Ship Class System

Warlord shared this feedback 39 days ago
Not Enough Votes

While the base game basically now only has one kind of grid size it would be nice if the possibility was left open for server admins and or modders to define custom ship class designations ie "battleship", "fighter", "bomber" etc.

One way to implement this would be a special placeholder ship class block that be extended to support as many variants as needed. The block would support various definitions such as max/min weight, block count, turret count, jump drive count, allowed blocks etc.


Some examples:

Battleship Class:

  • Max Blocks: 5000
  • Minimum Weight: 1 000 000
  • Maximum Weight: 5 000 000


Fighter Class:

  • Max Blocks: 300
  • Minimum Weight: 0
  • Maximum Weight: 100 000


Missile Class:

  • Prohibited blocks:
  1. Cockpits

Scout Class:

Prohibited blocks:

  1. Weapon turrets
  2. Fixed weapons
  3. Warheads


A server admin could tick a box and all new grids would be required to start off by building this block first before any other block.

Replies (5)

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7

This would take away freedom of design. You could do this on your own server but not in the official game.

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1

Yes which is what I was suggesting. This should be server admins and modders.

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1

I really value a more refined and clearly defined ship classification system. While I tend to favor the Star Wars: Anaxes War College system for space-capable vehicles, I find that other space genres often lack clarity in defining ship roles.

I would suggest including civilian ship classes, which might be better defined by their armament. For example, distinguishing between a freighter and a light cruiser could be useful, especially when considering the difference between a few point defense systems for anti-piracy and several mounted weapon systems.

In naval warfare, the tonnage of vessels usually plays a significant role. Typically, frigates and light cruisers have similar tonnage, but frigates are more versatile, serving multiple purposes, while cruisers are designed for more specialized tasks.

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1

The idea of this system would be that server admins/players could define their own classes to suit their needs with various parameters.

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5

No, just no. Classifications should follow function and role, not size. For me, my longest ship currently is a carrier dreadnought that comes in at 80 large grid blocks long. There are some people out there with ships even bigger than that still that server in a cruiser or battleship role. Classifications in SE are subjective as what I may consider an average cruiser, another may consider a battleship or so on. In sandbox games like SE, things are left vague and largely undefined outside of specific instances for a reason. Stuff like this would be nothing more than a limiter and restrict build freedom compared to what we have now, which is a bad idea.

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3

As I said in my post this would be an optional thing for server admins to enable/disable in the same way they can enable scripts, NPCs etc. Servers wouldn't have to use it if they didn't want to.


The main thing this would do is extend the base functionality of the game to allow for unique world's and scenarios that would require something like this. For instance in a PVP server this would be very handy for balance and to encourage different specialist designs rather then the all in one designs that are currently dominant.

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3

I forgot to say that this system should also allow admin's to define the max speeds of the various ship classes.

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1

NOOOOOOO! Just PLEASE no! That would be horrible! Different max speeds for different ship sizes makes no sense at all!

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2

An optional system like this is a perfect example of a feature that should be a Mod to suit those who want it. This way it's made for those who are interested but it does not claim resources from Keen that can be better implemented elsewhere.

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1

It should be optional but in order for it to be a mod it needs the backend support from Keen. It's like trying to make a mod for some kind of gun that shoots multiple projectiles in SE 1. Since there is no back end code support for any kind of shotgun weapon its not possible to currently do it.

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1

Class mods exist in SE even with the limits to what can be done there. SE is pretty moddable and it seems SE2 will be at least as, if not more so, given they are releasing a toolkit for it.

We managed water, aerodynamics, shields, and energy weapons in SE modding. I don't think a class system is going to be a bridge too far in SE2.

KSH should focus on the core mechanics to ensure the framework is dialed in and tight.

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1

As I understand it, there is not great support in SE 1 for a true ship class system. Mods have to use a lot of hacks to get the basics of such a system working. My idea would provide a basic inbuilt platform which allow modders to further expand it if needed.

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1

Improv-shotguns aren't too hard according to what I've heard, you just set a stupid-high rate of fire (to mag-dump instantly) and then use the magazine/clip-size to determine the number of pellets per shot, and the mag/clip reload becomes the reload speed for the shells.


As for the rest of this feature... making a mod that can read a ship's stats and class it based on those stats should be a thing, but pairing hard caps like this suggests with the unified grid system is just going to get you a bunch of battle-ship class heavy-fighters and a lot of SE1-shaped capital-ships, so it should probably not be part of vanilla.

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1

This thing I'm proposing wouldn't read a ship stats and class it, rather the very first block you would put down when this system is enabled would be the type of ship you want to make.


Think of how in SE 1 you build a small ship. Typically you either start with the cockpit or the landing gear. In this case you would start with the ship designation block which would determine what other blocks can be part of the same grid as well as how fast it can go etc. All of this stuff of course would be customizable by the player (or server admin if playing online)

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1

I really think a class system would destroy the game. It takes away the freedom of the author to design their ship however they want, because now they have to fit it into a designated class with arbitrary restrictions outside of what their design can actually do.

If you want to make a mod to do that, go ahead, but I'm vehemently against KSH spending time adding support for one when it would only detract from the game experience, not add to it. There are much better things they could be spending their time on. Also, they've said that modders will have all the same tools that KSH itself does to mod, so it shouldn't be any harder for a modder to add it than KSH themselves.

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1

Frankly - I also miss the point of such a system...

The only sense it would make would be on PvP "battle arena" servers in creative mode, where those interested in a duel pull their ship "from the hat" (they don't build the ship, they don't care about getting resources) and start their duel ...

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