Sorry for the long post. Hopefully I can turn this in for credit as an essay for an English class at school, when I go back. ;-)

I'd actually like it if everything in this post applied to all ships, but especially as player owned capital ships are introduced, I think it's important that the pilots of those ships gain an emotional connection with their ship.

Currently, every ship of a certain model is exactly identical to every other ship of the same model. This makes it so a pilot has little to no emotional connection with his ship - a pilot might have a preference to a certain ship model, but since every ship of that model is exactly the same as every other ship of that model, my IBG is exactly the same as your IBG and Joe's IBG, and when mine gets destroyed I can replace it with another IBG that's exactly the same. Now, there are benefits to this - we all die a lot in this game, and since replacing our ships is a simple matter, there's little to no frustration becauce of our deaths. But personally, I'd rather have an emotional connection with my ship - I want my ship to be MY ship, but if my ship is identical to your ship, I have a hard time feeling that emotional connection.

So, there's a few things I'd like to suggest, that would create an individual feel to each ship. First, all ships of the same model should start out identical, the way they are now. A ship should only start gaining unique features if the player that owns it actually dedicates time to it - so until a player has spent a minimum amount of time actually flying a ship (6 hours?), it should be "just another ship", the way they are now. But once a player has flown a ship around for that minimum length of time, he should be given the option to name the ship (and ship names cannot be used more than once, although they could be numbered), and the ship's statistics should start changing based off how the player uses it. That way all of the many ships players have already purchased and are lying unused all over the galaxy wouldn't require any more resources. Some of the changes should be positive, while others should be negative, but the net result should be positive.

The first thing that should start changing noticeably is the ship's armor rating. As a ship is damaged and repaired, it should suffer some semi-permanent decay to its armor rating. The free, automatic repairs that occur when docking should be able to repair most, but not all of the damage to a ship, depending on how extensive the damage was; the autorepair would restore 100-(5-ceil(0.05x)) percent of the damage done to the ship, where x is the percentage of hull the ship had left when it docked. The remaining 1-10% of the damage would be permanently subtracted from the maximum armor rating of the ship. Players could choose to purchase more extensive repairs, that would raise the maximum armor rating back up closer to where it started, but such repairs would be very expensive, approaching how much it would cost to purchase a new ship ("She's banged up bad, man. To get 'er all the way back up to factory spec, it'd be just about the same as a brand new hull").

There's a lot of things that the pilot of a ship could tweak to better fit how he uses his ship.

Turbo engines: If a pilot spends a large amount of time turboing in his ship, he could gradually tweak his turbo engines to be more efficient. So maybe make it so for every hour a ship spends turboing, its turbo drain decreases 1% (a ship with a turbo drain of 60, after turboing for an hour would have a turbo drain of 59.4; after another hour in turbo it would have a turbo drain of 58.81).

Cargo space: for every (max cargo space)*10 units of cargo that a ship transfers from one station to another, the pilot becomes more skilled are packing this ship's cargo hold, and gains one more cu of cargo space in the ship.

Lots of other things could be improved as the pilot becomes more familiar with & tweaks the ship - braking, spin torque, max speed, etc. The tweaks should only go into effect when the ship docks, not immediately when a certain amount of time doing an activity is reached (ya gotta be docked to tweak your engine).

Also, specific ships should have their own reputations, as well as the reputation of the pilot. The faction standing system is a good start for the reputation of a pilot, but it doesn't deal with the ship at all. For example, a certain pilot may be a feared pirate, but the pirate ship should be feared, as well. And if a pilot "Bloodbeard" is a feared pirate in a Centaur Aggresso named The Golden Maw, then whereever he goes in that ship, traders will flee in terror. But if he shows up in a different ship, that doesn't have the reputation of being a pirate ship, then the traders wouldn't be as terrified - NPC trader *Jack Spratt would surrender immediately, and pay large sums of money to "Bloodbeard" if The Golden Maw attacked him, but if "Bloodbeard" attacked him using a Corvus Marauder, *Jack Spratt might try to get away, instead of surrendering without a fight.

