Battle Pirates 2 ideas(years down the road)
The key features of the game, would be ship modifications, in a different format.
Take the Predator Submarine, lets say its the standard sub. when you take it into the dock and refit it, it would have 1 engine, which can be upgraded like a car, or replaced with a better one. it would have co2 scrubbers, you can update them and the sub stays under longer, same with torpedo tubes. you can upgrade sonar, radar, the electronics. and everything has a weight. if you hit max weight, that means you have 0 cargo space. With submarines for example you can add a segment, making it longer, benefits more equipment and space, bad side, it kills stirring and lowers speed.
What rank would do is effect accuracy, fire rate, and evasion. not turning speed, turning speed is a mechanical process, evasion, fire rate and accuracy are human components, the other is mechanical. when adding sections to a ship you lose rank, for example if you make a longboat into the size of a marauder, you would lose half your rank. Some upgrades require a certain amount of rank be used
The ships would be scaled down heavily, rather than 100 ship types, customizing them would be the key. you would only need 15-20 ship types. you can for example make a sea wolf into a sea scorpion. can make a floating fortress into a triton. But you need to upgrade them ships, it isn't a quick buy and done, the ship can be upgraded for just about ever.
The labs Modify attributes, they would not create hull types, they modify existing ones, at a deep cost in resources. For example you go to the auxiliary lab, you upgrade the propellers, they make it harder to find your sub on sonar, and increases your speed, the problem your engine is to small, and need to put in a larger power plant switching from 12 piston diesel engine to a small nuclear power plant, requiring uranium, the structure to be strengthened, so it may have been 3 speed under water, with the new reactor might be 9. Than you look at weapons, it may have take 90 accuracy down to 10 accuracy on your weapons, and may have lowered your ships rank to 0. Each change would have effects on other parts of the ship. For example if sonar wasn't upgraded, your going much faster, and by the time you see the enemy they are in weapon range, firing, and your to close to escape, your ship is longer so cant turn as fast, your trapped.
Weapon Customization, so much of what is out there is tweaks of the same weapon, rather than have auxiliary slots, you can get a weapon lets say a thud cannon, you upgrade the barrel (hardened barrels) upgrade the loader (auto loader) upgrade the targeting, upgrade the round fired, upgrade the caliber of the round.
The ammo Facility, you should make the ammo, and have different types of ammo, for example uranium tipped, armor piercing, high explosive, standard, standard would be quick and simple to make, make them in batches of 100, 5-10 minutes tops, depending on the weapon (obviously missiles and torpedo's take longer than a thud cannons shell)
A nice feature would be weather additions to the game, and day and night. For example have storms, toss in some icebergs, a hurricane or 2, rough seas, so for example firing a torpedo in 40 foot waves, the accuracy drops 50-90%. Have a rougher weather zone for example. Have shallows, that are too shallow for subs and large ships to operate in.
Size ships more correctly, for example a gunboat, would be almost invisible, when you have it next to a triton or atlas.
Replace mortars with vertical launch cruise missiles. Mortars where used in the 1800's aboard ships, they lost favor because the sucked, that and high elevation guns, did the job better.
All ships should have at least 1 depth charge on it, might not be able to aim or control it well. Many where as simple as kicking a depth charge over the side.
Ships should have a place dedicated to storing ammo.
Basically the ship would have a schematic of it/blueprint, statistical read out, then you go to the lab, the lab can modify the ship, make it longer, wider, taller, add more weapons, improve systems, the hulls strength, so you can make it bigger.
one addition would be submarines with long range cruse missiles, basically halo missiles, now its space is limited, so it may be able to fire 4-6 of them, then that boat is empty, its time to retreat, or get sunk. would have a weapon cool down time before can launch a 2nd , than 3rd and so on. so could build something like an Ohio class/boomer sub if upgraded capable of launching 10-50 Halo missiles or the equivalent (whales ships)
Bases should be alliance or neutral based, not individual. Have a sever cut back on npc's, focus on player vs player, no resources in the base, so the players need to come out and acquire goods. blueprints would be gone, you would need to kill npc fleets for a chance at items.
Possibly a split server game, where one is traditional, with when a ship dies it returns to dock. and a extreme mode, with sunk ships are sunk.
The hulls, would be built or looted off npc's. The players would scuttled there own ships first.
Each base would have a market, the base would be player controlled, the players pick a base commander. the base commander would set options, like who can buy tiles in the base to build on, who or what groups can trade with the base.
These bases would be more standardized, no moving around land, the base would be in the side of a mountain, with a harbor wall in front. and some under water turrets built, these turrets can be upgraded to no end. have sonar stations under water to detect subs. The base is set up to kill, for example have a long range missile platform, it may hold 500 halo missiles or a better quality, it may have 4 launchers on the 1 turret alone, capable of making patterns, not just aiming at the ships but in front, to the sides and behind, creating a massive blast zone. it will be more than capable of sinking and outranging enemy boomers. this weapons platform for billions to hundreds of billions of resources and undoubtedly, extremely expensive missiles, capable with nukes and emp, among other warheads, could easily fire 300-400 range. and with 100-200 blast radius, they are toast, the cost however makes it unprofitable to do, for every attacker. the cost of a nuke with that range should cost 500 million each resource or more, and yes it can be shot down. so if you let 4 loose, odds are 1-2 will live and do the job, but at a very expensive cost.
A weapon and its ammo goes across lines, base defenses would use ship based ammo and weapons. For example you could have an airfield, could have multi weapon turrets, the cost simply increases, so for example 1 turret could consume an entire tile, have a wall with guns built into it, even torpedo's, rockets, anti aircraft, radar, sonar. You end up with a complex, add another level on top.
You would be able to dock at any friendly base, but need to pay an owner to repair, and or upgrade, when you use the building, than it's in use, no one else can use it. if the owner decides they exclusively use it, they can do that. The lab needs to be upgraded high enough to do the upgrades though. Level 1 labs won't be upgrading atlas carriers for example.
This game Idea takes the heart of battle pirates and gives it a new body.
The reason this idea is needed is if you look at all the time and effort put into new weapons/equipment and ships its enormous. Once the new ship builder is introduced, and upgrade/rank system. much of the work can focus on optimizing the system, removing bugs. The current system requires a huge art department, constantly a fountain of new items and ships monthly.
