Request: Add an outfit that adds gun and turret ports

[brendanjones]

Problem Description

In the name of fun and ship customisation, it'd be cool to have outfits that add to the max number of gun or turrets ports your ship has. This would allow for more varied ship builds.

Related Issue Links

#3264
#6849

Desired Solution

A few combos that are possible

• One outfit that adds both gun and turret ports (EVN had this, the Sigma Mount Reinforcement, which added 4 gun and 2 turret ports)
• Separate outfits for adding gun ports vs turret ports
  • One outfit per port
  • One outfit that adds multiple gun or turret ports

One thing to note with the Sigma Mount Reinforcement is that it didn't take any extra outfit space, it just cost a lot of money. Making money was way more balanced in EVN, whereas here in ES money is no barrier. This makes me think there should be some other penalty to adding weapon ports - maybe 5 tons per gun port and 10 tons per turret port?

With that in mind, I think my preferred solution would be to have a gun port outfit that adds 2 ports, and a turret port outfit that adds 1 turret port. Both take 10 tons of outfit space.

Alternative Approaches

It may be good to have a maximum number of ports that can be added per ship, though available outfit space is maybe already limiting enough? Could be explained in game as not affecting hull integrity too much.

Feel free to suggest other options!

Additional Context

In a perfect world, adding ports would also add them visually to ships. It'd be very cool to be outfitting your ship and see the changes you make to your ship. But I think the outfits could be implemented and then any visual changes added later whenever that work is done.

Thinking through if this would wreck game balance, I think it would be fine as long as there's the outfit space penalty. Where it might create issues is with T2-3-ish tech. I'm thinking Sunbeam, Moonbeam, Bombardment Cannon, and the Husk Slicer. High damage outfits that it's well worth putting one more on your ship. Or, where your ship is already packed out with those weapons but you don't have the turret slots left to add the amount of anti-missile turrets you desire.

Skylances and Gridfires have a massive power draw so those are already self limiting (and Gridfires are limited in number so I'm not worried about a whole fleet being packed with those). Still, I'd be less concerned about the ability to add another Skylance to your ship if the Skylance was nerfed somewhat #8608.

Another reason this could create issues: breaking in-game lore. For example, some of the Wanderer warships have zero turret slots. Would adding turret slots to a Strong Wind be wrong?

[Quantumshark]

In a perfect world, adding ports would also add them visually to ships. It'd be very cool to be outfitting your ship and see the changes you make to your ship. But I think the outfits could be implemented and then any visual changes added later whenever that work is done.

Weapon hardpoints can't exist without a location for the weapon to fire from. So, you couldn't implement this without working out a way to do that. And there isn't a way to do that, really. You'd need a way to work out where on a ship they should go, which would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to implement in code.

Difficulty/impossibility of actually implementing this aside, the different numbers and types of hardpoints are also a major factor in differentiating ships from one another and in balancing them, and that's something you lose out on if you add outfits that can just add more hardpoints to anything. So, I think this'd be a bad idea even if we could do it.

[mOctave]

While I agree that this probably isn't a viable or helpful suggestion, it could be cool to have an outfit that takes up 5-10 or so outfit space that you can use to convert a turret mount to a gun port (but not the other way around). I'm not sure if that would wreck the differentiation or actually be useful, but it would be more practical to implement and I could see it being used in some niche situations.

[SomeTroglodyte]

hardpoints ... need a way to work out where on a ship they should go

For such a cheat feature - 0 0 under should work, no? At least for +guns 🙈 🙊

Just do a bunch if ship variants and jobs that exchange one for the other? give/take ship do exist.

[Hecter94]

For such a cheat feature - 0 0 under should work, no? At least for +guns 🙈 🙊

[Zitchas]

This has already been solved, conceptually, in this issue #4700 (comment)

The described process would be able to handle adding a new hardpoint of any kind to any ship that has at least a defined point of any kind. And if some ship lacks even so much as a single defined point (so, no guns, no turrets, no bays, no flares, nothing), then it defaults to 0,0.

This would be an extremely useful feature for a variety of storytelling concepts, and, obviously, is also something that keeps coming up as something people want.

