In this thread I'd like to discuss the ship diversity (or maybe more like the lack of it) of the races in the list compiled by Dafedz.

Ship list

I was wondering if this list, which has been created some while ago, has been evaluated thoroughly. Since I am working on ship descriptions of the various vessels (starting with the Federation) I have been using that list quite a while to get a feel of the properties of each ship used in the game. To be honest, I am not impressed. The main problem is that each new ship is in fact a copy of an existing one with some increased numbers in shielding, integrity, and weapons. Not only among the same class, but among other classes as well, making it difficult to determine a 'role' of a line of ships.

The most clear example is the backbone of any fleet: her cruisers. We discriminate two kinds of cruisers (using the Feds as an example): Cruisers and Heavy cruisers. All cruisers, exept the Icarus, have 5 phasers and 4 torpedo tubes, with varying strengths. Heavy cruisers, who would seem to be better armed and defended at a cost of speed and range actualy fit into exactly the same line as the cruisers. For example, the Exelsior fits exactly between the Constellation and the Niagara. There is no difference at all between cruisers and heavy cruisers except the tech levels in which they come available.
The shielding and hull integrity go up at a constant rate and the ratio between the two is constant over all ship types (about double shielding than hull in the early techs up to 5 times in the later techs) including destroyers. You'd say that they are much more maneuverable and lack some defense, yet their ratios are exactly the same as with the cruisers only weaker on all levels.
You can extrapolate this same line to the explorers. They are exactly the same as in ratios, only a bit stronger. Some do have more phaser banks indeed, but the magic number regarding torpedo tubes appears to be 4. I realy doubt a Sovereign has the same number of torpedo tubes as a Constitution class.

What happened, for instance, to the idea of 'Strike cruisers'? i.e. more torpedoes in regards to phasers. And is there some function which features exploration and research (scanning of nebulas for instance) which has been agreed on in the past for as far as I know.

In short: in the current setup, there is no benefit at all to not build one massive fleet of your strongest ships only. There is no variation and no desicion making regarding which ship is better in which situation (at least not how I see it).

That was about what I had to say. This is not intended to flame anything of Dafedz work, it is just something I want you guys to think about and hopefully we can come to a revision of the ship list.

I wouldn't worry too much about this, Centurion.

Dafedz and Captain_Chao are currently working to reorder and rebalance the ships in the game, since as you said, the list is pretty old now.

Dafedz is creating a big list of EVERYTHING - he's combining all the info from his various lists into one document that has it all, so that the dev team can use it for reference.

Once the rebalancing is complete, he'll post the document in the staff room. (So sorry, guys)

By the way, i'm in the middle of making another of my uber-threads at the moment; i'm hoping to post it tonight or tomorrow. (I make all my big posts in notepad before posting them)

The thread is all about the "life" of ships - building them, ranges, mothballing/scrapping, and so on.

I've been talking to Dafedz a lot about it, and we've had to make some minor changes to things that were discussed in the forums to make sure that they work in the game.

Anyways, my thread will explain it all, so keep a look out for it.

You should send Dafedz a PM to express your concerns as well.

I'm glad to hear that has been cleared up

Though I would like to have a copy of the file in order to be able to write the ship descriptions since, as it stands now, it is quite difficult to write something new for each ship (and it gets progressively difficult). Besides, you do want to have the majority of it to be about te abilities of the ships.

Surly ship abilitys should be correct and cannon to the ships in trek? if so the discriptions should be similar to the ability of the ships in the series and films.

Jade's right there, for descriptions just write up what we know of the ship types, their designations and fleet roles etc. Their stats don't matter so much for this.

There is a significant difference between Cruiser and Heavy Cruiser though. Yes the Excelsior slots in between the Constellation and the Niagara, as it does in canon. The Excelsior Heavy Cruiser is the strongest and best technology available at Tech 5. One tech later the Niagara inherits much of it but at a lower cost and maintenance. This is the difference. A Cruiser is going to be superior than a Heavy Cruiser of say 30 years before.

you cant stick to cannon as there is are completely new ships in that ship list, and there is no really consistancy with cannon firepower (the defiant as an example... ) at this point I reckon it should be loosely based on cannon, but strengths changed to allow for playibity(sp?)....

if anyone is happy with the setup like that i guess they can mod it!

