eduty

Agreed. Since the bonus would be in all rotational directions, it would make sense to reduce the rad/s gained to ensure the same benefit by volume that's currently in place. This suggestions is just really nitpicky/thematic in application. And the rad/s should still gain a benefit by being as close to center-of-mass as possible.

@Vis What you've essentially discovered is that missile launchers are best paired with old school dive bomber tactics. Based on that information, I'd almost want to see a significant damage boost to the launcher, making them a high risk, high reward weapon and include the bit about inheriting the firing ship's speed to the weapon's description. Or perhaps make launcher damage proportional to the projectile's speed up to a maximum amount of damage per shot. I'm with @TenguKnight that the launcher likely needs a relatively high shield penetration rating to make the weapon worthwhile, particularly in the late game. If balanced correctly, launchers could be a weapon suited for fighting some of the larger, slower moving enemies (pirate motherships, pariah, wormhole guardian, enemy stations) where a strategy of boosting towards the enemy and unloading until the turrets overheat would be highly effective. Building a ship to optimize these bombing runs and executing the maneuver sounds like a lot of fun too.

The changes to the hyperspace function in the 2.0 update makes this an even more attractive feature. Since an enemy ship has to boost for a certain period of time to jump, the player is incentivized to chase and shoot out a starship's engines to keep it from prematurely exiting the battle. The player is also further encouraged to aim and destroy enemy turret blocks to increase their chances of securing at least some loot before an aggressor limps out of the sector.

One of the greatest restrictions on the early game is the necessity of a radar upgrade with a relatively large deep space scan radius. A player can be off to a relatively slow and dull start if they're unable to find adequate radar upgrades from equipment docks or salvage. To give the player a more consistent game play experience, to get folks exploring faster, and incentivize purpose built scouting vessels - I propose the addition of a sensor block that increases the player's radar and deep scan range. I would reuse or base the formula on the hyperspace block with the deep space scan replacing the jump range. If we wanted to get fancy, the sensor block could also provide a minimal object detection range. Visually, I envision the sensor block to have white illuminations like a generator or energy container in a pattern of concentric rings (or octagons) on each of the cube's surfaces.

Pretty simple and to the point, I am proposing that the existing engine mods provide proportional bonuses to braking and rotation speed, or that an inertial dampener efficiency boosting module, thruster efficiency boosting module, and a gyro efficiency boosting module be added to the game. For an all navigational stats upgrade module, the starship's acceleration, max velocity, rotational speeds (yaw, pitch, roll), and braking speed are boosted by 5% per tier, for a maximum 35% bonus with a legendary tier upgrade. A functional block specific upgrade modules (either inertial dampeners, thrusters, or gyros) increases the bonus of those blocks by 8% for a maximum 56% bonus with a legendary tier upgrade.

As the title implies, this suggestion is to remove the current manually placed direction for gyros, and instead have the gyro block apply a bonus to all rotational speeds proportional to the gyro blocks mass across a particular axis. This would be a more accurate representation of how an actual gyroscopic system would operate, with its greatest radius of rotation imparting the most rotational force.

Well, fellahs. It's not exactly as written, but seems like it's got the spirit. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/445220/view/2960535943803450527

At the completion of a jump into an unexplored sector, the sector loads with the camera position 5km off an oblique angle from where the ship's center of mass will spawn. From this angle, the player gets to watch their piloted ship jump into the sector. At the completion of the jump, the sector coordinates and name (if there is one) fade in as large white text in the upper right area of the screen, just below the menu icons. The sector coordinates and name then fade out and the camera pans to its standard position behind the player controlled ship. This purely aesthetic start to the "discover" of a new sector and its contents can be toggled on and off in the options menu.

I like this restriction, although the naval warfare aficionado in me wants to keep the volume requirements. In my head, very low tech hangar decks would have ordinance carts, lifts, winches, hoists, and require more people to handle the repair and rearming operations for anything in the bay. This takes up a lot of space. I envision more technologically advanced hangars would have more advanced robotics and conveyor systems that stow into the walls, floor, and ceiling, with the deck crews essentially writing arming and repair protocols for the robotic force as opposed to turning wrenches themselves. It could just be me, but it has always struck me as odd that you need a full on captain for a ship with a handful of people. Perhaps a better mechanism would be to require the captain after the ship hits a certain crew total. As for the abandon ship mechanism, I had assumed that a player paying attention to their hull HP would deploy any stored craft before they were destroyed, or start dismissing them and jumping them out of the hostile sector. The damage to the stored ships is probably an unnecessary expectation surrounding how fighters or fast patrol craft are handled in other tabletop naval/space combat games.

