[QuarianRex]

One thing that I always wanted to see was inherent abilities for the specialized hulls. Like giving the carriers a fighter launch abilitiy of 5/20 or somesuch. It would give a concrete reason to pick the carrier hull when there are larger alternatives available.

Here are some comments on previous ideas. Increasing the cost of the larger ships? Whether this is done through increasing hull cost or boosting maintainance I say thee nay. Making a fleet of dreadnoughts break your galactic bank isn't realistic and is even less fun to play. I don't think anyone likes being forced to make smaller ships. How about giving a severe maint. reduction on the smaller ships. They may have the lifespan of gnats but you could support a horde. That would be a reason to keep the smaller sizes around.

Mounts can be a problem. If you want to go the MOO2 heavy mount route (2x size, 1.5x damage, additional range) then for the love of god don't give them to-hit penalties. Penalties actually shorten the effective range, and besides, you need something to offset the lowered damage ratio. I think that a +10% to-hit bonus per +1 range is needed to make the range increase usable as opposed to being a cruel taunt. Of course this type of mount is really effective when you can combine it with higher damage ratio weapons to give that long/short range punch.

Another problem is that the AI blindly uses the lowest available mount on the list. How to get around that? Perhaps by limiting certain mounts to certain weapons? Maybe the MOO2 heavy mount would be limited to energy weapons while the high damage/low accuracy would be more appopriate to slug throwers and the like? Then you could have a mix of mounts in a given design.

[ March 23, 2003, 22:06: Message edited by: QuarianRex ]