Lets be honest the Game is shrinking, wait times is a major source of that. It's unrealistic to assume that everyone can or will coin repairs. in the system I outlined above, its based around the idea, whales will not be selling long boats and predators in mass to other whales, they would buy tritons and atlas carriers. What would happen is whales would take a group of low end to non coiners, become a base commander, they could offload tons of low end ships, making a decent profit, charge for repairs, upgrades and basically become even richer. The low end players would drag in resources, and parts (feeding the whale) This system would have low end jobs like mining. Mining would be tedious, boring, and beneath most coiners to bother with. The land owners don't need to lift a finger to make money, people use there buildings, they can live comfortably doing nothing but collecting resources off buildings.
The conflict occurs when your miners get ripped to pieces.
The Main Map
Base tiles/islands: islands can be made into bases.
Oil tiles: They have open ocean with a spot of black in the middle, players use a oil tanker, that skims it off the surface. You can upgrade the oil tanker to have a drilling attachment on it, which makes a well filling its tanks, can transfer it to other fleets and send back to sell. obviously enemies see this as a chance to attack a nice chunk of the enemy trading fleet and cripple it. This would have a time, and if drilling a timer to drill before collecting.
Iron tiles: submerged under water, requiring it to be dredged up, and transferred to a ore freighter, like the oil tankers could have better excavating equipment.
Uranium tiles: submerged under water, same process as ore, very low content similar to gold, mining a tile for an hour may net you 100. To make a nuke, for the standard starting cruise missile, might cost 1k a piece. they may only do something like 500 damage to a radius of 10
Zynthium tiles: submerged under water, same process as ore.
Gold tiles: Submerged under water, same process as ore. its used as an exchange resource, meaning if you sell 2 predator subs, and have no base, you don't want to carry around 100k each resource for example. would allow you to have like 100 gold in its place for example. which go to another base and should be able to get about 100k each resource at the next base. (plus or minus some the base commander sets the exchange rates) Gold would be used in upgrade costs paid to the owner. which most likely they use to buy resources.
4 new ship types would be available
Dredges/excavators, used to mine solid materials.
Oil tankers, used to capture and transport oil.
Ore Freighters, used to transport ore.
Freighters, used to transport parts (ammo, weapons, smaller hulls)
So when your miners get butchered, and ripped to pieces, the Whale will get concerned, when nothing comes in, nothing goes out, which is bad for business. The whales some would team up, but due to resources being an issue, and there greed, they will separate out, and take on low level players, basically become like a governor of an area, with other people and bases/alliances, wanting to take a cut of your resources. its in the whales best interest to have some people around them. This is important for new players, otherwise they get eaten by whales.. If a whale see's them as a way to better themselves, they will get a level of protection. creating a mutual beneficial relationship. One which in time could mean they have a fleet guarding the base, even buying some land to improve the base. In time may even make defenses of consequences. Maybe even save the base, while the whale is sleeping one day.
The game becomes territorial and alliance based essentially. Instead of all spread out, its carved out sections, where you could see a 1/4 of a sector all one alliance. if you enter the wrong neighborhood... pew pew pew...So when you catch your neighbor deep in your area mining Gold, guess whats likely to happen. considering when your gold miners come on and its mined dry for 6 hours or something like that. Knowing they will go home and mine all there gold tiles dry... nice way to start a war... Considering your allies cant buy upgrades, you have no gold to buy resources, or cut into your reserves. it becomes ugly, and starts a war. That Fleet of Boomers you have each with 40-50 nukes in each one becomes tempting to take to sea and pay your neighbors a visit. Maybe go old fashioned, bring in a battle ship with huge guns, 90 range sorta stuff, you know 2k damage, with 8 turrets like that. Some nice cruise missiles, capable of launching 4 every 2 seconds, with above and below water ability, at 120 range. with the system above, this is possible. even space for 2 anti missile/drone turrets.
The high end ships I mentioned, strongly imply coining is alive and very well, because in the one death server for ships. if a ship dies, it dies, so if you put a lot of money in one, your going to make sure it comes back home. You can spend 10k on 1 ship, and if you skip an area, lets say sonar, to lose that ship to a slightly improved predator... would tick some people off... Maybe improved batteries, co2 scrubbers and a few nuke tipped torpedo's. You get an enemy for life...
A standard mission for example a player would under take...
You have 1 excavator which will mine iron for you, on an iron tile, you will have a ore freighter with you to load the iron on.
Also you would most likely have 2 destroyers and a cruiser type ship. The destroyers with anti sub capabilities, and anti aircraft. The cruiser would likely have the cruise missiles, and larger deck guns.
So lets say someone comes to sink your fleet and steal your ore freighter. Most likely using some subs (are relatively cheap) and a big ship or 2 (battle ship, or heavy cruisers) If you have good ally's they will have a sub fleet or 2, even a heavily armed surface fleet guarding the many mining fleets of the alliance.
If the fleets aren't guarded they get ripped to shreds generally. unless you have some super ships baiting a trap for enemies.
The game requires a ton of conflict, in order for ships to advance they must do what they are built for,excavators must excavate, mining ships must mine, freighters must move freight. While it sounds silly a freighter moving around is in danger and a target, killing a convoy of 4 freighters for example is a big deal. For example a freighter at sea with an excavator it gain ranks by the minute. (excavators by the ton or ounce) so to rank 1 a level may require 4-10 hours at sea, if you for example have a good string of luck, lets say the excavator lives 1k hours of use, along the way would have cashed in tons of rank, have 4 times the mining speed, more resources per scoop, a bigger faster ship, more automation like adding a conveyer to the freighter, so that you don't need to transfer materials to the freighter, but will transfer as soon as they are gathered.
Daily wars would erupt, seeing that ships must have rank to get better, sitting in dock does nothing for them. while people will not bring out the best daily, or even weekly, low end battles will take place. knowing you will lose some, and rank some. The ranked ones get upgraded and used more cautiously, the dead are replaced with new low end ships, to get tossed into the chaos of daily fighting.
The average ship used would likely be the marauder and predator sized ship. your not going to send out a triton into a swarm, and have it hunted down and killed by 30 subs and 30 marauders.
