GENERAL QUARTERS! SHIP VS SHIP!

Boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, it’s the best time to be alive, for it is time for us to discuss the must awaited addition to Colonial Marines!

  • Ship vs Ship Combat!

Rejoice, scream, tell your mother and your father, for it is time we start working on it!

“But how??” I hear basically everyone asking, because it’s such a difficult thing to implement, and I say “The lazy way” of course! What do I mean by this? Simple!

This is not an idea for a single PR, this is an year spanning group of PRs to slowly add all the components of ship vs ship!

So, let’s have it’s breakdown, shall we?

  • Breakdown!

    • Weaponry.
      A PR will add an admin useable Verb that adds a small plethora of useable weapons against the Almayer. This by itself already makes it capable to work around some of the most complicated parts of us running a fully manual ship vs ship event! This Verb will use a proc that has some weaponry that it hits the Almayer with, and causes explosions, shakes the ship, causes localized fired, so on and so forth!

    • Damage Control.
      When a weapon hits, it obviously causes some explosion, though… What does that cause effectively on the ship other than hurt the Marines a bit?
      That is where a PR about Damage Control would be added. MTs now are more useful even in settings where it’s not a ship vs ship situation!
      As we don’t have a functioning atmospherics (thank God, I don’t want plasma fires consuming groundside as if a nuke had hit because someone lighted a little cigar) we need some extra procs for it to happen.
      These will need to do some effects, as setting up the ship’s integrity, divided between Hull Integrity and Systems integrity. When the Almayer is hit by any weapon, it’s Hull integrity is lowered, and when it hits some System, the system integrity is lowered. For that, we will have fluff machines, or not so fluff machines around the Almayer that when broken will reduce Systems integrity. Along with that, a proc to make infinite fires would be made in case the hit causes a fire, and the MTs would need to use a machine (that can be broken) in engineering, choose the area where the fire is, and then activate it. This machine extinguishes the fire in the area, and needs a cooldown before it does that again.
      -Hull integrity CANNOT BE RECOVERED
      -Systems integrity can be recovered by fixing the machinery.
      -If the hull integrity hits 0, the Almayer is effectively gone, there being an event where it must be evacuated, or just plain out killing everyone inside.
      -If the Systems integrity starts getting low, random smaller explosions that we already see on hijack can happen at random. If it hits 0, the ship is effectively disabled, requisitions can’t send anything, OB is broken, overwatch is broken, and away the list goes on.

    • Astronavigation.
      I wouldn’t be surprised if this one was easier than the Damage Control one, because of how extensive that DC is. This would be a PR that would need some more officer to take care of, a first lieutenant could go very well here. Though, our beloved MoonShanks is already working on an altitude control console for Astronavigation with an role just for that. This same role could do the same here too.
      In CIC, one of the two Astrogator decks can be chosen and switched at a later date, and that is where the functioning Astrogator consoles will be at. The Astrogator officer(s) will be there present to control the altitude and weaponry.
      Not covering orbit altitude here, that’s with Moonshanks <3.
      The weapons console consists of complex systems that have tracking panels, to determine which radar contacts are ships or debris/interference, and if we go that deep, which are friendly contacts and enemy contacts.
      When an enemy contact is established, the officer can continuously do a small minigame to keep the track as precise as possible, and whenever he wants, he may engage with a weapon.
      The Astronavigation console not only will control altitude, but also proximity, allowing one to burn towards a contact or away from it. The proximity will determine the precision of each weapon. Missiles are great at longer ranges, while at closer ranges it can be taken down with ease. And railguns become an option at X range, and become evermore precise the closer they are to the target.

And voila! There we have it! Dividing it into three PRs instead of doing ALL OF THAT at the same time make it a much easier workload!

And more things can be added, one idea was to make a tiny CIC in the ERT Z level where players can be put to play as the enemy ship instead of admins just using panels.

Drop your suggestions below, be nice, give ideas of how systems can be done code wise, and let’s make CM even cooler!

5 Likes

This is an absolutely stupendous idea. Great work. The RP potential is amazing.