Ships used for trading could earn reputations as blockade runners, or for rapid deliveries; ships with consistently low times in the hamster tubes would have reputations as good racers, and would draw crowds (and prompt much betting) whenever they enter a race.

Something that has been mentioned a few times, is the option to purchase "used" ships, at cheaper prices but with inferior stats. With this suggestion, players could sell their used ships, or buy ships used by other players, but with the tweaking that's been done to the ship it might have superior stats, and a high reputation, that should transfer with the ship to the new owner of the ship. So if the Dread Pirate "Bloodbeard" retires, and sells The Golden Maw to Corvus, then a different pirate would be able to purchase it, and gain the benefits of The Golden Maw being a feared pirate ship.

Now, like I mentioned earlier, I really like how right now being destroyed in Vendetta is not at all frustrating, because we really don't lose much when we die. With these suggestions though, that could change, and players might become far more leery of dangerous situations, because they might lose their ship. But dangerous situations should be more appealing because they're fun, than unappealing because of the risk of losing a ship the player has spent time in. In order to counter that risk, I'd suggest the option to salvage a ship after it's been destroyed. Salvage should cost around 3-5 times more than purchasing a new ship, and will take a certain amount of time (30 minutes?), but the salvaged ship should be pretty close to the same as it was before being destroyed, with the same tweaks & reputation, but with a lower maximum armor, similar to the decay described earlier.

I like the idea of having individuality and adding character to each ship. But some people die a lot in this game. To the point where it wouldn't matter what you'd do to a ship 'cause it would just end up being blown away within a few hours, if not a few days. That being said, it would be frustrating to have to set everything up only to have it taken away from you so soon.

I agree that ships should APPEAR used after a long period of time. I think that would be very cool. To see chipped paint, scratches, and soot all over it after multiple repairs. However, I'd be against having some form of performance degradation over time or to be required to repair your ship simply because it's too old.

Repairs actually used to cost money in the beta version of Vendetta. But that was removed. Probably because it became so tedious to have to jump into the repair tab everytime you'd dock. And it was such a common sense thing that they simply decided to automate the task. I kind of see why they did it, but I think a newer (and more realistic) form of repair can be implemented.

The problem right now is that it feels so fake to have to dock and then undock a station and be repaired within the blink of an eye. You'd think a spaceship would take time to repair, no? Which gives me a new idea here...

1. Reintroduce the repair station tab into the game. Whether repairs will cost money or not would be left to the developer's discretion. I wouldn't mind seeing it make a comeback though. Since money comes by easily right now, I'd say yes for repair expenses (with the exception of the EC-88).

2. The amount of time it takes for a ship to be repaired depends on the damage you've taken. Heavily damaged ships will take longer to repair than lightly damaged ships. In either case it shouldn't be an instant, but may require up to 30 seconds or more.

3. The amount of time required for the repairs to be completed can be indicated through a progress bar. The progress bar can be placed next to or under your ship's icon, in a similar interface style as the sell screen, whereby all your current ships are listed.

4. During repairs, players will either have the option of waiting in the station for the repairs to be completed, or they can freely purchase a secondary ship to fly around in. Repairs should continue after the pilot has left the station. So you can set it and forget about it, if you're in a hurry.

So... that's my idea. I think repairs should cost money and should require a set amount of time, depending on the amount of damaged sustained.

