Player Features and Ideas Discussion

For a long time the people I have came in contact with have been complaining about their own control over the ship. I know the modules have offered a wide range of possibilities but people think that these are not enough still. So today I would like to tell you about my own thoughts and hope you would like it.

The aim of this feature is to enable people with their own control of the ship, adjustable, real-time(even in space) but with limited effect so that it is not too imbalanced and works for both new comers and veterans. This feature works like the neural remapping system, in its way of reallocating points to distinguished areas of the ship.

3 Skills are required, and 8 categories, 15 subunits(in order to distinguish from the subsystems on T3) in total for ship adjustment.

The first skill's name is Power Grid Optimization (I came up with the name myself, and all names following is my own thoughts so dont blame on it lol) , which description is Managing power flow and resistance in the power grids to enable the conservation of minor energies for use in the ship's subunits. Gives 5KW of energy per level which can be distributed to subunits. This skill allows the usage of subunits and is the core skill of this feature.

The subunits have 8 categories which are Aggresive, Defensive, Engineering, Electronics, Mining, Leadership, Navigation and Survey, aggresive subunits have gunnery and missile under it, defensive has shield and armor, engineering have power grid(including capacitor) and energy emission systems,Electronics have electronic upgrades and electronic warfare, Mining have normal, ice mining and deep core mining, and navigation have propulsion upgrades and propulsion jamming under it. Each subunit needs specific skills in that area to be operated(you can make it a unit that can only be used after fitting, in other words a module-like system, or you can just have it on the ship itself but you need skills to operate it, in either way the ship's data needs to be changed, but I prefer the second one so that newbies dont need additional money on the subunits as they start the game). My thoughts are that every subunit needs level 3 in that general area, i.e. gunnery unit needs Gunnery III, Mining unit needs Mining III, Ice Mining needs Ice Mining III, etc so that newbies can use this system after simple training.(Afterall you want them to get to basic features fast dont you xD) Their prerequisites also include the Power Grid Optimization skill I mentioned above, as they have to have points(energy freed from that skill) spent on them. Every subunit has 10KW of max power allocation, which is just simply 10 grids like the neural remapping interface. I have even thought of the warning message while you try to allocate more energy when the 10kw is full, it goes like : The unit have reached its maximum power allowance, keep allocating more power will conduct a irreversible damage in its internal circuit (something like that xD)

The effect of these subunits are yet to be discussed. I have set a max amount of 5% increase at full power allocation, which can be increased by the second skill to 10% when fully trained in base attributes(so they get multiplied by other modules). They can boost stats in most areas(about 5 to 6 for specified units and around 4 for leadership and survey) or just simply 3 areas for combat based units( I think 3 will be reasonable, otherwise it wont be worth it to train those 3 skills, and this keeps the game balanced without making the bonus too little.) Or, if people think it is fine, you can allocate these energy in a more detailed way, such as increasing a paticular attribute. (I personally thinks that this is too complicated for adjustment during the encounter.) But afterall thats what the balancing team should worry about xD so I will leave it like it is here.

There are 15 subsystems in total and so 150kw of energy gap, first skill to lv5 gives 25, then you can train the third if you want to go further(the 3rd needs lv5 in the first skill) , for a 10kw increase per level, up to 75kw of energy can be spent in all the systems, and that helps to keep the feature itself fresh as you can only have half of the systems on full at any given time even if you have full skills so that people will have to adjust them from time to time for optimization purposes.

Finally about the time multiplier of the skills I think for the first one 2x-3x is reasonable, second one could be higher , 4-5x, the third one could be 6x. So it is newcomer friendly and is not so easily topped either.

That is all I have with me at the moment as I wrote this on an answer sheet of an exam, so I dont have other details. I will be adding more ideas if I come up with any.

Firstly I dont think adding complexity to ship modification is bad, as this gives more control of the ship, and is easy to play with. people may need to spend time learning how to fit the best modules, but everyone knows what a point allocation mechanism is, no matter you are a new player or a veteran.

Secondly, balancing has been considered, it is just a very small all round boost which may not introduce big balancing issues. even if some ships are being buffed too much, devs will deal with it. Afterall it is the devs who decide what attributes to buff and how much are being buffed.

Thirdly, overloading has overlapping with this feature but you dont get all of it. for instance you cannot overload miners, or weapon upgrades, or capacitor rechargers. this intends to give a more clear and controlled adjustment of the ships attributes in regions that overloading cannot reach. Also you have to figure out how the overload mechanics work, I for one did not know what it is till now, imo I persume this subunit mechanism is more user friendly. and overload have punishments too, which limits its usage. and because of the punishment the buff is higher than what I have proposed, so it is not against each other. you can buff ur ship using both systems, my mechanism at all times and overloading when there is an emergency. Imo i think they compensate each other well.

Thanks for the advice