Small Ships Scout Hull Points

[Beam316]

Ok i think that the puny little ships that dont endure even 2-3 rounds in combat or even 1 in an advanced stage should have an overhaul in their hulls like have the double of points or even 50, in each side i mean, well even with just 5 more base points plus the armor could help them to last out more and actually help in the battle in a way of make more damge than simply be a cannonfodder tactical distraction, i think that another option is to make that the auxiliary pods actually make the hull of every side have the double or 50% more of hp at least for the small ships or different percentage for each hull size of the ships, also the survey subsystem should be allowed to the scouts after all too

In this way the scouts will be more used by some players i think, mostly at the beggining and up to the mid stage of the game at least anyway, of course for this the scouts should have more space available I mean the base space at least tho.

well i dunno what you, the most experienced players, think about this and i have many more ideas to come anyway

[keller]

Hi there, I would like to recommend shielding technology. Once you get up their in levels a bit the size of weapons decrease so a fleet of these small ships armed with torpedoes or missiles that is shielded can actually rip a larger ship to shreds. You might loose a couple during an engagement, but better to loose a small ship or two than a bigger more expensive one.

[Beam316]

Hi there, I would like to recommend shielding technology. Once you get up their in levels a bit the size of weapons decrease so a fleet of these small ships armed with torpedoes or missiles that is shielded can actually rip a larger ship to shreds. You might loose a couple during an engagement, but better to loose a small ship or two than a bigger more expensive one.

@keller 1st you dont get the shields in every play of the game, well not if you dont add it ina custom race at least , 2nd I think that if they put some more space the small hull ships will be more usefull and also will be able to get a suvey tool I think its called, 3rd i think this will increase the level of relevance of the smallest hull of ships in a fleet at least can become a more a threat and 4th is also almost not reasonable that we make ships with more firepower than resistance to it mainly in a turnbased game without chance of evasion for the attacked ship so yeah i really think that is even silly the amount of HP of the smallest ships atm.

[keller]

Yes, they are small, but you can sure throw out a bundle of them in an emergency situation(such as when reinforcements won't arrive in time to save the colony) I would like to share one of my scout designs with you though.

[keller]

The thing is I'm not disagreeing that there is too little space, but what I'm thinking is that the game really needs another class of ships which is just above either the scout or bomber class ships. This would more clearly define the scouts role in the game. The game has a scout class, an escort class, a cruiser and battleship class but no destroyer class.
What do you think of my suggestion guys?

[Beam316]

The thing is I'm not disagreeing that there is too little space, but what I'm thinking is that the game really needs another class of ships which is just above either the scout or bomber class ships. This would more clearly define the scouts role in the game. The game has a scout class, an escort class, a cruiser and battleship class but no destroyer class.
What do you think of my suggestion guys?

Well in fact in that case are 2 choices imo.

1st that the scout be really upgraded up to have 50 of base available space with the main system on them and 50 HP in each of his 8 sides so in this way it will have 400 HP in total, following ur idea that its needed a ship classs above the scout inself, and also in this way the scout will have the half of the points of the next classs as per you said the escort class also have the half of the next class and so on, if this is done then the actual scout class ships should be downgraded in name at least to the name of fighter, but with this i mean that this are really the fighters that come out of the fighters bays that can hold the cruiser or the battleships/motherships atm, so in order to rebalance the fighters they should have just 15 hp or something like that, but they cant obviously have any extra/special system on them, also we just can change the type of the weapons and their main systems, in consequence we will not be allowed to build them we just will have more options of fighter bays types or just squads of 4 instead of 5 as its atm and each is 1 of them is 1 of the each designs of the fighter designs.

2nd then if you want a destroyer class that must be placed between the medium size and the large one we could call it heavy the size at least or something like that, and should have no more and no least than 300 HP in each of the 8 sides, and if this is implemented then the scout class should have at least 25 of hp i think, if not just 1 shoot of laser will destroy it at the early game or a big light laser point, read it with 4 or more light lasers on it.

