Topic: Possible new weapon for SFC3 or holographic ships

[Red_Green]

I been toying around trying to throw a new wrinkle in. Mainly I want to add fog of war to the game. In other words more randomness and chaos. One way is having shuttles drop mines cause it clutters up the battle field.

My latest 2 ideas I am not too sure about. I like my holographic ship idea  only it would replace shuttles for the pirate race slot. Here is the rough idea. Instead of launching a pirate shuttle, you launch a CL class ship instead. But only Cl's and above would have them The thing is, this CL has weapons that do no damage. Easily done if I take a disruptor 1 and make it non- refittable to other ships. This ship could be made to appear nearly identical to a normal pirate CL, AI would target it and some players may until they catch on. I could maybe give it 1 weapon that actually does damage. Its just an early idea but may be workable.  But think of the confusion if a Dn was able to launch 6 "holographic ships", even if they do no damage, it would add confusion to the battlefield I think. This would be better if each ship could clone  a duplicate of itself, but I could only set the fake ship to 1 type. So is this idea lame or what?

My other idea is to make the pirate shuttle incredibly slow, almost so it can't move, Give it armor and 2 heavy weapons. Then it could be considered a new weapon, like maybe a automated gravimetric sphere. If I give it a BIO hull I don't think it could be captured, nor should it use tractors or transporters. It could be  be tractor-ed by the ship that launched it, since it can barely move. By a ship tractoring it, the grav sphere  would be able to cover the ships rear arcs.  I would give this sphere either 180 arcs or 360 arcs. Maybe this idea is lame as well.  They can't all be stellar.

Comments welcome, anyone see either of these 2 ideas as workable?

[interloper]

I like the idea of a holographic ship, but if you are going
to copy the original it will defeat the purpose if it is not
really hard to distinguish it from the real thing, just MHO

[Red_Green]

I like the idea of a holographic ship, but if you are going
to copy the original it will defeat the purpose if it is not
really hard to distinguish it from the real thing, just MHO

Yea, well this likely won't fly. If it could be added to the game instead of replacing shuttles then it would be nice.

SFC3 needs to have both shuttles and fighters in game to add flexibility.
The other issue is that the ships fitted like this would only have like 1 or 2 , otherwise the game would get overloaded with so many ships in play.

It could be set up with a unique ship where all the weapons do damage. Then its similar to SFC2 in regard to you would have up to 3 ships, though no control over 2 and only BC and DN's would have them as it would unbalance FF-CA,s. Plus you are giving up shuttles.

I am trying to add variety to shuttles so Each race slot well have a different approach.

1 slot will have PF's  equipped with shield I's and armor I and 3 primary arcs.

2nd slot will have fighters, a group of 2 with armor I and NO shields and 2 primary arcs.

3rd slot well have shuttles with Shield I's, NO armor and 1 primary arc
these may be cloaking shuttles as well.

4th slot could be this idea explained above or else  I'd just use shuttles or PF's again.

For balance purpose, races with shuttles well have more than races with fighters or PF's. The biggest thing that bugs me about giving a race a CL for a shuttle, is that races FF, DD, CL and CA get nothing. This creates an unbalance with a race using a PF. I could add arcs to lower class ships but not doing that until I get more feed back on this or suggestions on how to tweak it. I think your right, it would need to be a different ship. The poly count needs to be real low as well.