Good afternoon everybody, my name is Foursword and this thread is my first on the forum.
What Guns Of Icarus Online needs for me is more customization. Let's look at, say, the Squid. Three gun points, high speed, high manoeuvrability, and low armour, to sum it up. The most I can customize this ship is by picking the guns and a name.
For a start, colours. What if you could pick a livery- or, more practically, flag and sail/ balloon colour/design? Even selection from a pre-defined list, rather than "upload anything" would be pretty cool.
Next- What if I wanted a slow juggernaut ship which could take tons of punishment and dish out plenty in return, but was plodding and slow in return? Or a lightning-fast ship low on armour, packing a single gun? Well, with the current system, I have to pick a prescribed ship and change it's guns a bit. Having a Squid with three gatling guns and a silly name isn't really personalisation.
What if each ship had a chassis which could then be customized almost infinitely?
Each attachment point could pack either a Light Gun (provides firepower with no loss to speed) Heavy Gun (lowers the Airship's speed in exchange for heavier firepower) Armour Plating (Makes the ship more survivable) and Engines (increases the ship's speed). Given a set number of points based on chassis, the player could then add parts to kit the vessel out in a unique way. Say, a Squid with all heavy guns, or a Galleon fitted with extra engines. Obviously, each chassis would also make a difference- A squid will still be fast with no extra engines. This would mean adding more points to each ship, in order to allow meaningful customization.
Beyond this, a ship should be able to pick an aesthetic to use- be that the Victorian Gothic stylings of the Mobula, the Wood and Rope look of the Goldfish, or more. Any ship could pick any style from a list, even if it's just cosmetic.
After ships? Well, some kind of boarding action would be pretty cool. Maybe each class could pick different personal weapons (Engineer gets a long rifle, Gunner gets a rifle, and the Pilot gets a sword and pistol?) to fend off boarders or attack other ships by leaping aboard? Within these classes of weapons, the player could choose subsets and variants- for two examples for the gunner, a Hydra rifle with a high rate of fire and a Banshee rifle with a slower reload time and higher rate of fire. (Names picked randomly)
I had high hopes for this game, but with customization as it is, I just can't bring myself to play it much.
I hope some of these come in useful, and make sense. I mentioned some in chat yesterday and was agreed with, so I posted them up here.