What all this does is change the game mechanics to a more positive outlook. in this game you want more and more armor, time wouldn't matter for repairs seeing you rent docks or can build multiple docks and charge to use them. If a fleet is in dock for a week, its not a big deal in general, you can repair other places. So not a big deal, you can repair sub fleets and smaller fleets at other docks, without issue.
Now in the current game... if you need a week of repairs your going to lose your mind. Mentally, coiner or not, your going to dislike using that fleet. So what is the purpose of making ships people are afraid to use. Now on the new game, when you buy things its going to be visible... ships, buildings, you will see what you bought... sure can still do repairs.. and don't under estimate panic defenses building... the fear of 5 heavy battleships on a suicide run at your base, making a hole for your entire base and everything in it, to be destroyed and looted. leaving you pretty much with nothing...
You have the option to sell and transfer bases, so lets say a group wants you dead, they understand it will be costly, and the groups just cant get along. To take the base may cost them many to most of there best ships as losses, huge amounts of resources. seeing that its bad blood, one side can sell there base, and make or buy another, some place else. The problem is solved they go different ways and everything is fine... or they kill each other brutally, lose every last ship, smoldering bases, and another local group kills both of them and loots what's left of them.
You would have economic center bases. which allow most people in, and trade to just about everyone. Skimming a healthy amount of resources off the top for themselves. However can get things which they may not be able to otherwise get. Or go for a quick reversal in a war, for example buy 100 nuke warheads, lure some enemies to your base, and let the base defenses incinerate the enemies.
The ship types
Corvette (fast attack, light armor, used for hitting economic ships)
Frigate (used primarily for attacking weak freighter convoys)
Destroyer (used for anti sub warfare, best suited ship for it, more defensive)
Cruiser (used as a fast attack ship with many weapon types)
Battle Cruiser (a high speed battleship with low armor, for speed)
Battleship (heavily armed and armored)
Dreadnaught (very slow, heaviest armored, and biggest weapons)
Carrier (fast and lethal to surface ships)
Super Carrier (fast and lethal to surface ships)
Attack Sub (quick life ships, quick taking it, quick giving it)
Ballistic Missile Sub (hides and hurls missiles all over)
These ships all start out small as a light weight version, and upgrades make them larger and larger. For example the Ballistic missile sub will start with 4 launch tubes, 2 torpedo tubes, it will be slower than an attack sub, less maneuverable, the best way to hunt them is with subs, best way to hunt attack subs is with destroyers, best way to hunt destroyers is with carriers and larger ships.
What this means is each battle group needs a destroyer, probably an attack sub, and all types of ships. So what this means is a whale may be building carriers, and dreadnaughts only to discover they have no destroyers left, so lets say you have played a few months and have 10-20 destroyers, some very well off, to the point that whale will buy half them off you. In exchange you may get equipment, a battleship hull, nukes, land tile. any of which helps the whale and the new player. rather than offing the new, the whale let them hang around, and paid off for the whale... lets say the starting sonar is 40 range on a destroyer, they may have there's up to 80, and thermal up to 40, the ship may have gone from 200 feet to 300, might be able to rapid fire salvos of 5 depth charges every 2 seconds. In time could make the ship 600 feet long or more, with it bigger than cruisers and small battle cruisers. Being able to detect subs 150 away and thermal at 100 range, when you get your nuke tipped anti sub torpedo tracking and firing at it, before the sub is even half way in range, all of the sudden that sub has no chance at all. Put a few nuke reactors in that ship, some lasers for anti missiles. This ship becomes a monster.. until a battle ship 200 away lands a few hits and blows it in 2... which is always a possibility and risk in this game. Making a ship like this would take years of ranking and upgrades, or a ton of coining. The ship would almost possibly be invincible.. at it's task...
What this means is you can make a living in this game, upgrading and ranking ships, you can make a living hunting npc's for parts and rare weapons, also mining, building, and trading, the game becomes more balanced economically. It brings in more player types from other game types.
With ships blowing up, it add's change to the game, some will hate this (mostly because they always repair destroyed fleets) more will love it however. losing 1 player, but gaining 10... not a bad trade off. The best part no events, or monsters or new ships, we could hack and slash each other to death with the ones listed above.
Obviously keep the 25 ranks, but make it spendable, with resources and lab time. so for example extending the length of the ship, 100 feet might equal 25 ranks, or 20 feet for 5 ranks. take a destroyer, the ship slows on the percent of what is added so if it was 9 speed is now 6 speed (33% bigger, means 33% slower) nothing was added to sonar, weapons, or any other ability, the ship is just longer, and can carry 1/3 of it as cargo on top of what it already can. it would have a cost escalator, so for example if you upgrade the length 20 feet, the next 20 feet or 100 feet, the extra cost is built in, and will take more time, and resources.
When you take a weapon off, for another, you can sell the old one, all weapons are made, so can sell it, or put it on a new ship (will lose rank for equipping it) not a 1 to 1 ratio, like a 1 to 2, where if it cost 10 rank to build from a ship, will cost 5 more rank on the newer ship. This is to prevent making a farm, where you have 5 ships, make 1 bigger and stronger, and just build weapons or reactors on the other, planning to cannibalize the others to make 1 super ship.
The Ammo Factory
One thing it should do is make the warheads, and ordinance, but a ship's weapon is limited to firing what it is capable of. So for example if you have a Ballistic Missile Sub, you get a total of 4 Missiles... that's it... no reload. They are conventional warheads only, until you unlock the other warheads. Each new warhead requires different precautions, for example nukes requires at least 20, I would recommend 25 ranks to unlock. Armor piercing Rounds would require 5 ranks. EMP would require 15 ranks, corrosive, bunker buster, and napalm would be like 10 ranks. To upgrade the Missiles carried, the launcher needs to be upgraded. So standard would be a 10 foot standard missile, and eventually it would get up to 30-40 feet long. The increase allows for bigger warheads and more range. One example would be firing when stopped, if you upgrade the launcher, and buy special missiles, can fire on the move. (5 ranks for 5 more feet of missile's)
What this means is you will have 20-30 missile types for sale at each base, with a large stockpile of the standard type. (10 foot conventional) which can be used by every Sub.
So for example you need 5 ranks to add another missile tube on the sub, the controls would be automated, or like using the launch pad mode, where you can fire them manually (all at once, on one target, or one at a time, or in a cluster)
Each launch tube would need to be upgraded, meaning you may have 20 that launch conventional 10 foot missiles, and only 4 that launch 40 foot nuke missiles. And probably 4 torpedo tubes to fire at attack subs. This sub would be heavily armored, with survivability in mind, you could lose 20 ships, but if that one survived, you would be relieved.
