User blog:SolarKnight2/Planetary Ships (Custom Concepts, not real)

There is only one Ship with a Planet Name
That doesn't make much sense to me as the entire game is based on space travel. This topic is highly uneccessary as it doesn't affect the game at all, it just gives me something to talk about. A pretty bad topic, how could I come up with something good enough to feature in the game without breaking it entirely? Well, I wouldn't know. A lot of stuff in the game is balanced on stats for cost, such as how lasers turrets cost a lot of energy to destroy fighters, but void lancers cost the same energy with an exeded cost for minerals in order for a complete other spectrum of defense, destroying big things in one shot. I feel it's very hard to balance all of these out, especially with the inclusion of upgrading, Auxilary, and counter defenses. I'll do my best, but please feel free to give these custom capitals a rating, tell me what I did right and wrong, so I may learn for the future. All I ask is that you don't be rude about it. Anyways, let's just go through each planet by distance from the sun in our solar system.

Mercury
Mercury is by far the smallest planet in our solar system, so it doesn't deserve the title of "Capital Ship." Neither does Venus, Earth, or Mars, but that's food for thought. I decided these 4 ships would be Medium ships, it should make sense. After all, the cheepest Capitals go is Mastadon, and even then that ship is big. So I found the "Infobox Ship" template and I wanted to use it for these in order to make my concepts more presentable.

This ship is a more expensive Puma with a different distribution of weapons. Murcury has 6 frontal blasters, each fire once per second. Similar to the Autogun how it forms a cone with the blasters, meaning it's techically more accurate. Enemies that strafe around could still get hit with the side guns and stationary enemies are likely to take the full load of damage. Furthermore, it has 2 Micromissile top guns, each doing 12 damage total with 4 dps. Now, these would be utterly pathetic if it wasn't for the fact this ship is the fastest Medium Ship, meaning it can rush to the enemy base and fire the missles with almost guaranteed hits. It also has 200 armor and 4 armor regen automatically, which does stack with Repair Organ. The regen is able to make it exceed the tankiness of other Mediums, but only if your opponent isn't using Freeze which halts regeneration. I believe this ship with it's two top guns and frontal cannons along with the hyper speed could make it an effective rush ship. It does cost the same energy total as a Puma, just with extra mineral cost to balance it out.

Upgrades could be Engines E-C, gives massive speed bonus so it flies right past the base and attacks reactors and/or engineers. Acid/Freeze also, since it's so good at flying through and hitting everything, Acid and Freeze allows it to hit a bunch of things at once and cause them all to halt or slowly die. Cloak might be useful, but it's already so extremely fast that it can make progress before any non-laser projectile can reach it. It might have issues with Force Rounds pushing it away.

Venus
Venus is a planet known for "beuty," exactly what the name entails with mythology of the Greek or Roman gods, I can't remember to which because they worship so many and they're all so similar. The ship will also not be a Capital, but it will have a unique ability, like how Murcury had the uniqueness of being super fast and automatically regenerating health.

With a heavy cost, it has a Plasmacaster and three Autocasters all facint the front, making it a Myrmidon with the most dps out of any Medium Ship, excluding Hades as it techically has infinity dps. Venus is able to destroy anything in front of it, especially when it's massive Plasmacaster fires. It does have the issue of lower range and not as much armor, as well as the somewhat slow speed. Totaling the cost of this with the Stardock, 375 Energy and 250 Mineral is quite heavy, but it's damage is very high. Some could find worth in a midrange Plasma build by maybe using it to pressure the opponent. Plasma Mastery technology could help it a ton with fast enemies.

Cloak would be extremely useful for this ship so it can sneak in and blast enemy defenses, but it's also really good as anti-ship. This thing can demolish other Medium Ships with ease, so long as you have your own base backing you up and your opponent doesn't have too many Phalanxes to block all the Plasma.

Earth
Earth, where we live, is the planet made for life and health. I thought of a way to introduce it as both a medic to heal your base as well as an offense force to support your push.

