Associated Fleet

Yeah, I had a similar idea in a previous thread, although in reference to alternate play modes in a melee side-game. Basically treating your ship roster similarly to your inventory screen in something like Diablo 3, where not everything in your inventory is the same size and larger assets take up multiple slots.

SC2 melee had only a very rudimentary system of point values for building teams, and you would have to try to match the point values manually yourself to create a fair balance between teams, if that was a priority. Having a visual representation of fleet size and an imposed handicap based on style of play is a lot more intuitive for building teams of ships if you only have a limited amount of space to allocate.

I'm going to caution about reading to much into the rejected image. That was an early art style exploration nothing more. 

^ But we like the concept...

Don't get me wrong, it is a very nice art piece, but it fails on many many levels and just isn't right for Star Control. 

It's not the alien or art I'm referring to. I don't like the alien design either!  It's the top right corner of the art, where it shows your fleet arranged in a Diablo style inventory system. It's like the modern point system from super melee! Bring along 4 badasses or 15 relative weaklings and is a great way to handle the issue! 

^ Good idea. 

Quoting Hunam_, reply 6

Reduced 71%

Original 443 x 615

^ Good idea. 

CORRECTO!

While we're on the subject of fleets and motherships...

I'd like to be able to upgrade my fleet ships past their stock abilities. Please let us find artifacts that increase ship thrust speeds, turning speeds, weapon damage, etc. I enjoyed piloting a Vux ship that was souped up by Precursor artifacts in SC1. I missed that in SC2. It was kind of dull to have stock ships in the fleet.

Literally NEVER used them, save for the very beginning (when the Precursor Vessel was too sloooooow) and the final battle. Not even for fun! Always more efficient to use my tricked out flagship!

I have to say, though, I'm fully against small, incremental stat upgrades to ships. If I find an artifact that increases VUX laser power by 10%, I will be so disappointed.

But, give me an artifact that adds two side-lasers to turn me into the VUX spinning ninja star of doom, I will be ALL OVER THAT.

I want to address two things you said...

1. Precursor Ship

I know you liked the tricked out Precursor ship. It was pretty overpowered. I didn't even have to try to kill the enemy. I just held down the fire button and let my turrets do the work. The ramp-up was to get to that point, and once you were there, the game became easy.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing... But having only one option in the SP campaign was kind of boring. What was the point of liberating all those races when your main ship was all you were going to use for the rest of the game? (And what was the point of liberating the remaining races when the first race you liberated (Pkunk) were excellent at taking out the Sa'Matra?)

By the end of the game, I want to be ultra-powerful, but I don't want to be forced into a single ship loadout path because that's the only option.

2. Incremental Upgrades

I agree with you that a 10% boost to weapon damage is trivial. You'd have to have a weapon capable of killing 5 crew in order to see an extra 6th perish. The Precursor artifacts in SC1 were much more powerful. I think they may have doubled the attributes. I remember the ones that boosted maneuverability were critical for the sluggish ships in the armada. These are the types of upgrades I want to see. Give me something I can notice without being a bean counter.

I agree with the idea that the Precursor flagship became overpowered in SC2 in the late game, however that was only because the level of challenge basically hit a plateau once you had all of the Melnorme combat technology equipped. You could take out anything with little effort and the Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah ships did not become more powerful or cunning in order to compensate and maintain their threat level against you.

But what if the level of challenge continued to escalate as your ship got more powerful? For all the things SC2 got right, this is something it never did. What if your enemy steps up their game as well, and suddenly the ultra-powerful flagship you thought was unstoppable was suddenly subject to new forms of attack by multiple ships simultaneously?

Or perhaps enemies begin utilizing different attack methods against you with more powerful weapons or with equally powerful ships that bring you back down to the same level? You'd have to adapt your play style to new challenges and would never feel safe.

I think there are many ways to keep players from simply maxing out "one ship to rule them all" and I would like to see it done this way. I don't think the flagship should ever become so overpowered that the game ceases to be a challenge. By the same token, this should apply to modifications made to fleet ships as well.

You misunderstand, @Ibnobody! I was super agreeing with you! Stardock needs to do SOMETHING about the sidekick ships because I literally never found a reason to use them before! I WANTED to, but the flagship was too OP... so, we're in agreement, big time! 

I agree, I think finding artifacts that upgrade stock ships would be a great nod to SC1.  If so I think only allowing one particular ship not every ship there after of that type, so as to form an attachment to that particular ship much like Captain Fwiffo if you will.

I'm in favor of going one step further: it bugged me a little that there was only ever one type of spaceship per alien race. Even if they look the same, I'd expect it to be possible to have different ship loadouts (and I also do not want a case where a new better design supersedes a prior design - the variations should factor into my playstyle, or what I'm trying to defeat, not be a ramp up in power).

That's a cool idea, but there's no need to dilute the experience in this way. Maybe if there were only 3 or 4 races in the game, you'd need different ships within the same race to accomplish functions. That's how it worked in Galactic Civilizations, right? You're fighting against 2 opponents, it wouldn't make sense for them to each only have one ship type. So each race had to diversify in order to win against any other race.

But the beauty of Star Control is in the fact that there will be 20+ races each with a unique ship - and in conjunction with that, coordinating which ship to take on which enemy. It's a game of chess, and that's half the fun.

The chess analogy is actually perfect - it's not necessary for SOME bishops to move diagonal and OTHER bishops move forward and backward... that's what the ROOK is for! If every piece would get to move all over the place in several different methods, differing from piece to piece... it would really just be a whole bunch of Queens on the board. It would lose its focus.

