I know...curiosity killed the cat but.....

Since we dont have any updates or new info under "In progress" tab, some info about upcoming new ships, equipment, missions, expansions and stuff like that would be welcome.

Atm im not sure I understand the general direction VO is moving in with the recent updates content wise.

1. New capships serve as eye candy, they fly around, you can dock on some but....
Average attention span of existing playerbase on new caps is 1-2 days.
You cant own them, you cant pilot them, you cant trade in them, you can only shoot them and that gets boring after a very short period of time.

2. New equipment. Lawneuts, hive posis, hive gats, hive uc batt. Good, usefull. Rare. More.

3. Raptor. First new small fighter introduced after a really long time.
Prototype is ...well....pretty and unuseable for a real combat.
New variants will follow eventually....
Some other new small/medium ships were planned for production too but any info about them is lost in ancient threads on forums.

4. New escort missions.. Good but.....
Escort missions give combat xp, money and a small fraction of standing, why not trade xp? Lot of escort missions still start in bot infested sectors and thats silly.

5. Hive skirmish mission. Good but still buggy.
Bot count often fails so you just sit in sector with xang fighter ships waiting for some silly orun to jump in.

6. Border skirmish mission. Good but....
From start to finish, imho, balance of forces engaged in a battle is hard to explain.
Looks like both fleets are commanded by really stupid generals. I mean....3 serco teradons in sector and then mighty Itani armada of 1 TD hog and 1 vulture jumps in to murderize them....cmon guys....if thats not silly......

7. Unaligned bots in grey space. Ok, they are there, their main task is to attack trade convoys but....
They suck at attacking tridents and teradons, only thing they are good at is ganking players when there are no convoys in grey sectors. Atm they are more of an obstruction to normal gameplay then anything else.

8. CTC is dead for a long time now. It will be replaced by what?....new economy, blockades, something else....but .....
Will that homogenise nation guilds and force everyone in a continuous teamplay RPing like ctc did?

Some insight into "things to come" would be more then welcome to keep existing playerbase hooked.

#7: I have stopped playing as much as I used to, (I'm still paying and playing during events) because of unbots. They have temporarily ruined the game for me and most other VO PvPers. If only they would only attack behemoths, or something like that. You bring a moth into the sector, you're dead meat. You bring anything else and they don't even waste a YARR on you.

-Calder

I actually like the concept behind the unbots , but at the moment their distribution and numbers is rather unbalanced . The Odia sedina wh can see 15+ at one time , and it is rare to see B8 without them . If they were to be evenly distibuted throughout grey space wh's as a sproradic event rather than a continuous stream then they would serve their intended purpose of providing an occaisional danger rather than a constant blockade.

I am sure that this is on the dev's " to do " list , hopefully a good balance will be acheived in time.

Ecka

6. Border skirmish mission. Good but....
From start to finish, imho, balance of forces engaged in a battle is hard to explain.
Looks like both fleets are commanded by really stupid generals. I mean....3 serco teradons in sector and then mighty Itani armada of 1 TD hog and 1 vulture jumps in to murderize them....cmon guys....if thats not silly......

I concurr. BS is currently cool to watch but it's really hard to get a sense of who is winning. Seems like both sides continually send in reinforcements until some arbitrary limit is reached... there's no real way to measure progress.

I'd always envisioned the Border War as a general hostility punctuated by the occasional massive battle that takes place all at once rather than a steady stream of ships.

I've got some ideas on this (as do the devs I'm sure) but I guess they belong in suggestions...

I think the unbot distribution is good. They are more fearsome directly around Odia, which is supposed to be Pirate Central.

As for attacking ships and ruining PvP, I think we just need to change our habits. Sedina B-8 is supposed to be a dangerous system in pirate territory. Logically, it shouldn't be a great choice as a hangout point. Similarly, trying to fly an unescorted Behemoth through Odia SHOULD be a huge risk. We've just been spoiled into complaciency, that's all.

The solution is simple: For PvP, find a better hangout sector, such as somewhere in Latos, Ukari, or Pelatus. For people trying to solo trade in the most lawless parts of the galaxy, adapt or die.

Sigh, everyone is ranting about unbots...
My intention was to start a discussion about general direction VO is moving to....

Well, they can't add capship content without capships, can they? And there's no point in adding said content until after the capship itself has proven a stable, workable thing, can it?

All these missions and ships and new AI are obviously paving the way to more complex and cooler content; it's not Guild's fault most of you spacequakers don't find anything else in the game fun apart from PvP or that you're unwilling to adapt. Most pirates now haunt and fight in Latos H-2, why don't YOU switch? I find it funny that we traders adapted to the moth's nerfing (by using other ships, moving altogether out of greyspace, and sometimes even saying "what the heck" and flying moths through greyspace) while the PvPers' answer to things like unbots is to leave the game!

Anyway, back on track. What I know is coming:

-The new economy: the underpinnings are already in place, according to Momerath, and it will be coming sooner than we think. Under it, stations will require those convoys to arrive in order to manufacture the good they sell; that means THOSE CONVOYS HAVE TO ARRIVE OR YOU'LL RISK HIGH PRICES AND EVENTUAL UNAVAILABILITY OF GOODS, SHIPS AND ADDONS ON THE STATIONS. Planets will serve as unreachable "NPC-only stations" that will help prevent players unbalancing any market too much, but it will still be possible to, say, cut off Xirite shipments to a station to drive the price up and thus make a huge profit from selling Xirite there; it should also make prices on certain items to go down if you flood a market with some key goods, so you could make those expensive Corvus moths be a little less expensive.

- Military service is coming; I've already explained it elsewhere but let's recap (from what I've heard the Devs comment): you sign on, get special missions and maybe even special equipment for said missions, your equipment will be subsidized (at least for the missions), and as military personnel, orders to deploy to the battlefield can arrive suddenly and unexpectedly, and you are going to be expected to answer, no questions asked. Might be new factions into this, there most likely will be new medals and achievements.

- RUMOR HAS IT that Corvus will be retooled into a major faction, which is why the unbots are unaligned and the piracy missions are gone; not much else to lend credibility to this rumor, but there are many, many, MANY players wanting this for a long time. You being KOS with all three Nations, start in greyspace, and have access to higher-end pirate missions that won't be available to nation people who are just buddies with Corvus (as opposed to being Corvus characters).

- As for the capships, we know more are coming and we know they cannot start working on their being user-controllable until the UI is finished; we do know they are working on the UI, though, and that right now they are just squashing the odd bug (haven't heard of one in ages) and adding more cool features to it, like the PDA, so patience is the best answer here.

So, the direction of VO? more varied content, coming along nicely if you have a smidgen of patience.

Thanks for your reply Jex.
Interesting info, provided I ignore your sarcasm.

I very dig the Corvus faction rumor. I hope they offer some means to switch Faction.

Yeah, if Corvus can be joined by PCs it should be something you have to work your way into.