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Jakar Umbra
Militaires-Sans-Frontieres
31
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Posted - 2013.04.08 13:52:00 -
[1] - Quote
A friend of mine and I enjoy flying dropships in this game and we often talk about ideas for various aerial vehicles. I did a search on the forums and while I found ideas for dropships, I did not find anything for ideas of entire classes of aerial vehicles. What follows is essentially most of, if not all, of the ideas for aerial vehicles we discussed.
Firstly, at the moment the only thing Piloting skill is good for is getting level 1, to obtain the dropship skill of your choice, what about the other four levels? Well... here is an idea:
Lvl 1: Dropship - This is an aircraft we already have at our disposal and its usefulness is something that cannot be denied if executed effectively, however a way to obtain points other than vehicle kill assists would be appreciated. Other players have put up various well thought out ideas in General Discussion and the Feedback section so I'll avoid putting anything like that here.
Lvl 2: Attackship - This could be the close air-support of the mercenaries on the ground by giving the pilot a variety of weapons to attack vehicles and enemy installations. It should also have a second seat for a gunner whose primary target should be enemy infantry. To put in a nut shell this will be the Eve variant of the AH-64 Apache.
Lvl 3: Fighter - The Fighter will be the main vehicle to gain and maintain air superiority by focusing on air to air combat with a single pilot controlling a variety of weapons that can only attack aerial vehicles. The Fighter should also have slots for various countermeasures
Lvl 4: Fighter Bomber - This will be a heavy and slower version of the fighter and will be have two seats a pilot and co-pilot. The pilot will be the one flying and maneuvering onto the targets he will also have control over limited air to air weapons (choose wisely). The co-pilot will be the one in-control of all air to ground weapons and will need to guide the pilot onto the target. The co-pilot will also be in charge of countermeasures.
Lvl 5: Heavy Aircraft - These will be the biggest and slowest aircraft with a variety of tasks such as having weapons slots for big weapons for passengers to operate. They could also be fitted to have big passenger capacity like 12 to deploy them for high altitude drops. Other variation could a logistics for the Fighter and Fighter-Bombers giving them repairs in flight.
Note that these are suggestions, and no doubt some people might not like the idea of having to run with a co-pilot, but in some of the larger matches we're looking forward to at the end of the path, it might not be a bad idea. There could also be smaller single-pilot variants that would not have as large a payload as the ones that would require two pilots.
Next is aerial weaponry. We already have small turrets yes, but what about weaponry for the pilots.
Guns: Essentially these fall under some things like what we have now, for example, the blaster turrets, also we could have something like a Minmatar HMG as well, for both turrets and the pilot. For fixed-wing aircraft of course you would have to line up your target, and for VTOL craft, either the copilot could have access to it for those which can have two pilots and for some variations the pilot would have access to it.
Missiles: These would be much like a variant of a swarm launcher for aerial vehicles (talking about the lock-on feature). These fire and forget missiles would come in many variations, including, air-to-air, air-to-ground and even flux.
Rockets: The difference between rockets and missiles is that rockets dumbfire while missiles lock-on. Essentially similar to what we call missile turrets, these would fire in volleys if you hold your fire button, or a single shot if you tap it. Upon firing a volley it will have something of a cooldown as though reloading, much like the 'missile' turrets we have now.
Bombs: These would essentially be like the old-school fly over target and drop bombs (accounting for momentum of course). The variations for this are near endless, having the potential of such variants as napalm, explosive, or fragmented.
Next up is something I'm sure alot of pilots in this game want. Aerial countermeasures:
EMP: this as most, if not all of us know is an electromagnetic pulse. It would be a pulse that would essentially cause nearby electronic equipment to shut down. This is something that would have a limited radius, so timing would be everything and the CPU, PG cost may be quite a bit. Also, it would only be able to counter weapons that have lock-on capabilities.
Decoy Drone: This would be a drone, released from the aircraft with a similar signature to yours, potentially confusing swarm launchers, and other lock-on weaponry. Higher levels can release more simultaneously, with a much closer signature to yours confusing such weaponry even more. Options for cooldown could include needing to go to a supply depot to restock or lorewise self-replicating nanites could build more during the cooldown.
Flares: These would be somewhat different to your typical flare and for the most part are more for fixed-wing aircraft. Releasing a blinding flash, this could blind your enemies, giving you time to outmanoeuvre your pursuer. Another variation, that would not be flares of course could temporarily confuse sensors, causing you to disappear from their sensors so they cannot lock on.
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Jakar Umbra
Militaires-Sans-Frontieres
31
|
Posted - 2013.04.08 14:00:00 -
[2] - Quote
Finally are a few other miscellaneous things.
Aerial Equipment:
Extinguisher: There have been times when I have been shot down and burning, only to rep back up and still crash. This will help mediate some of this issue as it will put out the flames, perhaps leaving you at 100HP armour or something of the sort while keeping the engines in a coolant state so they do not combust.
Radar: While we do sort of have this, one issue is that aerial vehicles should have a larger radar radius than other vehicles because of the nature of it. Included should be an IFF system. Also along with this the HUD should be more refined so as to determine at range the nature of such things as tanks and other vehicles.