My point is that in this case, both the Constellation and the Excelsior will become absolete after one tech. As after that a more powerfull ship will be available. I think the Excelsior should be more powerfull than the Niagara indeed. More powerfull as in having more phasers and torpedo tubes. The damage done by a single torpedo can be higher still. The point is that, suppose their was a regular cruiser in tech 5, they would still be different. A heavy cruiser is different than a cruiser because it is mostly bigger and has more armor, shielding and weapons. At an increased cost.

Furthermore, I agree with UnDated that playability is more important than being so canon as possible. As it stands now, I'd add a bit more diversity.

About the descriptions, they have been a bit delayed due to exams I'm having. I will have the first version of the complete Fed list done this wednesday.

I dont think any ship u build will be unusable there will just be better technology available.

To be honest I'm ok with the ratio increase as long as there are distinct qualities to each class of ship that set it apart from the others. Because in botf 1, the game suffered from a huge lack of ship diversity, there was never a reason to build a Command Cruiser when you had the options of Heavy Cruisers. The command cruisers never had an ability that set it apart. I personally would like to see each class of ship get their own special battle maneuvers unique to the class. For instance the Defiant would have something like a "Duck and Dodge" maneuver, that... well.. would look exactly like the Defiant looked when it attacked the Borg cube in the battle of Sector 001 (First Contact). Enemy weapons would have a harder time getting weapons lock, and let's say that for balance sake, the Defiant won't be able to deliever it's full weapon potential compared to if it had Charged the enemy. Command Cruisers should have an ability along the lines of improving fleet co-ordination, something that botf1 had stated, but never implemented. Therefore a fleet full of Command Cruisers would be well co-ordinated (possibly represented by slight increases in speed,attack, and defense) , but would lack the true firepower of Heavy Cruisers (no command ability, but more weapon power). This would encourage players to mix the two.

In essence a well diversified fleet should always have a huge huge huge advantage over an enemy fleet of say, all Heavy Cruisers. I don't know if anyone here has played games like Starcraft or Warcraft III, but I'd like to use Blizzard as a company that truly knows the meaning of balance. In Warcraft III all 3 races are highly unique, as in non-carbon copies of each other; which is what Botf2 is aiming for (meaning you don't see the Cardassians with a Galaxy class, they've got the Keldon or what not). And every race has a wide range of units available, when you mix the units you combine their power to become much more stronger compared to if you had just built masses of the same unit. 40 Human Knights against 20 Orc Grunts wouldn't stand a chance if those Grunts had 20 Head Hunter spear throwers to back them up. Those Head Hunters piercing damage has a bonus attack against the Heavy armor of the Knights. But if those Knights faced 40 Head Hunters alone, or 40 Orc Grunts alone, they'd win. And that's what botf1 was. Regardless of what ships you built it was always just 40 Orc Grunts against 40 Knights, whoever had more units, or teched up the tree faster would win. Tactics never came into play.


By the way, has anyone played (or knows anything about) Galactic Civilizations II:DreadLords? It's the newest 4x (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate- same genre as Botf) strategy game on the market and I think it has a lot of base game qualities that everyone involved in Botf2 should know about. As far as gameplay goes, it's got very well thoughtout concepts that I'm not exactly saying should be implemented (the Tech tree for GalCiv is absolutely monstrous) but it's always good to look at another source of input. I'll make another thread to go over the details of the game if anyone's interested.

I agree with what you say, Perry, except the bit about the Command Cruisers not having an effect on the battlefield in BOTF.

If you have a bunch if ships on the battle field against another bunch of ships, then all your ships would simply fire their weapons and hope for the best.

