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Lock_Eye

Join Date 02/2006

TEC Ship Design

The only major problem so far that I see other then the ocassional bug is ship design. You created this interesting back story, and for the TEC it seams that their fighting this uphill battle. First the Vasari and now the Advent, troubling times ahead indeed! But I have to ask the question, why aren't they all dead? Did they spam the Kol Battleship?

Because a race of people in a desperate situation don't design a cruiser that has no firepower. I don't care if their commanders don't like the "dirty" work (i.e. combat), if their such cowards then really why not camp a Kol Battleship? I see a great ship design in the Kol Battleship, and then the rest are kind of mehhh.....

Or why is it, that the Original Marza Dreadnought was more of a Dreadnought then this new one. And to be honest the Original looked better. It was more in tune with the ship design lineage that spawns from the Kol. Don't get me wrong, the new dreadnought design looks amazing but sucks in the weapons department. I mean why does it have the incendiary shells ability when it only have one Autocannon bank? Don't you think that ability would be better on the Kol? Or are you going to put more low tech autocannons on the Marza? I thought the TEC weren't born again warriors or scientists? So why is it that almost all their ships are using lasers?

The Cruiser department is in need of serious help, not even worth their namesake. Yes cruisers can be specialized, and yes they can have weaponry. I am not asking you to make them a end-all unit. But why would a race thats in such a predicament as utter extinction create a class of warships that suck?

The Frigates are good, tho the Cobalt seems like it should be using Autocannons. I mean Cobalt is the name of a mineral not a laser beam? Are you just picking cool names and not putting thought into them? Don't get me wrong the Cobalt is a nice combat ship, step in the right direction. But why not call it the Icarus Light Frigate?

Capital ships are pretty good. The Marza is not a dreadnought, it needs the rail gun ability from the Kol, and give its incendiary shell ability to the Kol. Seems to fit better. Or you need more autocannons on the Marza. Like I said, the original is far better then this new one.

To be honest I am glad we have 233 odd days left, because the TEC ships really need a little overhaul. Which brings me to the issue of what the other races are like? Because the pirates, well their just a re-skinning of TEC ships. What was their a massive sale on TEC Warships I didn't know about? Why not give them unique looking ships? I love your ship design, but weapon placement and sticking to the back story could use some help.

So What does the community think of my opinion? Talk, Discuss, and lets hope we can save the TEC!

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There's a good reason for TEC warships not looking like warships - they are converted civilian vessels. Atleast that's what would be logical when a civilization of traders would be forced into a war. I suppose all the shipdesigns will make more sense once the site gets updated with the backstory to the ships.

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Well to start I think it'll help to keep the heavy criticism down, let's use a civil tone

Anyway, what I think is we don't know enough to tell yet. We can not really talk about balancing without knowing how the other factions look like yet.

TEC ship may be suck, which makes sense, the lore do say that most of them are freighter refit for combat. The only question now is how suck it is comparing to the other ships which we don't know. Their design is ackward, that makes sense too, remember up until know TEC scientists are not developing weapon, they'll just slap together stuffs they think will work without any experience. So actually any suckiness about TEC design is actually in tune with the lore.

The issue of balance, like I said we can only tell once we know how the other factions look like. From what I gather the TEC is a heavy trading empire, and they're fighting on the home ground. Maybe to compensate for their weakness TEC will have higher logistic points and can generate income faster then the other fraction, so while their ships suck, they can afford three ships for every one ship of the other and that's how they're still on their feet? It's just like WW2, the ally's technology and troop experience sucked comparing to Germany's, but they win with sheer number superiority.

What you're suggesting is to make the TEC a little more professional which is I think contradicting their lore. Their military should look like amateur mismatch milita get together to defense their home, which is what they look like right now, which makes sense too.

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the kol battlships should be a hell of alot more powerfull they can get wupe by just a few light firgates for god sake i dont mind if there more expnesive but they should be extremly good. To be frank there not and they should have aa guns but they only have that flack specail. they should have at least 1 aa gun they might do but iv never seen 1

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Incendiary shells works on the missiles. It also fits the Marzas theme of mass destruction as opposed to the military skills of the Kol.

