What if you don't want to lead an empire? What if you prefer a more Han Soloish type approach too it all? And what if you want your own Millennium Falcon?

As you know some of the Millennium Falcon's charm was that it was something that Han Solo spent some time on modifying to be the fastest ship in the galaxy.

Now what if you could modify your own ship to be something that no one else has? That's where this mechanic comes in.

In this new (I think) mechanic I propose that you should be able to modify your ship to whatever specializations that you feel are necessary. To do this you will need a modification module. A modification module is small enough to fit on a fighter. It will not be any bigger then that. Its job is to (you guessed it) modify your ship. It can only modify your ship while your ship is a hanger and only uses what supplies you have on your ship at the time. It takes half as much time as a research module to do the same job, but there is a tradeoff. These modifications are unique. There are no blueprints to the modifications and the only prototype is the ship itself. You may find ships with similar modifications, or even the exact same kind. But if you find any of those it will be by pure chance.

The modification module requires resources to plan out the modifications. The more resources you have the faster the modification module works. Bigger ships will take a much longer time to modify.
You can also speed up the modification plans by straining whatever you plan on modifying. Like say, thrusters. You can speed up the modification plans of your thrusters by firing them up to max speed. Or, for guns, you have to use against an enemy. Or, for a transfer unit, you have to use it on an asteroid.

So what do you guys think?

EDIT: You can not Reverse Engineer these modifications. Unless you find ttwo people with the same modifications.

Apologies if this has been suggested before. If it has then (this will be my new sig).

We do have the hardpoints, which essentially are components switchable in hangars like thrusters, weapons, reactors and such. Modifying a ship would be like modifying a car. Changing parts.

You can swop out most of the parts of your ship for new ones already.

I don't think it's reasonable or a good use of dev time to introduce something that does the job of "buying a new base ship hull" without the already simple "buying a new base ship hull" mechanic.

Even Han Solo types would upgrade ships once they weren't useful any more.

Idunno wrote:Stuff

are you thinking of something like this?

i would enjoy something like this.
i dont think that a modification module should be necessary, just a hangar with some production modules on the same station.

this could make an natural way of pirates having "ugly" ships, they dont have the means of researching and designing new ships, so they redesign the ships they already have.

it should have some soft upper limit of how much you can redesign your ships, and with rising "upgrade" process it has more and more mali applied to the ship, to make researching new ships worthwile and discourage permanent redesign of ships

I really loved that particular video. I think it makes sense, and the ability to custom-design your own ships? Love it. Plus, as an added bonus, it shouldn't be hard to implement an algorithm to make all computer-generated ships be themed to universal areas, star systems, and factions, so you could get a feel of where a ship is from. It would give an extra sense of history that most games don't have with their ships... but that'll come when Josh gets around to redesigning the ship and station algorithms, I guess, and it seems very much like something he'd do already, without it needing to be suggested.

I was thinking that the modification module would basically be the the research module, but everything the modification module does would be unique to that one ship. You will only be able to replicate the modifications by shear chance. For example, pulse lasers. Someone decides that they want to modify them to be better. The modification module decides to make them faster firing. In the next system someone else decides they want better pulse lasers. So the modification module increases the output of the reactor and automatically sets the pulse lasers to draw more power. It is essentially the research module but on the scale of one person as opposed to 20.

If we would want to give extreme tinkering control to the player and executives, we could do swappable subcomponents. Want more firing speed? Buy a different type of supercooler coil, and install to the gun.

Behemoth wrote:If we would want to give extreme tinkering control to the player and executives, we could do swappable subcomponents. Want more firing speed? Buy a different type of supercooler coil, and install to the gun.

Anyone can do that. My idea is to personalize the process. As opposed to buying a new component you tinker around with what you have until you have what you need.

Perhaps a small bonus for installing the prototype as a ship part instead of creating blueprints from it.
(posibly elimimating the option of removing it and blueprinting it later as well, as it is too integrated into the ship)
(or perhaps add a penality for using a prototype part to go with the bonus, 5% higher fire rate, but uses 3% more power)
This guarantees that your ship part is unique and quirky.

N810 wrote:Perhaps a small bonus for installing the prototype as a ship part instead of creating blueprints from it.
(posibly elimimating the option of removing it and blueprinting it later as well, as it is too integrated into the ship)
(or perhaps add a penality for using a prototype part to go with the bonus, 5% higher fire rate, but uses 3% more power)
This guarantees that your ship part is unique and quirky.

That requires a research module. The Prototype(s) takes up space. The modifications do not. Not to mention if you have a tendency to not stick around in one place for to long you probably won't have time to use a research module. Remember, the modification module takes less time to do the same job and can be sped up by straining whatever you are trying to upgrade.

I was thinking more of a bought, salvaged, or stolen prototype.
(for my pirate fleet)

N810 wrote:I was thinking more of a bought, salvaged, or stolen prototype.
(for my pirate fleet)

Oh...

The modifications aren't meant for a fleet. Unless you want your flagship to be badass.

yea, thats the idea, I want a small fleet of unique ships, probaly pirates and mercinaries,
But... yea I like your module idea too, I think both could work together...
I do think for your idea you would need a small mecanics room, to enable you
to tweak/modify all of the parts in your ship.

i think everything you need should be an hangar + some production capacity to make modifications to your ship.
they should altough take some time and have some stacking negative modifiers every time you make an modification.
to discourage permanent modification

Cornflakes_91 wrote:i think everything you need should be an hangar + some production capacity to make modifications to your ship.
they should altough take some time and have some stacking negative modifiers every time you make an modification.
to discourage permanent modification

With my idea you will only need a production module if you intend to modify the ship as a whole or you intend to modify a capital ship. If you intend to modify a sub-capital ship's hard points the modification module does the work with some input of raw materials.