So, I was just thinking about EV earlier, and remembered a cool feature that I think would be fun in Vendetta. What if there was a narrow margin of damage where a ship could be disabled. You could dock with a disabled bot or human ship for the chance at collecting more cargo, since presumably none was destroyed in the explosion. To prevent player ships from being sent permanently adrift, the engines could become operable again after a certain period of time. It would also require a lot of finesse to hit the disable sweet spot without destroying the enemy ship. Large ships would be easier to disable, while smaller ships would be much more prone to exploding. Perhaps even a rough docking maneuver could cause the ship to explode, causing considerable damage to your own ship.

In EV you could also board the ship for the chance of taking it over as your own, and while I think this idea has potential, it would probably need to be implemented very carefully. But, boarding to steal cargo seems easy enough.

I'm long been against this idea because I don't think it works very well in a multiplayer game. Stealing an NPC's ship is great. Having someone steal your own ship is not so pleasant.

In Vendetta, a player fearing getting boarded would almost certainly /explode. In fact, alot of players /explode out of spite whenever they think that they are about to lose a fight already.

As far as I know, cargo is not currently destroyed when a ship is destroyed. So, in terms of rescuing cargo, a disabling system has no purpose.

Lastly, MMORPG's - and heck all RPG's - always run the risk of being tedious. I would think that the last thing you'd want is to force a player to do nothing for some number of minutes.

Yeah, I agree that ship stealing probably wouldn't work.

And I also certainly wouldn't enjoy being adrift for minutes, but 1-2 minutes of inactivity and losing my cargo sounds greatly preferable to having to buy a new ship. In fact, I think boarding is a much more merciful form of piracy. It rewards the pirates who have the weapons control and flight skills to board and get greater booty. They don't loose anything except the weapons XP for not destroying the ship, and the victim potentially saves thousands of credits and the inconvenience of having to navigate back from their home base, which in and of itself would probably take longer than any inactivity time due to disabling.

edit: At the moment players explode when they're going to lose a fight because, well, they have nothing to lose. I would thank a pirate who only took my cargo and let me keep my ship.

Disabled NPCs could be a good thing, however.

oh... oh... one more thought. Once weapons and ammo are able to be carried as cargo, maybe the pirate could also steal those. He wouldn't be able to get these from a destroyed ship, thus extra incentive.

Maybe pirating could even become a skill. You get XP for disabling and stealing cargo, the more levels you have the faster you can do this and get more loot before the ship regains engines. Higher level pirates would be able to steal higher level weapons. This would cut down on PKing, while adding an extra dimension to PvP and make Pirating a viable profession.

Anyway, these are just brainstorms and by no means do they all have to be implemented together.

"Maybe pirating could even become a skill. You get XP for disabling and stealing cargo, the more levels you have the faster you can do this and get more loot before the ship regains engines. Higher level pirates would be able to steal higher level weapons. This would cut down on PKing, while adding an extra dimension to PvP and make Pirating a viable profession."

My apologies. When I replied to you the first time, I 'misunderestimated' you. ;)

Most of the time when a player has an idea, I can safely say that I had that idea months or years ago. This time I only beat you by two days, and it was I thought one of the better ideas about Vendetta I'd had in a long time. Good job.

I don't really want to say how the system I thought up works, or even what the exact idea I'm most interested in is, because I don't want to bias your ideas. However, I'd appreciate it if you started elaborating on the general idea you just had, because I just had it as well and a two day old idea isn't likely to be fully formed. Keep in mind its not the disabling system per se I'm most interested in hearing about, but if you want to explain how you think that would work too I'd like to hear it.

When I first wrote this post I wasn't really thinking about pirating, as it was never an occupation that interested me. But your response got me to thinking about the consequences and potentials for pirating in the game and now the prospect of being a pirate seems really exciting :) As it stands now, I don't really see much incentive to be a pirate besides the excuse for challenging PvP and the sex appeal of being a rebel.

But, as I see it, destructive (killing) PvP is for the wars, Itani vs. Serco. Pirates are not about destroying things, they're about plundering. Thus, the idea of disabling ships. I think you are right, there is a real danger in having people sit helpless for too long, but I think 1 minute really wouldn't be all that bad, and would require quick, deft maneuvering on the part of the pilot to dock safely and quickly.

Now as far as a pirate culture and profession goes. Besides the skills already listed, I think pirates should have real difficulty gaining any positive reputation outside of ungoverned space. Perhaps pirates could purchase fake ids to at least keep them from getting attacked or denied entry into faction stations. There could be a different id required for each faction, and the chance of it being detected would depend on its cost. Or maybe instead you could buy ids that increase your standing among the nations. Higher level pirates could purchase better, more effective forgeries. There could even be mission strings that lead to underground connections that make the forgeries possible.

And to add to the list of ship outfits strung throughout countless other threads. Regular players could purchase secret compartments to hide special cargo from pirates. The more expensive the compartment, the higher level the pirate it takes to be detected. Players could also purchase security systems that slow down the rate at which they are plundered. Or security systems for the weapons could increase the pirating level needed to steal those weapons.

I think there's probably lots more potential to the concept, but at the moment my brain is sapped :)

if i may throw in my 2 cents...

i would like to see an underground throughout all facions of space. places in serco and itani space where pirates can meet up without being killed or hounded also with a Corvus type black market.... only open to pirates with certain levels. perhaps a tab that only shows up when pirates reach a level 2 or three pirating XP. under this tab one would be able to buy or sell items of interest, maybe even put things in storage for other pirates to see and purchase.

also, to limit the amount of time someone drifts in space, make the disabled ship enabled once the pirate has left the ship. and maybe have an addon that if taken to the pirate ship would cause a small explosion... just as a deturrent. maybe take away 600 hit points.

well there are my thoughts, do with them what you will.