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I understand that their civilian ships that have undergone refits, but why only put on pop guns for cruisers. If the TEC are in such a desperate situation that they are facing a two front war. Does it make sense to put only low level weapons on a cruiser?

And I understand that we need to balance with the other races, but so far things aren't looking so good. The Kodiak is supposed to be a combat cruiser and its not worth 3 cobalt frigates.

I truly do understand that the TEC are not warriors, and that they are traders. But common sense dictates that when re-fiting or designing a ship for combat you put more then your weakest weapon on it.

No one can truly say that cruisers as they are now are worth it. The resources going into the research and production are better spent on capital ships, cobalt frigates, or LRM frigates.

Oh yeah, and when 4 Arcova scout frigates are more valuable then a command cruiser you know your in trouble!

Anyone here remember when the Marza was a good Dreadnought back in the original Beta version?

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After taking another look at the TEC shipdesign, I've got a few gripes of my own with it. Keep in mind this is just my opinion and I have no doubt it's not completely in-line with the developmentbible:

As a basic outline, in my mind, TEC frigates are built with the following in mind - "What do we have lots of? Freighters, Police ships, civilian transports. Good, now strap the cheapest guns you can find on them."

Cruisers are a more sophisticated line of ships, being purpose built for the war, thus they have a more streamlined, high-tech look.

Capitals are the biggest hulls the TEC could get with the biggest and latest weaponry strapped to them.

The problems I have with the design (without knowing the various background stories of the specific shipclasses) are these:

Cobalt Light Frigate - it looks far too sophisticated for the single most massproduced ship in the TEC game.
Kodiak Heavy Cruiser - it looks far too cobbled together for the otherwise streamlined and high tech (drones, C³, Carrier) cruiser line.

My proposed fix:
Kodiak model is given to the Light Frigate, sized down to frigate size, while keeping it's weapons kinetic to show how low-tech it is.
Cobalt model is sized up to cruiser size, and takes the place of the Kodiak Frigate's model. Personally, I'd love to see the new Kodiak get beams on those hardpoints, but that's purely cosmetic.

If the above is done, the frigate line now looks entirely like converted freighters, internally improving in streamlining slightly as new frigates are resesarched (Siege frigate, Flak frigate and Missile Frigate look less cobbled together than the Kodiak-model-light-frigate), while Cruisers are consistently high-tech purpose built.

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I think the new Marza is way better than the old one...

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The Original Marza may not look as good as the new one, but had better firepower.

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I like the idea of switching the 2 models.

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me too, would make it look better game and lore wise

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Some of the ships such as the Arcova and the Akkan look excellent (somewhat ugly, but excellent in that they keep to the lore). The Arcova probably hadn't changed much in terms of pre-war status; it was probably a scout ship designed to track minerals and resources. It has a fragile look and is barely armed, which is nice. The Akkan looks more like a luxury liner that ferried passengers to and from planets. The guns are not too obvious on the ship, and at a distance it doesn't look like it could do much damage. It makes for a perfect colonizing-capable capital ship.

On the other hand, the Kodiak looks like a flying brick, to be honest. In terms of practibility, that's what I'd go for, but if cruisers were ships designed for war (much in the same way as the Kol was), then I'd say it should look somewhat better. Something like the Cobalt. I agree with Daton that switching the two would be better. If the Cobalt was something of a police frigate before, then the Kodiak has a nice shape in terms of durability and practibility, something a police frigate would strive for.

In my opinion, the Marza, Sova, and the Durnov all look bad. Don't get me wrong, the Sova looks awesome, there's no complaint about that, and it looks like a modern carrier. But that's the problem, the Sova was not constructed from scratch as a warship. In fact, I was led to believe the Kol was the only ship. There is nothing that I could think of that the Sova could've been before it was transformed into a carrier. Maybe something like an oil tanker, or some massive supply ship, but it looks too streamlined to be a carrier. I know it's kind of ridiculous to complain that ships are too ugly, and then complain that they look too good, but the Sova does not look like it could've been anything but a carrier before. The Marza and Durnov share the same problem. They don't look like anything but warships. I suggest, if you are really thinking about changing the models further, that you base it off of a real ship first, and then start modifying it.

