Engineering...

Bambooza

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View: https://youtu.be/h8fKhnphE68?si=84VP50vTk7mD9o7v


Honestly this is very exciting and starts to really open up possibilities and give meaning to different ships. Combined with the coming online of cargo these game loops are starting to add substance to the pretty empty world. For me it is finnally an exciting time for the game after so many years since the introduction of 3.0.
 

Shadow Reaper

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This is all fascinating and exciting, but it also raises red flags about details, and there are a few things they didn’t speak on that have me concerned.

It sounds like life support can be enhanced to provide for more characters (PCs and NPCs) but this requires a greater power budget. So presumably, it will be easier to move your stealth incursion team on a Terrapin with an S2 reactor than a Pisces with an S1 reactor. Cool. Hot ships that are stretching their energy budget across a lot of energy weapons and shields are going to find providing for passengers difficult. Will there be times you tell the crew to suit up so you can divert power to engines, shields and weapons. Cool, cool, cool!

No mention on engineers running to replace ballistics. Leaves one wondering. This is something we were told would be possible on the bigger ships. I’ll be pissed if this gets lost in the shuffle as I have long planned to have several runners just to replace ballistics in Polaris turrets. Should be at least one on each side of the ship, and expect crates littering the oversized hallways.

No mention of the benefits of a workbench to repair components. Can we do a complete repair given time and a workbench? How much time? I have this vision of Chief Engineer running a mini game mid-battle to repair the Q drive. Need to see the utility here. IMHO, workbenches can’t have too much value. If your ship has one you should get mega-benefits (more reasons to prefer the Carrack over the 600i). Having grown up with workbenches both at work and home I can tell you very view appreciate the variety of intense advantages they provide. I have four dedicated workbenches aboard my Jedi Sojourner in ffg—takes up a huge portion of the ship.

No mention of the gravity generators found in all ships. No place to put them, or the life support systems, or the relays. And are we supposed to expect a revision of every ship to make room for these? Seriously?

I’m disappointed to hear they plan to make you melt armor before ballistics get full penetration. I realize they want to force players to cooperate to be effective but this feels like a step too far. Revenants should get great penetration on anything with armor shy of a Terrapin, IMHO. S4 ballistic cannons should penetrate the Terrapin, but not the Idris, etc. And what about components left in crates inside the ship? Will the crates protect them from penetration? So we all keep spare shields, coolers, etc. in crates on the floor of every Sentinel or Cutty?

One thing I was not clear on. You can replace S1 and S2 components with a hand tractor, but need the shoulder mounted version for S3 and S4? (And of course you cannot replace S4 reactors?)

I have to say despite my concerns, this makes me need to pee. Is this all missing from Sq42? Seems really late to be adding such radical additions. And damn, engineers are going to be so highly sought after. Scotty, beam me up!
 
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Cugino83

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I like the new engineering gameplay, at least on paper it sound solid... I fear for the actual implementation and balancing.

There are a couple of question that came to my mind for just looking at the video...
First thing is component identification on the power distribution interface: this is a niche problem but there is no component naming as far as I can tell.
With some ship having redundant components you can actually have some interesting configuration by mixing components type, and enabling/disabling them based on the situation.
just an example: back in the day I used to run the MSR with a mix of stealth and military components (1 powerplant and 1 shield), so that I can archive three different level of emission:
- full dark: 1 stealth powerplant, 1 stealth cooler active, weapons, shield and everything else turned off
- normal stealth: 1 stealth powerplant, 1 stealth shield active, coolers active, weapons, shield and everything else turned off
- combat mode: all on

With the interface shown is not immediate to know what components is what... I guess you can understand that based on the power output but is not that user friendly.

Second and more important question is: how CIG thing to archive all of that engineering munbo-jumbo when several ships are far behind the current state of the art?
Aurora, mustang, Cutlass, Prospector, MPUV, Buccaneer (just to name some of them...), several ground vehicles does not have any physicalised components, some doesn'0t even have the components slot in place...
How could CIG that has never find the time to rework those older ships do that in the few months that are left?
Not to mention some ship like the Freelancer that have their components access blocked as soon you load some cargo do to the fact that the last rework had the dimensions slightly wrong...
 

