Abilities and missile loadouts.

[t78]

Silly question: is it possible to give units different missile loadouts and special abilities according to faction, as has been done with fighter loadouts?

It just hit me that Maldrood, with its tendency to raid with VSDs in Darksaber, could be the "fast" faction, with increase firepower being replaced with power to engines for any ships with the former ability (useful when trying to retreat a VSD), and Zsinj's VSD Is might have some anti-fighter missiles as part of the loadout (one VSD does one-shot a shuttle in the Courtship of Princess Leia), with Zsinj being potentially an "anti-fighter" faction.

Eriadu might have longer-ranged, weaker missiles as I suggested before, but with VSDs and bombers having such a change.

Just some thoughts. I'm only suggesting this if it adds a little more flavour with little work required. I do not want to suggest something that requires tons of work, given that you've done so much already. Just ways to make certain ships different to the same class under a different faction.

[Corey]

Other changes generally require a different set of unit code, and certainly wouldn't be something we could change once boarded. There's not really any indicatiuon that the loadouts of dthe same unit would be different based on faction, and generally we want people to know what they're fighting- fighting a VSD in one faction shouldn't be that different from fighting a VSD in another faction. Generally those kinds of differences we try to accentuate by giving a different ship to the faction, rather than making a different variant of the same unit where none really existed.

[MrDrProf]

Yes but the question here is that some of their abilities are not ship specific. Conceptually, transferring ship pwr to engines/shields/weapons is something any craft with a computer should be able to do. The only reason these skills are applied to certain units is bc they represent that factions preferences or the predicted use of a given craft. Further examples include hunt, emergency retreat, etc. The only exception would be the Mon Cal ships as they were designed with tanking shields. Thing is they already have a higher resistance, better regen, and a better ability. Given this, conceptually at least the skills should be applicable across any relevant unit, to be more balanced, since this can cause more strategies to develop.