lvls for smaller ships

I have always thought that as well.  Though honestly, I always thought it should be that a logarithmic function rather than straight levels.  Unlike capitals which get them divided evenly, frigates would get an equal share of a duplicate of the exp that capitals collectively get.  In this way, as they get more experience, they deal more damage without having strict levels, which I hate for non-ability based things.  Of course lol...  Two things that computers hate are sqrt() and ln().  Both eat processors for breakfast.  Seeing as how we are in a 3D game, we're already being forced to use the 3D version of the pythagorean theorem which means lots and lots and lots of sqrt() to calculate the firing ranges of ships (especially in the late game).  I don't know what this would do to it.

Levels on the other hand already have the calculations run ahead of time and make things more convenient.

Perhaps instead of levels, you get a status or tired.  Let's base it off of how much damage/healing a frigate/cruiser does and how much damage it takes.  As you increase these numbers you'll advance through "rankings" that would simulate levels to an extent without going all out and "levelizing" frigates which I really don't want to do.  This would be one more little label to put on the infocard and would do almost nothing to game speed.

<1500: Fresh (default stats)

<4000: Veteran (+3.333% stats)

<6000: Elite (+6.667% stats)

>=6000: Legendary (+10% stats)

All the numbers are arbitrary, but I think you get the idea.  The more combat the thing goes through, the better it does in future engagements.  It's not a huge boost, just enough that a veteran fleet is going to kill one fresh out of the gate, which is what should happen anyways.  All ships have their quirks, and that's not something you'll learn in the manual.  You have to get to know your ship, which is going to happen through combat.

I wouldn't go with an XP thing.  But there are other ways to give a bit more added power to frigates and cruisers outside simple tech tree upgrades.

I think since the game engine got the ability to make upgrades to models, adding us an upgrade option to existing frigates would be a good idea.  These upgrades for a small fee would change the frigate into a "variant" of it's model.  So far I came up with 2 variants, but obviously more can be made.

Variant #1) Reinforced: +2 armor(TEC)/ + 5% HP, regenerates 1 hp every 5 seconds(Vasari)/ +3% shield mitigation(Advent)

#2) Fire support: +10% Damage(TEC)/ +10% shield penetration(Vasari)/ -10% weapon cooldown(Advent)

Here is how it would play out in my mind.  Say I'm facign a fleet of HC and Carriers vs my fleet of LRMS and FLAK.  I may want to beef up my flak into armored so the HCs dont remove them as fast and they can provide cover against the fighters while I buff my LRMs with extra damage so they could take down the HCs a bit.  Even though the matchup would not be ideal.

Obviously my opponent would probably counter by getting Fire support variant on his HCs and switching targeting priority to LRMs, possibly docking his strikecraft or retreating them all together. 

The issue with that is the way Sins works with models. You would have the 2 gig limit back just like before.

I really don't want to do variants on ships.  That and do you realize how much more than +10% damage +10% shield bypass is?  It's incredible.  By the end of the tree, you end up with ships that bypass 30% of the time and the missiles themselves are also significantly more powerful.  Adding another 10% on top of that to assailants is going to make them absolutely pound the Advent.  I'm serious.  There would be absolutely no stopping a late-game Vasari with the PM variants on their Assailants.  None.

Oh, and there is that memory limit too...

So... you want the Supreme Commander thing where experienced units get more life up to a certain cap?

I'll be honest, 95% of the suggestions I hear on these forums are basically people looking to add elements of Supreme Commander to SOASE. Not dissin' it, SupCom/FA were great games (same can't be said for numero dos). Just sayin', be honest about what you're asking for

-Itharus

I've never played supreme commander, much less know the game mechanics.  So thanks for calling me on lying when I wasn't 

I actually wasn't specifically addressing you, or anyone, Volt. It was a general statement, and I was not accusing you of lying. Calm down, bro. We've gone round and round on these forums before and never been hostile, you should know I'm not that kind of guy.

-Itharus

Sorry..  I've been a little touchy lately..

