Ship components Thread - X-Wing Starfighter

In the old X-wing/TIE fighter series, a player could target different parts of a capital ship, for example the hull, the communication system, individual turrets and missile launchers etc.

This game is supposed to be an evolution of those games so lets take this basic component system a bit further. This also allows us to take a new approach of balancing and introduce a few new game mechanics.

Here are my current ideas:

Engines:

• Each engine adds to the ships overall max speed and acceleration by a specific amount, those values are reduced for each engine lost.
• Each ship still has a max speed and acceleration to make it easy to control sane engine values.

Turrets:

• These would work pretty much as same the original X-Wing/TIE fighter series.
• Except from a smarter capital ship AI that would target larger capital ships with its turbo lasers and smaller star fighter with its laser cannons if possible.

Power Generators:

• Power generators are a new concept introduction into the flight simulator.
• Each power generator will generate X amount of power at a Y frequency (maybe every 1 or 2 seconds is a sane value).
• Each time a shield generator needs to regenerate shields, or a turbo laser/laser cannons shot is fired, a certain amount of power is drained.
• A power generator has a specific capacity.
• When power is drained faster that the shield generator can replenish, the power capacity will eventually turn 0 and shields and laser turrets have to "fight" about acquiring power. This mean an AI that is more focused to suriving can favor the shields to receive the power from the generator, making the turrets have to wait until they can fire.

Shield Generators:

• The shield generators for starfighters work very similar to the original X-Wing/TIE fighter seriers.
• Each time a shield generator needs to regenerate shields, it now takes power from the power generator. If the current power is 0, the shields will not regenerate.
• The shield generators for capital ships will probably see the following changes...
• Capital ships now have front and aft shields and may redstribute as necessary (maybe more layers can be added to big ships, such as bridge, port and starboard shields).
• Destroying a capital ship shield generator will prevent the ship from regenerating the shields, but it will not reduce the current shield rating.
• Capital ship shield capacity will be vastly increased so that it is rather impossible for a single X-Wing starfighter to take out a star destoryer by itself.
• Shields may now also protected other hardpoints on the hull, such as turrets and engines.

Missile Launchers:

• These work the same as the original X-Wing/TIE Fighter series.
• Each launcher for capital ships should also have a max number of missiles (I think the original series, capital ships had unlimted missiles).
• Explore the option of some ships having missile launcher closes to the cannon, for example the Victory Class Stardestroyer could launch about 50 concussion missiles at once, targeting enemy star fighters and/or turrets on enemy capital ships (once their shields were down).

Let me know what you guys think about these changes.

I'm a fan of these ideas, especially effects for shooting engines since it lets you effectively disable smaller enemy ships without ion cannons. That was always a point of frustration for me in the old X-Wing series games when I'd hammer a ship's engines and nothing happened.

I really like the power generator idea. Plus it prevents abuse like tossing extra shields and beam weapons onto your ship during skirmishes. I never used the extra systems, but adding them essentially gave you extra power generation at the same time so it was a free speed boost. Having a set power generation value for each ship would prevent those shenanigans. As long as power management and prioritizing different systems is still an aspect of the game, it sounds good to me.

I don't know if you want to delve into ray shields vs particle shields. While I agree that a lone starfighter shouldn't be taking out star destroyers (especially with just blasters), you will need to make sure that torpedoes, rockets, etc., are still able to damage them.

One thing I had been considering as I was working on modding XWA was reducing the strength of the shields across the board but greatly increasing the recharge rate. I feel like this would give it a more movie-like approach. Fighter shields provide relief from the occasional mistake but drop quickly under concentrated fire. The nice thing there is that when it comes to capital ships, instead of just creating a ridiculously high shield strength that can still be worn down by a dedicated (or really bored) pilot, it would be fairly easy to give it a good enough recharge rate that fighters will never make a dent in the shields without taking out the shield generators first.

However you do it, just consider that if shields are protecting components, and capital ship shields are going to be designed to be nearly impossible to beat with a fighter, how are players supposed to take out the shield generators in the first place?

Firing multiple missiles at once for capital ships is an interesting option. I don't know how well it will work out in practice (it would really suck to have even 5 missiles fired at you simultaneously) but I think it's worth exploring.

On the note of missiles, I'd really like to see the ranges for all weapons, blasters and missiles, increased. It often felt weird to see a big capital ship on my screen, know that there was absolutely nothing but vacuum between me and it, yet I still needed to get that extra .2km before I could open fire. If nothing else, at least increase the range for turbolasers to make it easier to have some epic naval battles going on around you as you fly around. While it's annoying, I can accept the limitations on fighter weapons but capital ships are supposed to be able to bombard a planet from orbit so I expect a bit more out of them.

bone_naga wrote:

I'm a fan of these ideas, especially effects for shooting engines since it lets you effectively disable smaller enemy ships without ion cannons. That was always a point of frustration for me in the old X-Wing series games when I'd hammer a ship's engines and nothing happened.