To produce a more thematically consistent gameplay experience, the way in which hangars, fighters, and command of ships not currently piloted by the player are changed. Hangars are updated to "store" any object in Avorion that fits its capacity and fits within the hangar opening. A ship's hangar capacity is a percentage of the combined volume of all hangar blocks on the ship. Hangars made from "better" materials utilize a greater percentage, as the hangar's systems can be further miniaturized and allow more space for an object to fit within. This comes with the recommendation that hangars are available in all materials, with iron granting capacity equal to 50% of its volume and each subsequent material adding an 8% increase - all the way up to 90% for an Avorion hangar. For a ship to "land" on a carrier with a hangar, the carrier must have hangar capacity equal to or greater than the total volume of the landing ship, and the hangar opening's height and width must be greater than the landing ship's height and width. The player orders a ship to land on a carrier by taking control of the carrier and issuing the "enter hangar" command to the appropriate ship. If the volume and size requirements are met, the selected ship will fly towards one of the carrier's exposed hangars and despawn at a short distance from the hangar opening. Ships that have successfully landed on a carrier are bound to a launching hangar on that carrier, and cannot land on another carrier until dismissed from the carrying ship. This essentially removes the need to construct fighters from turrets at fighter factories, as each "fighter" is essentially the same as any other Avorion ship. So as not to be a disincentive to creating multiple small craft - ships no longer require a captain to receive AI commands. Captains need only be assigned for their unique captain bonuses, and are entirely optional. Ships will still require command crew, such as sergeants, lieutenants, etc. based on their crew populations. The main tab of the ship menu now assigns a key binding to any exposed hangars, similar to how the game currently operates torpedo launchers and turrets. Outside of the menu, the hangar is displayed on the HUD with the other key bindings. Right-clicking on a hangar gives the player access to the hangar's commands: attack target, defend target, mine, salvage, and repair. If the hangar is active and the player presses the keyboard key bound to hangar launching - all craft assigned to and currently stored within the hangar will launch. If the hangar is empty and active, pressing the key bound to hangar launching will recall all bound craft to that hangar. Craft that are in a ship's hangar are displayed on a tab in the ship's menu where the fighter tab was previously located. The new hangar tab displays all the ships in the carrier's hangar similar to how ships are presented in the fleet tab of the player menu. The hangar tab also displays the carrier's maximum hangar capacity and its current utilization. Ships on the fleet tab that are bound to a carrier have an icon indicating that they are currently on the carrier, and display the bound carrier's name, a small thumbnail, and the carrier's current sector. Each ship on the hangar tab is assigned to an exposed hangar from a drop down menu below the thumbnail of the ship. Adjacent to the drop down is a button to initiate the transfer of crew and cargo between the carrier and the ship. To the right where you'd normally find the "delete ship" option for a destroyed ship, the player has the option to dismiss the ship from the hangar altogether. Doing this immediately "launches" the ship from the hangar and unbinds it from the carrier. As pilots are no longer necessary, pilot personnel are replaced with "deck crews" that service ships in the hangar. The number of deck crews required on a ship is proportional to its hangar capacity. A ship in a hangar repairs its hull and shields 15% faster thanks to the work from the deck crews. Overstaffing the deck crews can enhance that repair bonus to 20%. That means that a ship in a hangar with its maximum mechanic bonus will repair its hull 150% faster than normal. New upgrades can increase hangar capacity (same amount per rarity as a percentage based cargo upgrade) and the deck crew repair rate (same bonus per rarity as a regen boost shield booster). New transporter software can be installed that removes the height and width requirements from landing a ship on the carrier. If a ship bound to a hangar is destroyed, it is treated as a regular destroyed ship. It is immediately dismissed from the carrier's binding and can be restored at a repair dock using a reconstruction token. If the carrier is destroyed, all craft in its hangar are immediately dismissed at 50% HP and at the start of their shield regeneration cycle. These ships spawn in whatever space is available around the destroyed ship. At this point, it's probably a good idea for the player to enter the strategy menu, select all the ships that just spawned/escaped the destruction of the carrier, and order them away from the conflict.

Easily implemented as just a percent change with different modifiers. So say each faction has a base chance to run and each ship has a modifier based on its role. So a military vessel has a lower chance to flee than a civilian loader, etc.

It would be nice if the ancient gates were also a different color or had a special icon. Aside from the long line, their presence is not always apparent from the galaxy map.

