[Ship class? Frigate / Corvette / Battleship?]

Perhaps the simplest system would be this.

 

First, choose you ships role.  This would be one of four things:

Starship, general purpose.

Warship, focused on armor and shields or engine/thruster power and shields.

Freighter, focused on cargo space.

Carrier, still a warship, but a large enough hanger overrides it into the carrier role.

 

There may be some other roles you can build for, but I'm having trouble thinking of them right now.  Like, I kind of wanted to split warship into slow/armored warships and fast/light armed warships, but at the end of the day those are both still just survival strategies that somewhat accomplish the same thing through different means.

 

Next, assign a material designation for the ship's type.

Ir for Iron, Ti for Titanium, Na for Naonite, Tr for Trinium, Xa for Xanion, Og for Ogonite, and Av for Avorion.

 

Then, assign a number equal to the number of system slots and add it to the ship's type.

 

Last, pick a class name.  What we've actually been discussing in this topic are ship types/roles.  A ship's class is actually specific to a particular build.

 

Now, put all that together in this order, ship class, ship type (material code)-(system number), ship role.

 

So if I had an Avorion tier warship that had 12 slots and I wanted to call it the Warspite class it would be a Warspite class Type Av-12 Warship.

[QoL: Hardpoints.]

The only real draw backs I see are:

1. This change would break all previous designs.  Not a good argument if a change is desperately needed.  But, there are other ways to go about addressing your problem.  Some may not require breaking the backwards compatibility.

 

2. Turrets become much easier to target and destroy.  Turrets can be placed on all sorts of stuff right now.  In fact it's really cool that they can be mounted at angles on slope blocks.  This also means turrets can and are generally placed on large armor blocks that keep them from being destroyed.  Dedicated turret blocks will be much easier to spot and in all likely hood much easier to destroy than armor plating.

 

That why it might be an interesting idea, but also might a huge pain in other ways.

[Real-world dimensions of blocks]

It's 10 meters as stated by the dev himself.  I've also confirmed this to be true using various methods of measuring the blocks in game.

[Balance: Repair vs. Build in space (make Iron needed all through the game)]

There is literally great value in heading to a repair dock or shipyard because repairing there saves you a ton material and credit cost.  It's also planned to for shipyards to have more functionality in the future.

[QoL: Hardpoints.]

This might be interesting.  It could be cool if turrets changed size based on the size of the hardpoint they were mounted on rather than scaling based on tech level.

[Ship class? Frigate / Corvette / Battleship?]

I've seen these kind of topics get brought up in other games.  And at the end of the day, people always just seem to use their own system of classification.

 

Naval classes define both ship size and ship role because ships various sizes are better at certain things.  Look at cruisers for example.  They can be about the same size as a battleship in terms of space but their lighter armor is going to make them faster and smaller on the the scale because naval classes are measured in tonnage.  Being so large they can carry a ton of supplies and have room for very large powerful engines.  This makes them fast and well suited for long range missions, much more so than smaller ships.  So in the Navy your fastest long range "scout" ships are actually really big unlike in most sci-fi where scout ships tend to be small.

 

So, if you want to make a universal class chart for Avorion you need to consider what each ship can do at a certain size.  The two things I see that most define a ship in Avorion, are it's volume and it's material tier.  I like the idea that the various size classes are based off of the number of system slots since this is based on volume and has a large effect on what a ship is capable of.  Of course you also need to account for cargo space and the ship's hangars as well.

 

So there are four things a useful size class system needs to describe are.

1. Volume/number of system slots

2. Material composition

3. Cargo space

4. Hangar space

 

Pretty complicated I guess but every other aspect of a ship is highly variable as system cards and turrets can be used to turn a poorly shielded mining vessel into a hardened warship even if no blocks are changed.

[Hanger bays rethink]

If this is a suggestion why isn't it in the suggestion forum?

 

There's been a lot of talk about fighters and how to handle them differently.  I'm sure some changes are planned, but I don't have anything to point you towards to tell you what they are.

[Introducing inertial dampeners.]

