Ok this idea was partly inspired by another poster in this thread: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=603

It would be EXCELLENT if different class ships had different advantages. Maybe frigates are a little harder to hit. Maybe battleships hit a little harder. Scouts could be harder to see. Maybe cruisers generate energy a little quicker. Whetever, these are just thoughts to illustrate the idea. Make it a percentage, so it's balanced at all levels. Better still, tie those percentages to crew. Light, med, heavy cruisers could get +5%, +10%, or +15% of total engineers as a bonus to energy.

This could give yet another reason to try different ship builds, instead of just adding 4 decks and 1 cargo every rank.

frigates are supposed to be large bulky cargo carriers. that will not make them harder to hit. otherwise, I like the idea of ship-class bonuses. In fact, I would like to have a science-vessel class introduced (research of course).

I had an idea like this, but it was not based on ship size 9why mess with that) it was based on model (as in style of ship) or grade of ship.

This would be like you want a light fighter but the upgrade (model upgrades would work close to shields ect... and would have its own tab) But lets say you got the light fighter it would lower your hull and up your def by either a hard number of a %.

as of right now... dan has said that the model or look of your ship is based purely on your race pick... and it will look like that no matter what size your ship is.... so the picture you have right now of your ship is always how it's gonna look unless you change races

But i do like the idea of different ship sizes giving certain bonus's to an extent...

Ship size is based on your total amount of decks.. so just adding more decks is the biggest bonus there is right now because you can install different or bigger and better modules at your leisure. But just for getting a better class ship i think a small "congrats" bonus would be good. BUT it would not be cumulative. so the reward you get for being a frigate isn't applied still when your a titan or any of the size's between frigate and titan.

Yep, absolutely the bonuses would not stack. If your ship type changes, so would your ship's attribute. The goals are 1) to add a bit of flavor to spice up the otherwise meaningless ship type, and 2) more importantly - add a bonus to compliment a player's play style and rank point spending.

actually, becuase decks are already overpowered to crew, a penalty to big size might be a better idea.

I think that crew and decks should be of same power(by making crew a percentage based on amount of research, like if youve researched a weapon with a attack/size ratio of 1:10(Thats not an actual weapon,I think, its just an example) then tactical officers would be +10 for 1 rank point), except that more decks would give you these bonuses and crew would still defend against raids( and maybe other bonuses unless you think that is sufficient).

ok 2 things, 1 it would just be easier to boost crew rather then nerf decks not to mention more fair to those who have chosen more decks, 2 untill moduels can defend againts raiding in on the fence about being decks being "overpowered" as much as I think would think there more versatile.

I agree that decks should not be nerfed. I just think crew should be more balanced, and the ship class idea is one possible way that this could happen.

Here's A question to anyone over rank 20 who does NOT agree that decks are unbalanced.... Do YOU put more than 50% of your rank points into decks?

I thought so.

Thats why I suggested that items have crew requirements, you could achieve the requirements through modules that increase crew but are SUPER inefficient where as crew was very efficient. Decks would = versatility where as Crew would = specialization.

Though I do like the idea of it applying a % and not a base stat, it would require some heavy math so not to be abused, could make things fair.

I was wrong in making a brash comment and agree that crew should be better instead of decks being worse. However, I do have evidence of deck's power being too superior to crew:

first, rank points to skill ratio:
20 Tactical Officers = 40 attack
Light Plasma cannon (17 decks) = 42 attack

second, versitality:
crew ranks: energy, attack, defense, and research
(cannot be changed)
deck ranks: energy, hull, shield, attack, defense, scanning, cloak, and recovery times
(with credits, can be changed at any time)

This means research is the only ability that can not be done faster and better with decks, and that is because there is no module for it.

Well see thats the thing, id like to see decks mean that your more versatile while crew would be more of specialization. And as for the whole light plasma cannon thing, crew requirements with there being modules that provide it, but are horridly inefficient.

%s though would work well too.

I agree 100% that percentages would be the way to go. Either:
1. Replace set-amount modules with a percentage amount, based on crew. This would be best, but would mess up those who built their ships around modules.
2. Add a research tier for "crew training" or "efficiency modules" or something, which lets you research low space modules to give a % boost based on crew.

RE:1.......no
RE:2 yes but the math is going to be wierrrrrrd, might have to base it off of rank.

Hehe yeah I didn't think you'd go for #1. You're flying through space in a massive flaming juggernaut of doom, piloted by something like 3 people, right?

#2 wouldn't be that hard... (well, not to say adding another tech is easy!) It would just be based on tier. Each tier would be 3 or 4 steps, each step could be either a % bonus to att, def, energy, science based on your matching crew count. The only math to figure out would be the % amount (it could be as simple as +10% per tier, or have it scale up - T1=5% T2=10% T8=150% etc) and also the decks required. For it to work, it would need to be smaller than weapon modules, otherwise there would be no point. This would make it viable to focus on crew instead of decks, and it wouldn't break people who still wanted to put almost everything into decks. But in the long run it would encourage a more balanced ship build.

Options. I like options.

I have an idea, why not give heavy cruisers 10000 stats of every kind (The Enterprise was a heavy cruiser ).

the enterprise may have been a heavy cuiser, but there are warships that would be better at combat, and science vessels that would be better at scanning