- This topic has 7 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 7 years, 9 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
This is an idea I have been considering more and more recently. Simply, it is to modify fighters so they no longer have offensive capabilities (or very limited capabilities) so they become shuttles and then equip every ship in the Division with one.
In missions like the recent quarantine mission played, we’d use these shuttles to ferry teams about, instead of simply pulling up in a ship. In the mission we played, it would give the weapons officer something to do (even if they switched places when a shuttle pilot leaves) rather than them simply hanging around.
This would also add a different RP perspective too, with the potential for GMs to create some tense decisions and story lines.
Fighters at the moment are not being used. We just don’t have the capacity and I believe most people prefer playing as a crew anyway. Adding a shuttle therefore takes the fighters and tweaks them to something more useable that we could draw on every now and then for interest.
What do you guys think? What kind of stats would a shuttle have? When and how might we use one? Should all ships have them?
I like it. Comms should be able to communicate with it and order it, and it should be deployable by a mechanism that isn’t a torpedo tube.
I like the idea of shuttles and having them instead of fighters, so they can be manned by an officer. Which officer, that would depend on the mission.
Giving it basic impulse drive with a small amount of shields, no ordnance and perhaps a tiny beam (for mining or other purposes, not for combat) would be enough, I think. The number of them on a ship should be proportional to the ship’s size. Also, adding a Life Pod if it’s destroyed might be a good idea.
I like the lifepod idea and I think the beam should be powerful enough to take out a drone, assuming a
fightershuttle can target drones anyway.I cannot see a reason that any TSN vessel would not have a shuttle or two aboard and I would expect larger ships to have at least two.
These presumably would be envisaged as carrying medical, science, engineering or marine/security teams and/or some cargo?
I’d originally thought give each ship a number of shuttles based on it’s class/engine nacelles. Excalibur, Hunter, and Lancer (yes, this breaks the pattern) would get one. Phoenix, Horizon, and Viper would get two, and I could see arguments for Raven getting two or three.
Here’s a mock-up for a shuttle. Things to call out in particular. Relative to the Allard FXI, its weapon does half the damage and the cycle rate is twice as long (effective one quarter the damage rate). All the homing torpedoes have been removed. Shields have been slightly increased, but it moves and turns more slowly than the standard TSN fighter.
<vessel uniqueID=”120″ side=”7″ classname=”TSN shuttle Mk.I” broadType=”player fighter”>
<art meshfile=”TSN/fighter.dxs” diffuseFile=”TSN/fighter_color.png” glowFile=”TSN/fighter_glow.png” specularFile=”TSN/fighter_spec.png” scale=”0.06″ pushRadius=”70″ />
<shields front=”30″ back=”30″ player=”240″ />
<!– for fighters, front shield here is actually total HP–>
<performance turnrate=”0.020″ topspeed=”0.6″ shipefficiency=”1.0″ warpefficiency=”1.0″ jumpefficiency=”1.0″ />
<beam_port x=”0″ y=”0″ z=”0″ damage=”0.1″ playerdamage=”1″ arcwidth=”0.1″ cycletime=”1.0″ range=”500″ />
<engine_port x=”-101″ y=”0″ z=”60″ />
<torpedo_storage type=”0″ amount=”0″ />
<!– Type 1 Homing”–>
<long_desc text=”TSN bulk shuttle^Capable of transferring a platoon of marines or up to 100 cubic meters of cargo^Armament: 1 mining beam (can be used for defense in an emergency).” />
</vessel>As far as the look of the shuttle, I suppose we could just grab one of the existing freighters and scale it down but for the moment I left the skin and wireframe as the TSN fighter for ease of use. The only other change that should be required would be setting any ship that would carry these shuttles to side=7.
Changes from what I’ve listed above to the TSN Shuttle:
- Beam damage doubled so that it is noticable, but range is still halved and cycle rate doubled. It’s enough to take out light enemies around level 5, but wasn’t able to destroy or disable hard targets at level 10.
- Turn rate decreased by 25% (now 0.015)
- Model now uses one of the civilian cargo freighters, with a reduced size model
Changes to other ships (Affects Raven, Horizon, Phoenix, Lancer, Hunter, Viper, Gryphon, Vengeance, Excalibur, and the generic CL-Valkyrie and CL-Apollo)
- Side set to 7 so that it uses the shuttle instead of fighter
- broadType set to “player carrier”
- Each vessel now has a carrierload entry. This is 2 if it is a light cruiser or larger, or a 1 if smaller.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.