Uhh, yes, just like that.

As I see it now, here is the path to the current end game (from a Secro perspective):

- Go through tutorial. w00t I got a hornet (now I go subscribe).
- Now I need credits, let me go mine/trade to build up a nice amount.
- 500k credits later, I want a Faction L33t ship.
- Go out and grind Mining/Trading/Botting mission until I get Goliath/Rag.
- Go do BP and end up in PvP land. w00t killed asshat secro/itani griefer.
- Finally get l33t faction ship, have 3+ million credits. Now what?

This is where most people, who arent doing "Role Playing" (which there is nothing wrong with that), are stuck. Not sure people need "massive" content improvements, but little content add-ons (not graphics wise) will go a long way....

After that you PvP duel until you can call Shape easy :)

There was once *ctc* as the main conflict point between nations that occupied lot of players and provided endless fun.
I proposed that before and I will propose it again, buff ctc rewards and make it alive again. That is quite easy and can be done quickly.

give the winning nation something so awesome that is worth fighting for, to hell with balance, people interested enough in something can tip the balance scale in full force with numbers. so, make something awesome, that cant be stockpiled, and only participants get!

Also make the voy a proper convoy instead of the lame bot convoy

make ships too expensive to be used as reloadable ammo.

make people worry about being killed,as it stands its a joke.
maybe make combat more than just roll,roll fire and pray.

everything else will change after people realise that loosing a ship means more than a few k lost,maybe then the pirates might be able to operate successfully,and can get paid when they find a victim.

but i suspect all this is far far in the future.

No, it's not that far out. I've been intending to reprice the top 10% of ships for awhile. But we need to do station inventories first.. which also isn't that far out. I'm just stuck on other stuff right now.

We can address a lot of the basic stuff (ship prices, station limits, enhanced Nation interactions.. be it CtC or otherwise) over the next couple of months. The "bigger" fixes, which require enhanced Kourier (like redoing the economy), will take a bit longer.

I don't think jacking the prices is a solution.

I also don't like how it seems there is always some movement out there to make the game less fun by say jacking prices and making things retardedly hard to get.

The solution of making something actually worth doing and polarizing the players for team effort (bojans idea) was a much better idea than "jack the prices of everything so no one wants to die and the game becomes Fisher price trading and mining land", that is just silly. If i wanted that I'd play EVE or WoW but those are both boring loads of crap. I want constant action and space parties!

If you create new things you are quite welcome to Introduce those at uber prices because that would make having lots of money (which everyone does) necessary but jacking the price of all the old stuff is silly (unless you make ship and item prices part of the economy then it is the players fault if such hikes occur and I am ok with economy based hikes)

I am with CrazySpence on this. One of the best aspects of the game is the fact that I am not really afraid to die a bunch of times. That is in fact a big part of the draw of most FPS games. Who is afraid of dying in Quake for example. Nobody, happens all the time. And don't people often refer to this as "space Quake"?

Making money is dull. Trading is a drag, and mining, dear lord mining, what a waste of valuable time that can be. I don't ever want to have to spend more time making money to play the fun parts of the game than actually playing the fun parts of the game.

What we really need, is more things to spend our money on. Things like hiring escorts, and wings of AI pilots to fly around with us, and renting/buying capital ships at a huge cost. Want a Cap ship to warp into your Nation space where you are fighting bots, that will be 200,000 credits for 30 min please.

Also, things that get us into combat faster would be nice, like re-spawns in the same sector, or the ability to jump into one of our wings ships (see above) when ours are destroyed.

Not everything needs to be useful either. Make a few models of very expensive, really cool ships, that arn't really about combat or trading. Ships that can fly around at 300-500ms without turbo on, but have no ports, and no cargo space, and crumple like tinfoil if hit by anything.

What do rich people spend money on in the real world? Cars that are only 1-10% better or faster, that cost like 300 times as much, that you would be have to be insane to drive for the daily commute.

Fun and expensive things for people with tons of cash to get additional fun value for, not jacking up the prices on the Honda Civics of the world, so everyone is poor. Credits are "fun tickets" to me and if acquiring and spending them ceases to be fun, so will the game.

I am certain every idea I have posted has been said and discussed at least a dozen times before now. I'm drunk and rambling, and doing a wonderfull job of dragging this semi off topic, because the way I see it, pretty much everything in suggestions is actually a breakdown of the original question.

Got credits, now what?

I agree with Psy and Crazy. Making old ships more expensive to force people to "trade and mine" in an economy that doesnt fluctuate is more than silly... I think it will drive off some existing members. Adding taxes and upping prices isnt going to fix the need for "new content".