Don't you remember? In Star Control II... you knew what you were up against when the lime green dreadnaught appeared... you know what action to take, how to fight it and how screwed you were. Same goes for when you set a course for the VUX system. You knew what ships to bring and how to outfit your flagship for maximum effect.

..... only to show up and find a bunch of weird missile-launching, blaster shooting VUX ships, and not a laser or limpet in sight?? No thank you.

There's a ton of races with unique ships to serve the purpose of diversifying the combat experience. Multiple ship types in such a crowded cast of aliens would just be redundant.

Now don't get me wrong - I still want the aliens and there ships to be the same "technology", just somewhat different. For example:

The VUX limpets could either reduce turn rate, or acceleration, depending on loadout.

The Ur-Quan fighters could either be the little fighters, or kamikazes (don't survive, but does sizable burst damage).

The earthling ship can either have massive missile and point-defense laser; or massive laser and point-defense mirv rockets (the difference being that massive laser is relative short range compared to massive missile, and mirv rocket defense has slower fire than point-defense laser but a bit larger range).

In other words same, but different. If nothing else, I'd hope to see these kinds of unique variations available as special rewards, even if only in one ship (rather than as a fleet loadout option).

Btw. what about introducing at least several unique ships for the main game? In SC2 we had only Sa-Matra. Would be nice (not for melee) to have some unique ships, stations, battle platforms, space monsters who knows what.

^ As mini-bosses. yes. I'd love to have those and figure out how and which alien ship to beat them with.

Ya! That ties in perfectly with my suggestion for action set piece

Exactly, like beefed-up regular ship with changed textures to signify their uniqueness  (something like Admiral ZEX intruder) and, please-please, some unique boss ships-platforms-stations-monsters to spice up our life

+ We do not know if there will be spheres of influence in new SC, but if there are, then it would be nice to see ships of aliens leaving their own sphere of influence for some reason (think ZFP encounter from SC2)

Lots of great ideas here!  I do like the realism of having multiple ships for every race but agree with the fact that if you have more than about 10 races it starts getting really complex really quickly.  I'm not so sure that I like the idea of enemy ships being customized though.  Just from a visual design perspective not knowing what to expect when you see an enemy (eg is this Earthling Cruiser going to be the missile shooting kind or the laser shooting kind?) feels like it would make for frustrating gameplay. Though I guess you could make modified ships visually distinct, to take a cue from the infamous Black Spathi Squadron.  

Having your own fleet be customizable does seem like a neat idea, and would encourage players to use a greater variety of ships instead of just having a couple of optimal all-around ones that can take down anything.  Miniboss encounters like a ZEX's modified Intruder type of battle are also an idea that I agree with very much, even if those ships wind up not being usable in the campaign by the player.  Or maybe they could be persuaded to join your fleet, so that you could have a fleet of ships that are more unique than just having different names. 

I agree with those who don't want to see small incremental improvements in ships.  In this arcade type of environment more dramatic improvements are more appropriate.  For example, instead of the 10% damage increase you might get in a flight sim in this kind of game you uprgade to multifire instead, and shoot 3 shots instead of one (or something like that).  If there are going to be ship uprgades, they should be more along these lines than minor stat increases.

You made it in Kavik_Kang!? A little late is better than never! Nice work!

Anyway, this is a good idea, but please for the love of God, these upgrades are starting to sound like upgrades from the Raiden games! Please Stardock PLEASE don't give us little floating, senseless baubles that give us spread shot for no reason. That type of thing doesn't belong in Star Control!

For me I would love a game where you can evolve your ship in the way you like it.

For instance I loved the dynamics of a very old and now gone mmorts called shattered galaxy.  your player had the following attributes

Tactics :- allowed you to control more units

Clout :- allowed you to upgrade units aka mk1mk2, which basically upgraded the baseline stats speed etc before equipment.

Education :- is your research and allowed you to equip better weapons, armour, engines. Scanners, new power sources

mech apt: generally used to improve weight on units, equipping more of the specialised equipment means heavier weighted items can be equipped.

Now what made it unique is you are limited in # of points you can spend in the 4 attributes.

E.g. maxing tactics meant you had upto 12 units (minimum 6 at lowest lvl) but meant you had limited points or the weapons armour, or Mk version so you basically a hunter class and swarm the enemy, but generally each unit is alot weaker in stats aka, health and armour.

Maxing Clout allowed you to use the highest Mk version so faster unts, alot better default tags aka tank type, but due to low tactics you only use 6 units.

Hopefully everybody gets the idea of the above, but obviously this wouldn't work here due to

# of races would make so many variations be impossible to balance correctly.

Balancing enemy strength while progressing the game, (don't want certain build to be op while others may struggle.

But it would be cool if some of the above can be used or evolved to fit star control in new way to give us unique builds, unique gameplay which would give the game extra playability, and changing it with a different game style, swarm tactics to the technologically to out lasting the opposition etc.

 edit to correct errors stupid surface tablet lagging bad...

Yeah I agree. The Precursor relics were items that you had to hunt down on the starmap to find. (Though, the starmap was relatively small since SC1's focus was on strategy.) I wouldn't want them to be as plentiful as +x magic weapons in any Faerûn/Forgotten Realms D&D game, I'd want them to be rare.

The best part of exploration, in my opinion, is finding epic loot.