If there is a Command Cruiser present though, then your ships will shoot to hit, rather than shoot and hope for the best. This is easiest to see when your ships start firing torpedoes - your uncommanded ships will fire everything they've got, but if a Command Cruiser is present, they will fire enough to take out the ships they are targeting, and that's it.

Try it yourself if you don't believe me. Save your game right before a big battle, then play it first without the Command Cruiser, then reload the saved game, and play it with the Command Cruiser. It might be just one additional ship, but the improved outcome of the battle should far exceed this minor change.

The reason why Command Cruisers were pointless is because the Heavy Cruisers had the same capability as the Command Cruisers - afterall, they were often simply larger, uprated, versions of the Command Cruisers.

I agree that in BOTF2, this blurring should not happen. Command Cruisers should be able to co-ordinate fleets, but Heavy Cruisers should not. Otherwise, Heavy Cruisers would be better named as Heavy Command Cruisers, but that's being pedantic...

I agree, Shallow and Pedantic.

(lol, family guy quote)

But yeah, I apologize for my assumption that Command Cruisers didn't do anything special in Botf1. I did notice some battles where ships only fired the required amount of torpedoes but I never connected the dots to the ships involved.


So does anyone have any ideas about what kind of maneuvers each ship class would be unique for? Like..

Defiant (fast destroyer class) - Duck and Dodge fighting borg in First Contact something or other maneuver.

Light Cruisers - Flanking maneuvers?

Command Cruisers - Group Attack: co-ordinating individual ships to group together with other ships to form just enough firepower to destroy an individual enemy ship, maximizing the fleets full weaponry potential. Sort of like ganging up on individual enemy ships to destroy them faster, like select targeting in Armada.

and so on for each ship class, in any case using these special maneuvers for each class would help increase one ship attribute, while reducing another. So a Defiant ducking and dodging would fire with less than full power weapons, a Light Cruiser flanking an enemy would have reduced shield power because of the high impulse engine/thruster use, a Command cruiser while co-ordinating other ships would have a reduced attack rate of it's own because the tactical officer is busy... etc.

If you wanted ships to have the maximum attack and defense potential, then you would just Charge or some other boring command :p

Well I think this certainly needs more discussion - in fact, it is worthy of its own thread.

We'll need to ask Jig about it though, since he will be the one who has to program all this additional stuff.

Unique moves would be great, and BOTF did have it's own unique moves - they were just very few in number. Command ships Circled whilst Fast Attacks Harried, Command ships could Assault, whilst Fast Attack couldn't...

If you check out your files, you'll find that there are pictures for moves that were never implemented in the game. I've posted these pics before in another thread.

Anyways, we won't be able to decide on what moves *could* be possible until we know what classes will be available in the game. We already have a shiplist, but Dafedz is currently reworking it, so we might find that there are new or altered classes.

Until then, there isn't any point in creating any moves. Plus we would need Jig's approval, of course...

The idea of unique moves would be interesting, but I think you could finely tune the ships to unique abilities much more easily. Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I see it there are basic classes of ships:

Medical/Triage
Transport
Colony
Scout/Surveyor/Probe
Frigate/Destroyer/Attack Ship
Heavy Destroyer
Escort
Cruiser/Battle Cruiser (Early command?)
Heavy Cruiser/Warhawk
Tactical Cruiser
Command/Explorer/Dreadnought/Warbird/Attack Cruiser/Battleship

Transport and colony ships I wouldn't bother with, except perhaps to add them as a negative to fleet speed. The others I would figure you could specialize by using different values for the following stats:

Maneuverability-chance to avoid incoming enemy weapon's fire, decreases attack accuracy when evading
Damage Reduction-reduces fleetwide damage or casualties
Accuracy-pretty self-explanatory, the chance to hit an enemy ship
Firepower
Shield Strength
Sensor Range-ability to detect enemy ships further away, earlier warning
Interception-chance to intercept and prevent a ship from escaping
Recharge rate-shields and weapons, although possibly split into two categories
Point-blank fire-ability to attack ships within say 500 meters
Ranged assault-attack from further away
Coordination-slight boost to all stats fleetwide


