Opinions on Military Slots

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
Disclaimer; not a rant, or request, just some thoughts on them!

Sometimes, I forget why we even have military slots on ships.
My Chieftain, and Challenger, are both currently used for PvP, and/or AX.
So those 3 military slots are being used nicely for hull reinforcements. No problems here.

But, I really enjoy the flight model and look of those ships, but they're simply too limited with those military slots.
After seeing some screenshots of CMDRs using them for exploration, I found myself wanting to do the same.
But I just couldn't think of a way to squeeze in what I wanted to take, over my Phantom, which can take everything I want, and some more luxuries, and jump further, and it's faster.
Lol

I do sometimes just like to fly a ship, because I like to fly said ship. But those military slots just seem to needlessly prevent those (beautiful, I might add) Alliance ships being useful outside of combat.

I'd be quite happy to pay an engineer (in either money or materials/cargo) to convert those 3x class 4 military slots, to say, 3x class 3 regular slots, permanently. (I'd be happy to buy a whole separate Chieftain/Challenger for this).
Or simply be able to install non-military modules at one size smaller, with no cost.

Then I could use those ships for other activities in game I enjoy, such as exploration, or mining.

Just some thoughts I had this morning. Not even a request from FD, because I've literally forgotten why these things exist. 😂

What are your thoughts on Military Slots?
 

Deleted member 182079

D
Military slots should be usable for all modules, but it should only be possible to fit defensive modules (HRPs, MRPs, GSRs, SCBs) to military slots. Also, military slots should be introduced for utilities.

Shame it will likely never be implemented that way, as it would require a huge balance pass on all ships.
 

Jukelo

Jukelo
IIRC, back when military slots were implemented, they were added on top of the already existing slots. They weren't replacing regular slots, they were just extra. The military restriction was added to avoid turning ships that were meant to be specialists into multiroles while making them a little less restricted than before.

So unlocking these military slots back to general slots should come at a heavy cost.
 

Bigmaec

Bigmaec
ObiW said:
Military slots should be usable for all modules, but it should only be possible to fit defensive modules (HRPs, MRPs, GSRs, SCBs) to military slots. Also, military slots should be introduced for utilities.

Shame it will likely never be implemented that way, as it would require a huge balance pass on all ships.
Click to expand...
This. Combined with a full balance pass please.
 

Misty_Dark

Misty_Dark
They where made this way to boost the combat ships to excel over the multi purpose ships in pure combat roles, without making them the new "best" multi purpose ships with their total available number of slots. So no that is why we cannot fit cargo racks in these slots for example.

This followed the same model we had for the restricted passenger slots on the Saud Kruger passenger ships. Now this restriction on the Saud Kruger ships have been lifted and that opened up these ships for a variety of actions that their previous restricted slots made them unsuitable for...But the lifting of these slots restrictions did not alter the trading or combat changes, as we could put cargo racks and hull reinforcements modules here from the start.


Sadly, doing the same change to the Military slots would change the balance on what these ships are can do and they would outperform other ships that did not receive as many military slots etc. Think about how the Type 9 got an extra size 8 to make it more competitive with the Cutter... if we unlock the Cutter, it would gain two more size 5 slots, that is another 64T of potential cargo space and teh Type 9 would get nothing, as it does not have any military slots!


We also have the requests to add more modules to be able to fitted in the military slots!
We also have the request to give us the explorations specific slots, I think this is partly the reason why all ships got atleast one small slot!




I do not have any good suggestion on how we can move away from the military specific slots without we either loose this space, or how to balance this out with changes to the other ships, as not all ships have military slots, and some only received a single slot while other got two etc. and we would then be back where we started, ships whose primary function should be combat, would once again be sub-par to the multi purpose ships, or these ships would be the new best combat and multi purpose ships...
 

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
One thing I never really liked about this games setup, was the whole "multirole Vs combat" ship scheme.
Essentially, we all play this game to fly spaceships.
Blocking a load of ships out of most of the game to make them combat only seems like a bad design choice.

