Ship Module thoughts

Ship Enhancements/Modules Ideas

Hi all,

This is just a post I wanted to make with ideas/feedback about the ship enhancements, which the developers were requesting feedback for. I'll try to structure my ideas in some kind of logical format, but I can't promise anything

Building up your ship with modules is a cool and thematic way to personalise your SC:O experience, and I'm a huge fan of it. I loved building the ship in SC2, although honestly it was a bit limiting - you would only put weapons (and there were only a couple of different types, which you upgraded to just do more damage) in specific slots, and then you would fill the other slots with your own preferred mix of crew, engines, cargo space, batteries etc. Did you want more crew or faster energy recharge, etc. It was fun but ultimately had not that many possibilities and I would wager that every single one of us had a pretty similar looking ship by the end of the game (or, hell, by about 1/2 or 2/3rds of the way through even).

How do you avoid ship uniformity? Easy, you provide a lot of options, and make sure players can't have all of them. They have to choose between the various options and work out what fole they want their ship to fill. That was the other problem with the ship in SC2 - in the early to mid game, you would build up a cool fleet of ships with you, and when you got into battles you would choose which ship you wanted to use (and which one would be best against the opponent, etc). But by the mid game and certainly in the late game your flagship was so utterly powerful with heavy hitting auto-aiming shots and point defense lasers, along with being fast and turning quickly that there was literally no reason to ever use a fleet ship again, you would just take your flagship into every fight. Arguably, you could have had no weapons and thus had more cargo space, and relied in melee ships to do your fighting with, but cargo space was so plentiful anyway there was no reason to do that.

So, hardpoints on the ship and modules that can snap op need to be designed witn this in mind. Ideally, a player should have to choose bertween a number of possible ship configurations:

Dreadnaught: Powerful weapons and decent defenses, but probably not very fast and with poor cargo space and lander capability etc

Cruiser: Midrange, has reasonable weapons and reasonable non-fighting capabilities (cargo space et al)

Explorer: Weak weapons (probably still some defense) but plentiful non-combatty options like huge cargo space, better ships comms, probably a lot faster etc. This ship would rely heavily on the attached fleet of fighters.

How do you achieve this while not actually having three different hulls? Easy, you design the modules around the concept. Heavy weapons are just that - they're heavy, so they take extra module slots, and they require more power and dynamo's to use them, so you will be forced to take more engines etc and less cargo pods. Likewise, exploration-geared modules like cargo pods, landers and such will be lighter and simpoly wont require the extra battery/engine modules, so there's extra space to squeeze even more of them in.

Assuming one of the design goals is to stick with the "two different weapon/defense systems" paradigm like SC1/SC2, we can work with that.

Possible "main weapon" modules.
These would tend to sit at the front/Nose of the ship and have a unique look each. Also, that wayu there is no way to have 2 of them
* Lasers (various powerups of this unit possible; split beams, pulse beams, etc
* Mass Drivers (again, different options such as larger loads which fire slower)
* Heat seekers (from one to three heat seekers depending on power up of the weapon)
* Boomers (such as a very hard hitting single shot like the Druuge)
* Cannon (rapid shooters that hit weakly but you're hitting often, e.g. Yehat)
* Grabbing arm that can then do direct damage (like zoqfotpik)
* Energy lash or energy eruption (like a whip, or maybe a bit like the Illwraith fire burst etc)

Possible Secondary Weapon Modules
These would tend to be secondary attacks and/or defenses and/or utility items
* Point Defense Lasers
* Anti-missile missiles
* One-man fighters (like Orz / Ur Quan)
* Minor secondary weapons
* Boosters (boost dynamo for sudden energy improverment for main weapon, boost speed etc)
* Cloaking device
* Teleporter (like Arilou)
* Drone launcher

Other Modules
These Are modules that may not have direct impact on fighting, but aid your ship in other ways
* More engines for power
* More cargo space
* More crew quarters
* Dynamos for energy refresh speed
* Extra landers for planetary exploration
* Sensor pods to improve ensing range (basic planet scans without having to be in orbit etc, info about systems before you enter them, etc)
* Communication pods which affect comms in some way? (translation?)
* Shields, or perhaps ablative armor to provide a gold sink?

Special Modules
SC1 had this great feature where you would find precursor enhancements, and one of the ships in your fleet could get that boost. Precursor crew pods so any ship could have the max number of crew, precursor power, etc. I would like to see that for the main ship in SC:O. The idea would be that during planetary exploration you would occasionally find special precursor modules for your ship that you could add. In keeping with the theme, these would tend to be better versions of other modules, so you might find engine modules that are as good as 2-3 "standard engine modules", or robotic pods that add "crew" for free (far more than a standard crew pod adds), harder ablative armor, better shield systems, special weapons you can't otherwise buy, drones that help you when fighting, that kind of thing. There could also be special modules you can't get anywhere else (like the long rumored cloaking device in SC2), or a module that makes a holographic ship beside yours so the enemy is unsure which one to shoot at, that kind of thing)

Hell, come up with a special precursor ship (I know that would be ship #15 and this may not be possible) that you can never build or buy in game, but occasionally you would find one crashed or stored on a planet and if you spend the money fixing it up, it's a special precursor built fighter ship to add to your fleet. Hell, I *really* like this idea.

Anyway, a lot/most of this is pretty obvious stuff maybe, I was just thinking about it a lot and thought I would put some thoughts down for people to mull over and comment on if you feel so inclined. The point to take away is that I don't want my ship in SC:O to look like everyone elses' by the midpoint of the game, and when I replay the game, I want to be able to design my ship in an entirely different way as this will affect my playstyle etc. Remember, in an RPG you build your character up different ways or in different classes, but in this kind of game, your ship is basically your character. Give us LOTS of options, and don't let us use all of them in any given playthrough.