Rank would be a little easier to get, and would have no limits on the amount you can gain per trip to sea. For example lets say your attack sub solo's a battleship and lives, lets say the Sub had 2 torpedo tubes, and basically the standard model.
How rank is calculated.
Each ship has a starting value, its modified and active value, to equal the total value.
An example I have a frigate
(frigate is 5 points as a standard)
I have spent 10 ranks, its 20 feet longer, and 5 added to guns range, also have
3 rank on the ship currently (not used).
If you kill that ship it has 18 rank points.
and if your ship has a total of 18 rank points,
You get 1 rank, because your adversary was equal to you, you get 1 level.
If you kill an inferior ship, lets say you have 18 points and they have 9
what happens is you get half a rank.
Lets say you kill a super ship somehow, you have 10 rank points they have 400. you get 40 ranks (25 active, but can spend 40) If you send that ship back out, it now has 50 ranks, against a 400 rank ship, you only get 8 ranks if you kill a duplicate ship or whatever.
Economic ships rank in combat is multiplied by .1, so a level 50 economic ship, is only 5 points if killed. meaning if you had a frigate, fresh out of the shipyard, you get 1 rank. If you have a ship with 100 rank points you gain 5% of 1 rank.
What this all means is you gain next to nothing offing little ships, and economic ships. the real prize is offing high level ships. the more successful a ship the more people that want to kill it, and the bigger incentive they have to kill it. When you have a legitimate war and these ships are slugging it out, do you have any idea how much coins will fly and get blown up. When for example you get a battleship, Super carrier and boomer fleet of a whale (500 ranks each ship) and they lose the destroyer escorts, and cant make it back home safely. how many coins will they spend, to buy gold, in order to buy your rank 50 destroyers? Not just the normal cost, but inflated war cost, when half the destroyers are destroyed, the price easily doubled or better. what will happen is fear coining, and while that whale could buy a destroyer and buy the rank, speed up the production, far easier and cheaper to buy what is already out there.
How mining works
You would have 1 or 2 fleets, depending on your size. Preferably use 2 with one fleet, you have the dredge with an escort, and the freighter(s) in a fleet with escorts for the 2nd fleet. Allowing you to mine non stop, while the freighters load and off load. same idea with oil tankers that can drill for oil., you transfer the resources to the other fleet (not instant is a off load timer) could also sell the resources to other freighters and tankers, for example 1 ounce of gold per ton of metal, or 30 barrels of oil for 1 gold ounce. depending on the value of the resource in your area, it will differ due to Geographic's, but also players abilities, if you have a limitless oil well for all intents and purpose and can pump it out at a million barrels a minute, offloading really quick, and for whatever reason you keep losing ore mining fleets, and cant rank them quick enough to keep up, and end up with oil at a rate of 10 to 1 metal, this will influence prices, and development, your base (alliance/ally's) may go with napalm as standard issued, due to a metal shortage for rounds and weapons, seeing napalm's primary element is oil, as compared to standard which is more metal.
Gold and uranium mining, the amounts of materials they will get are minimal as far as tonnage is concerned, you wont need a freighter to move either element back, even after mining all day.
Starting out
you start out picking 5 hulls, you must take 1 corvette, to lead the fleet. You must pick 1 economic ship minimum (freighter, ore freighter, tanker, dredge), the only military ship type you can pick is a corvette. They are basically the long boat/gun boat. The strength of this hull is it can run fast and maneuverable. It has the smallest weapons, they basically are suicide troops.
If you lose it all....
you receive a corvette and a mining ship. Your gold stays with you, so would need to have 0 gold also, so even if you lost all your ships and buildings, you can easily buy more ships, a corvette would only cost like 10-20 ounces of gold. A freighter would only cost like 20-40 gold ounces, which is like mining for 30 minutes? tops even in the worst ships at mining. Meaning a short amount of play time and can double your fleet. Buy another mining ship, send the other one in to upgrade. After 2-4 hours could have a frigate, some corvettes and a fleet of mining ships.
Coining
Basically 1 coin could buy you a starting freighter, 1 more would buy you a corvette, 3 would buy you a frigate. so on the low end could make a fleet of ships, with a few coins.
Ransom option
Basically mining ships are very valuable, and you wont want to kill them all, even though they are easy rank. a player can set a mining fleet reward, which before the battle starts would send an automated message. which will say Let mining ships retreat, and you get x amount of gold. if you click yes, they leave but fighting fleet doesn't. and you fight out the battle, but keep the gold ransom. or you click no, and try your luck at running them down and killing them. when a ransom is given they go directly back to base the trade ships.
You can limit the offer being sent, for example if they have 5 rank points totally, and you have a battleship and attack sub, you wont give them anything but a quick death. (battleships standard guns out rage the corvettes by likely 50 or more) A sub will have an easy time killing ships without sonar. so to pay corvettes a ransom would be a mistake.
Now if you have 5 enemy attack subs after you, and you only have 3 frigates guarding, it's time to give them what they want, your going to lose your mining ships if you don't pay up. The frigates would be out numbered, and out ranged, limited sonar, and limited antisub warfare, they are not the ships, that should be trying to defend in that situation, unless they are seriously upgraded (long range anti sub missiles/torpedo's, extremely upgraded sonar) if not they are all dead. now against 5 corvettes, the 3 frigates would do there job very well, likely no loses, even if the corvettes have some upgrades.
The more valuable your mining fleet, the more valuable combat ships you need guarding them. Take a rank 100 oil tanker and 60 ranks went into length/size, and the other 40 in engines. the ship is 240 feet longer than the standard oil tanker. if the standard is 100 feet, this ship can carry at least triple the other tanker, and more survivable., it might take a dedicated player 2-3 months to get that ship that big. if an attack sub is 10 ranks at start, ad that ship is 10 ranks equivalent, any sub out there will get a rank for killing that tanker, if it had to kill a pair of frigates first, that sub just gained 2 ranks, next time you see it maybe it has better sonar, or better diving abilities, maybe better speed. meaning next time you see that sub, maybe it takes out 4 frigates and a mining ship. maybe a pair of destroyers next time, and all of the sudden it has 15 feet long torpedo's with better range, maybe it takes on your battleship fleet and sinks 1, before hiding and retreating. The point is you give up easy rank to enemies, it will bite you back hard. people would rank ships first on mining fleets, than on smaller combat fleets, than would move up the food chain. until one day it attacks a super carrier, and sinks it, and out of no where a frigate with no customization sinks it from behind.