I do disagree with Psy to one extent. I dont think that fisher price "mine and trade" are restrictive to WOW and EVE. What makes this fun and those suck, is that this is a FPS. Adding in mining and trading is a bonus, especially when it makes a difference. Otherwise, people will do what they always do, do exactly what makes the MOST money... because doing anything else is pointless. literally.

There will probably come a time when dying is a severe blow to your credits, not because of the price for the ship you just lost, but because of the opportunity you just missed out on. At some point, traders *are* actually going to need to hire escorts. This time will be when pirating is a more lucrative job than trading, and that time will come when you can't make infinate credits on the same trade route indefinately. When the economy becomes "dynamic", or whatever terminology we're using these days. Anyways, one day every bit of skill you've honed will come in handy, because there will be things which need killing, and times when you need to be alive to do it. In comparison, right now there are things which would be nice if they were killed, and times when we'd like you to be alive, but if you're dead that's understandable too. =)

Oh don't get me wrong Antirelic, I know that "trade and mine" are necessary and have their place, and that a vast amount of people are interested in being able to play games that are little more than dynamic screen savers.

If space quake was all that is was going to take to make this game popular, it would be. Despite the Devs decisions to not market, the viral nature of news on the internet, and the fact that if the offering were more compelling, then a decent retention would have probably already pushed the game past critical mass.

We need miners, and traders, and eventually manufacturers, refiners, and others. We need to give people who like that sort of thing some things they consider fun as well. Heavy trade ships, dynamic economy, the ability and reason to hire both player and NPC escorts, fleets of slave ship fighters that they carry with them on their capital trade ships for defence, etc.

For example, I would hold up EVE (26,280 players online when I posted this) and star sonata (2D asteroids model game that has players heavily rely on their fleet of slave ships to progress with) as examples of just how much people like games that allow them to put things in motion, and progress, even when they are not online. This certainly appeals to a great number of people, and I think Vendetta needs to attract those kinds of people in order to fill out the universe.

What I don't want to see, is making the game "harder" just because many people have unconscionable amounts of cash, relative to the current value of ships and credits, and have started to get bored.

That is not progress.

- Finally get l33t faction ship, have 3+ million credits. Now what?

Actually learn how to fly the "l33t faction ship"?

Make a decent ctc reward, something like a jackhammer mk2 or a gauss mk3, and make it so only those who participate can buy it, even uit. Purchasable wingmen sound like a great idea. Add secret addon's only available at one backwater station and only visible to a certain level range. The ability to hire a capship sounds great too. Make the levi's drop some completley unique weapons (gauss turrets), hell make the stats on them random within certain limits or with no limits, how bad can it be?

Simply jacking up ship prices isn't the answer because you'll force some players out of the game. Like me for instance, right now liddy has 900k and clay maybe a mill, adding another 0 onto the ship prices will drive me broke because I HATE TRADING. I think if I had to choose between trading or slamming my head in a car door id go to the car.

"Not everything needs to be useful either. Make a few models of very expensive, really cool ships, that arn't really about combat or trading. Ships that can fly around at 300-500ms without turbo on, but have no ports, and no cargo space, and crumple like tinfoil if hit by anything."

I like this. How about a "luxury personal transport" for the super rich?

Suggested stats,

Armour: 1000
mass: 2400kg
weapon ports: none
cargo: 0
thrust: 300N
spin torque: 5.0Nm
max combat speed: 25m/s
max turbo speed: 300m/s
turbo drain: 50/s

Give it a really pretty (Ferrari like) look, and price it at 500k credits. This would be something for the rich to have and show off, but couldn't be used for trade or fighting or much of anything, thus preserving game balance.

I could definitely use that. Every saturday night, at alternating time slots. :)

Damnit Syylk, ya don't gotta be FASTER...

Another option for this would be to create courses within a sector and have the uber-fast ships race around them. If the user created content comes in, then perhaps users could create courses, organise a galactic Grand Prix.

To take it in another direction, how many of us have died and realised we have forgotten to set home to a particular place and ended up seven sectors away from where we really wanted to be? With some of these uber ships, perhaps users could create some sort of taxi business. In fact, this could be a good use for the old EC88.

The thing which seems to set games apart in my mind is those tiny bits of realism which create opportunity in different directions. Setting up a taxi business, setting up a cargo business. Perhaps setting up an in game newspaper. All user run and the success of them dictated by the users themselves.

Uh, trav, go to Sedina and check out the racecourses.

Hah well there you go, I didn't know they existed. Still, it proves it was a good idea right?

:p