*** Ship ideas ***

Well, I already mentioned my dream ship for this game but I'll mention it again here.

This is my dream ship for supermelee dueling.  Its abilities are powerful in the hands of a player who's style they suit, but it is a reasonable and balancable design and not something silly like "I want a god cloak":=)

Class: Medium (i.e. akin to Yehat, Syreen, or Vux)

Speed: Average for medium class

Maneuverability: Above average for class

Durability: Average for class

Weapon: Gravitic Beam Weapon.  This is a "wavelock" weapon.   15-20 degree wavelock arc.  Can "lock on" (i.e. begin firing) at closest target in arc.  Firing ceases at end of duration or if the target leaves the wavelock arc.  Weapon does average damage but each of it's pulses of damage also knock the target back a short distance.

Secondary: Gravitic mine.  Low damage mine that leaves a 3-6 second gravity well.

Oh baby!!!  I'd have 3 or 4 of these in my supermelee lineup if I could:-)

Neat idea!

Name: Swarm Carrier

Speed: Low

Acceleration: Med

Turning rate: Low

Primary weapon: Random teleportation that creates EMP shockwaves or Energy blasts when disappearing and again when reappearing. (Kind of like the Kor-ah spinning ninja stars, or the Kzer-za ring of fire)

Secondary weapon: Squadrons of mini-fighters (like the Orz)

Speed: Ultra-fast

Acceleration: Not applicable

Turning rate: Not applicable

Firepower: Weak

Mini-fighters will hunt/seek enemy automatically, that is the mini-fighters know where the enemy is and fly there automatically.

Mini-fighters only have a certain amount of fuel and then they have to return to the cruiser.

They can be recalled on demand.

The ship can teleport without collecting the mini-fighters but that would mean stranding them in space in case they run out of fuel.

Mini-fighters will not be affected by EMP shockwave or Energy blast.

As the name implies this is a Carrier class ship designed with guerrilla fighting tactics in mind.

It sacrifices Speed, Acceleration, Turning Rate for the ability to randomly teleport and create a shockwave on exit and reentry.

It then launches mini-fighters to overwhelm/ambush the enemy.

Even though Paul Reiche isn't involved in SCR, maybe SD could honor him with some Archon-inspired ships:

Name: Knight (aka Zot-Fot-Pik Stinger)

Velocity: Medium

Acceleration: Medium

Turning Rate: Fast

Primary Weapon: Sword - short range high damage physical attack

Secondary Weapon: Shield - brings up a limited range directional barrier that lasts a short time

Name: Shapeshifter

Velocity: Low

Acceleration: Low

Turning Rate: Low

Primary Weapon: Firing this initiates a scan of the enemy ship and after a delay transforms your ship into a replica of your opponent for short while, complete with weapons and abilities

Secondary Weapon: Simple gun

Name: Phoenix

Velocity: Medium

Acceleration: Fast

Turning Rate: Fast

Primary Weapon: Nova - for a short while the ship is immobilized but invincible, creating a local AoE damaging field around itself

Secondary Weapon: Plasma absorb - the ship can only recharge itself by gathering plasma from the star

Name: Troll

Velocity: Slow

Acceleration: Slow

Turning Rate: Slow

Primary Weapon: Hurl Asteroid - ship can lasso an asteroid and fling it with great speed and damage at enemy

Secondary Weapon: Absorb Asteroid - ship can repair itself using asteroids

Name: Wizard

Velocity: Slow

Acceleration: Slow

Turning Rate: Slow

Primary Weapon: Summon - the ship creates a secondary ship that is AI controlled that also participates in the battle, creating a 2-on-1 situation

Secondary Weapon: Simple gun

This idea hit me while driving today.  In Subspace all ships had the ability to "Attach" to a team mate, and you became a turret on their back.  Your whole squadron could attach too you, creating a 5 turret supership that was very fun, but weaker than 6 individual ships would be.

One of the ships in SC could have the "Attach" ability as it's device/secondary.  Maybe it can attach to any ally, or maybe there is only one other ship it is able to attach to that makes sense within the story of their races (in this case it should probably be an inherent ability and not use up the device slot because it can only attach to that one ship).  This could be a fun ship in 2v2 and 3v3 duals, and any other zones that might exist.  I don't like Attach as a general ability in SC like it was in Subspace, but the idea could be used to do something cool in Star Control.

^ I'm gonna register your Sniper ship for ya.

Name: Sniper

Velocity: Med

Acceleration: Med

Turning rate: Med/High Precision

Primary weapon: Power rail gun

Secondary weapon/ability: Sniping mode

Recharge rate: Average

This is a skinny long vessel with a long ass rail gun attached to it at its full hull length. It's the most powerful gun for that ship size. Shooting it in regular mode results in a double shot - 2 consecutive shots with quarter the damage power, average range and half energy bar depleted. Shooting it in sniping mode (which is literally bringing your view down through the gun scope and turning high precision control on) results in a 1 full power insta-shot with fully depleted energy bar.

Pros: Longest range weapon, precise, average weapon recharge rate.

Cons: Slower and clunkier than other ships.

@Island Dog

Please, merge the ship ideas threads?

Sorry, we don't have the ability to merge posts.

How should we be reporting all of the bugs and feature requests of the new system?

(And my Reddit offer is still open.)

Wow! did you model that "cutter"? looks awesome!

