What if there was a small (~10%) chance when you destroyed a bot or another player that one of their weapons would survive as a cargo canister that you could pick up and take to a station to sell or equip on your own ship.

That way if you had the skill to kill ten Arklan guardians, you might get an advanced gatling turret even if you didn't have the licenses for it. You wouldn't have unlimited access to the weapon, so you would lose it the first time you died, but it would be cool to occasionally be able to "loot" a weapon off another bot or player.

This idea could be taken further by introducing rare items and weapons (say for example, an advanced gatling turret mkII), of which there are a limited number (~100) in the game. Since there are a limited number of these items the only way to get one would be to kill another bot or player that had a rare item and loot it for yourself.

Some players may try to get a full set of rare equipment for their ship, and since these items couldn't be bought back at stations, they would have to be very careful not to die. It would add yet another fun goal to an already fun game.

Seconded!

Perhaps it would drop a 'usable scrap' crate that would convert into a totally random weapon when you docked.

Yes, excellent. I would add that some dropped schwag would be nice too. A rare item doesn't have to fit on your ship to be cool. I'd think it would be great just to collect some rare widgets that no one else has, even if they don't do anything.

How bout some Diablo style works together things. Maybe there is an alien gun, alien battery, and alien engine mod. Any one will have it's own unique attribute but when all are equipped together an additional bonus is achieved. Better energy efficeny maybe.

And more reason to hunt for the elusive and rarest last piece you don't have.

Well i'm sold :)

/givemoney Devs 2c

Good grief alot of people are suddenly having this idea at once. What are you, psychics? And here I thought I'd had a few original ideas to send the devs. Well now that people are talking about it, yes, I think that this is a good idea.

But some consideration needs to be made for the fact that in an RPG randomly dropped swag shouldn't be completely random. When playing Diablo, skeletons don't randomly drop King's Greatswords of the Heaven's.

So my take on this is that we have a new kind of widget which I've been refering to as a 'Salvage Widget', though you could just as easily call it 'wreckage'. Salvage widgets are kinda like the box containing Schrodinger's cat. You never know what is inside until you look in it. When salvage widgets are opened, contents are randomly generated based on the 'level' of the person opening them. We might even have a 'salvage' skill reflecting technicals types superior ability to turn wreckage into valuable items. That way, the schwag inside is appropriate to the experience of the character opening it.

I'm not sold on the idea of 'magic items' though. If we make rare and expensive items too much better than the normal sort, then we take too much skill out of the game in my opinion. But if we let the occasional dropped item be something better than they'd normally be able to buy (at that level or with that reputation) then it would be ok.

It is realistic. If you blow up a car to steal its contents, it's a fair chance that a good portion of what you want to steal will be consumed in the inferno. This would make pirating have a new dimension, because there would be a point to demanding a target to "heave to and release their cargo.

If there's anything dropped, you pick up Celebrim's Salvage Widget. A player's dropped salvage widgets usually carry cargo, but there's a low percentage chance that a piece of their equipment may survive (although you'd have to take it to a station and pay a bit to repair the part so it's useable). If you kill bots, the salvage widgets again usually carry cargo, but there's an extremely low percentage that you'll get a piece of equipment, or an even lower percentage chance that you'll get a special item - a part of a weapon, a piece of an engine, an new alloy that if enough is collected by a nation and is brought to a research station, new armor can be developed.

yes, kudos to Celebrim's Salvage Widget goodness :D :D

Ow, that brings up a gread point about how a pirate knows their prey has cargo. I was jumping around neutral zones to collect a ship to level up with back home. A certain serco pirate with known ties to the force asked me to drop my cargo in exchange for my ship. I told him I didn't have any, he didn't belive me but I sure proved him wrong when I got issued my bus and he stands there with no cargo! HAH!
The point is, wouldn't it be great to see the weight of the ship in char info screen? Leave some mystery so the player needs to know the ships dry weight to know if they have cargo or not.

"So my take on this is that we have a new kind of widget which I've been refering to as a 'Salvage Widget', though you could just as easily call it 'wreckage'. Salvage widgets are kinda like the box containing Schrodinger's cat. You never know what is inside until you look in it. When salvage widgets are opened, contents are randomly generated based on the 'level' of the person opening them. We might even have a 'salvage' skill reflecting technicals types superior ability to turn wreckage into valuable items. That way, the schwag inside is appropriate to the experience of the character opening it."

