[Hades]

Posting possible capital ship powers.

Aeolus: Beam overcharge, sgreens fire every 5-7 seconds, causing massive damages. This works for AAAF too, but the downside is it gradually damages hull.
            Repair like on the Karuna, though a bit faster.
            Countermeasures: Used as a power to basically disarm UEF torpedoes, including the ones fired from UEF capitals, can be used to help out larger ships as well.

Deimos: Beam overcharge: Turns the terslashes into a powerful direct fire weapon for a short time. Does some minor damage to the Deimos' hull.
             Repair
             Point Defense Overdrive: Causes all point defense turrets to fire much faster, useful for trying to take down more incoming bombs.

Sanctus: Cargo Utilization: The Sanctus uses the spare ammo in its cargo bay to, for a few seconds, greatly increase the reload rate of its kenetic weapons (Torpedoes, mass drivers, etc)
              Repair
              Not sure about the third power, I was thinking perhaps an engine overdrive, which makes it move much faster for about 5 seconds, which would be useful for getting into range with its mass drivers, etc.

Diomedes: Stikecraft Launch: Launches one wing of fighters and one wing of bombers that assist them.
                Repair
                PD Sentries: Launches 10-15 sentry guns around the ship (and perhaps friendly capitals) which terran turret 2 which are used to help shoot down torpedoes

Chimera:

Bellephron:

If anyone has anything to say about these or any ideas for these or the other capitals I didn't list, please do share.

[Hades]

If anyone has anymore ideas, I'd be happy to hear them.

[Lester]

I think we should add the Custos to the list of playable capships.

[Hades]

I think we should add the Custos to the list of playable capships.

Yeah true, plus the Narayna (spellllling), Chimera, and Bellephron too

[bigchunk1]

Right now the Narayana and the Sanctus models are in the bpmulti modpack.  I would like to brainstorm possible ideas for abilities with these ships first, since abilities for them will be easier to implement.

Sanctus: (Ideas Hades mentioned are good)
Active Sealent: Armor type gets a temporary buff
Long ranged ordinance: Sanctus' Warhammers get temporarily swapped with Apocalypse#Narayana which has 12000m range.
Signal lasers: disables all beam weaponry a given distance from the activating ship for a given amount of time.
Thruster coolent reserves: recharges afterburner energy instantly.

Narayana:
Fire mission: All gauss cannons and mass drivers fire instantly when this ability is used.
Jam their signal!: Makes the Narayana untargetable by enemies for a short duration.
Recalibrate Sensors: Repairs the Sensor subsystem.

Edit: Just thought of another ability.
Reactor Polarity: Overloads the reactor to cause a massive EMP shockwave which radiates outward from center of the activating ship. Scrambles the targeting of the activating ship as well as others around it. Useful for desperate situations.

[Commander Zane]

Long ranged ordinance: Sanctus' Warhammers get temporarily swapped with Apocalypse#Narayana which has 12000m range.

A missile that isn't a quarter the length of the ship itself would probably be a better choice. I think both the Karuna and Solaris use the same model which is smaller than the Narayana's.

[bigchunk1]

I just checked the tables and you are correct that the Solaris uses a MissileL.pof, Different from the Karuna and Narayana's MissileXL.pof. I'm not actually sure exactly how the MissileXL.pof sizes up compared to the Sanctus. If the ability gets put into the game, we'll test and make a decision then. Using a solaris missile might be a viable alternative though the range will be shorter, unless we retable new ones.

[Commander Zane]

The Karuna also uses MissileXL? I thought the Apocalypse#Karuna used MissileL along with the Apocalypse#Solaris.
I looked in the lab and the Karuna's missiles are MissileM, I was wrong there.

[Qent]

Signal lasers: disables all beam weaponry a given distance from the activating ship for a given amount of time.

Please no. You will cheapen one of the most dramatic moments of WiH.

[SypheDMar]

Signal lasers: disables all beam weaponry a given distance from the activating ship for a given amount of time.

Please no. You will cheapen one of the most dramatic moments of WiH.

This is for PvP capship battles only. It's not canon.

[KyadCK]

We wouldn't be able to use this in a co-op mission like Blade Itself multi (cap/fighter combined)? Or hell, even a RTS mission? There's gotta be more ways to use this then just cap ship TvT.

[SypheDMar]

Well, it probably could, but I'm just clarifying for him that it's not canon.

[KyadCK]

fair enough.        really lookin forward to this, preferably as an option so it can be turned off when need be.

[bigchunk1]

fair enough.        really lookin forward to this, preferably as an option so it can be turned off when need be.

Well, here's what I was thinking of doing.

Multiplayer clients can't use the Keypress sexp, so input for an ability has to be triggered by some other means. #Player Capital ships have no primary weapons so how bout making the player fire dummy weapons to trigger the abilities? The weapon energy of the capital ship can be used as the 'cooldown factor' with each ability consuming a different amount of weapon energy depending on how valuable it is.