Yeah, I tried to address the issue of how common death is in the game. For our more FPS combat oriented players, who die the most & just want to get back into combat as soon as possible, most of this wouldn't really apply. They'd just keep going pretty much the same as they do now. It would only be some of the more role-playing oriented players, who wanted to dedicate time to developing their ship, who would reap the rewards and consequences of this "aging". The way I described it, only "named" ships would have their individual stats tweaked, and ships could only be named after being actively used by their owner for a certain length of time (I suggested six hours, but maybe only 1 or 2 hours would be better). So if you're just going into combat & getting blown up (and blowing others up), none of this would really apply. For those players who did want to work on developing the individuality of their ship, if their ship was destroyed, they could either decide to start anew with a different ship, or they could use the option to salvage the ship that had just been destroyed, like I described towards the end of my original post.

Actually, while I agree that appearing older & used would be awesome, I thnk that's likely to be more difficult for the devs to implement than it's worth, and also would require more system resources. Regardless of how expensive it would be to implement, graphical appearance is actually not very high on my list of priorities, I'd rather have the "aging" of a ship affect its stats, that actually matter to the gameplay, rather than its graphical appearance.

But, I agree with you that a net degradation of performance over time would not be good. The improvements the owner would make to his ship should outweigh the degredation of its armor rating as it is damaged. I do remember when repairs were not automatic and cost money; and I'm actually not suggesting we go back to that. I'm suggesting that all the normal, standard repairs would be automatic and free, the way they are now, but there would be a very small amount of damage that would not be covered my the standard maintainance. I actually see this degradation of armor being slow enough that it could often be ignored for quite some time, if not forever. If it does reach the point where the player is unhappy with it - say it has 80% of the factory spec for armor - then the player would have the option of purchasing more extensive repairs, to bring it back up to factory spec (or up to 90% factory spec, or whatever the player wants), and the closer to the player wants to get to factory spec, the closer it should cost to buying a new ship. For these more extensive repairs, I'd love to see your suggestions about reintroducing the repair tab, and having it take some time. But the "normal maintainance" repairs, that wouldn't completely bring the ship back up to factory spec, I like having automatic and free. And actually, the numbers I choose to describe the more permanent damage, that would require more thorough repair, were pretty arbitrary, and now that I'm thinking about it more, would result in the max armor rating dropping faster than I intended. I'll change them.

I like it great idea (And I'm one of the FPSs guys with an average ship life of 30 min) It would be vary cool to have my vary own cargo runner centa for when I get hired on to make deliveries or in the case of right now for when I'm working for IA and do tons of CtC.

I also wish we would have to pay to repair our ships my self. I think it's more realistic.

I don't like the degredation over time

I do like the personalization of each ship, especially, decals, names, though upgrades over time I'm not so sure of.

I don't mind waiting to be repaired, but how would explain the instant time it takes to repair someone using nanites, would that not be the same way they repair you "in-station"?? So would nanites be removed?? Personally I would hate to see that, and if a delay at stations WAS implemented, I could see the repair module making a big comeback in-game. And I do like the salvage ship idea.

I also really like the reputation being placed on the ship AND the player, but I'm unclear on one point. Does that reputation effect only npc's, like atlas traders and station guards and such, cause players already know who to watch out for and who not to.

Don't forget the original plan to have different equipment make the ships look different. :P

When I first heard about the repair beam I actually pictured them as being sort of a mining beam. Not as a glob of nanites that you shoot out. I was sort of disappointed to see that they were just things that you shoot at people. Blah. You know, when I hear about nanites I picture a welding beam of nanite robots flowing towards the crack of a hull or something.

So you know what? I think the repair beam should also take time. It should have a progress bar that's similar to mining. There should be risks involved. And the importance of protecting a "medic" should be emphasized as well, through teamwork and tight escorts. So it's simple, really. Remove the insta-repair capabilities of the repair beam as well.

For aging to have any meaning to me, according to my observations, my ships would have to degrade within several minutes of game time, cuz they usually don't survive much longer than that.

CP thats the point, perhaps you would not die as much as the ship would mean something to you. This is in essence promoting runners =)

It's actually a good idea- adding to the RPG without restricting the FPS...

