Author Topic: catapult ship component - launching ships over great distances  (Read 4490 times)

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Offline Seolferwulf (OP)

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Hi there!

An idea that just poppep up and after a short search for something similar I decided to post it here.   
The function I'm imagining is something that would enable ships or space stations to launch other ships over great distances that would otherwise take forever to traverse.   

As an example imagine a really large system which would require your ships to fly straight for a year or more just to get to the outer ring.   
Now imagine you could make space stations with the suggested ship component which would launch ships to the outer ring in a fragment of that time.   
Make two of them facing each other and you'd have a fast travel road between the inner and outer rings of the system.   

Another example is combat against an opponent with a long reach.   
A military ship with a catapult could launch smaller ships to bridge the gap and close in on the enemy.   
This would take away some of the advantages that missile ships have over ones with weapons of lesser reach.   

There should be commercial and military versions of this component and civilian ships should be able to use the commercial ones much like they use jump gates.   
Similar to jump drives they have a tonnage limit for ships that can be launched - the bigger the module the bigger and farther the ships that can be launched.   
Launching a ship costs the launching ship fuel while the fuel of the launched ship is left untouched until it reaches its destination.   
A launched ship cannot navigate or slow down until it has reached its destination.   

I'm not certain of how to determine in which direction should be launched.   
Either you'd have to let the ship face in a direction prior to the launch or you specify a target every time you want to launch.   

What's your opinion on something like this?


Edit:
There'd also be a need to integrate a limit as to how much tonnage can be launched per second, otherwise you could launch a ridiculous amount of ships in a short time interval.   
For example 25 tons or 0. 5 HS per second, which can be further customized via research similar to reload rates of missile launchers.   
As a drawback the total launch capacity would become less for faster launching rates. 
« Last Edit: August 06, 2017, 11:10:32 AM by Seolferwulf »
 

Offline MarcAFK

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Re: catapult ship component - launching ships over great distances
« Reply #1 on: August 03, 2017, 07:38:40 AM »
A similar idea would be a drive that lets you do instantaneous in-system jumps without the need of a Lagrange point.
However, you first mentioned the absurd travel time needed for massive systems. There used to be a hyperdrive which worked in the edges of a system giving much faster speeds. But it hasn't been ingame for many versions. It would be nice for hyperdrives to make a return.
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Offline DuraniumCowboy

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Re: catapult ship component - launching ships over great distances
« Reply #2 on: August 04, 2017, 09:10:43 AM »
I would simply like to see a component that scales launch times.  As it stands, I can launch a hole carrier wing in a 5 sec pulse.  This allows craziness like having all your fighters abandon a carrier as soon as it comes under fire.
 

Offline Seolferwulf (OP)

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Re: catapult ship component - launching ships over great distances
« Reply #3 on: August 04, 2017, 09:28:46 AM »
Quote from: MarcAFK link=topic=9633.   msg103785#msg103785 date=1501763920
A similar idea would be a drive that lets you do instantaneous in-system jumps without the need of a Lagrange point.   
However, you first mentioned the absurd travel time needed for massive systems.    There used to be a hyperdrive which worked in the edges of a system giving much faster speeds.    But it hasn't been ingame for many versions.    It would be nice for hyperdrives to make a return.   

I'm a rather new player to Aurora so I've only read about hyperdrives.   
Could civilian ships use it, too?

Your idea of in-system jump drives comes with a few problems, which are difficult to balance.   
On one hand it replaces Lagrange points and makes them obsolete.   
There would be no point in having them.   
On the other hand you could make range advantages of some weapon systems completely disappear, if you were to use that drive in combat situations.   
It's absolutely OP xD
Although it sounds cool to just teleport anywhere you want.   

Quote from: DuraniumCowboy link=topic=9633.  msg103790#msg103790 date=1501855843
I would simply like to see a component that scales launch times.    As it stands, I can launch a hole carrier wing in a 5 sec pulse.    This allows craziness like having all your fighters abandon a carrier as soon as it comes under fire. 

I see, I didn't consider that. 
Then it should only be able to launch 1HS or 50ton per second. 
Would this take care of the problem?
« Last Edit: August 04, 2017, 09:38:41 AM by Seolferwulf »
 

Offline DuraniumCowboy

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Re: catapult ship component - launching ships over great distances
« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2017, 10:29:00 AM »
Quote
I see, I didn't consider that. 
Then it should only be able to launch 1HS or 50ton per second. 
Would this take care of the problem?

Something like that, basically so you can make a design choice of overall capacity vs strike launch time (kinda like missile launcher vs magazine space trade offs).
 

Offline Seolferwulf (OP)

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Re: catapult ship component - launching ships over great distances
« Reply #5 on: August 05, 2017, 11:51:14 AM »
I've edited the opening post and posted a link in the suggestion-thread.

The suggestion is still open for discussion, feel free to do so :)
 

Offline sloanjh

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Re: catapult ship component - launching ships over great distances
« Reply #6 on: August 06, 2017, 10:43:48 AM »
I've edited the opening post and posted a link in the suggestion-thread.

The suggestion is still open for discussion, feel free to do so :)

Thanks!
John
 

Offline Gabethebaldandbold

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Re: catapult ship component - launching ships over great distances
« Reply #7 on: March 04, 2018, 11:58:02 AM »
if the sistem is ship based, it could be balanced by making it huge and expensive, which could make said carrier be more vulnerable to long range missiles. 300HS to propel 1 fighter 200 miliion km every 5 minutes doesn't sound that OP, specially if it tells your position to the enemy
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Offline Seolferwulf (OP)

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Re: catapult ship component - launching ships over great distances
« Reply #8 on: March 07, 2018, 10:49:23 AM »
That's the idea.
Have a bulky and slow ship to accelerate smaller ones.
I've left the details uncertain since Steve would have to tweak them for balance anyway.

The launching component could also come with a relatively long cooldown time to force you to put several of them onto the same ship, if you want to launch multiple ships in a short time.