The point being, this is very solveable, however as best I can tell people would rather use the few hollow ships we have as an excuse to pretend this is impossible.

Given how few ships we have that are hollow, I don't see this as being an impediment. Even if implemented in the most simplistic way that is strictly adding stuff to 0,0; it'd still be worth doing because it enables useful mechanics for telling interesting stories and mechanics. I don't think it's a good decision to block a useful feature on the off chance that someone might happen to be flying one of the 1% of ships that are hollow.

(the exact same logic blocks adding gunports, turret hardpoints, and bay outfits.)

[mOctave]

The problem is that, while this is doable and is something people want, it would also throw the game way out of balance. Maybe as a one-off for story it would be fine, but you'd need pretty steep penalties in order to keep people from turning their heavy freighters into OP 40-energy blaster-carrying warships.

[SomeTroglodyte]

40-energy blaster

Bah, want 42 Nullifiers. 🎯 🏹

Open source games are always open to cheating - but for people who don't, balance is a matter of the "campaign definition", not engine capabilities.

[Zitchas]

Just like we can add 5M shields to our ships? We've got that capability, and had it since day one. Somehow, our game still isn't broken.

I'm not advocating for a generic outfit adding +2 gunports to be added to the outfitter for general purchase. I'm advocating for the capability for it to be in the game for stories to use, and those that want it on a purchasable outfit can put it in their plugins, just like shield capacitors and armor plating.

That being said, have you ever actually tried going into combat with a bulk freighter with 32 gun ports? I've done that. It looks really impressive, but it dies so fast it's hard to put it into words. It's slightly better if one fills that with missiles, but yeah, it's silly how much of a glass-cannon it is.

[SomeTroglodyte]

As for that 512 image up there -

Here's one firing from (0,0) - pretty cute iyam:

advocating for

Exactly.

bulk freighter with 32 gun ports

Isn't the ship Zitchas a bulky frightener with 32 gum ports? No sorry that was bays...

[brendanjones]

The problem is that, while this is doable and is something people want, it would also throw the game way out of balance. Maybe as a one-off for story it would be fine, but you'd need pretty steep penalties in order to keep people from turning their heavy freighters into OP 40-energy blaster-carrying warships.

That’s impossible with the outfit I proposed. Well, it’s technically possible but the gun ports alone would cost you 200 tons. Then you need the extra outfit space for the guns themselves, which you probably had to create with outfit expansions, which is going to send your heat numbers sky high. And you won’t have room for any other outfits after you’ve put on the guns, cooling and energy production/battery. So yeah you might be able to create ships with stupid amounts of guns but they’ll probably be really bad at anything but shooting in one direction.

So my balance concerns aren’t about smaller ships or smaller weapons. People might create fun ships but I don’t think they’ll be much good, or they’ll have big downsides. My concern is big ships with lots of existing outfit space (and some cargo space to convert to more outfit space) mounting a couple more very powerful weapons.

But if we don’t want to allow that level of customisation then one easy solution is to limit each ship to one of these outfits. Explain it away with something about not destabilising the hull or aerodynamics or something like that. Then you can add max 2 guns and 1 turret. Any problems with the balance of that?

[mOctave]

But if we don’t want to allow that level of customisation then one easy solution is to limit each ship to one of these outfits. Explain it away with something about not destabilising the hull or aerodynamics or something like that. Then you can add max 2 guns and 1 turret. Any problems with the balance of that?

No problem with the balance of that, except for:

In Escape Velocity, the classic series of games that Endless Sky is patterned after, there were some outfits that were so powerful compared to their size that there was no reason not to install them if you could afford it: for example, outfits that took no space and improved your acceleration and turn rate, or very small outfits that boosted your shields considerably. As a result, those games needed to put a limit on how many of each outfit could be installed.

In Endless Sky, I'm attempting to have the balancing happen naturally, without putting fixed limits on how many copies of an outfit you can install. For example, that means that more powerful outfits tend to be larger or much more expensive (or both), and may have other side effects like generating a lot of heat or requiring more energy than other alternatives.

(From the CreatingOutfits wiki page)

[brendanjones]

Ah. That puts a bit of a dampener on things. Righto, double the outfit space I suggested, that’ll keep it limited :p