This way, you'd have it easily able to balance out and have specifics for your different ships. The figures would look something like this:

Medical/Triage-reduce fleet casualties/damage in battle by 15% at level 1, 20% at level 2, can be cumulative up to say 50%, balances out because these ships have essentially no firepower and weak shields

Transport-if anything, maybe a fleetwide damage reduction or increase to the chance to capture/salvage ships in combat, same percentages as medical

Colony-nothing in battle, except maybe drop fleetwide speed by 20% at level 1, 15% at level 2, 10% at level 3, same speed penalty could apply to Medical and Transport

Scout/Surveyor/Probe-minimal shield and firepower, maneuverability 3, recharge rate 2, sensor range 6

Frigate/Destroyer/Attack Ship-maneuverability 6, recharge 3, sensor range 3, interception 6, point-blank 7, shield and weapon strength 3, coordination 1, accuracy 2

Heavy Destroyer-maneuverability 8, recharge 5, sensor range 4, interception 8, point-blank 9, shield and weapon strength 4, ranged 2, coordination 1, accuracy 3

Escort-maneuverability 10, recharge 5, sensor range 3, interception 9, point-blank 11, shield and weapon strength 5, ranged 3, coordination 2, accuracy 2

Cruiser/Battle Cruiser (Early command?) man. 3, recharge 5, sensor range 3, interception 4, point-blank 3, shield and weapon strength 5, ranged 5, coordination 3 (5 if this is a command ship), accuracy 4

Heavy Cruiser/Warhawk-man. 5, recharge 7, sensor range 2, interception 3, point-blank 2, shield and weapon strength 7, ranged 7, coordination 1, accuracy 5

Tactical Cruiser-man. 6, recharge 8, sensor range 2, interception 4, point-blank 3, shield and weapon strength 8, ranged 6, coordination 0 or 1, accuracy 5

Command/Explorer/Dreadnought/Warbird/Attack Cruiser/Battleship-man. 2, recharge 10, sensor range 5, interception 5, point-blank 3, shield and weapon strength 7, ranged 5, coordination 6, accuracy 5

Of course, the coordination could only be cumulative to a certain extent, say 2 or maybe 3 command ships worth. The variable could alter a bit as the ships rise in tech level, like I mentioned with the medical, and the values I put in just came out of thin air. The point is simply to illustrate what each ship type would naturally be better at. Destroyers and the like would sacrifice accuracy, sensor range, and shield/weapon strength for maneuverability and close-quarters fighting strength whereas the larger ships would have greater accuracy, recharge, ranged attacks, and shield/weapon strength at the expense of maneuverability and close-quarters fighting. And, of course, you'll always want to have a command ship or two to grant the extra boost in coordination to your fleet. The noncombat ships I also added in as a means of reducing casualties and perhaps damage at the expense of fleetwide speed/maneuverability since your attack ships will need to protect these fragile ships.

Does this idea sound more balancing/acceptable, and I would think this would be a LOT easier to program than unique maneuvers for each ship or ship class.

Ritter, you exactly explained what I meant all along in this thread only better. As stated before, each ship has its own role in the fleet, though the current shiplist doesn't reflect that role. Things like this would add all the diversity we need in its own right.

You did forget one stat in your list, though. A while ago we've been talking about the possibility to scan nebulae, black holes, pulsars, etc, etc for research points and to find hidden things and such. If that is still going to be in, we need a stat called 'research'. Naturally, scouts and surveyors would be best in that while Heavy cruisers and destroyers fail in that area and the Defiant will have an astounishing value of 0.

After this has been implemented (which I very much advocate) I fail to see why we can't have some special moves for certain classes as well. While we don't have to have a special move for everything, some special classes might have one. A 'duck and dodge' maneuvre for the Defiant sounds good. A 'bombard' maneuvre for the steamrunner and Intrepid class for instance (using their Tri-Cobalt torpedoes as is canon, yet I don't know if those will be in), the Picard-maneuvre for the Galaxy, etc, etc.