Perpetual war
you need to constantly rank up every type of ship, because what will happen is an alliance will make 100 subs, and send them at you. you counter by making destroyers, and all along the other alliance has been building up battle cruisers and battle ships, and after attacking you 2-3 days with subs, they lure you in with subs, and spring there capital ships wiping out your destroyers. now they have some remaining subs, and capital ships running around on you. and your left trying to counter the new threats, they take much of your mining fleet, and build up some boomers.. I mean why not they destroyed all your destroyers over the last week, and have attack subs to escort them now. You get to rank up the boomers while they regroup. do some serious mining, so when they are ready again to pose a threat you now have several ranked fleets, in all categories, so no matter what they make, you can counter attack them and make weaknesses on them again. Obviously when you have mining fleets out, and see 10 inbound enemy fleets, its time to pack it in for the day and run.
Ship Yards
All a ship yard does is make ships, they do not upgrade anything, they make no new objects, other than standard issued no rank hulls. They can not upgrade hulls in any way, all they do is pump out ships, the ships coming out have a standard load out, in order to change weapon configurations, you need a weapon, a standard, non modified weapon that is standard issued on that ship class would require no rank, or for some reason if you wanted smaller weapons, would be no rank charged. (for example you wanted to have 3 inch deck guns on a destroyer instead of 5 inch. These changes would be made at a weapons lab.
The ship yard would need to upgrade to make the bigger ships, a rank 1 shipyard makes corvettes exclusively, and dredges on the economic front. The cost to make a shipyard is going to be extremely high.
The Labs Role
The Weapons Lab, Anything pertaining to weapons is done at the weapons lab, If for example you want hardened barrels on all 4 your turrets, you would need 4 (1 per each turret) or more ranks, you would need gold to pay the lab owner, than the materials for the upgrade. So lets say you have 9 ranks to spend, you buy armor piercing round ability on a turret, and all 4 with increased range (hardened barrels). the armor piercing rounds increases damage, but the turret can still use conventional rounds if you are unable to buy or build advanced shells. Spending 9 ranks should cost 45 minutes first range increase per turret (5 minutes is the start) same with armor piercing rounds (first time you bought it). So the next range upgrade would cost 20% more in time so would increase a minute each time on the last time, so each time increases a minute. so to take range 50 guns to range 60, would cost 15 minutes from 59 to 60 range. Labs would charge by the minute. 5 minute fast forwarding would no longer happen...
Weapons Lab upgrading, the lab owner would need to keep upgrading this building (taking it offline to do). Upgrades would be targeted to weapon types. so a level 1 lab, would pick a category to start out in. so for example it may pick deck guns, that lab could upgrade all minor upgrades to level 5, meaning range, accuracy, reload. (each upgrade increases the stat by 1 or 1%). Major upgrades being the shell, could upgrade ships to armor piercing 1, or conventional mk2. would need to reach level 25 to unlock nuke shells. you could not skip for example armor piercing 1-4 and just buy armor piercing 5 shells for example. To unlock nukes for deck guns the lab must be level 5 specifically in deck guns. so if you have a missile turret for a sub, you would need to drop 25 ranks just to make it a nuke missile. they wouldn't be over powering, they do area damage. now a level 1 nuke would sink a group of corvettes or frigates, if they where close together, possibly if a direct hit on a surfaced attack sub or destroyer that are at the lowest possible rank. So no it wouldn't be God mode to have nukes, unless your enemies are all in corvettes and frigates, in which case you would go broke, and gain no rank just about ever, nukes are expensive and destroying ships that take 5-30 minutes to build, as opposed to nukes which would take an hour to make and cost absurdly more. Not really cost effective to go around nuking noobs. (basically would be like using a fleet of atlas carriers killing level 3 npc's all day.. you could but why would you want to, or bother?)
The Naval Lab, Anything that deals with the hull is done here. If you wanted a destroyer 40 feet longer (200 start+40=240 also armor is now increased by an additional 20%) and you wanted 10 levels of anti Torpedo armor. Basically you will spend 20 ranks and (11 minutes for the 40 extra feet, 5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14=95 minutes for the torpedo armor) 106 minutes is the total time cost (1 hour 46 minutes) Now if a sub has level 3 conventional torpedo's, it will do damage at a rate of a level 1 torpedo, however with 20% more armor from the size upgrade, The sub is not back to square 1 it has an additional 20% to get over, and if they needed to upgrade its 2 torpedo tubes to level 3 (costing 22 minutes, but 20 ranks total, same as the destroyer) The destroyer weapons have not been changed, but either has the subs core abilities, the destroyer would have better odds at winning, since it's upgrades set the subs attack ability far back. Armor is meant to outpace weapons technology, this gives extra survivability to high ranked ships, otherwise, no incentive exist to upgrade ships, if every time you upgrade a ship they litter the ocean floor... who wants to deal with that?
Naval Lab Upgrading, Anything to do with making the hull better, this lab will get to focus on 10 small upgrades or 2 major upgrades per ship type. What this means is lets say you choose to work on destroyers as your first upgrade, you can make a destroyer 40 feet longer (2 upgrades totaling 10 ranks), you can increase a destroyer 10 times in 1 area in small ways, The armor you can increase 10 times, you can increase against certain types of weapons, for example anti radiation, anti torpedo armor, anti projectile, anti missile, (and a ton more) which gives a 1% bonus against certain attacks per level. This lab deals with subs ability to have stealth skins and things that deal with subs. next you may pick the oil tanker, allowing them to get bigger and researched to a total of 10 ranks. so an extra 40 feet, can upgrade the armor like a normal ship.
