Oh I see, Devs were gonna post some screenshots of the new UI. Cool. Can't wait!
http://www.vendetta-online.com/h/news.html

For some UI goodness, check out the 11/5/05 changes to http://design.vendetta-online.com/wiki/index.php?title=User_Interface

http://design.vendetta-online.com/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Menumockup.gif

Bow to the überist, best looking, best textured of all interfaces!
I like the color scheme...

It's mostly screenshots of the TPG Cap and "texture improvements" on the older ships I was talking about. But I will be posting UI screenshots as well (or perhaps video), probably a little later on.

/me can't wait!

So how are the TPG shots coming?

Any one of us get to toy with these any time soon? Aka, test them and comment on them?

Person: I'll probably post them early this coming week (mon/tues).

mouser: pretty much like I said in the newspost. The "big" (cap-scale) ships won't be usable for awhile. But the graphics tweaks to the existing ships will be visible in the next client update.

Even just seeing an NPC version of the cap ship flying around with the convoys would be uber cool.

What, like the *SMV Nemesis that's been flying back and forth between Sol II & Geira Rutilus for months now? Yeah, that'd be sweet. Of course, it'd be even sweeter if it did something that actually meant something to the game... how tough would it be to make it so if there's a full group (8 players, IIRC) that's on the BP mission, and they all dock w/ the *SMV Nemesis, it goes to the BP sector for their mission & stays there until destroyed? Of course, after a few minutes (say 5 or 10), the Itani should launch a NPC Cap Ship to the BP sector, to keep the balance.

Phaser: yeah, but I think they're trying to hold off on a lot of stuff until the next client-side update, which sounds like it'll include a LOT.

Beolach: Yes. *SMV Nemesis, or another ship ought to go to either the BP sector or the Deneb-Geira Rutilus wormhole (deneb side). But before it does that, it NEEDS to have it's weapons nerfed. Only by pouring hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of credits into missile & rocket ammo is it possible to kill one, and those actually on the cap ship get bored, because the bombers don't ever get within range, and the bombers get bored because it's just point & click for them. I really think the super-AGT was more fun, even if it was way more vulnerable.

/me seconds the motion made by Harry Seldon

The Nemesis and company represent the old handling of NPCs and such. The new framework is intended to be a lot more flexible, so the hope is that once we get bigger ships working with deliverator and such, we'll be able to do a lot more interesting things with them.

The problem with sending the Nemesis on BP missions, or any other mission, is right now the thing is a gigantic, idiotic flying brick. It is not very able to navigate, and fairly likely to kill itself bashing against some asteroid or other. We're in the process of making the new deliverator bot-framework smarter, with part of that purpose being having less moronic capital ships. Like I mentioned in my post, it wouldn't be particularly cool to release the new ships and have them just slam into things at random.

*chalks up another mark for the number of times incarnate has had to repeat himself about that*...heh

We know it's in the works, but for now, would it be possible to have a few more roaming cap ships? One for Serco, one for UIT, etc or something. Seems like it would be something pretty simple, but it's your call.

Well, we could do that, but it would require that someone plot out relatively "safe" paths for them. Wormholes without nearby asteroids, etc. I would rather we just work that much more diligently on our deliverator-driven stuff. It's entirely possible that you could see cap ships appearing in convoys in as little as a week. No promises on that, of course, it's just that it's pretty trivial to do, once we get some of the flight/navigation problems nailed down.

Once things are cooking under deliverator.. wow, then we can really do some cool stuff :). Lots of users BP'ing in a particular sector? Automatically send in some cap support for both sides. Lots of neat stuff becomes easy..

I'm sure that, should there be pilots in CAPpies, they'd be less dumb?

Surely, an idiot wing-bugging a CAPpie would get told and ridiculed quite aptly.

So, anyhow. The CAPpies have been discussed. What about the Trident?

Oooo, tridents in the conovys would be great. Make e'm drool over the new ship for a few months and around the holidays give the players the gift of actually piloting the tridents.

Who cares about the mining frigates!

The trouble with the Trident is that it is currently a single-user ship. Having to fly it's lumbering weight *AND* fire it's weapons is quite a task.

It dies rather easily. (Right Mark? ;) )

I think we've all been drooling long enough.

So we don't fire its weapons!

We trader-types just fly it, and fighter-types escort it!