For this to work, weapon points need to be added to the .pof file of whatever capital ship is being used. This is why I suggest implementing the Sanctus and the Narayana first, because we have their .pof files in the svn already and are able to customise them.

Once a dummy weapon is triggered, FRED code will read that the weapon has fired and do whatever it needs to do in order to get the ability to work. For example, the armor ability will involve the set-armor-type sexp. and will be set back via sexp after a certain amount of time has expired.

This is doable without a custom HUD, but a little someting extra would be nice.

Because Fred code is creating the actual ability effects, we can set the abilities on a mission by mission basis, meaning we have complete control over when a ship has abilities and when it does not.

Signal lasers: disables all beam weaponry a given distance from the activating ship for a given amount of time.

Please no. You will cheapen one of the most dramatic moments of WiH.

I would not want to do that if that's truly the case. These are just off the cuff ideas to get people thinking. Any other ideas for abilities or any other ideas related to capship PvP are certainly welcome. Would you like to see some other kind of ability in the game instead?

[Trivial Psychic]

I don't play Multi, and I haven't played "The Blade Itself" yet, but I had a thought (that perhaps someone else has had already, so humor me please), thought it could be somewhat difficult to implement.  Although we've never seen this in any canon FS2 mission, it has been seen more than a few times in fan campaigns... Inferno R1 comes to mind... its subspace nano-jumping.  It would certainly be useful and would definitely be an ability that at least some ships might be expected to have, but the trick is implementing it.  What I was thinking (again, I'm in unknown territory here) is when you select the ability, you are prompted to provide a set of numbered key presses that correspond to direction and distance.  The first figure (0-9 or perhaps 1-8 of you'd rather have 45 degree increments) would correspond to lateral direction, another figure (same numeric system) corresponding to vertical inclination, similar to Star Trek's blah-blah,-mark-blah-blah system.  A third figure would correspond to distance in kilometers.  All figures would be in relation to the ship's own perspective, rather than the the environment.  Another option but a potentially more tricky one, could be a set of figures for ship orientation.  The clincher would be that you'll only be able to nano-jump either so many times per mission, and/or within a certain interval, or risk overheating.  It would also disable end-of-mission jump-out during the wait interval.  Then it's just a matter of simulated effects and ship moving via sexps.
There are many obvious uses for this, such as the obvious of moving yourself into a more favorable attack vector against an opponent, protect a target of importance, or perhaps reaching a jumpnode.  However, in a mission where your enemy can't nano-jump, it would also be useful to briefly move yourself out of range of enemy weapons while you conduct repairs.

[MatthTheGeek]

Well, if you want to know, nanojumping is more or less what the RTS script is all about.

[Hades]

Gonna use red for responding to each individual point, but remember, each ship can have 3-4, depending on how many available buttons we can find.

Sanctus: (Ideas Hades mentioned are good)
Active Sealent: Armor type gets a temporary buff
Eh, I dunno. Could overpower it even more than it already is to TEV cruisers, and cruisers were meant to be support ships to corvettes or frigates, honestly.
Long ranged ordinance: Sanctus' Warhammers get temporarily swapped with Apocalypse#Narayana which has 12000m range.
Basically what cargo utilization is. Makes the weapons
Signal lasers: disables all beam weaponry a given distance from the activating ship for a given amount of time.
Ugh, I dunno, if it's a TVT like 1 corvetee + 2 cruisers against 1 frigate + 2 cruisers this could be a bit overpowering.
Thruster coolent reserves: recharges afterburner energy instantly.
I like this one. It's really a lot more useful than just armor or weapon upgrades, since the Sanctus, with my balancing, is meant to be slow, as the Aeolus and Hyperion cruisers are mincemeat for it, even with its weakish weaponry. Although I think something more like infinite afterburner capacity for, maybe, eight seconds could work better.

Narayana:
Fire mission: All gauss cannons and mass drivers fire instantly when this ability is used.
Hrm. Could be tricky to use.
Jam their signal!: Makes the Narayana untargetable by enemies for a short duration.
Really has no gameplay effect unless you make it so turrets can't target nor fire upon the Narayana.
Recalibrate Sensors: Repairs the Sensor subsystem.
...What's this for? Just have it be an overall generic repair, like for all of the ships, that repairs everything.

Edit: Just thought of another ability.
Reactor Polarity: Overloads the reactor to cause a massive EMP shockwave which radiates outward from center of the activating ship. Scrambles the targeting of the activating ship as well as others around it. Useful for desperate situations.
Again, scrambling targeting is useless without making it so turrets can't target nor fire on other ships.

[Darius]

Not sure how setting kamikaze to a player ship would work, but a Ramming Speed power would be useful for cruisers on their last legs.

[NGTM-1R]

Chimera and Bellerophon both scream for a "kill movement, main guns go rapid fire" ability

[MatthTheGeek]

They don't - they're way too overkill as-is.