I really like the power generator idea. Plus it prevents abuse like tossing extra shields and beam weapons onto your ship during skirmishes. I never used the extra systems, but adding them essentially gave you extra power generation at the same time so it was a free speed boost. Having a set power generation value for each ship would prevent those shenanigans. As long as power management and prioritizing different systems is still an aspect of the game, it sounds good to me.

Yes the origianal power management system will be exactly the same, with power levels to the lasers and shields, and transfering power between the two.

bone_naga wrote:

I don't know if you want to delve into ray shields vs particle shields. While I agree that a lone starfighter shouldn't be taking out star destroyers (especially with just blasters), you will need to make sure that torpedoes, rockets, etc., are still able to damage them.

I will probably not do anything with ray shields.

bone_naga wrote:

One thing I had been considering as I was working on modding XWA was reducing the strength of the shields across the board but greatly increasing the recharge rate. I feel like this would give it a more movie-like approach. Fighter shields provide relief from the occasional mistake but drop quickly under concentrated fire. The nice thing there is that when it comes to capital ships, instead of just creating a ridiculously high shield strength that can still be worn down by a dedicated (or really bored) pilot, it would be fairly easy to give it a good enough recharge rate that fighters will never make a dent in the shields without taking out the shield generators first.

What I had in mind was that to take out a larger capital ship like a Star Destroyer, you have to at least have a squadron or two of star fighters with a healthy amount of torpedoes, this would be a hard task made easier if another capital ship or frigate is involved in the fight.

The idea of the space combat against capital ships would in general to rely on focused fire or starfighter support to take out the shield generators, preventing the capital ship from regenerating its shields. This means everything but the shield generator would be protected by the shields, maybe not logical but necessary for game balance.

Then mainly turbo laser fire and torpedoes would reduce its shields, at his point less powerful lasers such as laser cannons would not do much.

After the shields are down, torpedoes and turbo lasers could start taking out systems, such as engines, communication systems, targeting systems, turrets etc. At this point, laser cannons from starfighters would quite effective too.

Also some capital ships have really strong armor plates at certain locations, for example look at this picture here:

If laser or torpedoes hit these armor plates instead of the hull, the damage could either be completly mitigated, or maybe each armor plate (marked in red) will have its down separate hull value protecting the larger hull. Also, I could add so that the darker super structure between the plating (the areas marked in green) could be more vulnable to damage. This means the player could be rewarded for carefully aiming fire and missiles towards more vulnerable parts of the ship.

bone_naga wrote:

However you do it, just consider that if shields are protecting components, and capital ship shields are going to be designed to be nearly impossible to beat with a fighter, how are players supposed to take out the shield generators in the first place?

Yeah that is correct, so shield generators would not be protected by the shields, but all other components are.

bone_naga wrote:

Firing multiple missiles at once for capital ships is an interesting option. I don't know how well it will work out in practice (it would really suck to have even 5 missiles fired at you simultaneously) but I think it's worth exploring.

Yes, balance could be achieved by adding a cost to missiles, firing concussion missiles and torpedoes by the thousands would just not be economically viable for either the Empire or the Rebellion. Also, one could speculate that such missiles are harder to get by, the Empire have to wait for orders and re-supplying, and the Rebels probably have to plunder Imperial supply convoys, or acquire such missiles on the black market.

bone_naga wrote:

On the note of missiles, I'd really like to see the ranges for all weapons, blasters and missiles, increased. It often felt weird to see a big capital ship on my screen, know that there was absolutely nothing but vacuum between me and it, yet I still needed to get that extra .2km before I could open fire. If nothing else, at least increase the range for turbolasers to make it easier to have some epic naval battles going on around you as you fly around. While it's annoying, I can accept the limitations on fighter weapons but capital ships are supposed to be able to bombard a planet from orbit so I expect a bit more out of them.

That is a very good point, I could double the range of the weapon on the capital ships and see how it goes. Turbo lasers are much slower and hard hitting than laser cannons, so even if a capital ship would fire those towards you, you could probably easily dodge that fire. If the capital ship has faster tracking laser cannons, you would have to be careful.

Also, according to the lore, Star Destroyers had shields with massive capacity, but slow recharge rate and the Mon Calamari cruisers deployed by the Rebels had lower capacity shields, but with multiple layers that allowed quick shield transfers and recharge rate.

This could result to interested tactics, where rebels try to hit and run attack a star destroyer, and the Empire forces responded by trying to take down the Mon Calamari engines to prevent it from running away and recharing its shields (Mon Calamari cruisers were in general faster but also less armored than Star Destroyers).

Edited by: starwarssquadrons

Sounds good. I'm excited to see how this all turns out.