Here's an idea - either a single underground, or maybe three to five different underground organizations, which would have their own territories, maybe with some minor squabbling every so often over pillaging rights.

Everyone who didn't to missions *against* these groups(in other words, who didn't help rat out pirates, seize illegal weapons caches, etc), would start out at 0 standing. When your standing got good enough, maybe by either being an efficient independent pirate, or maybe by doing missions for places like Corvus, you'd get approached by agents of these organizations, who, if you had impressed them enough, would provide you with sector readouts, similar to the player lists, which would inform you of where the current drop-offs and dealers(higher end dealers/fences being listed as your rep increased) were located.

These would be NPC ships which would move randomly about empty sectors, and the only way to find them would be to have this readout, and they'd sector hop a few times if anyone they didn't know(had too low a rep) entered the same sector.

The dealers would sell all sorts of goodies(weapons and such right now, maybe black market electronics, illegal weapons mods, and fake IDs and other stuff later), and the dropoffs would buy high end weapons for a market price governed by the same sort of supply/demand model that stations use, and would generally pay better for high end weaponry or maybe even ships(you buy the ship, sell it to them, they provide you with a bus to get you back home) than they cost in the 'white' market.

Both the dealers and dropoff agents would sometimes have quests for you, and possibly you could take quests to find and kill specific dealers, possibly using gov't made fake ID to pretend to be a high standing member of their faction.

I think these are all excellent ideas :)

"also, to limit the amount of time someone drifts in space, make the disabled ship enabled once the pirate has left the ship."

++ Although, I think there should still be set time limit where your engines become functional even if the pirate hasn't disengaged, possibly governed by the size of the engines. Larger engines take longer to get restarted?

Underground markets and societies sound awesome.

late in the day to add two pennies, but missed out on connecting two very good ideas before in this thread. One giving xp points to pirates for lotting, the higher their level the better and great quantity they can steal. Two buying fake ids.

Why not add the id function into the lotting process, so that when your pirating and stealing goods from those fair traders, you also steal their id/nation standing, and gives you their rating in other nations.

the poor victim can then post an alert to stations they visit that there id has been stolen, so if mr or misses pirate turns up at a station that has been alerted, they then get the local "police" after them.

So the higher a pirates xp the better loot they can steal and the more convincing id they can copy and use.

Multiple factions wouldn't be necessary to make an underground work, and it would overly complicate the gameplay of it without giving anything back (other than adding complexity). I like the idea of seeing a "secret tab" in some stations that is only unlocked by being bad.

The disabling of ships does not sound like a good plan. However, it seems to me that a cargo-stealing beam would have the same effect, and the game mechanics appear to be already in place with mining beams. Instead of increasing a mining skill, it increases a pirating skill. (Perhaps it also diminishes your faction standing with those factions the victim is admired with. This would generally keep pirates in the underground.)

Or you could get some sort of "EMP" weapon that when you hit some one whos under 50% could disable him for say, 30 seconds to a minute in order to board his ship and collect his cargo and weapons.

Each unit of cargo obviusly takes an amount of time to transfere to the boarding ship.And the more cargo you get the more XP you get.It also makes a trade-off for ships with a bigger cargo capicity but less manueverabillty to get to the ship.And to prevent people from using this as an unlimited weapon you could only have About three shots or so.And if you have a buddy on the defending ships' side he could shooty the boarding ship a few times to get him of you.And if you are a "bad person" you could get better EMPs foor lower prices.

Hmm, how would you stop 2 pirates from boosting their XP by just stealing eachothers cargo a few dozen times?

The big problem with disabling ships is that it creates a great deal of frustration for the player who was disabled. There are three ways that I've heard that this can be avoided:

1. Don't allow ships to be disabled at all.

2. Only allow NPC ships to be disabled, not player ships.

3. Treat "disabled" ships almost exactly like destroyed ships - the player is sent back to their home station, and can return to the site of their disabled ship to attempt to recover the ship & cargo. This could be optional, allowing the player to choose to stay, or return to station.

I personally prefer 3.

Beolach, the number three suggestion is great: ),

and Noid the onlyway to stop that from happening is that it would have to be one type of XP, say boarding XP.Also it would have to be faction\reputation related.

I.E. if two players with realy bad reputation against say Itani they would be classified as pirates and if they were to start boarding each other they wouldn't gain XP in any direction, unless they were to board non-pirate players and bots.It dosent matter what faction they are as long as they are non-pirates.It also works the other way.Non-pirates can also board pirates.And if they were serco they would still be able to dock with serco stations and such.However if they are itani and they are pirates in itani direction they would not be able to dock etc.

Then a pirate and a non-pirate just make a deal to help eachother to some XP...

I would then put a timer on the EMP it needs to chrge after it has fired once.Say, 2 to 5 minutes.Other than that i don't know how to stop that from happining...

I'd say it'd have to be dealt with the same way as PKs. Two players could feed each other combat XP by letting each other get PKs, but it would be slow, because PKs don't give much XP. Do the same thing with disabling & boarding ships, only they should give even less XP than PKs give, because the pirate will also get credits & trade XP from capturing cargo off the disabled ship.

Theres just one problem with this:If a pirate boards a non-pirate in order steal cargo, what happens if theres nothing onboard?should he get less XP just for boarding him?