Ship-Based Habitats
From CSMWiki
Contents |
Stats
Raised by: Bunyip
Submission Date: 01-01-2009
Issue ID: To be indexed
Summary
The idea for small player owned structures has been presented before, but I submit a thought-out design that minimizes both code and art, while giving a further purpose to the ships in the game.
Mechanics
The Ship-Based Habitat means it will start out as a ship. This ship can be flown as a normal ship, but will have special modules that highly limit it's effectiveness on the combat side without making the ship completely useless. Either Cruiser-size or Battleship-size rigs can be bought, and fitted to the appropriate sized ship.
When a ship has reached a good location that is outside of 1 AU from any other permanent celestial object (planets, asteroid belts, permanent beacons, etc), the pilot can set the ship up as the SBH. This process leaves the ship entirely defenseless for 15 minutes, so other ships are often needed as protection while a ship transforms. At the end of that period, the player can either eject in a pod or in one of the ships left in the cargohold (usually a shuttle), and the ship becomes anchored to the location in space.
A player can have as many SBHs as he has levels of the skill Habitat Management (rank 4). He can only have one in a system though, and there can be a maximum number of habitats in a system equal to some developer-decided system, such as moons. The SBH is considered a part of the person or corp, so other corp members can have access to them if given the permissions, and attacking them in high-security space will only not cause Concord interference if the corporations are at war.
In the SBH mode, up to 2 ships of an equal or smaller size can dock with the SBH. These ships use a gangway to link them to the SBH, so that they're outside the armor and inside the shield of the SBH. While docked at a SBH, the pilot can engage certain modules on the ship to allow it to function as a very limited POS, and these functions will run until complete (either the SBH runs out of fuel, the function runs out of the necessary components for the activity, or the pilot stops the process).
Certain modules can be used for a SBH, but it can also use any other passive module designed for a ship of it's type, such as hull modifications or anything else. Guns are activated automatically when attacked (with a skill level of 1 unless the Anti-Theft System is on the SBH).
When the SBH is deployed, regardless of size, the device doubles the HP of the ship and burns 10 Isotopes of the appropriate type for the ship used as the basis every hour, and 1 Oxygen per day. Modules which double the fuel are marked with (2x) and stack with one another, so a Cloak and a Refiner would quadruple fuel costs.
Modules
- High Slots
- Habitat Cloak (2x): Passive module (always doubles fuel cost), reduces the chance of probing the SBH to 20%.
- Mid Slots
- System Scanner: Detects the people in system/cloaked status/security status. Detects ship type within 5 AU.
- Anti-Theft System: Detects and immediately evemails if the SBH is attacked, augments guns with the user's skill levels.
- Drone Coordinator: Automatically manages and launches drones if attacked, uses the skills of the deployer.
- Low Slots
- Refiner (2x): Refines ore at 1 m3/second and ice at 1 unit/5 minutes, otherwise works as a Refining Array.
- Repair Bay: Enables repairs of T1 ships, the percent damaged is the cost to repair in total ship materials.
- Munitions factory (2x): Assembles ammunition from raw materials at 10% higher cost.
- Rig Slots
- Transformation Augmentor: This is the cruiser-sized rig, adding 10,000 m3 to the cargohold of the ship when deployed.
- Improved Transformation Augmentor: This is the battleship-sized rig, adding 40,000 m3 to the cargohold of the ship when deployed.
Potential Solutions
- Use pre-existing ships for small player owned structures
- Pros
- Easier for the coding, with only a few items instead of complete structures to be designed.
- Easier for the artists, as it only adds small cosmetic changes to the ship model.
- Allows newer players (but not rookies) to stake their own claim.
- Gives guerrillas and pirates an outpost to run to.
- Far less powerful and useful than a POS, allowing them to continue to shine.
- Creates far more construction opportunities for manufacturers.
- Increases demand for passive modules.
- Cons
- Modules would need a code so that they’re only activated when the ship is ‘deployed’ (similar to the Dreadnought or Rorqual).
- Might cause database problems with remembering the user’s skill levels.
- Slightly increases the item amounts in the database.
- A mechanic of maximum habitats per system would have to be implemented, possibly by using certificates.
- Pros
