i have just tried out the free trial on eve and come to the conclusion that eve really does large shit well. i would really love to see things of that scale in LT especcially with the friggn
HUGE stations. we dont make stations for pussies, we make stations 3 fucking KM wide! depending on the available space in a given system i REALLY want to see these kinds of structures being somewhat of a norm around large miningoperations and civilizations. you could probbavly not store one in yout ship (or could you?) but that is where orbital constructions come into the picture. as long as this is in the dev phase scale should not be a problem and with procedural generation you can just generate your HUGE FRIGGN station from mere 200 m chunks.

also yhe MASSIVE docking bays with the lights and shaz are EPIC and stations should definatly have some of those.
finally as a way to see the sheer size of this you could have forklifts and people wizzing around on the floor(s?) of the docking bay.

the scale of statoins compared to even the huge carriers from demovid 5 should be huge.

see duglas adams (yet again): "space is huge" thus stuff in it should be too.

Remember that we'll still need to be able to run this on a normal computer.

Hey, let's keep this discussion in the "Scale" thread please, no need for a new one!

Also, I made a post in that thread to address why it's easy for EVE to make this massive scale, and why it would be very hard for LT to achieve the same thing. I agree, EVE does scale extremely well, but it is quite a different game, and significantly easier for them to implement than it will be for LT!

the hugemongus stations could be done by making them a peice of "scenery" like a planet or something, cut down to the basics when it comes to interraction physicswise.
you could probbably increese the size of stations tenfold.
i dont know how hard the hittbox is for the cpu, but there is probbably things you could do to cut that down too.

I really loved the balance in TIE Fighter: you started by flying a TIE Fighter, a ship that had NO shields, and your only method of defense was speed and dodging. I so loved it. It was still possible, when playing very carefully, to take out a big big ship with that one TIE Fighter if you took the time (and evade skill).

Looking back I think this game is the reason I always go for the fastest ships, no matter the hit in shields I take: it's always more than the zero shields of the TIE FIghter

So yeah, I don't mind if we have shields ranging from Shield Strength:

- 0 (hyperfast scout with offensive capabilities)
- 10 (basic fighter)
- 100 (basic frigate)
- 1000 (basic corvette/freighter)
- 10000 (basic carrier)
- 100000 (basic space station)

Let's say every point in shield strength in this overview is the amount of regular fighter-level weapon fire per second that the shield can take before going down.

Remember the Asteroids game? You could initiate a shield for about 3 secs by pressing a button, it would need 30 secs to reload. That is pretty cool. I could see this working for a niche-fighter.

Of course shield strength means nothing without Shield Regeneration rates. Or weapon Rate-of-Fire variance (current day stuff already approaches 1 million rouds/minute: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKlnMwuCZso and we all know the lower rates of fire too)
If shields regenerate a flat 1% of their power per second or so then the larger shields get insanely difficult/impossible to take down with average fighter weapons.
On the other hand, if shields regenerate really slow it may become possible to destroy a space station with a TIE Fighter-like craft, if you take 2,5 hours to do it.
This, imo, is an awesome experience, and I am not certain it's a problem in the game. I mean, logically I'd assume the AI to send some reinforcements to the station in 2,5 hours. If you have killed those already well... great job If you do not want to take 2,5 hours just take a Corvette and attack with that.

I assume bigger shields will take longer to recharge to make this possible.
We could also give every ship the same shield strength but radically vary the regeneration rates: from near-instant to never.

This is getting a jumble, sorry :p Guess my point is:

- We can use any number of ways to achieve the sweet spot of shield/weapon balance of different classes of ships: until a decision has been made writing things like "shields should only vary in strength by a factor of 100 or less" does not make sense
- I don't see why a big scale difference in shields (or armor of whatever) would lead to problems (imo there are some assumptions in there I don't know about) (@Gazz, top of page post)
- Make a tactical strike scout without shields!
- My personal Sweet spot would be:
* Small ships would either need a lot of time or big numbers to kill a big ship (preferrably both are an option, so recharge rates shouldn't be too high on average).
* Big ships and freighters have better shields than small ones, and can hold out a while, hoping for rescue.
* If there are different statistics for shields they should radically differ: I wouldn't like comparing shields that only have a few points difference in certain areas
* Small craft have the advantage of manouvrability and speed: you can do strafing runs and weapons can miss if you fly well and fast.