Guys, I know you haven't been on the site for as long as me, but much of this conversation was actually done quite a long time ago. We ended up having to say that specific bonuses for each ship would be extremely difficult to program...plus some of the bonuses that we came up with were rediculous...

Like I said though, this is a new game with a new programmer, so there is a possibility that Jig will say yes. It's certainly worth considering, and would make battles more strategic, more purposeful, and just plain cooler.

...



You forgot the Prommie! 8O

Multi-Vector Assault Mode!

...I don't know if this is gonna be in the agme, but Gavin said he had programmed it into his game, so fingers crossed that Jig wil be able to program it as well.

...

Centurion, as far as I know, the Science bonus is still in the game. You'll also be able to build science stations in such sectors to gain a much higher (And longer lasting) research bonus.

Obviously Science station won't be your most powerful of stations though, so you will also have to think about defending it as well...

The Science stats haven't been included in Dafedz's current shiplist. I'll send him a PM to make sure he doesn't forget. I'll also PM Jig and get him to have a look at this thread.

At this instance I may renew my idea to paint the ship names (and their NCCs probably) on the hull. As I understand 3d-engines it should not be too difficult to have a shader adjusting the specific texture to add just a small "NCC 1701-E" at the right point of the saucer ^^

And this is related to this thread how..?



My bad... That's what the 'etc, etc' was for


Anyway, back to business, Matress, I fail to see why it would be difficult to program? Each individual ship has numerous of unique values. They all have unique speed values, weapons, shields, etc. I fail to see why these values can't be implemented allongside of it. You shouldn't see them all as specific bonusses to the ships, which they aren't. They are just the properties of the ships. Properties which make them realy unique. In the terms of programming I think they could work as simple modifiers (factors) to implement in various calculations. Again, these are not bonusses that could be rediculously exagerated. They are just properties of the ships that increase with tech level and vary per ship just as weapon damage and shield strength do now.

Well it's all up to Dafedz and Jig.

If they can be implemented as a calculation, then it will probably be workable.

I've sent a PM to Dafedz about it, and I included Ritter's stats as an example. Afterall - if the bonuses are included - he'll be the one that has to work out all the maths... 8O

We were about ship diversity, right? Well, in my opinion, a name on the ship's hull would add to the Trek-alike feeling every ship is some kind of individual, no matter if there are just 1892734 identical Niagara-class ships...

Thanks, Centurion. I figured sometimes a nice list helps clarify things. Since I put the thing together in about 10 or 15 mins., I'm sure that there are some things missing/needing adjustment. The science/research bonus haunted the back of my mind, but I was aiming more at combat stuff for the list and figured it wouldn't really go into that. (Responded the Oberth to the Neg'Var, "Let me finish my scans of this nebula, then I'll come over to your parlor.")

Plus, to be honest, I wasn't sure whether the science ships should have a higher research bonus than Explorers or vice-versa. Logically, a Galaxy class with a crew of over a thousand trained, capable officers and numerous dedicated scientific laboratories should have a higher research value than a tiny Oberth crewed by 20-some civilians or scientists, but the shows almost indicated otherwise. If the Explorers have as good or better scientific capability, though, then why would you waste any time with tiny little scout ships which specialize in being target practice for your enemies? In order to balance this, I was thinking that scout ships might have to be ridiculously cheaper than Explorers, or getting the bonus would take such a long dedication of time (you get a research bonus only once the survey is complete rather than per turn) that you wouldn't want to commit your more expensive capital ships for such a long time. Scouts I see as being virtually worthless except for surveying and the aforementioned target practice, so I'm honestly almost tempted to downgrade them to noncombatants, but I don't know if that will work out.

