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bilun
bilun
Join Date 02/2012
+36

Stolen ships and upgrades

April 26, 2012 3:52:06 AM from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

So I just noticed that enemy ships stolen by abilities or in the case of the advent rebels revived as clones don't keep any of the original owner's weapons/armor/ability unlock research upgrades.

 

This left me kind of disappointed as it means in longer games suddenly the ships you're stealing will be inferior to your own ships if they were originally controlled by another race(well for most combat frigates).  Part of the fun of stealing an enemy ship IMO should come from it improving your total fleet power by adding a tool not ordinarily available to your race.

 

The ability unlock upgrades I understand- those can unlock some crazy strong abilities which you may want to keep out of the hands of other races.  That said I kind of feel that stolen ships should retain their previous weapon damage and armor from before they were converted- kind of silly that ship-stealing abilities are arbitrarily weaker against certain ships simply because they use weapon types which the player stealing the ships lacks any sort of weapons upgrades for.

 

Well maybe it's not really necessary necessary(after all, the advent who have the most ship-stealing tools are starting to look pretty strong these days).  Just bummed me out that stolen enemy ships(with the exception of maybe support frigates and ogrovs) are often a poor long term investment as your own ships provide superior firepower per fleet supply.

 Anyways discuss.

 

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bilun
Fyrstar2002
Join Date 03/2009
+8
Reply #1 April 26, 2012 8:10:48 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

I agree.  After one steals a ship, I doubt that the discussion among the engineers goes like this:

 

Engineer 1) "What the hell is this green gooey shit dripping from the walls?"

Engineer 2) "It appears that gooey crap makes the light shooting thingamabobs four times as powerful as our own lasers!"

Engineer 1) "Screw that, it's getting all over my pants, my wife will kill me.  Get rid of it.  Now, what's with this super thick armor?"

Engineer 2) "It appears that it was designed to stop torpedo penetration."

Engineer 1) "Stops penetration!?!? Its a chastity beltz?!?!"

Engineer 2) "No sir, I meant..."

Engineer 1) "Get rid of it!  More penetration means happier soldiers and more people to colonize our planets!"

Engineer 2) "But, sir!!!!  We NEED this tech.  It's much better than anything we have!  It even has SHIELDS!"

Engineer 1) "If it won't let me haz moar cheezburgerz, screw it!  Toss it all!  Muaaaaaaaaahahahaha!"

 

 

 

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bilun
IamMirezNL
Join Date 09/2008
+4
Reply #2 April 26, 2012 8:33:59 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Hard to do from a programmers perspective.

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bilun
mcintire
Join Date 04/2010
+7
Reply #3 April 26, 2012 10:35:40 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

From what I know the game destroys the original ship and replaces it with a ship of the same type, but your allegiance. Now they would just have to read the original's stats before killing it and copy them over...

 

In all honesty I thought the original takeover abilities did that before. I do recall having taken over Kodiaks with afterburners, and that one is a research, too...

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bilun
GoaFan77
Join Date 10/2008
+629 moderator
Reply #4 April 26, 2012 11:38:34 AM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting mcintire,
reply 3
In all honesty I thought the original takeover abilities did that before. I do recall having taken over Kodiaks with afterburners, and that one is a research, too...

Unless you were also TEC I think you were mistaken.

That said OP, the ship you take over will have your upgrades. So if you're Advent and take over a TEC ship its shields will probably be better than the normal ship. Considering the other player is obligated to do any ship enhancing research, its a bit more reliable I think.

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bilun
bilun
Join Date 02/2012
+36
Reply #5 April 26, 2012 2:51:30 PM
from Sins of a Solar Empire ForumsSins of a Solar Empire Forums

Quoting IamMirezNL,
reply 2
Hard to do from a programmers perspective.

Well one thing they could very well do is create "classes" of weapons that use the same tech upgrades.  For examples have advent laser upgrades also improve the weapon damage of autocannon, pulseguns, and flak on ships they steal(and conversely TECH autocannon upgrades improve laser/pulseguns on ships they steal with corsev).  Perhaps plasma could correspond to phase missiles/missiles.  and so on.

 

While I suppose having the ship keep it's original upgrades, by doing this they could at least allow the new controller of ths ship to essentially upgrade it alongside the rest oft heir fleet.  And it's not like it would change anythign else, since besides stolen ships, these weapon types would be otherwise unobtainable.

Quoting GoaFan77,
reply 4

Quoting mcintire, reply 3In all honesty I thought the original takeover abilities did that before. I do recall having taken over Kodiaks with afterburners, and that one is a research, too...

Unless you were also TEC I think you were mistaken.

That said OP, the ship you take over will have your upgrades. So if you're Advent and take over a TEC ship its shields will probably be better than the normal ship. Considering the other player is obligated to do any ship enhancing research, its a bit more reliable I think.

Wasn't really concerned about hull/shields(though to be fair an extra 10-20% shields isn't enormous for example on TEC ships which have pretty cruddy base shields).  

 

The main issue is weapons systems having no available upgrades for a great many ships.  Armor is also a bit of an issue(for example many TEC ships were balanced assuming higher armor due to TEC's ealy available armor upgrades)>

 

 

All that said, I would be thrilled if weapons upgrades were either carried over or made available by the method I discussed above.  The complete unavailability of weapons upgrades for most ships is what chiefly makes them inferior to building your own ships.

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