Very slow like Exumer, weak body, heavy energy cost, all that for some weak Microlasers and a top-mounted Repair Turret. This ship is also a carrier with two fighters on each side (2*2). It can repair other ships while dealing with small ones and continue spawning more. The range however is very short, meaning it has to get very close before doing even a miniscule amount of damage. It also comes with a shield buffer, meaning it has 50 bonus health that cannot be returned, technically meaning it has 125 armor but split so healing is not op on it. This is canceled out with a shield upgrade.

This is especialy powerful with carrier upgrades, and the lasers fire so fast that Freeze would be especially useful as even more support. The only issue is just it's massive cost for it's ability to only support. There is a bit of a trick where you can spam Terras and they'll constantly repair each-other. That's also why I significantly nerfed it's overall armor, so that even if such a thing happens, you can find a way to out-damage it. Furthermore, it cannot repair itself, so if they die before they can reach each other then they'll have wasted their healing. Also the shield cannot be healed with repair beams, so that's also kinda wasted. A very helpful addition to that is to just get a Shield upgrade, A-E it doesn't matter, which will additively increase the shield it already has as well as give it regeneration for said shield. There is the downside that +Armor mods are much less useful on it due to the percentages only adding to 75 Armor rather than a 125 total. Even then, +Armor mods aren't exactly the best. Although, Cloak is invaluable. It causes this to constantly spawn and restore others without being put into risk. Maybe a bit TOO powerful with Cloak.

Mars
Mars, the red planet. I don't always correlate much with Mars, so I decided it would be a heavily Mineral based Medium with tons of damage, and a unique ability as always.

The mars ship has 3 structure aiming non-homing missiles and a single Bomb turret on top. It still has 225 range while the Mars ship itself only has 150, meaning it can still snipe with a 40 damage shot. It also has two basic frontal blasters that aims forward each second, meaning it has some consistant damage between missiles. The most important thing about Mars is an ability tied to it's main weapons. When it's missiles destory a structure, the missiles immediately reload and fire again. This means it can chain destroy Turrets, but this is highly situational. It also doesn't work on the single Bomb Turret mounted on top. An important fact about it's behavior, even with it's blasters it will still only target stuctures and ignore enemy ships, but the Bomb turret will aim and fire at enemies. This means it can be attacked by Fighters to swarm and bother the Bombs leading to less overall damage.

I'm not exactly sure what upgrades would help it out the most other than the obvious cloaking, it's just the heavy Mineral cost that can make it less desireable than a Scorpion. I was just tyring to make a unique take on Athena. What is not a good upgrade is firing speed, as it's whole gimik is to fire instantly when destroying things. Also Acid effects that destroy sturctures does NOT trigger it's automatic bomb reloads. Freeze significantly debuffs it's damage so that's also not recommended. Basically, treat Mars like Athena and get cloak or else it's garbage.

Saturn
With Jupiter ignored due to it already being in the game, we head to Saturn. Saturn will be extremely unique with a ring around it, other than that it's the first Capital Ship you get to see in this post.

Saturn is a close combat Capital, having the shortest range out of all. It's main gun is a special Cluster Cannon, one that fires 5 Asteroids that each do 8 damage every 2 seconds, meaning it can spread different speed rocks at Fighters to damage them or get up close and do a full 40 damage hit. This does mean it's inaccurate and the low range requires it to get close. Another thing is the top Turret is a Quad Micromissiles, meaning it can do some heavy damage from far away to make up for it's short base range. A final special part is that this base has a gravity field which causes a ring of asteroids to float around it constantly. Anything in this ring (including your own ships) will take 8 damage each second, which explains the 6th "8" you see in "Gun Damage." This means anything close will die super fast. Cloak is a must-have for this, it's just so slow and building up speed takes a while. Cloak lets it stay hidden far away as it's Quad Micromissiles does some damage, then when it can reach the enemy base it just sits inside and does MASSIVE damage. Each rock can tehcnically damage an endless amount of enemies, so it's able to do some serious area damage. It's also very tanky, so it doesn't need much other support.

Once again, Cloak is curcial for it's unique ring and shotgun to work well. Engines and Range are very poor for it, as it's very slow and short ranged, also increasing it's range won't make it much better as it's attack is inaccurate to begin with.