The current ship destruction and reconstruction option, while convenient, misses an opportunity for more immersive play and additional faction quests. The proposed would be a significant overhaul to reconstruction tokens and the consequences for losing a ship. When a player ship is destroyed, a certain amount of its crew, cargo, upgrades, and turrets are spawned as collectible items in a random, empty sector within 2 sectors where the player ship was destroyed. The number of crew and items recovered is determined by the game difficulty. This simulates the crew abandoning ship and escaping in drone sized escape pods. The sector shows up on the player map as a green blip with an exclamation mark that identifies it as a distress signal. When the player visits the distress sector with their lost crew and items, they will find everything floating in space for collection not far from where they exited hyperspace. The player is incentivized to have ships with spare crew and cargo capacity for these recovery missions. Additionally, if a flight recorder block was on the ship when it was destroyed, the player can repair the derelict hull as if it were an abandoned wreck. Ships recovered in this way become playable at 10% HP and immediately go through a hyperspace cool down and shield regeneration cycle. All the blocks lost during the event that destroyed the vessel are still missing, but can be restored with a "repair missing blocks only" command in the build menu. The derelict will also be bereft of crew, meaning the player will have to quickly add mechanics or suffer the eventual hull HP depletion from having an insufficient crew. Alternatively a player can pay a repair dock for a salvage operation. This replaces the current reconstruction token system, and the player pays a fee proportional to the number of crew and items for the operation. The salvage operation takes 1 minute of real time and ends with the previously destroyed ship dropping out of hyperspace in the sector with the hired repair dock. The salvaged ship is fully restored with whatever number of crew and items are recovered at that difficulty level. Distress signal sectors may now contain similar loot piles in addition to the standard distress signal sector encounters. This simulates the player coming upon and rescuing the life pods of a recently destroyed ship. Repair docks may also give quests to perform the whole salvage cycle for a faction ship. To complete the mission, the player jumps to a sector to find an abandoned wreck. The mission reward is proportional to how well crewed and armed the ship is by the time the player returns it to the repair dock, with the monetary reward equal to the total cost of the crew, ship, turrets, and upgrades on the recovered wreck when the ship is turned in. The mission will also award a turret or an upgrade of 1 tier rarity greater than what was equipped on the ship when completed. This is a lucrative way to earn credits, while also a new way to potentially exchange an unwanted upgrade or turret for something better.

As the title implies, I would like to propose system upgrades for assembly and hangar blocks to further specialize carriers. Productions upgrade: adds 1 additional simultaneous production per tier. Production efficiency: provides a 5% production power bonus per tier. Power consumption scales with increase. Mech link upgrade: increases fighter capacity by 5% per tier. Power consumption scales with increase. Fighter booster packs: increases fighter speed by 5% per tier. Power consumption scales with increase. Flight simulator: increases pilot XP gain by 5% per tier.

I really enjoyed your posts and reading the well thought out responses. However, as another IT professional, I feel a bit for the game devs in attempting to parse this out. So, in an attempt to be useful, I've attempted to condense your points and achieve your goals with simple solutions. 1. SHIP SCALES Very large starships have a disproportionate advantage in terms of maneuverability, overall acceleration, and survivability. Having one sure solution to every problem, build it bigger, lowers the incentive and enjoyment to explore other aspects of Avorion. This issue can be mitigated by refining the diminishing returns on engines and shield generator blocks, so that vessels over a certain volume benefit more from their added modules, and not from their system volume alone. Consider introducing a "shield bleed" mechanic, where some percentage of weapon damage always penetrates the shields and strikes the hull. NOTE: Based on my several playthroughs, I think that sweet spot is around the 7-8 slot range. You can complete all Xsotan artifact missions and breach the core comfortably on Veteran difficulty with a well equipped 7 slot vessel. 2. FIGHTER DEFENSE Fighters with ace pilots are nigh invincible. Modify the current dodge chance so that a fighter's dodge chance is never 100%. Fighters given the "defend" command for a vessel should operate as point defense against incoming fighters and torpedoes. NOTE: PDCs can likely be simplified with carriers capped at a certain number of fighters, and starships capped at a certain number of PDC or anti-fighter turrets. Rather than track torpedo or fighter HP, destruction is based on a "roll" modified by the PDC's and fighter/torpedo's stats. Fighters/torpedoes have 3 states: approaching, attacking, and retreating. For fighter/torpedo defense one of three outcomes occur: * the fighter/torpedo wins and gets to make its strafing run against the target. A fighter gets to advance to the firing state (at which point it fires) and a torpedo achieves impact * stalemate, the fighte/torpedo dodges, does not get to fire, and has to circle back for another pass * the fighter loses, and is destroyed A starship with the maximum number of anti-fighter/torpedo weapons at the maximum material, quality, and tech level should reliably eliminate all fighters/torpedos of the same material, quality, and tech level. Anti-fighter turrets have the maximum benefit against fighters, while PDCs are at maximum benefit versus torpedos. 3. FIGHTER TYPES Rebalance fighter stats based on size. Right now, smaller is better to save on hangar space, but larger fighters should have a damage output that scales with their volume. This adds variety to your fighter squadrons, opening up the possibility for "bombers" and "heavy strike craft". 4. WEAPON TYPE BALANCE Rebalance rail gun range or damage to increase the viability of other weapon loadouts. Increase range of lasers to have a valid, long-range energy weapon besides lightning turrets. 5. ENEMY FLEET COMPOSITION We're headed in the right direction with the current enemy ships and behaviors. It would benefit pirate fleets if they had dedicated repair ships.