I'm just wondering if we will be able to build a ship the size of...oh say...that small moon over there.

EDIT: Even more than making a Death Star like object, I would be interested in making a Dyson Sphere or a Ring World construct. Or even take that idea one step further...a Dyson Sphere that encompasses an entire star system. Now we are talking big.

Hardenberg wrote:3.) 4X approach

This approach is similar to Homeworld, and it would be my preference. The capital ship's relative inability to engage fighters always seemed like a very organic counterbalance and makes the question of battlefield superiority a three-way equation: strength vs. speed vs. numbers. A successful fleet commander will have to consider all the angles, it will not be enough simply to drift onto the scene with the most gnarlsome destroyer money can buy.

On the subject of Excession, it's worth considering what would happen at the limits of whatever model is chosen. For instance, what would happen if a capital ship was converted to a high-velocity platform for a single enormously powerful weapon? All other features sacrificed for engines and one weapon, so that the ship could accelerate into battle at ludicrous speed and deliver a decisive strike before anyone had time to respond. Or even a kamikaze ramming manoeuvre, for that matter. Getting hit by a capital ship travelling at close to light speed should probably be enough to dent anyone's armour.

Getting hit by a capital ship travelling at close to light speed should probably be enough to dent anyone's armour.

Pretty sure a capital ship moving at close to light speed would have enough kinetic energy to take out a planet. At least according to Larry Niven it is

This is not that mutch about scale...anyone want to try to Keep the discussion on topic? Balancing has its own thread i think.
My english sucks.
Banana.

ravener96 wrote:This is not that mutch about scale...anyone want to try to Keep the discussion on topic?...

Sure, I was just thinking about how big the jump gates are going to be. As in, will they be big enough to handle only one battleship-sized ship at a time, or will they be big enough to have three fly in at a time, or seven, etc.? As far as affecting gameplay this would mean that the bigger the jumpgates the more traffic can go through, whether it's for trade, transport, combat, etc.

With that whole Tie fighter thing, I really hope that we can't defeat any capital ship with some sort of turret or flak defense with a fighter, regardless of the time. There is no way a single fighter should even get close to overcoming the shields, let alone having the firepower to damage the hull. It's like asking for a infantrymen to destroy an aircraft carrier with a pistol.

If the shield regen on a cap ship was so weak it could be defeated by a single fighter, it'd be devastated in a major engagement.

Back to the topic of scale I guess the bigger the better in my opinion, a super carrier would be pretty amazing, staying back a bit in the engagement unleashing swarms of fighters and corvettes to harrass the enemy. That's what its all about

Slevan wrote:With that whole Tie fighter thing, I really hope that we can't defeat any capital ship with some sort of turret or flak defense with a fighter, regardless of the time. There is no way a single fighter should even get close to overcoming the shields, let alone having the firepower to damage the hull. It's like asking for a infantrymen to destroy an aircraft carrier with a pistol.

If the shield regen on a cap ship was so weak it could be defeated by a single fighter, it'd be devastated in a major engagement.

Back to the topic of scale I guess the bigger the better in my opinion, a super carrier would be pretty amazing, staying back a bit in the engagement unleashing swarms of fighters and corvettes to harrass the enemy. That's what its all about

It depends I think... If the shield of a ship is a bubble a fighter can fly through, then a fighter could do some damage. Without torpedo's perhaps they shouldn't be able to breach the hull, but they could at least take out some turrets or subsystems.

Yeah I think I've mentioned that somewhere else that fighters should be quite effective against sub systems and weapons with the right weapons and numbers, but 1 is a bit ridiculous to kill a capital ship.