General idea for an expansion to ships
A proposal for a new ship concept:
Strike Craft (or Fighter, or something similar since Interceptor is taken).
Right now, all of our ships function conceptually the same. There are numbers adjustments on each, where an interceptor has low health, high turn speed, low capacity for weapons, etc. Likewise, a Battleship is slower/stronger in every way.
Lorewise, it has been mentioned that even the smallest interceptor is “building scale” in terms of its size--these aren’t tiny spacecraft with a one-person cockpit and wings. My proposal is for exactly that concept: let’s add a way for Anakin-in-a-starfighter to be a niche that is possible.
Obviously the defensive capabilities of these ships would be quite small. I imagine it should have a much higher chance to evade compared to all the other ships, and speed and maneuverability would be how it stays alive. But once it gets hit, pretty much one hit will blow through shields and one hit will blow through the hull. Something like 200dam / 100dam or such.
So how is it any different than an interceptor? All of our ships currently look like NPC ships (@--). Direction, turn speed, etc. What if strike craft looked like organics? A (&) on the map, no directionality. 360 degree firing arc, and no turn speed. Pick a direction and start moving in that direction. Pick a speed and accelerate to it immediately. Extremely maneuverable, extremely fast, extremely fragile.
I don’t have the actual hard numbers planned out very well, it was primarily the concept I wanted to explore. I envisioned it as a ship component that can be created through autofactories (economy!) that can be blown up, and that requires a ship to carry it. So just as some random thoughts:
Module: Strike Craft Hangar / Fighter Bay
5 hardpoints. Has space for one strike craft aboard the ship. Can have multiple hangars on a ship.
Strike craft:
Initially for simplicity, not very customizable? Ideally there’d be more things to play with and fine tune down the line, but some ideas for how this could look.
Initial option A: thermal/gravitic/kinetic/EM strike craft constructed from autofactory.
Initial option B: generic strike craft constructed from autofactory. Pilot can switch weapon type.
Damage: some type of fast-hitting, average-damage, spammable attack. Around 1.5-2.0 second fire speed, with damage in the 450-600 range respectively (to average out around 300ish DPS, comparable to Cannon3 or Turret3. A better use of hardpoints, but it requires an extra pilot.
Can be deployed with SHIP RELEASE STRIKERS or SHIP RELEASE <hangar module ID>. Strike craft can return to the ship (or even another ship) that has an open hangar bay with SHIP HANGAR ENTER or such.
I'm sharing these ideas in Discord too, but I figured there's a few people that might prefer sharing their thoughts on the far-less-spammy forums so I'd post here too just in case.