cuisinart8 wrote:Black--Snow wrote:cuisinart8 wrote:If we get ship classes in the editor, I think they should be player-defined. After all, we'll know the purposes of our ships better than the game.
I'm inclined to both agree and disagree for different reasons. I believe that the game should assign a size class to the ships you create as it could be used for mechanics purposes for example: "no ships above cruiser size may enter this system without angering the local police" or some such other things.
Very true. The names of player-made ship classes could be chosen, but the game could categorize them with weight classes or something to allow situations like the above. The game could also have premade names for the weight classes for the purpose of giving procedural ships class names.
I'd disagree on it being purely volume/size.
I'd personally use a combination of size, defensive capabilities, offensive capabilities and ratios between them to classify ship types.
Just because its as big as a battleship it doesnt have to be one.
It could just be a freighter, a mobile mining base, a factory etc.
To take up the example of the angry police:
The rulings would be more along the lines of "ships above x firepower arent allowed to have a firepower/size ratio over 0.3 or total firepower over y"
((With whatever exact numbers make sense, with some fuzzy edges))
Edit:
The ratios and so forth could of course generate discrete classes again and rulings could use those classes in their calculations.
So the ruling would be "no cruiser or larger sized military ships allowed" but with "cruiser or larger" being defined by the ratio system.
On a side note: it would be fun to be able to corece officials to shift classifications of your ships "a bit".
to get your combat refitted transporter still being classified as transporter instead of the frigate it now equates.