in short everything that gets mounted into and onto ships.
but theres one thing missing:
how do we actually get this stuff into hardpoints?
in freelancer it was easy, all ships could dock everywhere and you had to be in a hangar to switch equipment, so it was a given that you could switch equipment when you were docked.
the x-series made another approach: tjey didnt care, weapons switching was instantly and everywhere, even in deep space and combat.
freelancers approach cant really be used as we can build ships "in the free", that means out of any stations. potentially leading to ships that are too big to dock anywhere, and for stations its a pretty clear case that they cant dock anywhere, so how would they switch equipment?
the x series approach always seemed just lame and of the game design category "no design at all".
its just the laziest implementation which also seems cheaty to me.
so how do we actually switch equipment?
i made a few thoughts on that:
first: i'd like the process to be somewhat "real", meaning that you cant just instantly switch out your battleships main reactor without needing any prequisites, or short:
you should need a shipyard/drydock/hangar for doing this.
for outlining ideas to design this we first need to discern between the (in my mind) 4 usecases.
- in hangar
- external hardpoints (weapons, sensors, drives, etc)
- internal hardpoints (generators, shields, production modules, etc)
- in space
- external hardpoints
- internal hardpoints
- in hangar
means everything that causes a docked ship to be out of view (fighter in his carrier for example).
this case doesnt have any graphical/representation issues (or does it? we have been able to see our ships in hangars in the LTP...) if the ships are visible there should be some graphical magic going on, similar to "in space")
but it should have some (gameplay) requirements, namely it should take (some) equipment and whats more important: time.
by equipment switching times zero, pre-battle preparations and scouting become less important, as you can just switch out your loadout("oh, they bought their slow long range cannons, lets switch to our short range rippers and hit them on short range where they cant hit us").
for equipmend needs im thinking of an hangar "add on" component like a light mashine shop or even just a hangar.
i'd personally prefer the mashine shop approach, as it gives you a choice to make.
either you have faster re-equip and loose a hardpoint or dont use the hardpoint but can equip more other equipment.
a combination of both would also worth considering.
with a mashine shop its fast and easy, without it you can still do it but it takes much longer
- external hardpoints
are everything that you bolt on the outside of your ship and is thus visible all the time.
i consider this kind of equipment to be pretty easy to switch out, needing only shorts amount of time and it doesnt take much infrastructure to do it.
something like a "light mashine shop" or something - internal hardpoints
are everything you cant see on a ships model, shield generators and production modules for example.
these should take much longer to swap out than external equipment, as you have to deconstruct significant parts of your ship to make such changes.
this may takes bigger equipment such as a "heavy mashine shop"
- external hardpoints
- in space
this is where things get hairy.
everything you do happens in sight of the player so equipment plopping in and out of existence is a no-go.
so we have to consider graphical aspects in addition to the gameplay aspects
- external hardpoints
i think the gameplay and graphical requirements could be served by the same mechanism: drones.
they could physically carry the new equipment out of their carriers hangar bay and haul it over to its mount point.
all nice, believable, visible and pretty. - internal hardpoints
im a bit torn on internal hardpoints, as how do we display equipment that has no actual form in the game?
well, a solution would be to generate a form for the different kinds of internal equipment and handle it like external equipment.
having it carried around by drones and lowered into the ship through some opaque "force field" that gets established around the construction site (think of hangar bays in homeworld 2)
having internal equipment having physical forms would have another advantage in prettiness: if you drop the equipment into space, for example for a cargo transfer, it would have a unique shape that identifies the object and not just be a random cargo container.
another method, being graphically less challanging, comes without the need for creating object shapes for the equipment.
instead of having drones drag the equipment have a ship dock at the location where the equipment is due to be changed and attach.
this could be accompanied by some "auxilliary" stuff being extended to cover any areas that might be left open by the hulls f the docked ships
for bigger equipment multiple smaller drones could attach to the same eqipment and drag it collectively - external hardpoints
