play now, if I want to take out a cap ship, I don't load up beam weapons. I take 4 wingmen with me. And missiles.

Freelancer for the win again! Freelancer has excellent balance because it has a variety of weapons and defence technologies that all interact in different ways. For instance, a photon blaster (my preferred gun because it looks and sounds so cool) is a short-range, low-damage weapon with a high-refire rate that is defeated by the standard Liberty shields but works pretty good against the typical Bretonian shields. But its damage-per-second is really no more or less than the high-damage, long-range, slow-firing Ripper tachyon cannon because of Taylor's and the dev team's careful balance: how effective it becomes is a function of the shield you are using it against and your combat style.

Granted, Freelancer does have the level progression system, but when compared to techs at the same level, all ships have a whole slew of options that are all balanced against one another. Personally I think Freelancer could have done without the level progression, but that's just me!

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It's my belief that these sheep are laborin' under the misapprehension that they're birds. Observe their behavior. Take for a start the sheeps' tendency to 'op about the field on their back legs. (off-screen baa-ing) Now witness their attempts to fly from tree to tree. Notice that they do not so much fly as...plummet.

Yeah, I liked the Freelancer design. I was sorry to see the level progression mess it up. I know they wanted to make you feel like you were gaining something as you went along in time, but it was not really needed. It was fun enough to follow the story. And if they structured your encounters correctly, it would have had a very similar feel. Meaning that if the second "race" you encountered had shields that were especially good against your starting weapons, you would have wanted to upgrade without unbalancing the whole system.