Aviation Equipment:
These are general things to improve the quality and effectiveness of flying. These things include:
Altimeter
Horizon Indicator
Airspeed Indicator
Aiming Reticle
Airborne Anti-Collision Avoidance System: Essentially something to indicate you are in close proximity to a structure on a particular side, particularly the rear of the craft.
Lock-On Detection System.
Charged Energy Detection Systems: This would help determine if there are such weapons as forge guns in the vicinity of your area of operation. While it may not help for when he fires, if the person is charging within a certain range, the craft should be capable of detecting it, with a visible cue to show the person's location.
Credit for a large portion of these ideas goes to Silver-Ace of Militaires-Sans-Frontieres.
Any other ideas of this nature that people wish to add feel free. |
Jakar Umbra
Militaires-Sans-Frontieres
37
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Posted - 2013.04.10 17:18:00 -
[3] - Quote
What if for earlier levels you have aircraft that can be specced in a multitude of ways according to what you put on it, but as you get higher and spec along certain paths you can use aircraft more suited to specific roles and therefore would be more effective at them. This would reward you for speccing into more specific skills and a perferred role. It would more or less be similar to what the HAVs seem to be becoming where the first tier is your general one then we would get the enforcers, marauders, and whatever else may come. |
Jakar Umbra
Militaires-Sans-Frontieres
39
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Posted - 2013.04.10 21:51:00 -
[4] - Quote
Ulysses Knapse wrote:This doesn't sound right. It sounds less like New Eden and more like something I don't recognize.
Perhaps you could elaborate on this, as I'm not quite sure what you mean. I'm new to New Eden myself, but what I understand it to be is a place full of politics, betrayal, wars, battles, alliances, grudges, plots and conspiracies. What we are talking about here are the tools by which to execute and maintain these things. At least that's what I understood New Eden to be.
Kitten Commander wrote:I would rather they start off on the smaller side with attack aircraft to begin with. The abilities of aircraft are going to be completely dependent on map size and spread. With the current maps, the plane would be constantly doing figure 8s to stay within the red zone and would be severely OP considering how bunched everything is.
This will be a good idea when map sizes are at least a couple magnitudes larger than they are right now.
As I said in the other DS thread.. what I would like right now is a ship based on the DS but with only 2-3 spaces on it with a front mount turret and two fixed side pods.
Front mount - blaster/rail/missile/etc
Side mount - vehicle version of swarms/plasma cannon etc (have to aim these with the ship)
To balance these out, the tanks should have an available turret that is similar to swarms.
These things are by no means intended to apply to the current map sizes we have now. They are ideas for when we reach the large scale battles we are hoping to eventually reach.
The ship to which you refer with the fixed weaponry for the pilot is essentially what we refer to as the attack ship. Also a swarm launcher variant turret for HAVs would be somewhat acceptable provided the countermeasures requested are also implemented.
Mobius, the Aviation Instruments part of the requests covers that sort of thing. Flying in first person is practically impossible as is. Also the ability to free look while flying in first person is of course a good idea. |
Jakar Umbra
Militaires-Sans-Frontieres
51
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Posted - 2013.04.20 03:04:00 -
[5] - Quote
Wow, I come back to find four pages of solid discussion. Good to know my friend and I aren't the only people who want more out of piloting in this game. Here's a bump in the hopes more people get in on the conversation.
Also, looking back at my OP I was pondering the way I had the skills laid out and was wondering, if it could not go like this as an alternative:
Level 1 unlocks the skills for Dropships and Attackships since they would both essentially fall under small VTOL craft.
Level 2 nothing
Level 3 Fighters and Fighter Bombers. Fixed winged aircraft. Both craft not necessarily specialised so the fighter can be a generalist in all air to air, while the FIghter Bomber can be a generalist in well... bombing. Higher tiers which would be unlocked from higher levels in the skill would be more specialised like the higher level Caldari Fighter would be more efficient at using air to air missiles, with such things as reduced lock on times or better tracking.
Level 4 would unlock nothing as well
Level 5 would unlock what I originally referred to as Heavy Aircraft. The reason I don't want to elaborate too much is that there are in fact a variety of things that could fall into this category. An example would be something that I would call a Mobile Command Outpost. This craft would only be of use in much larger battles and may even go as far as to be unlocked with a Piloting Proficiency Skill or whatever the equivalent would be referred to as. It would be smaller than a MCC, but able to manouevre around the battle at high altitude. On board would be a CRU with a bay capable of holding I would estimate four people before it was full. It could be equipped with logistics gear to repair other aircraft as well as flak to defend itself from other Aircraft. I ponder whether or not it should have anything air-to-ground for the sake of balance though. At best I would say one weapon of that sort, probably under control of a secondary person in the craft. Like I said though this would be for the much larger battles in the future.
The motivation behind my questioning the skill system is for the sake of balance. There could be other potential solutions. If you guys have any I'd like to hear them.
With the reveal of the new concept art, particularly the ones showing fighters and what looked to be a LAA I'm more excited moving forward in this game. Let's keep this conversation going even after Uprising hits. Hopefully the Devs are reading. |
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