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Very interesting idea, but i’m pretty sure this is literally impossible with the CM code, or it will be jank as hell. Neat though


uploading this as promised.

concept art, mostly, for a conceptual

you have multiple range bands, point blank, short, medium, long, extreme.
these range bands affect various things
weapons fire has a time to cross each range band, and a % chance to hit their intended targets.
for example, a railgun salvo is impossible to hit at long range, one in a million at medium, and likely hitchance at short.

also, you can track missiles as they go across and stuff

At Extreme range
only certain missiles will even have any chance of hitting their targets.
At Long range
you will have most missiles fighting here, interceptors and missiles clashing.
At Medium range
this is where it gets interesting. Particle Beams can do anti-sensor attacks against enemy ships, overloading and destroying sensor clusters, for instance. Railguns can begin shooting at enemy missiles. All missiles will be firmly in range.
At Short range
This is when it starts getting scary. Railguns will have acceptable hit%s on their salvos and particle beams can start doing a little hull damage. Laser air defense starts shooting here.
At Point Blank range
Fights will end very quickly here. Railguns are firmly in range, particle beams can chew into armor, laser air defense is spraying at missiles as they exit their launchers.

look ill elucidate more tomorrow or something

2 Likes

This is an outstanding idea.

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The above get’s REALLY hard to do, but I’ll admit it, it isn’t impossible to do.

But I shall focus on the first two parts of it, for those there have already some more concrete ideas of how to do.

Lesgo, this will be fun!

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I’ll try to simplify as much as I can if that helps, then?

For instance: We can disregard particle beams entirely, and that simplifies both balancing and an element of EW out.

Railguns could have a hard limit and fixed hitchance check at short range. Laser air defense can be limited to point blank, and be an RNG % roll to kill anything it attacks.

The real question is how we best make missile gameplay interesting…

I’ll need to write up some additional missiles for the Almayer to be carrying.

I’d be 100% be onboard but this seems like a MASSIVE project. I’m talking DEFCON or Techwebs amount of work. If you can pull it off power to you

Oh yeah, the whole thing? It’s going to be hell to do, that’s why it’s bit by bit!

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look, if you coders (aka people with real brains) can pull this off, i will HRP this to Shivas and back

It’s in muahahaha :wink:

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The basic’s in, I’m writing about where on earth to go from now, heh!

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AHOOY!
The basic of the basic’s in! We have a button to call general quarters(ONLY WORKS WHEN THE SECURITY LEVEL IS BLUE OR BELOW FOR NOW, MIGHT REMOVE THAT SHIZ CUZ IT MAKES NO GOD DAMN SENSE AT TIMES), we have EXPLOSIONS, we have point the defence and the chance of missing shots at the Almayer too!

Now, what’s a battle when the other ship doesn’t shoot back?
I’ll be giving the Almayer the ability to shoot back a limited arsenal! A limited number of missiles and railgun shots (some 12 missiles and 100 tungsten slugs) can be shot and will advise the ones running the event if that missile hit or not the enemy target, keeping a tally of hits of each weapon on that target!

Where to go after that?
From here, the last thing that I have a small feeling I could remotely do if I did blood sacrifices is Damage Control. If too many systems break, system HP goes lower, when it hits 20% it causes hull damage, and at 0% the reactor melts down. Systems can be fixed and it’s HP recovered. Hull HP cannot be recovered, and when it hits 0, it triggers a total hull breach, which cannot be reversed.

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for the almayer’s shootback missiles, you could probably use the missile tubes above the brig to do it

only other thing that would be kinda cool is depressurization stuff (that would probably take atmos though :skull:)

Tying into the concept of Systems Integrity, would it be worth considering having a system where that when the integrity falls below a certain level, a random section of the ship will suffer a more serious degradation in its apperance?

So if the system falls below XX%, the game will pick a random department/area and ruin it, dim the lights, cause minor explosions, somehow disable it. You can then fluff it by making a generic ARES announcement declaring a certain area of the ship is disable.

Otherwise though. keeping it simple stupid seems a great way to go. Makes it easier for staff to make an event.

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areas of the ship that get hit could light on fire and get firelocked, it would be funny for terrifying shipsiders

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when do we get the “minor ebent” where we use this power?

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When someone runs it : )

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Yyyyeah I ain’t slapping ATMOS back into this game… Even if it’s multithreaded.

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I love the plan for gradually implementing it.

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