Player Features and Ideas Discussion

due to lore and other issues its logical to think that we cannot get to pilot rogue drone hulls, at least if you think of the infected dominix for that matter. rogue drone ships arent actually ships but ship sized drones. so its impossible to think about riding a dominix drone without having some sort of control device.

instead of that, i propose the following:

"same way as we can produce augmented drones from rogue drone components, players would be able to reverse engineer the rogue drone parts in order to create their own hulls, same way as T3 ships from ancient technology"

from that premise we get 3 new hulls, the problem is the bonuses, since we have so many drone boats in the game, its hard to think in different bonuses. rogue drone derived ships would be only focused in drones, no bonuses to any other weapon type because drones dont have an specific weapon (or tanking doctrine). so we have a situation similar to that of the Gnosis.....ships with a balanced number of slots.

as for skills....well......the main problem with this is that rogue drones are an independent faction, so we cannot tie them only to 1 or 2 races. they cannot be treated as pirate ships so they have to have a new set of skills for this. so i propose the following:

-Rogue Drone Interfacing: skill at manipulating Rogue Drone derived components, this skill requires Drones V, Drone Interfacin III and each racial drone skill to lvl III

-Rogue Drone Subsystems: allows for the control of Rogue Drone Subsystem components, +10% to Rogue Drone Subsystems effective bonuses

now for the bonuses:

ship bonus: (per lvl)

-10% drone microwarpdrive speed
-10% drone tracking, optimal and falloff range

role bonus:

-can field 5 more drones

the idea: these ships will be special in that they are only focused in drones, think of it like subcapital carriers, BUT, they're not delegated only to supportive roles, and instead, have a series of subsystems that much like T3, help them to cover different functions in group. basing it in the rogue drone's almost insectoideal social structure.....

the possible layout of these ships would be:

frigate: 3/5/5
cruiser: 4/6/6
BS: 5/7/7

the rest of the attributes are to be decided but they should be viable both as shield or armor ships (even hull too, given the case)....

about the Rogue Drone Subsystems:

these subsystems are designed to enhance the ships with specific functions, the idea is that players will be able to add a single subsystem to the ship allowing it to focus in a function of their choice:

1. "Worker" subsystem:

+50% drone mining yield and cargohold
+50% cargohold (you would have to use cargo expanders anyways)

2. "Soldier" subsystem:

+25% drone damage and hitpoints
+20% to all resistances
+37,5% to armor, shield and hull repairing amount

3. "Infector" subsystem:

+25% to EWAR drone effectiveness and hitpoints
+25% to all sensor strengths

4. "Queen" subsystem:

+100% to logistic drone armor, shield, hull and cap transfer amount
+50% to capacitor capacity and recharge
-can use 3 mindlinks (warfare, mining, whatever)

this is a very basic concept so im open to criticism......

i think its more than that, if rogue drones are that advanced then taking the "brain" of the drone wouldnt be enough, they would have backups in several parts of the ship and therefor, representing a possible danger to the player (every drone inside the ship is hostile you cannot tame them). it makes more sense to reverse engineer a ship based in the technology evolved from them a la T3, than just shoving the capsule on a brainless drone......

Rogue drone ships are just normal ships infested with rogue drones. The only way to get the functionality of rogue drone tech yourself would be to infest your own ship with rogue drones. At that point, it ceases to be your ship at all. It belongs to the rogue drones.

That sounds interesting, I think.

Put a heavier emphasis on fighting ability, over yield and utility.

The presumed dynamic of fleet support just seems a pretty ideal far too often, with nothing tangible underneath.

A set of dual function drones, only available to the proper ship, could make it into my opinion of a winning idea.

OP edited......

This is a possible brainstorming direction, but the ability to field more drones could be divided.

Bandwidth vs Mining Bandwidth.

With a hard cap on 5 of each being possible at the same time.

What do you think?

I would say to this, yes and no.

We are considering a ship that relies on drones for the bulk of it's DPS, as well as it's mining yield.
Pushing drones into allowing more than 5 combat, or 5 mining, would make balancing this difficult.
(I would suggest the ship have no hard points at all, in exchange for this ability.)
I think that to the drones, anything bigger than a certain size exists solely as a support element, while drones are always the primary focus.

Now, that being said, I would suggest the total pool of bandwidth be limited to 200.

Also, that a class of heavy mining drone exclusive to this line of craft exists. Like any heavy, I would recommend bandwidth and space needs of 25 / 25m3 respectively.
The same with medium, 10 / 10m3 respectively. (No, the harvester does not fit this profile, as it pales obviously when compared to a current T2 drone)

With a total bandwidth of 200, the pilot could do all heavy mining, but only have 75 remaining for defense. If they expect the reverse, then they have best possible combat but diminished yield.

That is my vision of this, perhaps as a more drone centric view with the infested domi acting more as a mother ship / queen drone.

bump, some details of the OP edited for clarification.....