Salvage skill = bad.

It's one thing to have the bot drop something that, when taken to a base, can be reconstructed(using the station's repair facilities) into a usable item. If this was going to be done, it would be best to make it so ONLY items that bot used against you could be gotten. I don't want some high level player being able to super level their 'salvage' skill, then being able to kill Artemis bots till they get a tach-3 from the wreckage. Only things the bots could actually be using themselves.

"I'm not sold on the idea of 'magic items' though. If we make rare and expensive items too much better than the normal sort, then we take too much skill out of the game in my opinion. But if we let the occasional dropped item be something better than they'd normally be able to buy (at that level or with that reputation) then it would be ok."

Magic items are not only stupid and bad, but FLAT OUT IMPOSSIBLE without directly contradicting the background of the game.

"Thus, while unable to develop new technologies [the hive queens] have been able to benefit from 200 years of human innovation."

No bots should EVER drop any weapons, engines, hulls, peripherals, or anything else that cannot be somehow attained from a station somewhere.

--No bots should EVER drop any weapons, engines, hulls, peripherals, or anything else that cannot be somehow attained from a station somewhere.--

I agree completely.

I also agree that only weapons the bot has should be availible as salvage from that bot. I'd prefer the "salvage wigit" to be determined when you kill the bot, and simply not revealed until you make it to the station.

"Salvage skill = bad."

Ok, fine. But if you are going to start out a post in that fashion, you could at the least say something later in the post that contridicts something I said. As far as I can tell, with the exception of your claim 'salvage skill = bad' we are almost entirely in agreement.

I also said that I didn't think magic items were a good idea, nor did I ever suggest that salvage widgets ever turn into something that can't be obtained in some other faction. I won't go as far as you in suggesting that they are impossible, because I have some fairly good reasons for thinking that they could be possible, but I hadn't said anything about how they were obtained or anything to suggest I thought positively on them. I certainly agree that magic items shouldn't exist in limited quanities and be dropped at random from bots.

I never once suggested that salvage necessarily had anything to do with usable items like batteries or weapons. They could, but its certainly not inherent in the concept. I suggested that higher salvage skill would let you recover more valuable loot, but I never once suggested what form that loot would be in. It could be just the difference between 'scrap metal', 'power coils', and 'avionics components'. And yes, maybe you could return to base and turn (for example) 'avionics components' and 'computer chips' into something usable, but that's a totally different topic.

Nor did I ever suggest that the loot should be something that the bot could not have contained to begin with. I have no strong philosophical objection to destroying an Artemis bot, salvaging the contents and getting a Neutron MkIII (no one seemed to mind when you killed something in Diablo and got an item that the monster wasn't using), but on the other hand I never said that you should either. And, while I think it likely that a player with a high salvage skill could probably obtain just about anything in the normal fashion, I've got no particular problem with experienced players having resource advantages over new players. After all, at a practical level experienced players already have advantages in equipment and resources over new players. Player skill may be the most important thing in the game, but Tri-Neutron Valks are a pretty huge advantage in character ability over Ion Blaster Buses, n'est pas?

Why does it have to be available from a station? What if you kill an alien form an unkown wh? How do we know what technological wonders it might have had in its cargo hold.

I agree killing a Dentek collector and getting a tach-3 would be silly but it's not the only situation.

Why are rare items with slightly different attributes bad, I think I'm missing a point. Or maybe no one is actually saying that? I think it takes much of the fun away if its just something you can buy somewhere.

salvage skill = bad, yeah that is a meaningless statement when we haven't even defined what the skill would do. I would have it determine if your are able to find something or nothing, not the value of the find. If you want value in your salvage you would need patients, high level targets and high salvage skill.

Some of what you said was ambiguous, so I wanted to be very clear in my response to the topic in general(my post was not by any means directed solely at you) to be very clear.

You use the term valuable to describe what might be found in the wreckage. This could be meant in one of three ways: valuable, as in hard to find; valuable, as in impossible to find(due to character level, or because stations don't sell it); or valuable as in expensive and sells for lots of money.