A car takes years and years to degrade under normal use. Why then would a spaceship degrade within minutes and seconds? I'd imagine that these companies have spent thousands of years in research to make these ships last under hostile environments. I don't think something that would cost tens and thousands of credits to put together would be disposable in the sense that they'd require such high maintenance.

I'm sorry, I just don't like this idea very much. Not only is it unrealistic to have any sort of mechanical object to degrade that quickly, but I think it would also detract from the fun of the continuous flow of gameplay that exists today. Once the novelty of it wears off, I'm not too sure people will be too excited about going down a list of every ship they own to do routine repairs.

I'd just hate to have my ship crap out on me just because I've chosen to survive most of the time. Having to constantly repair it due to some arbitrary age variable would simply be more of a hinderance than something that would enhance gameplay.

Instead, maybe I think repairs should be altered to be more realistic by requiring a set amount of time. At least that would require players to change their tactics and be more careful in flying during combat and trade routes. It would place more value in life and money, in my opinion.

agreed arolte

and I also agree that the repair module should not be a weapons style "shot" of nanites, but a beam that take x seconds to repair y about of damage.

Arolte, your analogy to a car is somewhat unsupportable. Cars are not regularly thrown pell mell into combat. a better analogy would be to compare them to fighter planes and bombers during the air battles of WWII. While ground crews patched them together in quite a hurry, often getting them flyable within a relatively short period of time, returning them to factory condition took much more time, and was often impossible.

On the other side, Until there is some limit to the supply of ships availible, such a restriction makes no sense at all, as no-one would want a ship that only repairs to 98% of original hull, when for a few seconds of effort they can buy a new hull and fit it out with the same loadout.

I would also object to repairs taking any amount of time over 5 seconds, simply due to the fact that it is a game, and ANY downtime in a game will quickly be viewed as an irritant by many players.

I have no objection to repairs costing money, however I definitely feel that the actuall cost of ships and equipment needs to go WAY up, or the earnings potential of the game needs to come WAY down, in order to make purchasing repairs viable, as it is now there is no point as everyone but the newest of players most likely has plenty of cash.

Additionally I would like to see the cost of repairs be based on if that station sells the ship type or not. If they sell the ship variant, then they can be assumed to have spare parts on hand in quantitiy, if that station doesnt sell the ship, the cost of repairs might be much higher (maybe as much as 3 to 4 times the value of the hull for an almost destroyed ship) This would encourage players to use different ship types depending on where they are homed at, as flying a IBG, a Rev-C or a SCP to bractus (for example) means that you now have to pay a lot more to maintain the ship there.

and your worried about a little down time for repairing? If your suggested model of repair were implemented, combat would seriously be altered for the worse in VO. Few would fly nice ships, and those that did would simply run before taking too much damage.

think what you like john, but 30 seconds down time would hurt far more than my idea.

As for few flying the nice ships, THATS THE POINT. the specials would become special again, because risking them in combat would have concequences. there are a lot of nice ships in the basic variants that are offered at most stations, they just never get used because the "special" ships are flown by every tom dick and noob in the game.

There won't be any down time if you don't want there to be any. Like I said, simply hop into another ship while your other one is being repaired. I don't think that's too hard of a thing to deal with.

On the topic of tweaking ships and giving them individuality. What would be neat is to be able to upgraade engines and boost your ships stat's that way. I like the original idea though. That would be more realistic and fun. To not die you can just not fight. It's more like the real world. If you fight, someone's gonna die, and along with it, their reputation. Etc.

What would make this even better, i think, would be part upgrades. Maybe engines(topspeed and excelleration), torque upgrades, boost-engine upgrades, armor upgrades, etc. This whole thing would contribute to ship individuality and also make up for degration of armor and wear-and-tear on the ship from usage. So maybe after a cirtain amount of use, a part just couldn't be repaired anymore, so you have to go and buy a new one and install it. Same goes for weapons. Maybe they get damaged beyond repair. You have to buy a new one.