"Someone really into the game could get some badass speed out of even a traditionally weak engine."

I have two big problems with that.

One, that it requires an extensive time commitment to something that is enherently boring to get the advantage.

Two, that you want experienced players to get large ('badass') advantages over newer players even beyond that of experience and money.

What would be wrong with 'tweaking' not requiring a time commitment but just occuring automatically depending on the experience of the character? You have skill points in 'maintenance' or 'mechanic' or whatever and the bonus automatically applies to whatever ship you use without fiddling and rolling the dice for a few minutes to get it 'just right'. And, perhaps more importantly, what would be wrong with that advantage being rather small? Imagine we had a skill system with 1 being the lowest skilled rank and 10 being the highest skilled rank. Now imagine that for every 1 skill you had in 'mechanic' your ships (all of them) had a 1% higher top speed. Wouldn't this be enough of an advantage that you'd want it? For every 1 skill rank, your ship could go ~2 m/s faster under turbo. For every 2 skill ranks, your ship would go ~1 m/s faster when cruising. It's a small difference, and you'll still need to be a skilled pilot, but it would help. It wouldn't have to turn weak equipment into 'badass' equipment and good equipment into 'go weapons'. Now, if the first couple of skill ranks are pretty easy to get for anyone that wants them, but the higher ranks require commitment to the game, you have something like balance. Heck, we could even have ranks above 10 (say up to 20) if they took so much time commitment that we could insure that almost no one would have such high level of skill without taking almost no ranks in any other useful skill. Ok, maybe your ship does go 10% faster than mine, but I've got more stored energy in my batteries and faster energy recovery, and things I buy are 10% cheaper, and so forth.

SirCamps, all this tweaking actually depends on the type of ship that you use most. Remember that each ship has different mass. The way every ship responds to the engines will be very different from one another. A person in a Ragnarok could opt to tweak their dampers so the reticule would wobble less (due to overcompensation for turning). While a person in a Valkyrie may opt to leave it as it is because there's very little reticule wobbling. In other words it would benefit the playing style of individuals players (i.e. whether you want to fly a fighter, bomber, etc.).

By leaving it at its default value, however, you'll have a wider range of ships to choose from. By choosing to tweak your settings more towards one particular grouping of ships, you'll be limited to flying your favorite ship only.... BUT you'll have an easier time controlling that one ship. In other words you sacrifice versatility when you do too much tweaking. Each player has their own favorite ship, and rather than dealing with the default damper values you'll be able to tweak them on your own to decide which one best suits your style of gameplay. There is no unfair advantage with tweaking, but it CAN enhance your gameplay if you do it right. It's really hard to describe. Gran Turismo 3 was the only example I can think of.

well, and some people like one setting over another.

I really personally don't want to see classic RPG-style ranks in Vendetta. Ranks in a faction (e.g. Admiral, pPresident, CEO, General, etc) are fine...but no levels of skill or crap like that. It's just a reward-based conditioning system...you don't necessarily actually get better at something.

If ships were to become tweakable, I'd want it to be doable on the fly. I'd wanna be able to switch engine settings around between something like combat efficency (emphasis on maneuvering and precision of the crosshairs) or something like burn-rubber mode (you use a helluva lotta energy, but you just GO).

I take back what I've said regarding the engine tweaking. After thinking it through, I think it would be best to keep Vendetta simple enough so newbies won't get scared away. I think the devs have already said that they won't be making detailed/technical procedures such as landing or docking. Making it into a mechanic simulator with engine tweaks wouldn't exactly help in keeping the simplicity of the game. Yes, it would be fun to fiddle around with the various settings, but then again we don't want the players to focus too much on that either.

Vendetta is all about being an MMORPG and space combat sim in one. Part of what makes Vendetta fun is its simplicity. It's not too dumbed down so that it feels like we're playing Space Invaders. And then again it's not too complex either, like that truly realistic physics space combat sim those guys who made X-Plane made. It's a mix of both worlds, attracting newbies and detail freaks alike.

The Hornet, the thing that got the whole damper discussion started with me and the devs, is probably better off with the wobbling reticule. In other words the dampers should probably be left alone for it. Since the agility has been increased, I think the wobbling is the only thing that's keeping it from becoming the "god ship" of the game. So I think a lot of what's in 3.2.7 is really starting to progress in terms of balance.

Turbo tapping might have been a bigger problem then some are aware.

/alias something "+turbo 0; +turbo 1"

Took away the need to actually tap. 200m/s and recharging battery almost at full speed. You could go straight through a wormhole at top speed. And if you didn't mind going backwards "+turbo -1000" gave you the energy that the engine would have used going forwards.


I still can't log on 9 out of 10 times :*( any suggestions?

In response to the posts on joysticks vs. keyboard/mouse, I personally prefer a joystick in my left hand and a mouse in my right. I use the mouse to look and fire, and the keyboard (which has 4 axes) to strafe left,right,up,down, as well as roll and change speed. I've found that this makes dogfighting MUCH easier, and thanks to Vendetta's very customizable settings.

Concerning other game changes, I think the game needs to become more complicated somehow. Right now, it's pretty simplistic. I know the devs have lots of changes planned, and the game sounds like it'll be great. It's pretty good now, in fact. But I find myself getting somewhat bored with either trading, botting, or dueling, and I vow never to pirate. I don't think adding more settings or tweakings would be my preference to answer this problem. In fact, simply introducing some social organizations and/or constructs within our nations would solve it well for me, and it is something that we could introduce right now.