The first is not an option. Stations at the moment sell such similar things that the idea of 'rare' is pretty foreign to the game.

The second is only acceptable so far as getting things that the bot you fought was using, but you couldn't buy yet are concerned.

The third, while maybe interesting as a token thing, is both relatively illogical and pointless, since money is anything but difficult to get in this game.

"I have no strong philosophical objection to destroying an Artemis bot, salvaging the contents and getting a Neutron MkIII (no one seemed to mind when you killed something in Diablo and got an item that the monster wasn't using)"

I did have a problem with it, and this isn't Diablo. The game mechanics here are utterly different, so comparing them is pretty useless, not to mention insulting to Inc, A1k0n, and the others. I quit Diablo because the world was pointless, static, and made no sense, which was not helped by being able to get Godly Plates of the Whale from rock beasts.

"I've got no particular problem with experienced players having resource advantages over new players. After all, at a practical level experienced players already have advantages in equipment and resources over new players. Player skill may be the most important thing in the game, but Tri-Neutron Valks are a pretty huge advantage in character ability over Ion Blaster Buses, n'est pas?"

Player skill has to be, for this game to have meaning within the premise with which it was designed, the deciding factor in combat. This can be affected by equipment, but just because someone is low level should not mean they cannot use a suboptimal ship against a tri-tach3 valk and win provided they are better at the game. The existence of overwhelmingly optimal configurations would be a huge wound to the game, since it makes time played more important than raw skill and aptitude.

Just how much do I have to type in order to be unambigious with my ideas?

"The first is not an option. Stations at the moment sell such similar things that the idea of 'rare' is pretty foreign to the game."

There is no reason why it has to stay that way. In fact, in a sense the game already has places where 'rare' items are obtained. The current 'rare' items are the faction specific items. I thought most people wanted _more_ faction specific equipment?

"The second is only acceptable so far as getting things that the bot you fought was using, but you couldn't buy yet are concerned."

I don't see why it presents an insurmountable objection, however, if it breaks your sense of immersion, ok fine.

"The third, while maybe interesting as a token thing, is both relatively illogical and pointless, since money is anything but difficult to get in this game."

And there is no reason why it must stay that way. Money can become a relatively scarce resource.

"The game mechanics here are utterly different, so comparing them is pretty useless, not to mention insulting to Inc, A1k0n, and the others."

Err.. Not that I haven't insulted Inc and A1k0n on occassion, but I should think that the devs would be quite happy to make a game that is as widely admired and accepted as Diablo. Maybe its not your thing (its not mine really either) but that is beside the point. I'm not comparing the whole of Diablo to the whole of Vendetta online. I'm comparing one narrow area to another narrow area of a wildly popular and much admired game.

"This can be affected by equipment, but just because someone is low level should not mean they cannot use a suboptimal ship against a tri-tach3 valk and win provided they are better at the game."

All the oldbies are aware than I'm a merely adequate pilot. But I don't fear that I'll be insulting FiReMaGe, Arolte, Pheonix, Eldrad, or Icarus by suggesting that there far superior skill would be completely pointless when excercised in a bus against someone like me in a Valk. The mere existance of different levels of quality components suggests advantages due to time, to say nothing of the advantages resulting from licences.

Of course not in a bus, but maybe in a Vult or Hog or something, where they should be able to actually manoeuvre, they should have the capacity.

Skill is one thing, but I won't pretend it's not stupid to say that skill can make a ship do what it's clearly not designed for.

"Of course not in a bus, but maybe in a Vult or Hog or something, where they should be able to actually manoeuvre, they should have the capacity."

Maybe, but while that might be the case it would clearly be an unequal contest. Once you admit that, then you are forced to admit that other things which might make the contest unequal or no different in kind than what we already have. At that point it just becomes a matter of degree.

And on that, we are both in complete agreement. Player skill should be the single most important element in the contest.

did anybody actually read my post?

I agree with Celebrim, there's no reason there shouldn't be more hard to find objects in this game and no reason money shouldn't be more of a limiting factor. Arguing from a status quo standpoint is rather pointless since this game is always changing.

The one argument I must concede to Soltis is the fact that part of the backstory is that Hive Queens do not develop their own technology.

However, I would like to hear some more arguments from a gameplay standpoint why there shouldn't be rare items in the game, and also why there shouldn't be a limited number.