Your ship choice, is more of an expression of yourself, much how you pick your armour in RPGs.
The armour is more or less the same, functionally, but looks more how you would like.
I always think ships should have been similar, functionally similar (per class/cost), with your personal preference taking center stage.
Modules should then customise it further, with things like thrusters being in different versions to make them more, or less drifty, and whatnot.
So you pick the "shell", with very few limiting factors, (basically weapons), then customise the rest to suit your needs.
Obviously you can't slap on all the best everything, compromises would need to be made so they fit.
Or something like that. Lol
 

Misty_Dark

Misty_Dark
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead said:
One thing I never really liked about this games setup, was the whole "multirole Vs combat" ship scheme.
Essentially, we all play this game to fly spaceships.
Blocking a load of ships out of most of the game to make them combat only seems like a bad design choice.

Your ship choice, is more of an expression of yourself, much how you pick your armour in RPGs.
The armour is more or less the same, functionally, but looks more how you would like.
I always think ships should have been similar, functionally similar (per class/cost), with your personal preference taking center stage.
Modules should then customise it further, with things like thrusters being in different versions to make them more, or less drifty, and whatnot.
So you pick the "shell", with very few limiting factors, (basically weapons), then customise the rest to suit your needs.
Obviously you can't slap on all the best everything, compromises would need to be made so they fit.
Or something like that. Lol
Click to expand...

I like this sort of thinking... and I have in the past made a suggestion that the hull could be replaced and alter the ship to fit different roles.
So smaller/bigger internal
So smaller/bigger ooptional internals, also adjust the number of internals, ie trading one large slot 2 or more smaller slots,
Smaller/bigger hardpoints
Add /remove hardpoints



So the end goal would be to allow ships of similiar dimension/volume to have very similiar cargo capacity, combat power etc, but still have their own characteristics.

Example
Combat, we focus on combat stats, bigger/more hardpoints, more hull, at the cost of optional modules options.bigger power distributor etc.
Multi purpose I think is the current ones we have
Exploration, stripped down ships with long jump range, and one large optional slot for fuel scoop and then several smaller internal for all the fluff and stuff we want to bring...
Mining hulls, that slots that matches the limpets controllers size 1,3,5 etc, and one module for the refinery
Passenger, adapted to fit as many passenger cabins, fewer smaller hardpoints
Trading hull, smaller internal, fewer/smaller hardpoints, more larger optional internals for cargo

I see these as classes of hulls. so you could have several trade hulls for example, so that can have a more armoured hull that trade some cargo space for a tougher hull... etc.

Anyway, this is just a short summary, as the balancing act of all of these options could create quite a big mess... but as to give us options and to actually turn any ship into a special purpose ships for a specific task could be fun, but there are alot of challenges here, regarding stuff like how does outfitting works when changing hulls and existing modules, ship models when we changes the size of a hard points etc...
And with these specializations, there must be some significant drawbacks. so that it is a trade off...
 

aRJay

aRJay
CMDR Cosmic Spacehead said:
One thing I never really liked about this games setup, was the whole "multirole Vs combat" ship scheme.
Essentially, we all play this game to fly spaceships.
Blocking a load of ships out of most of the game to make them combat only seems like a bad design choice.

Your ship choice, is more of an expression of yourself, much how you pick your armour in RPGs.
The armour is more or less the same, functionally, but looks more how you would like.
I always think ships should have been similar, functionally similar (per class/cost), with your personal preference taking center stage.
Modules should then customise it further, with things like thrusters being in different versions to make them more, or less drifty, and whatnot.
So you pick the "shell", with very few limiting factors, (basically weapons), then customise the rest to suit your needs.
Obviously you can't slap on all the best everything, compromises would need to be made so they fit.
Or something like that. Lol
Click to expand...
I see what you are suggesting here and quite like it however in my conceited opinion that would not be the Elite that has evolved over the last 35 years where the ships are much more constrained.
 

Riverside

Riverside
metatheurgist said:
Military slots should be the only slots that can contain HRPs, SCBs, MRPs, Interdictors, GSBs.
Click to expand...

If the game had been designed that way from the beginning yes, but it would require as much of a rebalance to do that now as the OP's suggestion.

Military slots were a band-aid solution. But I'm not really sure any solution is better than another.

IIRC being able to fit AFMUs in military slots was a decent idea (from Frenotx I think) with relatively few downsides, might go some way to help the OP.
 

Flimley

Flimley
Never take your military slots out in public places, because other slots (military or civilian) may become envious and cause trouble. possibly resulting in a big fight and a completely ruined evening.

Flimley
 
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