But in all honesty, I really have always wondered why only capital ships got better.  I've never wanted frigates to near capitals in power, but I still want that extra touch of power that an experienced fleet is going to bring you.  It also means that it would reward good players that pull out of a battle they'd ultimately lose before they lose everything.  It gives them an extra touch of power in battle the next time.  That's how things work in real life.  A regiment goes off to combat and is an extremely lossy battle.  The next time they get sent out, they already know what to expect from battle and fair much better.  That's just how combat works.  Experience>Training.

Haha. Sup Com is not the only game that does this, but yes I am a sup com fan and i do think its a good feature in that game too. I hadnt thought about the conection till you mentioned it. The essence of game making has always been one or two new ideas built upon proven ideas from games that came before...

I dont want to see it as just getting more life. In fact you could make the benifit of xp give different benifits to each class of ship, or at least each faction

Well lol...  Ideally, I'd want a weapon type based mitigation system with all energy weapons linked slightly and all physical weapons linked and the increase of mitigation of one weapon type does not necessarily mean the increase of another (though obviously things like pulse beams and wave cannons would be because both are plasma).  As for armor, armor would also be specific to weapon type with some resistant to traditional weapons while others would resist energy weapons.  On top of all that, each type of task you do would slowly make your ship better in a logarithmic manner.  As you fly around farther with your fleet, your fleet would ultimately end up moving slightly faster.  With more combat, you get better at combat.  Oh, and the AI's would adapt to the attacker that's Embargoing their home world.

Unfortunately, those things aren't going to happen...

These are just rough numbers, not final. Just like 10% weapon cooldown could prove even more powerful when stacked with cooldown aura and cooldown reduction in the tech tree. I repeat these numbers are not set in stone, they are there for illustration pourposes.

Yes 30% shield penetration is a lot. But if you are concerned with Vasari getting 40% shield penetration you should know that  Vasari can have 50% shield penetration with phase missiles right now. Subverters increase missile bypass by 20% on targets of their debuff. 

But TEC can reduce shield mitigation by 40% also with their support cruiser so their LRMs can be just as deadly given that their tech tree allows for 30% damage increase vs 20% of Assailants. TEC actually deal more raw damage than Vasari. Because 40% mitigation reduction (assuming 67% shield cap) is equivalent to 121% damage increase (You deal 73% of base damage vs 33% without mitigation debuff). Where as a 50% chance to deal 300% damage (Dealing 100% of damage instead of 33% if missile bypasses shields) is a mere 100% damage increase. But Vasari can destroy  targets with ratio of hull to shield closer to 1 more efficiently because they do not have to reduce the targets shields to 0. If such cases Vasari have a effective HP debuff on their targets, reducing the total off effective hp by certain amount... which is rather hard to calculate.

So to answer your question: Yes I know the difference between 10% damage increase and 10% shield penetration... do you?

Actual reason behind the additional shield bypass buff is so that Vasari ships without phase missiles can get a chance to bypass shields.  And this would not be a possible buff to strikecraft, though the variants for carriers could be more interesting, like a squadron specific buff to make specialized carriers more desirable.

Now Ryat, what is this about memory limit?

Sins being a 32 bit application is limited to 2 gigs. Most  application get around this by only loading what they need, sometimes on the fly. In order to speed up this process Sins loads everything. In the original game this never made a difference. Things began to start messing up with Entrenchment with multiple meshes loading with the starbases (as they do change their meshes as you upgrade them like you want to do). Diplomacy created further problems with more meshes and diplomacy calculations. Early Sins Diplomacy had a lot of issues with memory in hitting the 2 gig wall and minidumping. The devs made some changes to the internal game to fix this but the engine still loads everything. Introducing more meshes (especially a tripling of all the frigates) could possibly break the game again.

Ahhh silly.  Can we get less detailed models? Would that free up some memory?  My idea was not to have 3 meshes but rather a model made up of more than one object.  The upgrade would be a smaller model attached to the basic model.  The attachments could be less detailed, and take up much less memory.  Or if anything simply a different texture for the same mesh :/

Unfortunately that is not the way Sins works but it would have helped.