Uranus
People always make a dumb joke about Uranus. It's actually not pronounced that way. Anyways, this teal planet is not much different from Neptune, but I'll do my best to make both special.

This ship has 2 Minotaur missiles, which are slow firing but heavy damaging homing missiles. That's not very fantastic compared to other capitals of it's price, but it also has a simple front carrier that always spawns Rapiers (1*2). The most important is the top Turret. It's a unique laser weapon that has 800 range and fires once every 0.25 seconds. This gives it a dps of 12, and can essencially wipe out entire fleets of Fighters due to the quintuple damage it does. It also bypasses shields as a small bonus. The missiles are the main damage, the laser is a huge benefit that can assist across the entire map. Not exactly artillary as it does very little damage, but it's still anti-swarm. Phalanx still overpowers this, and another Capital with a Phalanx would eat this alive.

Cloak is very useless (except with the carrier spawns), as the Turret fires way too often for the Cloak to even really take effect, as well as the fact it's range is too long. Hard for me to say what upgrades are very useful, but a Shield will prevent Freeze from stopping it's laser for as long as it's up. It's also impossible to get any of the carrier upgrades that changes the spawns on this, as it will always make Rapiers no matter what it has. The Rapiers do support well with taking out any Fighters Uranus hasn't already. Getting Missile tech would help increase it's dps, but it still won't help it against Phalanx. It would be better to get many other supporting troops to overpower said Phalanx.

Neptune
The final real planet, but I will have some bonuses at the end. Neptun will be much different from Uranus, in terms of both cost and effectiveness.

A powerful ship with a massive armor pool. The frontal gun and top gun do the exact same damages, both being Autocannons. The most powerful thing is the Cloak Field it has. This is the same as the normal Auxilary, meaning it cannot cloak itself but cloaks everything else around it. A huge support, meaning two Neptunes can Cloak each other without needing the upgrade mod. The issue is it doesn't do THAT much damage by itself and it's ungodly slow. This does hoverer help it stack with other Neptunes. Cloak Field does not affect enemies in range.

Cloak isn't completely useless, as it allows it to cloak itself. Force Rounds with Cloak could help it push away enemies and keep itself cloaked longer, as it's so slow it'll most likely encounter other Capitals near your own base. This also helps it survive against Archangel and Hades by pushing them out of range, but does nothing against Void Lance and Archangel needs it's shield taken down first. Engine upgrades are useless in almost every way, there's no need for it. Lastly, it could be a good idea to give it EMP rounds or anything shield destroying so it can support in that right, Acid and Freeze would be a different support.

I'll be honest, this one I am the least proud of. It's honestly just so simple. Although, most of the Capitals are simple.

Pluto
Pluto is technically not a planet, known as a "Dawrf Planet." This does let me try my luck at desiging a good Fighter Ship that's possibly balanced.

This is a Fighter version of Venus, using a rock cannon that fires every 2 seconds but only fires 3 projectiles which lowers it's overall damage. It's quite fast, allowing it to rush into the enemies and fire once before essencially dying. The range isn't as short as Cutlass, but it's still very short. Also the increased Mineral cost doesn't make it so easy to rush out.

Cloak is invaluable, anything else is a minor bonus. +Range can make it worse sometimes with how inaccurate it can be.

If you got this far..
It means you read my post fully. I'm glad you did. I hope you enjoyed and looked at things differently. I try to be unique with my ideas rather than just making stat-swapped things.

What I'd like for you to do is give each of these a rating on how balanced they are, how creative it is, say weather you'd use it or not. If you don't like it or feel there's something missing or too much, say how you would've balanced these ships.

Once again, please do not be rude. If there's something you really don't agree with, that's fine. I'm not forcing you to agree with everything I say, just please don't insult my works even if you hate it. Constructive critisism is better, y'know. I did try hard to balance these out by comparing them to other ships and turrets. I was also trying to find "Planet names outside our solar sytem" but they all had names that were just series of cordinates and numbers. The most I could do were these 8. If this gets enough feedback weather good or bad, I'll try again with another blog.