[Zaimat]

I'll review Scout/Small size ships and how they stack up. Increasing their Hit Points isn't out of the question, right now it's 1/5 of the transport/medium size. Where as the ratio is 1/2 between medium/large/huge sizes.

As for size/available space.. I prefer to take the view that long-range explorer ships should be at least medium sized to carry both scientific instruments, supply bays etc. So I don't think we want to make small ships have more space but perhaps we can reconsider allowing scientific instruments to be available.

[Bansheedragon]

I'll review Scout/Small size ships and how they stack up. Increasing their Hit Points isn't out of the question, right now it's 1/5 of the transport/medium size. Where as the ratio is 1/2 between medium/large/huge sizes.

As for size/available space.. I prefer to take the view that long-range explorer ships should be at least medium sized to carry both scientific instruments, supply bays etc. So I don't think we want to make small ships have more space but perhaps we can reconsider allowing scientific instruments to be available.

Since you bring up long range exploration shops and scientific equipment, it made me think of something that has me puzzled a bit.
I noticed that the scout(small) size ships cannot equip the planetary survey equipment, and I was wondering if this was intended?

The problem is not about space, its just not available in the list of equipment for that size ship, even if you have the space available.
I find this somewhat odd considering that these are the most likely to be used as long explorer ships(at least thats how I always use them), as such it would seem natural that they be able to carry surveying equipment for surveying new planets.

[Zaimat]

Yes, scientific instruments is disabled for scouts right now. But I'm leaning to revisiting this decision.

I think most players use scouts for exploration (even the AI in Horizon does it!). This is typical behaviour in older games like MOO/MOO2 too. Where as "realistically" and in shows like Babylon 5 or even Star Trek, long-range explorer ships are some of their biggest ships, even bigger than destroyer class ships etc.

So while you can explore and survey with a scout it's not really optimal. I wanted to get this aspect in Horizon but like I said I'm leaning toward allowing scientific instruments on scouts. It still won't be quite as effective as a bigger ship since it won't be able to hold supply bays and scientific instruments together.

[Lithari]

I personally never build scouts, i stick to transports and above.

Transports for exploring, colonization

Cruisers for the warship.....motherships and scouts just aren't used by me.

[Beam316]

hhmm what about a special that gives extra armour, but not doubling or increasing the effect of the armor inself, i mean that it can be called extra hull for increase the amount of the HitPoints of the ships, so if the scout hp is increased to let say 25 hp in each side it will be the double with this extra armour or hull, but if i put that in a medium class it will be just 80% more of the hull so it will increase from 100 to 180 in each side, and for the cruiser that this increase in just 60% the HP so it will lncrease from 200 to 320 in each side and for the huge class this will increase between 30% or 45%, dunno what number is better but something in between 520 to 580 of hp in each side and of course with a cost of the same amount of the % of the added hp to the hull, hhmm and about the space i dunno if the half of the % of the increase or something in between of 25% to 50% of the total available space.
But well, i dunno if this appear in a more advanced stage or i just dont see it yet perhaps.

[Anguille]

Yes, scientific instruments is disabled for scouts right now. But I'm leaning to revisiting this decision.

I think most players use scouts for exploration (even the AI in Horizon does it!). This is typical behaviour in older games like MOO/MOO2 too. Where as "realistically" and in shows like Babylon 5 or even Star Trek, long-range explorer ships are some of their biggest ships, even bigger than destroyer class ships etc.

So while you can explore and survey with a scout it's not really optimal. I wanted to get this aspect in Horizon but like I said I'm leaning toward allowing scientific instruments on scouts. It still won't be quite as effective as a bigger ship since it won't be able to hold supply bays and scientific instruments together.

Your points make sense. In that case however, we should call the smaller ships something else than scout as standard, maybe fighters etc. As it is, when you build a scout you expect it to behave like one. What do you think?

[keller]

but like I said I'm leaning toward allowing scientific instruments on scouts.

You could always increase the space on it by a couple points, or lower the space cost down to 1 or none for scouts.