Do you guys remember the Timewarp clone that was kicking around a while ago? While I wasn't a fan of all of their ship designs, several of them were really cool and might be a good place to look for inspiration. Incidentally, the ship idea that Human_ opened the thread with is very similar to one of the ships in the game.

Wow, somebody's already invented that shizz... LOL

Cross-post. Grrr.

Gelatinous space-cube.

Stuns and causes damage by slamming into its opponent at high speed and then slowly engulfs its victim by extending pseudopods to pull the targeted ship into itself.

For a twist, inorganic material gets absorbed while the crew ends up stuck in the gel-o until expelled into space.

Big cube.

And it has to be of a very slightly translucent green color. After all, you want to see what's inside.

Regenerates via absorbed inorganic matter.

(image borrowed from minmaxboards)

Hmm I have an idea...

Name: Mule

Velocity: Low-Med depending on payload and current ship status

Acceleration: Low

Turning rate: Med/High Precision

Primary weapon: Forward laser array

Secondary weapon/ability: Automated drones specialized in resource recovery "Mining/scavenging/etc"

Special Ability: Automated hull repair at a slow rate once hull hits 20%

Recharge rate: Average / slow upon activation of above HoT

Typical mule ship utilized for space mining / emergency repairs with prefered battle tactic of hiding in a debris field & reflecting it's forward laser array off of floating debris to attack from unclaimed materials when possible.  When said tactic is impossible appearing from behind an asteroid or from the tail of a comet and firing the laser array at the broadside of a ship when possible.

Ship Pros:

Powerful forward array of lasers primarily used for obliterating asteroids for materials

Increased resource unit recovery after battle

Automated repair over time at the cost of power for the abilities

Can be used to repair fleet minor hull damage at the cost of RU outside of battle

Can assist the lander with mining under certain conditions

Ship Cons:

Slow fire rate with diminished damage output during repair times

Can only fire it's primary weapon in a forward motion with limited range

Raises likeliness of pirate raids outside of protected solar systems -- this would be pretty cool, somewhat like a random encounter by the Slylandro probes

Slows entire fleet movement speed during hull repair operations

Unable to build new ships or repair major hull damage -- Maybe something like more than 30% hull damage of a ship couldn't be repaired while in transit

Ship repair rates 1/20-1/10 the speed of space dock repairs

In the forums like usual. Try to keep them in one post or respond to the monthly feedback posts.

Sorry, not familiar with the Reddit offer. Please explain.

^ You say yes, he hands over https://www.reddit.com/r/starcontrolorigins to you. You invite all the founders there and we talk there instead of here, 'cause it's just a better platform.

Has Stardock solicited fan designs? Are they even legally allowed to use them?

I'll hand it over regardless of whether or not we use it instead of the Founder's forum. But it would be nice to use it instead of these forums.

I'll take the Reddit, but we won't be switching the discussion from the Founders forum. Founder's forum is private and is tied to your accounts.

PM sent...

Reddit can be private, too.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

A long time ago in a sketch book far far away, I had designed some ships that i wished I could have modded into Star Control II.
I wont embarrass myself with the drawings I made, but i hope the notes I made gives someone enough of an idea.

Came up with this one when i was being bored to death in a chemistry class. 

Name: Nucleus

Velocity: Low

Acceleration: Low

Turning rate: Medium

Primary weapon: Fire Electron (low energy cost)

Secondary weapon/ability: Spawn Electron (high energy cost)

Recharge rate: Average

The ship starts out with one electron orbiting the ship.  The electron orbits the ship and sends out bolts of lightning to any ship that gets close.   To attack the player "launches" one of the the electrons.  As the electron travels across the map it it will zap anything that gets close enough to it. (I haven't figured out if detonates on impact dealing more damage or just passes through the target.)

Another one of my underdog ships (ships that start weak but can become powerful as the battle progresses)

Name: <<Unknown>> never came up with one, "Liberator" was too *blech*

Velocity: High to begin with

Acceleration: High to begin with

Turning rate: High to begin with

Primary weapon: Homing Photon Beam

Secondary weapon/ability: Crew Liberator beam

Recharge rate: Average

The ship starts out with minimal crew but is quick and agile.  As the ship "liberates" crew from the enemy, the ship decreases in manoeuvrability but the main weapon becomes more powerful by increase the number of homing projectiles per shot (because you have more crew are operating the "turrets").  The thought on ship design was inspired/stolen from the warhammer 40k universe.

^ I'd call it Syphon. "Inspired" (shamelessly stolen) by Hearthstone Siphon Soul card.

I'm not sure how to say I want a poop ship without it sounding like I'm saying I want a poop ship, but on the "aliens are so weird and things that are normal to them are disgusting to us" level I think it would be pretty great if there was a ship made by alien excrement (call it spider web style stuff if you want) and a weird/funny plot point is us realizing they are referring to pooping their ships out at some point in a conversation. That's my useful feedback. You're welcome.

Quoting Hunam_, reply 23

^ I'd call it Syphon. "Inspired" (shamelessly stolen) by Hearthstone Siphon Soul card.

Slightly off topic: I hope that adding more ships / races into the game is going to be relatively easy.  I have seen cases where a game can live or die on how easy it is to mod (eg: GSB I vs GSB II).  Reason being, I want to add in "Precursor / Artifact" ships . . you cant build them, you have to find them on planets