Should there be some sort of Carrier-class vessel?

Suggestions Miscellaneous
1

While you can sorta get a “carrier-style” Elydium ship with the Crystalline Swarms, it doesn’t really feel the same as a true Carrier. Back when I was playing Fractured Space, the Paragon was essentially the game’s carrier, and could send multiple squads of ships to multiple different targets at a time. You also could do the same thing in World of Warships (though they’re reworking Carriers in a few days from now).

 

And while you can use Attack Drones, they’ll tend to only go after your selected target, and once they’re killed you have to wait a long time for your missile cassette to reload. What if you had a ship that was dedicated to drone production rather than heavy weapons like a Destroyer, and could send these drones against multiple enemies at once? Would that be fun to play?

 

This is just theoretical stuff, so don’t freak out. I’m also relatively new to the game (only started about 3 weeks ago), so maybe there’s already a ship that can be a “Carrier”.

2

I generally dislike drones and other autoaim things in fast pvp games. However, it could be interesting to have a ship that can switch to drone control at the expense of regular firepower.

These drones would obviously be voulnerable to ecm.

3

2 hours ago, Scar6 said:

I generally dislike drones and other autoaim things in fast pvp games. However, it could be interesting to have a ship that can switch to drone control at the expense of regular firepower.

These drones would obviously be voulnerable to ecm.

Unfortunately, it seems like from the general consensus from a mock-up that Fox had made before, Drone boats are generally frowned upon by devs.

 

The link is here^

4

The “general concensus” was that it would be “too much for the average pilot to control” and “too hard to learn” as well as the usual complaints of auto-aim drones. I feel like it would make an excellent addition to open space and PvE for more experienced and skilled pilots. It should be something that you need to focus on getting, rather than something that just randomly unlocks at a point in the game. This way only players who want to use it and want to learn how it works can use it.

 

The graphical aspect alone I would love to see in game. A long stalk-like ship with “plates” of armor that peel off the ship and act as drones that can be individually commanded like in Company of Heroes or Starcraft.

5

Please no drone carriers. Ever.

 

The game should be based on your “skill” and if the “carrier” doesnt have instant kill buttons then it wouldnt be played at all and in turn would not generate any $$$ from sales. There’s literally no way to implement something like that without instant regret on either or both sides.

 

I know why people suggest this type of a ship but this game is almost a FPS genre, Counter Strike in space basically, try fighting against ships with aimbot mechanics and you will see why a drone boat is a bad idea.

6

Maybe  there could be a ‘Scout Drone’ module for dessies. It could launch a small player controlled beacon drone with a tiny thermal blaster. Obviously no op elly swarm, but a tiny scouting tool.

7

I always wanted to see the cargo drone turn into a spectator ship for tournaments and everything since we’re on that scout drone topic but that would be a topic hijack so lets go back at the main topic, basically no drone carrier will ever happen, we need to go away from basic outplays to more complex ones if we are going to make things interesting.

8

i’d love to see a carrier. maybe small, frigate sized versions to get into the gameplay (possibly within the normal ship tree) and destroyer sized ones that can launch more drones/fighters at once and send them over a greater distance. they shouldn’t be too powerful of course, we see with the swarm what happens then…

9

On 1/29/2019 at 7:03 AM, ORCA1911 said:

Please no drone carriers. Ever.

 

The game should be based on your “skill” and if the “carrier” doesnt have instant kill buttons then it wouldnt be played at all and in turn would not generate any $$$ from sales. There’s literally no way to implement something like that without instant regret on either or both sides.

 

I know why people suggest this type of a ship but this game is almost a FPS genre, Counter Strike in space basically, try fighting against ships with aimbot mechanics and you will see why a drone boat is a bad idea.

If you were to take a page from the Paragon of Fractured Space or the new Carrier rework from World of Warships, I think it could be workable.

 

For context, the Paragon’s bombers fire torpedoes that cause a time-delayed explosion in an area. This delay allows plenty of time for a ship to get out of the blast radius, unless one of the Paragon’s allies helps it by slowing/immobilizing the target. Additionally, the Paragon’s bombers have to reload after every attack, requiring that you time an attack well and that you not camp across a map (otherwise it’ll take forever for your bombers to come back and reload).

 

The idea is that the Paragon couldn’t win fights on its own; its bombers would easily miss an attentive opponent, and even if they hit they wouldn’t kill an enemy ship on their own. However, when employed right, the Paragon’s bombers were a good way to flush enemies out of hiding places, or did well when combo’d with an ally who could pin the target in place.

 

As for the new World of Warships Carrier rework, it requires you to manually steer your planes into attack positions, and makes it so you can only control one squadron at a time (even if you can have several deployed at once). This was done to prevent Carrier players from hovering their planes over a ship for scouting purposes, and to allow the Carriers more power by requiring more manual control. The Ellydium Swarms already do this sort of thing, though.

 

Of course, I’m guessing Carriers are probably still inappropriate for Star Conflict, but hey, I’m just entertaining the idea. If it truly wouldn’t be healthy for the game, then I can live without them.

 

That said, maybe the Dreadnoughts could be given some sorts of “Carrier” mechanics. Maybe a corporation could choose to install some sort of “Drone Launcher” rather than a big cannon if they wanted a Dreadnought that specialized in drone attacks. They already launch drones, I know, but a “Drone Launcher” weapon system would send out loads of them.

10

Long range frigates do the explosion area torpedo thingy and taking that from them would be kinda not okay, as for the rest, elly swarm does the droney thing already and the game is far too fast to be playing a carrier. It simply has no place in this game.

 

Just like eve has its enormous economy system and variety of ships as its trademark, those tank games have their slow snipey tanks and all the other space or other genre games, Star Conflict has its own trademark to some degree and it’s the careless arcadey speed carnage.

11

i dunno, we already have quite a few carrier mechanics, would be cool if we could simply put them all into one ship, not as strong as some of them are. we have engi drones, drones for the missile slot, the hybrid missile/drone on destroyers, swarm, sendable drones on waz’got etc.

 

one option would be to change the hybrid missile into a clustermissile with less dmg/warhead but one drone per missile (i think about 3) and they can move so you’d send a small group of drones after a target or to secure an area.

 

another thing would be to take the engi drones but give them several modes, for example: defensive = behavior like now, passive = they don’t shoot but can also heal a bit hull, aggressive = they aren’t as close to the mothership (= larger radius they can reach around the mothership) but don’t heal at all. being able to send them to friends for healing would also be nice (tap button to change modes, hold button for ~2 seconds to send them to targeted (or most damaged in range) teammate)