Upgrades System

[TurboSlug22]

While I've heard some criticisms, I really enjoy the upgrades system in HS. It really lends for some great gameplay dynamics...

 

*Making the player feel like they can explore various item combinations.

*The above increases the scarcity of money.

*An exp system allows the joy of the game to unfold more steadily for the player by extending gameplay and giving the player more opportunities to spend more money in the meanwhile on other ships and etc thereby increasing player spending

*Very decent items are some of the first upgrades unlocked, the rest are specialty items that typically come with a penalty players can build ships around

 

I was talking with Spidernl - we were trying to think of a way to expand upon some of these nice aspects of upgrading and came up with some ideas that could be a lot of fun while still maintaining the desired gameplay dynamics in HS.

 

What do you guys think about making your purchases tweaks to your ship instead of outright items? So players would be buying modules to install in their ship. The module could be a gun, or it could be an item that affects guns. Each module would be of a certain class. Modules that affect guns would be in one class, modules that affect energy would be in another class etc... Each ship would be allowed a certain number of each class of module.

 

Here's the fun bit.. to make things interesting, each module also has an "Overhead" or an imaginary cost. So by example, we could say the warbird has "A 100 Mj powerplant" and each module would require a certain amount of power, so the player would have decide where to allocate this imaginary resource.

 

Each ship would have a limit to the number of each class of module they could mount.. So, using the 100mj powerplant, the warbird could equip modules in each of its 3 gun slots, 3 structure slots, 2 engineering slots etc..

 

The beauty here is that we can achieve the same settings in HS now with much more items and variety for players to play with.

 

Some ideas for modules:

 

*Stock Guns (Factory grade guns like those in HS now)[Gun class item requiring high Powerplant so you cant mount 2 on small ships, mounting 2 on big ships = turret]

*Gun class accessories (Heatsink for slightly increased rate of fire with penalty)(RamScoop for increased powerplant instead of gun bonus)

 

Essentially we're taking the same upgrades, cutting them up into bits and pieces and letting players mix and match them on their ships more. We also get this whole new concept PowerPlant - and we can create a whole class of items that give bonuses to that... And again, just to be clear, that affects the quality of modules that you can fit on your ship - more powerplant, better item combos... Too many slots devoted to powerplant, ship loses in actual performance. Players can buy and sell to find the right balance.

 

I dunno how close this is to spidernl's idea but we were talking about this earlier, hopefully he'll post his thoughts too but as far as manpower is concerned, spider says he'd like to make this idea happen.

 

What do you guys think?

[spidernl]

*Stock Guns (Factory grade guns like those in HS now)[Gun class item requiring high Powerplant so you cant mount 2 on small ships, mounting 2 on big ships = turret]

 

I never intended to do this, by the way. Mainly because I want to try to build a new item set using existing resources. As far as I know there are no modules in HS that would easily allow me to automatically turn a duplicate item into a turret or something.

 

Here's the fun bit.. to make things interesting, each module also has an "Overhead" or an imaginary cost. So by example, we could say the warbird has "A 100 Mj powerplant" and each module would require a certain amount of power, so the player would have decide where to allocate this imaginary resource.

 

Actually, I'd call powerplants "Reactors". Although that'll confuse people for a while, it should make sense eventually. You could also have reactor upgrades that take slots you could've also used for other items, but that would allow you to use more power-sucking versions of other item types.

Reactors as they are now would be replaced by generators, which would also be modular. Increasing energy, recharge and such seperately.

Edited May 20, 2010 by spidernl

[Samapico]

I'd call your generators 'shields' ... cause that's what they do. You lose your shields, you die

 

But I like the idea of reactor energy management... much like heat management in MechWarrior games. Or more like tonnage management, actually... You can have a bunch of huge weapons, or focus on a larger engine, or having more armor... etc.

 

Such as system would definitely add much more variety, because items of a same category would NOT be balanced by themselves, but the overall builds should be balanced.

[»D1st0rt]

I remember a couple of years back Cerium and I and probably some other people tossed around the idea of having items more tied to physical characteristics like power and mass and thrust and things of that sort. For example the Warbird could have capacity to hold 1000 kg of equipment, energy/recharge would be calculated based on the reactor load, etc. In theory even with an inferior engine a lighter ship would be able to outmaneuver the same hull if it had more stuff in it. Of course coming up with the physical model and balancing it would be considerably more complicated than even our current system.

[kid]

I remember a couple of years back Cerium and I and probably some other people tossed around the idea of having items more tied to physical characteristics like power and mass and thrust and things of that sort. For example the Warbird could have capacity to hold 1000 kg of equipment, energy/recharge would be calculated based on the reactor load, etc. In theory even with an inferior engine a lighter ship would be able to outmaneuver the same hull if it had more stuff in it. Of course coming up with the physical model and balancing it would be considerably more complicated than even our current system.

 

Or you could just add negative speed and thrust to better items, like resonance, tokamak, and dual core.

[»D1st0rt]

I think such a system would be so fundamentally different that none of the items would exist as they currently do

[Samapico]

Indeed

 

 

But that whole thing made me think about how cool a MechWarrior themed zone could be, now that ASSS is around... Some neat things could be done (i.e. heat, mech setup, tonnage limitations)

mmhmm

And yes, I love mechwarrior. And Civilization V is coming soon. Yeah.

[»Purge]

I'd definitely love to play a MechWarrior zone...