Thalstan

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Couple of things.

Engineering could become a good active alternative to piloting. Part of the big reason people like to fly their own ships is that between fights, there is nothing to do. No turrets to crew, no scan readings to watch, etc. it effectively is a sit around and wait, leading to either talking to other people over text or voice, or doing something else like watching Netflix. If people are doing that, CIG fails.

With engineering, you can repair, bring things back up to full ammo, etc. YET, while this might be fun at first, it’s quickly going to devolve into yet another time filler mechanic that may be seen by some, or even by most as repetitive and boring. In which case, CIG fails again.

Ow, just one comment on something I saw above. Running ammo. Keeping ammo outside of dedicated bunkers that are designed to vent the explosive power outside if struck could become a recipe for disaster. While a “rail gun” just fires slugs of iron or other magnetic material (or encased in that material as a sabot), most other types of ammunition require a propellant having those laying around means that WHEN it gets hit laying in the hall, it’s going to be a very bad day.

Warships should be incorporating ammo storage in protected areas and delivery systems that keep things less likely to be explody

Non warships (cargo haulers, etc.) might be better off with energy weapons.
 

RoosterRage

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Couple of things.

Engineering could become a good active alternative to piloting. Part of the big reason people like to fly their own ships is that between fights, there is nothing to do. No turrets to crew, no scan readings to watch, etc. it effectively is a sit around and wait, leading to either talking to other people over text or voice, or doing something else like watching Netflix. If people are doing that, CIG fails.

With engineering, you can repair, bring things back up to full ammo, etc. YET, while this might be fun at first, it’s quickly going to devolve into yet another time filler mechanic that may be seen by some, or even by most as repetitive and boring. In which case, CIG fails again.

Ow, just one comment on something I saw above. Running ammo. Keeping ammo outside of dedicated bunkers that are designed to vent the explosive power outside if struck could become a recipe for disaster. While a “rail gun” just fires slugs of iron or other magnetic material (or encased in that material as a sabot), most other types of ammunition require a propellant having those laying around means that WHEN it gets hit laying in the hall, it’s going to be a very bad day.

Warships should be incorporating ammo storage in protected areas and delivery systems that keep things less likely to be explody

Non warships (cargo haulers, etc.) might be better off with energy weapons.
They recently stated that they are looking at having dedicated areas for ballistic ammo that will auto reload weapons so there will not be a manual reloading of weapons.
 

NomadicHavoc

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They recently stated that they are looking at having dedicated areas for ballistic ammo that will auto reload weapons so there will not be a manual reloading of weapons.
I, like @Shadow Reaper, kinda liked the idea of running ammo but that didn’t sound realistic IMHO. Like this idea of just bringing extra ammo and essentially belt feeding the surplus rounds directly into the ship from the ammo crate. Would be cool if this was animated in some way. Wonder if there will be different kinds of ballistics that can be purchased or crafted?

@Shadow Reaper: Do we really need workbenches for repair since repair can be done with the multi-tool in the ‘field’? Having a workstation for in ship or base crafting, however, should hopefully be In the CIG playbook. Hope crafting is discussed next month.

Getting excited thinking about the possibilities!
 
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Shadow Reaper

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I’ll be happy for big ships to simply have huge ballistics magazines so we don’t need to reload. Fine with me.

CIG promised us huge utility from workbenches that can be had no other way, including making improvements on weapons and armor. Though they said this when they released the Carrack, it’s gotten no luvs since so it’s hard to say if they’ve done anything. Theoretically, you could repair and improve virtually anything. So for example, you found that special crystal and can now build it into your Gallant to squeeze out two more points of damage, or even into your ARC Lite. Hard choice to make. Better farm two crystals.
 
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