Here is my argument why having a limited number of rare items in the game (useful and otherwise) would be a good thing:

There is a big difference between having an item that is hard to get but available to everyone who puts the time in to get the neccessary faction, licenses and whatnot, and having an item that is hard to get because it is truly scarce (by economic definition).

Right now there are a number of the first type of items in the game, take for example the TPG sparrow phased blaster. Anyone can get a TPG sparrow phased blaster if they put in the time by doing enough trade missions for TPG, therefore this piece of superior equipment favors those with more "time played," to use Soltis' term.

What I am proposing is a number of items, some of which are better than average like the TPG sparrow phased blaster, that *cannot* be obtained through the normal leveling treadmill because they are truly scarce, in other words there are only a limited number of these items in the game at any one time. The only way to get one of these items would be to PK someone who was carrying one, or to be one of the lucky first to find one.

Still with me? Good. Now if you think "raw skill and aptitude" should be more important in getting rare equipment, this is why you should agree:

If theres nothing out there that I can't somehow get for myself from a station, then rare equipment would not truly be scarce from an economic standpoint. Consider the following scenario: I see Joe Vet using a sparrow blaster and I think, "hey that's pretty cool" so what do I do? I leave Joe Vet alone and go grind AI mobs until I get access to my own sparrow blaster from a station and live happily ever after. Now let's say that there's only a certain number of sparrow blasters in game and I can't get one from a station. If I want my own sparrow blaster I HAVE to confront Joe Vet, PK him and loot his sparrow blaster. Now that I have the sparrow blaster I have to be careful flying around with it because I can't just buy it back from the station and I'll lose it if I die. This is true economic scarcity, and it encourages competition among players.

Now Soltis makes a good point that Hive Queens are not supposed to invent their own equipment, so how can there be good items out there that you can't get from a station? Well, I should be a little more specific by saying that you *might* get a rare item from a station by doing a special mission... the only critical part is that there's only a certain number of these items in game and if they're all being carried by bots or players then you wouldn't be able to get one from a station.

How to justify this in terms of gameplay/universe? Well, rare items could be scarce if they are either really old, exotic, or cutting edge. Rare weapons could have names like "Experimental Rail Gun", "Flux Cannon Prototype", or "Vintage Flechette Cannon." Some would be better than conventional weapons, some would be worse, the only difference is that you couldn't buy one back if you lost it in combat.

A few closing comments:

I like Celebrim's mystery widget idea. Remember when bots used to drop "Damaged Weapon Components" and "Damaged Engine Components"? Perhaps this could be somehow worked into the crafting system when it comes around.

Spellcast: "I also agree that only weapons the bot has should be availible as salvage from that bot. I'd prefer the "salvage wigit" to be determined when you kill the bot, and simply not revealed until you make it to the station."

Ditto. But perhaps there would be a few bots out there using Vintage Flechette Cannons or Experimental Rail Guns.

CrippledPidgeon: "did anybody actually read my post?"
Yep. I agree completely. Exactly what I had in mind.

The objections I have to items that are truly limited in nature are these:

First, "rare items" have a nasty habit of ending up in collections, or in the hands of elite guilds, or being used by extremely high end players who are good enough to avoid getting killed infrequently enough with the same equipment as everyone else, let alone while using something that gives them still greater an advantage. The problem is especially bad with guilds, who can work together to insure that even if a member carrying said weapon dies, it will be another member who picks it up again - or, failing that, that the entire guild gangs up on whomever does get it.

Second is the problem that, since rare items DO tend to stay in the hands of vets, it only makes it that much harder for newer players to keep abreast, since they prolly won't have access to things like said hypothetical rare items, and will be working at a double disadvantage.

Soltis, both your points are well made and highly plausable.

One thing though is that rare items might re-balence the game. Allowing "middle class players" able to kill a few of those hard to kill vets. Or like Soltis'could backfire and make it even more unbalenced. Hmmmmm how about rare items that last a period of time. Ex: You kill 10 Arklan bots and in the tenth bot you find a rare energy item. But this weapon is said to be unstable and will become usless in 30 minutes. Or will explode and destroy the ship if it isnt jetisoned. This is just a small idea that could balence the power of said rare items if they were to be implamented into the game