The Propulsion Lab, what it deals with is the power plants/reactors, rudders/stirring and propellers. So lets take a destroyer as an example, and you want to hunt sub's, get a little speed, get a little more quiet. so what you do is go to the propulsion lab, you buy a Diesel reactor MK2, it puts out more power, which is split between propellers and electronic systems (sonar, thermal, weapon systems, jamming and all sorts of equipment), you buy 1 propeller upgrades making a Mk2, and 5 stealth coatings on the propeller, what that does is against standard equipped sonar take 5 off of what the sub should see, so you sneak in 5 range closer, obviously the sub upgrades sonar 1 time for 5 ranks and back to even. What you have is a Diesel reactor MK2, a propeller MK2 and 5 coats of stealth on the propeller, the cost is 15 ranks, your speed increase significantly, (accuracy would fall on weapons), and be easier to sneak in on subs, you would have issues with turning, since it wasn't upgraded, but the ship is faster, along with accuracy issues, but would be able to outrun similar ships, and escape quicker and easier.
The propulsion lab is similar to the hull lab, your upgrades are for a specific ship type and class, it is not generic across the board upgrades.
The Electronic Warfare Lab, what this does is keep your ship smarter than the others. Increases in sonar, radar which help accuracy of weapons, counter measures for subs, electrical grid optimization, increases in mining efficiency, radar jamming, warhead jamming. All of these systems require 5 ranks to put aboard) So an example would be I Have my destroyer, I put on it radar jamming mk1, Sonar Mk2 (Destroyers come with MK1 sonar aboard and all ships after it, and all ships have radar MK1) Also add on warhead jamming Mk1. Radar jamming lowers an enemies ships accuracy when surfaced 5% (requiring radar 2 to get back to normal accuracy for a level 1). Sonar Mk2 increases sonar range by 5, and warhead jamming gives a 5% chance at disabling an enemy missile that is not modified to resist tampering. So it costs 15 ranks and 16 minutes, for these 3 items.
The Electronic Warfare Lab, is just like the other labs, it focuses on 1 ship, and must be upgraded, for many ship types.
Overall It's well balanced out and represents where a ship is at, not where it was, so if you take a frigate, add 100 more length, than it's the same size as a destroyer, same tonnage, can use the same size weapons, similar attributes, except to get to that point it needs a upgraded reactor, research is going to get just as costly or more. You need to upgrade sonar, upgrade the propellers, and the ship should mirror a destroyer. Going forward the cost to upgrade the frigate will be far larger, especially in time, time cost more gold to the building owner. When you look at all the ship types, and labs, and need to upgrade, the owners wont have 50 levels for each ship type possible, what will happen is each lab will have a few ships, and the upgrades will be more specialized. for example 1 owner may make 4 labs, a ammo plant and shipyard, and build only subs, , another may only build destroyers. you may have the poor owner that only has a few frigate upgrades, and a small shipyard. you may have an economic person that deals with all economic ships, and builds them at your base. What will happen is even if you could get 1 player to make labs capable of servicing all ships, the problem is the lab is always full. 1 other thing about labs, would be you can spend 1 upgrade to form a line, so for example a lab upgrade could be spent so that a line can form at your lab by players, and have no downtime. The ship that's to be upgraded goes in line, and stays there, until done. when a lab owner wants to upgrade they turn it off, and when every ship is done that paid in line or in progress, must finish, and you can put the building upgrade in line, if you have 2 spots the building being turned back on after can be done after the upgrade. As you could see from examples above, upgrades can take minutes or days. either way the owner receives there money.
When mining... you will receive small amounts of gold, iron and uranium, while each spot has specific areas that are most ideal for the hunted and desired resources, you will find trace amounts of other materials also. So you may mine iron and find 10 ounces of gold and 100 uranium after an hour. lets say the local lab charges 1 ounce of gold a minute. You can keep your materials, and buy some upgrades for a ship, or buy a new ship, or could sell your old excavator and ore freighter, since they are ranked, and buy 2 of each that are unranked, and double your trading fleet. so that next time you go out, can have the 2 ore freighters traveling between the base and mining location, The oil tanker for example can go to the Weapon Lab, buy a drill, and start drilling into the ocean floor, than go to the electronic warfare Lab, buy an electronic pump, all of the sudden its more like an oil rig, than a oil tanker. Each time need to go to the ammo lab, and buy a drill head (with piping) with no pump the oil just spills out, and is gathered by tankers sucking it up on the surface (very slow as opposed to pumping it aboard). Go to the naval lab and get a crane to offload ore freighters faster, and to fill them, can upgrade pumps and cranes and make things even faster.
The most important part is the Repair yard in the game. Without one... your pretty screwed. No upgrading unless the ship is repaired, so obviously is a problem. obviously wait lines will be allowed, the more you upgrade them the bigger they are, can accommodate bigger ships, and more ships at once. This is how coining comes into the game big, beyond waiting for upgrades (can only buy gold, not resources) gold is used in the construction of electronics, so will be consumed. Imagine you come into dock, your base has 2 Repair docks, 1 for small ships, capable of repairing 10 at a time and 30 on the waiting list destroyer/attack subs and smaller (10, 260 foot long stalls)(not bad) Than you have the dreadnaught, super carrier sized repair dock, capable of repairing 2 at a time, and 2 in waiting. so if you have a fleet of 5, you cant even put the entire fleet in for repairs at once. When upgrading the repair dock, only 1 stall is taken out of commission, the 1 you are upgrading/building, when you upgrade to the point its 1,000 long or more, you need to buy another tile, that building now requires 2, and if you get 10 that are 100 feet wide, you need to buy 2 more, to expand sideways. (10, 1k foot long is the max you can do for 1 tile (1k by 1k).
When you see a battle, an a dreadnaught 1k length next to a destroyer, the destroyer is 1/5 the size, a frigate is 1/10 the size a corvette is only 40 long 1/25th the size. Armor is accumulative, as well as a bonus, but for example if the destroyer has 400 armor, the frigate 200, and corvette 80, the dreadnaught has 2,000, if a nuke does 250 damage, it would require 8 direct hits with nukes to sink a unmodified dreadnaught with no rank bonuses applied. which is 8 nuke missile tubes, so 25 rank times 8 is 400 ranks, then add 40 length (10 more ranks), then add 4 missile tubes so another 40 ranks. That boomer would have 450 ranks minimum, The dreadnaught would likely have 100-200 since just starting. the outcome would be fair honestly, considering that boomer had to have killed no less than 450 ships equivalent, and the dreadnaught kill would only net it about 20-40% of a rank.