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I think the Marza approach might have been to take the weapons first (which are all massive - tri-barelled cannon and giant missile battery) and then build a ship around them. That might explain it's look. Though I have to agree on the Sova - it's really looks 100% custom built. It might be, which would be nice if we could have that confirmed.

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Well also consider the TEC had to have some kind of warships, So the capitals seem just about right, but thats just how I feel...

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I think the main thing is that the Cruisers need some boost in firepower. Why not put a few autocannon turrets on a cruiser or two. Why only the Kol?

I like the cobalt the way it is, just give it kinetic weapons. I think Lore wise the TEC have too many laser based weaponry for a race of low tech traders.

Tho not TEC related the pirates should get a few custom ships to make them stand out. Sometimes I think their just another empire trying to kill me until I take a close look.

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I do like the autocannons, wish more ships had them!

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I know what you mean lord, think the sound effects for them are the best too. We want more autocannons.

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Yarlen

Join Date 01/2005

+369

I'll let Ironclad reply to most of this if they see fit, but here's my bit:

The human race as a whole in Sins is not on the brink of extinction. Sins takes place in a small area of the galaxy, and yes, the humans there are in deep trouble. The Traders in Sins have been at peace for about 10,000 years, dealing with nothing more than minor corporate rivalries and piracy. As such, much of the TEC war machine is primitive - you don't just advance 10,000 years in warfare overnight. The Akkan cruiser is a good example of this, as it's basically a converted cruise ship where they stuck as many guns as feasible onto it. The Kol, on the other hand, while being the first true warship the TEC constructed is still pretty primitive compared to the Advent or Vasari. Need is the mother of invention and the Traders never needed ship-borne beam weapons before. What's on the Kol was stolen technology that's been reversed engineered. The TEC aren't able to replicate all the various parts to the quality of the originals, as so the Kol's beam cannons aren't nearly as good as you'd find on an Advent warship. That said, humans have been using projectile weapons for millennia and have gotten darn good at killing with them. That's why the TEC ships focus on guns and missiles. Shield technology is also pretty new for the TEC and, as I recall, was also stolen and reverse engineered. TEC shields therefore aren't as advanced as those on Advent or Vasari ships, but they've certainly done well by them.

The Pirates are essentially groups of humans who chose not to join the Trader Emergency Coalition and other renegades (i.e., criminals and other elements). As such, their ships look the same as those of the TEC because the humans all come from the same original group.

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I understand, but why is it than that almost all TEC ships use Lasers instead of kinetic bassed weapons?

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Yarlen

Join Date 01/2005

+369

That I cannot say, so I'll leave it to Ironclad. I think it would be more in keeping if they used rail guns.

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Lasers for cutting stuff up. What good is a cannon?

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Multianna

Join Date 10/2006

+10

Lasers for cutting stuff up. What good is a cannon?

duh, i put my laser ON my cannons, for better aim

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Actually in space a railgun would cause more damage than a laser. The reason for this in general is that because their is no friction in space, thus there is nothing to slow down a projectile. It would cause more significant kinetic energy. Which is one of the most powerful forms of energy in the universe.

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I'm talking about the TEC having access to railguns before lasers guys. Lasers have some utility functions (cutting up asteroids, pointing), while a cannon... well... I guess we can launch people out of them? There's no use for a cannon outside of war, which would explain why autocannons are so rare.

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Lasers for cutting stuff up. What good is a cannon?

Well, if we use the common lore among scifi, then Kinetic base weapon usually still do the most amount of physical damage and they can not be blocked and have high impact as a bonus. Energy base weapon can be absorb or deflect by shield. But they're cumbersome, high running cost and low accuracy.

Although I don't know how much of that applied to Sins.

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A metalic slug fired from a space-based railgun at the earth with enough force would cause a blast similar to a micro nuclear detonation without the side effects of radiation. At least in theory. Also rail guns, at least the ones being developed today on earth would be able to penetrate the strongest armor on a main battle tank to a sea based carrier.

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