Realistic Shipyards OXP

[JensAyton]

I am on 1.68 and the ship yard doesn't work at all. Pressing F3 twice does nothing. I have no ship yard at all. I tried it with a new game and still didin't work.

If you happened to be testing at Lave, that’s perfectly normal. It’s just a rather low-tech world.

The sky code is completely replaced for 1.71, so details on bugs in 1.70 aren’t likely to be useful.

[Lestradae]

Hye Arexack_Heretic!

Great job!

Thanks!

I always wanted to introduce this kind of policy, but was never able to implement it.

Yes, me too - but there doesn`t seem to be a consensus on putting this into the core game. Well, so I did an OXP, and it was fun to do it (which I found quite unexpected ) With the OXP, everyone has the choice if they want consistently priced ships and tech levels that actually mean something or ... individually priced occasions

Are you sure cargospace should be that expensive? It is only space you know, rather low tech and just the absence of the goodstuff.

Yes, I am. For the game mechanics: Lots of cargo space make lots of profits. If they became too cheap, why would anyone ever want to fly a ship with lousy 35 t?

And concerning the atmospheric part, if you double a ship`s cargo capacity, its not just about screwing a bit of additional room on. The ship will need bigger machines, be it standard impulse, witchdrive or hyperspace, more energy to run, and as the ships can land on planets (we just never seem to get that landing permission) there`s also a bit of changed, more complicated and more energy-consuming aerodynamics to be put into account ...

I'd suggest a flat 10/10% trade-in. maybe even a discount for larger volumes. (coupled to an increase of cost in other areas?)

Actually, 10 t more cargo capacity raising a ship`s price by 10% IS the trade-in A discount would not be such a good idea - it would, again, not make a lot of sense in terms of game mechanics (think of the spans you can earn with a 750 t Anaconda) or atmosphere (why do only GalCop institutions own all the really big ships?). It would, de facto, become a get-rich-fast scheme in the overall game mechanics effects of the Realistic Shipyards.

Oh, and an increase of costs is there anyways, depending on how good or bad a long string of variables is in comparison to the ultimate standard: The basic Cobra MkIII.

This would suggest ship-class uniforms with different premiums on the respective properties? (ie if a ship has more than a certain amount of cargo and less than a certain amount of energybanks, it is a freighter. Freighters get a discount on cargospace, but speed and energybanks are expensive.)

I was thinking along those lines and about this idea. But I decided against it. The reasons being:

1. It reminds me too much of X3: There you have Explorers (M5), Scouts (M4), Fighters (M3), Corvettes or heavy fighters (M6), Destroyers (M2), Carriers (M1), Motherships (M0), Transporters (T), Transporters Large (TL), etc. ... doesn`t have that Elite feel to me.

(Which doesn`t say, that, if someone had a really great idea of how-to implement that, a future version couldn`t ... but I have no plans in that direction at the moment)

2. It would get too complicated. Inventing a method that accurately and comparably priced and "tech leveled" the about 220 ships from wildly different creators in an as much as possible consistent way so that it all fits together in game mechanics was difficult enough. You don`t want to know how many formulae I developed before that which created absurd runaway prices ... Imagine repeating that with five or even ten different shiptypes.

(And its obvious. A Cobra MkIII is an M3. A Krait is an M5. An Anaconda is a TL. The Tesoura is an M6. And the Condor Flagship (from this OXP here) is an M2. So, in game atmosphere terms, we don`t need to rename them all for notiving that.)

Anyhow. just some suggestions. good job

Well, thanks for your feedback!

I hope you find the Realistic Shipyards V1.03 enhancing your gameplay (and have you, by the way, noticed, that V1.03 is a massive upgrade?) - have fun!

L