Fleets would be picked, as opposed to sitting in groups forever. When a fleet goes to home base its broken up, visiting other bases it will not break up, unless you give the order. the materials are automatically stocked in your warehouse, stored, or sold off. you can use freighters as warehouses. you can form up groups to defend the base, you can keep some groups if you choose. this is used to discourage farming with fleets, since you may lose a ship or 2, of considerable rank, farming is a poor idea. You could make more money selling the experienced ships, than you will by minor looting.
The battles would be more epic, when a shipyard can pump out 24 subs a day, then upgrade, so maybe its 30 a day, all these excess ships are going to spill into major wars. You then have another making 20 destroyers, another making all sorts of stuff. when you can build on average 10 fleets a day of decent low end ships, and up to 100-1000 starter ships a day, after a week that's a minimum of 300 combat fleets, with the higher end around 500 fleets built a week. if 90% of these ships are destroyed, that means out there, will be some highly ranked ships hiding out, the opportunity to gain 50 ranks a week consistently are there... When you get people itching for conflict, and have 10 fleets of no ranked junk, how long before a war starts? i'm guessing it will take them a short time before they pick a fight. if they lose 9 fleets, they wont care, the surviving ships will likely be ranked 40-50, a few weeks of this and they wont be having such high loses, it will be down more towards 40% than 80%, eventually they will get ranked ships and cause massive amounts of carnage. They will realize they are broke sell a ship or 2, and able to rebuy the 10 fleets they had.
Some ways the game would be different, is every tile on the world map can be mined in some way, the map wouldn't need to be as large, a 50 by 50 area could support an alliance of hundreds, comfortably. If you have 200 members, and around 40 a base, 5 bases is realistic, you will have a few whales, you will have a bunch of noobs, a decent amount of mid level people. The best part is a war will be a war, winners and losers will exist, not stale outcomes and draws. when your group levels an enemy base, that the day before cranked out 100 mid level ships a day, tomorrow when you fight again, the other side is at a serious disadvantage. First thing the whale does is send out an armada of subs and destroyers with no rank to guard the base, next thing is tap the credit card limit and upgrade all the base defenses, knowing that there base is next. so them 15 inch deck guns, are going to be upgraded to 25 inch deck guns, those little Missile batteries with 10, 20 foot nukes... well now they are going to be 50 missiles a battery, and they will be 30 feet tipped with nukes. Which will be roughly a years worth of raids to buy, for a whale. The medium level coiners, obviously they are going to be tipping them cruise missiles with nukes. so when the Whale that was beaten yesterday shows up at your base to join and help you, and you get them 6 land tiles. lets see how a whale responds to losing 1-5k dollars, and how much more they will spend in vengeance. will they buy a fleet of boomers, and fire 40 foot nukes inside the enemy base, when the first strike punches a hole in the turrets, the return trip nukes some labs or a repair yard. Insanity will follow, and stabilize, some new bases will be made, and lost. The game will forever be changing, and this is good.
What changes is the ships can be changed to tasks they preform, as opposed to generic upgrades which may or may not be helpful. while one upgrade area may help a ship in 1 task, it may hurt it in others. For instance a destroyer, if you upgrade anti sub torpedo's and anti sub missiles. You upgrade sonar, and your ability to be detected by submerged ships that's very nice... but when a cruiser comes at you, none of them advantages have any relevance. your ship might as well be rankles, because nothing that was done to your ship will help it, kill this cruiser. your only ability is to try and outrun it and retreat. If you don't its a dead ship, and hopefully the owner was smart enough to have a sub, or cruiser with that destroyer. other wise 50 ranks down the toilet, and a level 20 cruiser just gained 2 and a half ranks.
This is why newbs are important in this game, instead of being a pest... They buy 100's of ships, then proceed to sink them on other newbs. if they get a decent ship, they are going to likely need to sell it off. So that they can buy more ships to sink. this entire process helps older players. free rank, and if they cant beat them, they can buy them out. If they turn out to be good at combat, they can rank and sell bigger ships, everyone will start with the delusion they will rank everything themselves, until they realize it's not npc's your fighting, it's risky and luck is involved.
Why many people would love a game like this is it has final results. Ships don't come back when dead. You can take out fleets every day and fight, some days can have none come back, other days loaded with rank and lost no ships.
Obviously most players will keep the good fleets back at base, and fight it out with smaller ships. however when someone crosses a line, the skirmishes get personal and out comes the big ships. The smart noobs will pull into dock and hide, the dumb ones will get destroyed without firing a shot.
Opportunity would exist, if you pull out a level 80 cruiser, 2 level 50 destroyers, and 2 level 60 attack subs. you will get a hundred noobs trying to kill you, because they know if they sink 1 ship and retreat, they just gained 8-5 ranks on 1 ship. They take it home, and now they get a new sonar, some stealth shielding armor, now they can see more underwater and kill enemy subs easier, and hide from subs and destroyers better. When the unranked subs come after them, now they get 5 more range to see them, they can see them, hit the gas and stay away while firing at them, so when that 1 sub kills 5 enemy subs (50 points, against 18) it just gained nearly 3 ranks. Send it to the shop, put 2-3 ranks on a torpedo, now it can fire 2-3 further, which will help against surface ships, and also against subs. Lets say it goes out again gets 5 rank, you extend the hull 20 feet.. you fire 10 foot torpedo's you can get 2 rows for storage, and can get 32 more on the ship, so that you running out is less likely. Maybe that helps you in the next battle gain 10 ranks, and after put on 2 more torpedo tubes, you just doubled your offense, now your a decent match, and people are going to be giving offers to buy that sub. Maybe you get 10 more points, the advancements helped a lot, so upgrade the reactor to a MK2 and sonar to MK3, now you can see newb subs 10 range further, than they can see you. All they ever see is 4 torpedo's incoming. the price of this sub goes up a lot now. Whales for example may need to spend 150 dollars to make this ship and rank it using coins, but if they buy it off you for 80 (which is gold in game) they save money, not getting to pick everything, but enough to know they have a very good ship. The player that worked the ship to that point sells the ship, but rather than being in subs, they may have bought a battle cruiser, or carrier, maybe a land tile or 2. lets say 1 coin turns to 10,000 gold (800,000). lets say the initial buy of that sub was 3,000, they soaked a bunch of gold into it for upgrades and repairs (10-20k) so they make 770-780k, they can buy a few subs, and some other nice toys. Far easier to rank things when you have a strong ship guarding your back, incase things go bad, it comes in and kills the enemy.