One other stat that I thought might be worth adding in is separating out speed from maneuverability. Man. stands for the chance to evade incoming fire, whereas speed would be more the rate at which the ship moves across the combat map--closing with the enemy, circling around the enemy, moving out of the system, and anything else I'm not thinking of right now. Obviously, Destroyers and Heavy Cruisers would be at the higher end of this, followed by Explorer/high-end Command, and finally Cruisers. Where Scouts would fit in I'm not sure, although I wouldn't think they'd be great at it.

The final concern that I have with doing this is a matter of balance. Obviously, the Federation is going to be the greatest recipient of these different advantages, possibly with the Defiant ending up as the most deadly sole warship in the galaxy barring ridiculously high-tech command ships. Should that be added to their higher research output and various other bonuses, they could end up being ridiculously overpowered. That would have to be addressed and balanced out somehow. Maybe Federation ships would have to be more expensive than any other race's ships with the exception of weak Scout/noncombatant ships?

to save me reading through all this (i`m knackered) tell me if i`m wrong, the gist of this would appear to be to give specific ships special moves like galaxy = picard manouvre the answer to that would be no, fast attacks will have the same sorta moves as in botf same with cruisers.

Yeah, that's basically what it is about, Jig.

It also moved on from that, as in giving the ships specific bonuses (Command ships have more accuracy than Destroyers, etc. etc.)

Obviously Dafedz is sorting all that stuff out though.

...

Ritter, as i've said before, much of this has been discussed previously. All those months ago, we decided that the bonus would be one-time, and would only come from completing a scan/survey. If you want a long-term bonus, you'll have to build a Science station in the sector.

I added a section to my starship info thread this morning, (Purely coincidental) which might be useful to you:

That was one idea, jig. The second, probably much easier to program in and more balanced out over the races, etc. is to extend the properties of each ship. Instead of having individual stats limited to number of phasers/torpedoes and their damage, shield and hull points and speed, we add a rang of other abilities that can vary per ship (to distinguish better between say, a cruiser and a destroyer. Abilities like maneuverablity, accuracy, point-blank damage, etc. Check the post of ritter on the previous page for more details.

That is more the issue at this point than the special maneuvres for some type of ships (which would still be fun if it were possible).

But it would be nice to have some kind of bonuses.
Like 9 hevy escorts haveing enemy fear factor +10. And when 30 Romulan Command ships and 30 Klingon Command ships and 40 Borg Cubes meet up with 9 Defiants. They all drop shields and surrender.

Just a thought.

gotcha, but that sort of stuff is being looked at by cpatain chao who is basicly makeing sure we have a good balance, fast attacks will of course be more manuverable in combat pm chao and ask him to look through your ideas.

At this point i am collecting data and getting up to speed and i understand what you are saying. In botf you built the biggest strongest ship usally wich left a whole list of ships unused.Currently in the staff room we are talking about firing arc ships speeds and attributes.Ill do my best in trying to make every ship have a usefull function.

Which is what i think was meant to be in botf, except it didn't quite work out

Can some one answer me on this one.
Dose the Defiant class has pulse or plain phasers mounted. I know that he has both but in BotF it only fired plain one. I like the pulse.

Pulses were NEVER in BOTF - but they will be in our game.

Jig has said that if we saw it in the films/series, then we will see it in the game. Obviously this doesn't apply to super-weapons like the Genesis probe or the Scimitar's kill-all weapon, but Phase Canons, Photonic Missiles, Phasers, Photons, Quantums, Plasmas, Pulse Canons, Disruptor Pulses, Disruptor beams and anything that i've forgotten will all be in the game.

The engine will also use particle effects, so instead of the weapons being flat and boring as in BOTF, the Torpedoes will spike and flash, and the beams will glow and have particle effects.

If hit, your ships will start to leak plasma and whatnot from their engines, and there will be several different damage textures for each ship, rather than one generic one to show increasing amounts of damage.

That sounds better than BOTF, doesn't it?

yea it does MOE but will you be able to have pluse on diffrent ships would it be posible to take others wepons and put them on ur ship ????? or is this not posibl3e