I don't really like the idea of a system that causes the ship it is installed on to act in a way that is completely different from the other ships around them.  Especially if it's being done to turn Avorion into a generic sci-fi with "space air resistance".

 

Also, why isn't this in the suggestion forum?

[Material unlocks. Broadsides. Colour palettes. Ship docking repost. Other bitz.]

I think only the hangar is being changed and all other material unlocks are staying the same.  This is a change I can agree with because it is strange that you can't add hangars earlier than Trinium tier even though you can buy fighters almost from the get go.

[Balance? Salvagers too powerful as combat weapons...]

They're like everything else really.  They can be very good and they can be pretty meh.  With the extreme short range, half that of most telsa guns, and the zero effectiveness against shields I can't honestly say I find them that OP.

[Combining Turrets through Research Stations]

Yeah.  The current system only seems to account for type and rarity.  Everything else is rerolled from scratch at the new rarity level.  This works for system chips, but not so much for weapons.  The system could do with the improvements you're suggesting.  Except that last one.  Item combining in supposed to be a gamble.  Items may on a small chance turn out to be worse.  So the game shouldn't tell you what you're going to get ahead of time.

[Mid-flight repairs; Player distress calls; Loading saved ships]

I'm not sure I really see the point.  If you can get away for 30 seconds it shouldn't be too hard to disengage for a minute, 5 minutes, or however long you want repairs to take.  At the end of the day the biggest limiting factor is going to be what it's always been.  The cost.

 

I similarly don't see the point of the distress call, because you can always just leave and go to a friendly sector yourself.  Nothing actually cripples your ship.  And if the distress call randomly attracts pirates it seems particularly useless.

[Other Games you are Currently Playing?]

Wow, i didnt see anyone so far who plays Rocketleague. That is my number one go to game.

 

I hopelessly flail around in Rocket League playing against others guys who are much better than me.

[W40K + Original ships]

These look spot on.  Good job.

[Harrier's Workshop]

The Baikal Class is perfect!

[WH40k: Imperial Navy (2 new Gloriana-class battleships, Sword-class Frigate, and Endeavour-Class Light Cruiser, Dauntless-class remade)]

The cowardly xenos will surely turn tail and flee from this beauty!

[Arkhangelsk Engineering & Co's Shipyard (New: Kataphrakt-class Mech)]

It didn't take long for someone to make space mecha in this game.  I approve.

[Retrograde velocity marker]

Certainly something like this is needed.  I'm just curious what you guys think it should look like.

 

This is the Kerbal navball.  As you can see it's a little overkill on information.

 

 

From those of you who don't really understand what they are looking at here's a tutorial that walks you through how it works: How to Read the Navball.

[Intelligent rifts near The Barrier?]

No.  I've run into these kind of "rift mazes" before.  Very time consuming to get past.

[Vorgra's Ships, Battleship XML is up.]

The Warship is super cool looking.

 

The cargo ship is...  colorful to say the least.

[The Adventures of Paladin [edited]]

I LOL'd.

['Snapshot' copies of NPC ships & stations?]

Could be useful.  I do like some of the station designs. 

[Ship's Rolling Direction]

In most games the camera is basically glued to the ship.  In Avorion the camera can roll and swing around very fast and ships have to play catch up.  The less maneuverable the ship the most obvious the effect.  I agree that rolling is pretty disorienting.  I usually try to avoid it.

[Retrograde velocity marker]

So like a Kerbal Space Program style nav ball?  Or do you have something else in mind?

[Ship's Rolling Direction]

It really isn't. The correct thrusters do indeed fire, but the ship slants in the wrong direction. Here's a screenshot of me rolling left. As you can clearly see, the ship is at a diagonal going from top left to lower right. If the right thruster is pushing up and the left thruster is pushing down, the diagonal should be reversed, going from lower left to top right. I hope this makes sense.

 

http://imgur.com/a/zDK0M

 

Isn't that caused by the camera rolling faster than the ship?  Much like looking around, the camera can get to a new alignment and the ship has to play catch up.