Bases in Depth
The repair docks, Lab's, shipyard, they all are on the water.
Ammunition factories, the main building/market, and Storage is on land, along with turrets and defenses.
Land would be sandwiched on an island/continent, so the base is attackable on only 1-3 sides.
No limit on structure type, level, or any limits. You may own as many as you want. (50 turrets for example or 8 shipyards, its all player choice)
Drac sea walls, basically Drac outposts have a seawall and on it are turrets, this is the better way to go for turrets, otherwise half your land is used making turrets. so instead build seawalls at the market/command center, than position them out in the harbor, until you can remove all land tiles. So for example, each piece of seawall is a tile long, you then sell/give that piece to a person, and it can only make turrets on it. Each sea wall can have 1 turret, which can have multiple weapon systems on it. for example if you have 1 section a radar/sonar/fire control tower with a flak turret on top, and a mk5 reactor at the base of it, you have 1 turret area have 64 Ballistic missiles, the other turret area 128 anti ship, and anti sub cruise missile battery, and the last slot is a 25 inch deck gun.
When the enemies see the tower, that is target number 1, they destroy your anti sub ability, and decrease accuracy. So 1 thing a tower would do is increase its armor, past absurd. If you link 2 pieces of seawall, and you can link the 2 turrets into one, using the same tower, so that you can increase fire patterns from that turret, so for example it might launch 10 ballistic missiles at a time, instead of 5 from 1 turret space, with 2 can make a larger circle to bombard an area in a pattern, so lets say you could make a pattern to cover a diameter of 50, now you might be able to do 80-90, basically setting the ocean on fire. put a random anti sub Ballistic missile, and it will detonate under water, possibly killing a sub at random.
A player could manually target Ballistic missiles at areas they believe a sub to be.
The sea wall would be upgraded, it provides the turrets more and more armor, the seawall can be blown up, it is just more difficult, than blowing up the turrets above.
Cruise missiles take the path of normal missiles, and hug the ground more, Ballistic missiles take the mortar/halo path to its target, straight up and archs over onto the target.
This game design is superior to battle pirates as it stands now. The reasoning is you have hundreds of ships, all slightly modified from other versions, than retrofit labs, specialists, and all these modifiers, where picking a ship is more like playing a slot machine, maybe it will get a good upgrade, maybe it will get garbage, or no upgrade at all. What this system does is put all ships in all the upgrade systems evenly, it's player choice on what to upgrade individually, Because it is the player that needs to live with and deal with that ship, possibly for months to years.
The game would not need raids, or special events, and get away from the gimmicks, while from a finance perspective they help the game a lot. For a health perspective of the game its killing it, so much ships and equipment is thrown at the players they can never use it all, and the top end players are never catchable, since no ships permanently sink, they are untouchable, and its essentially God Moding. Newbs are of no value in this game, the contribution they make is just about nothing, in the game I outlined new players would be valuable and an important part of the game, they buy excess equipment, mine for you, spend money at your labs. Here they are farms, but summed of useless and no value. The original game concept was good, the problem was incorporating in new players years down the road. The consequence of an ineffective way to solve this problem is minimal to no new newbs and a declining player base.
The system I outlined above holds no one back, and at the same time can incorporate in newbs, to be a desired part of the game, and legitimately help older players. Firstly as miners, and purchasers of ships, but provide pathways to help, become a better miner, sell off ranked ships, expand the groups territory and influence, without risking the whales navy in every battle. When a wave of suicide troops is incoming let the mid and newbs take care of it. Also recognizing many players don't like to deal with bases and economics, and that people shouldn't be forced to build or guard territory. Many players would love to go pure combat. by forcing a base upon everyone instead of massive group bases. many players that dislike the economic side are scared off by the game.
This game would be hard to code, but if done correctly with a good interface, could be conveyed in very simple ways. if you have any questions feel free to ask.
This game isn't going to be atlas carriers, and tritons or whatever death star they are working on now. The scale is going to be dropped, more reflecting real life navies....
Most players wont have a carrier or battleship, The far majority will be using the lowest end ships daily, making huge armadas fighting each other.
When you have 200 people in a area, and 200 in another area, assuming 50% are online, when each person can cheaply and quickly build, within minutes a fleet of corvettes, you can see hundreds of fleets on the map. and in order to get resources must be out on the map collecting them. that fact instigates conflict by its nature, because someone gets to close, or crosses some line to gather resources and creates a reaction by the other side.
Now if its a small problem, they will send some ships to kill that intruder.. if they get reinforced, it becomes a battle, if its the 10th offense in an hour, they might send a armada to beat that area down. so when you have dozens of battles going on with hundreds of players in it... The outcome isn't assured, when all the sudden attack sub fleets that no one knew where out start attacking mining fleets, while the mine fleets gaurds ran off to attack the surface fleets. your mining fleets are screwed. that is not going to go over well, its going to tick people off. they are going to send out subs of there own, you know the ticked off whale is bringing out his carrier, and battleship, and seek retaliation by blowing up some of there base, and hopefully retreat before they lose there carrier and battleship. The opposing whales don't want to lose base facilities and rebuild them, so they are going to send out everything they have to stop them. In short tons of carnage, tons of people running on fire. and kixeye sitting there going... same time tomorrow? and it all starts again, some old ships are sunk, some new ones built to replace them, some more advanced/ranked ships, some did well, some lost a ton. then start again the next day, trying to reclaim what you lost, or expand upon what you have.
From a game concept, its hard to beat. Players are incentivized to kill each other without mercy (coins cough cough) it keeps interest in the game, and tons of action, no need for long repairs.. most ships wont last that long. the ships average life span will likely be 10-60 minutes out at sea. in defensive situations you may lose a fleet in seconds, i9t pops on the map, attacked instantly, a short battle and all 5 corvettes are wasted by a sub or battleship. Which may give the time, or distraction to recall a better fleet to finish the job.
A ship would not be useless when going against ships similar to it, or close on the tech tree, a corvette for example can take down a frigate in superior numbers. frigates can destroy a destroyer, destroyers can take down a cruiser. what it comes down to is willingness to take losses to kill it.