Several nations have attempted to set up their own governments, but these types of organizations don't seem to be very widespread. It's my opnion that if the game itself tried to incorporate some of this, it would help the process a lot. Although an example of this is each player choosing their nation at the beginning of the game, I think that some more specialized social constructs should be created. It would increase my enjoyment a lot if the game consisted of cooperation between different guilds within a nation on a more widespread level. Many players (myself included) are too apathetic to try to institute this themselves though. I don't pretend to know what the best way to incorporate this would be, I merely wanted to point out that something along these lines would make this game a lot of fun and very involving for me.

On a final note, I'd like to point out that my desire for social organizations in the game is my viewpoint, and others may not agree with me. This I realize.

RocketMan: I think you are basically right, but I think you do need to realize that functional and configurable governments are an extremely complicated undertaking that wouldn't in and of itself solve the gameplay issues.

If the underlying gameplay is limited, no one is going to be highly motivated to invest themselves in the governance of the faction. This is one of the mistakes that EVE made IMO, investing all of its creative energy into the 'corporation' concept, and leaving all of the gameplay that they had promised for later. You can't just trust the PC's to create thier own story. You have to give them a reasonably interesting world that inspires them to create thier own story and rewards them richly when they do. There are alot of things that I think we need before a government.

In a real sense, its probably never going to be possible to make any space game which at its heart doesn't have the Elite model of trading/mining/fighting. What we need first before a government is a mission structure (kinda like Elite) and a reward system (well, gee, kinda like Elite). Only then do we need to worry about a government, because if the single player play isn't thier the multi-player play probably won't develop like you want it to.

Frankly, having been involved in running an online government for a MMORPG I got to tell you its pretty boring and involves a huge time commitment that I just don't have.

just wanted to say... 3.2.7 RULES! Way to go devs! You got an awesome/revolutionary game in the making!

I think you should be able to adjust your ship to a much greater level. Basically, it's just a FPS now (with some trading elements, but I can't really say trading is enjoyable). In any FPS, newbiez (or players who "now and then" play for ten minutes) get torn to pieces by addicts. That's just the way it goes. Stop trying to overbalance everything, or you'll end up with a Battle Cruiser with 3000 hull points, "because it has so much weapon slots". Getting blasted in the beginning does NOT stop you from enjoying the game. If you play UT instagib online the first time, you know what I mean :) But then if you get to blast another newbie, it just makes you feel really good. And when you get really good, and you blast that bastard that used to kill you as a newb, it really kicks ass (though i still have to experience that :).

If you can get some more "RPG" into the game, the problem will solve itself... I don't know any people who play an online RPG "now and then" :) You also need to stimulate "sqauds" and teamplay in general, so that there is no need anymore for any single ship being able to kill any other single ship (that just doesn't make sense). I also think the whole thing about "dueling" really sucks... It's a war, djeez... So who cares if you see two weakened, dueling opponents and you blast them to pieces? It's a valid strategy. I myself, am eagerly waiting for the large scale battles :) I don't enjoy being killed, but it's just part of the game. I didn't / don't mind people not attacking me because I'm a sucky newbie, but somehow I didn't /d don't really like it, and it quickly gets boring.

So.. hooray for pirates, and hooray for imbalanced ships!!! (which will only stimulate teamwork, of course, the better ships have to cost way more than the less good ones)

Btw, how do u find the frigate / sector 15? I'd really like to see it up close...

Slightly off topic.. To make up for it: 3.2.7 is.. good... i guess =)

Uhh... Fearsome_Penguin, if everything wasn't balanced then everyone would use the same newb ships and there would be absolutely no variation in ship usage or roles. The idea behind balance is not only to make gameplay fair, but also to encourage the various role playing aspects of the game (i.e. choosing a career as a bomber pilot, fighter pilot, merchant, etc.).

However, in order to make up for lack of skill, the devs have added weapons like the advanced gatling turret, gauss cannon, and sunflares. Unfortunately some of these items are a tad unbalanced right now, causing everyone to use the same weapon configs over and over again, with the same problem where variation lacks. A gun CAN be easy to use but not too deadly, as illustrated by the inclusion of the advanced gatling turret in 3.2.

What I mean is that there should be some really good, REALLY expensive ships. That way you have something to look forward to when you're earning money through trading. I do mean really expensive. The additional cost of losing it should weigh up to the additional abilities of the ship. I also read somewhere that a single (skilled) pilot is able to destroy a frigate on his own? This should be virtually impossible! If you just keep it so that you can do anything on your own, you'll never get real teamplay.

I agree that later on frigates, battleships, cruisers, etc. should be powerful. I don't see the point of having them if they'd be as weak as a Centurion. I mean it's a no brainer. There's no doubt that the current frigate is in fact very strong. I don't see why its strength would be reduced. As far as those easy kills go, the frigate simply has no AI attached (or a very dumb one) to it. It's simply an anchored ship with a bunch of AI controlled turrets slapped on to it. All that will change eventually. The frigate will most certainly be harder to hit with avalons when it's moving and slowly dodging your shots.

As far a balance goes, the Frigate will most likely move at a slow pace with very low agility. That's what'll keep it from being too powerful. Bigger ships will naturally have more mass, and therefore the balancing factor for them will be their lower agility. On the flipside it would have TONS of weapons to force every enemy to attack from a long distance, in addition to some escorts. So even the most expensive and powerful ships will have some balancing no matter how you look at it.

But at a smaller scale, strictly speaking in terms of fighters/bombers/transports, the balance of gameplay is essential. But I don't want to rule out rare ships. There'll most likely be hidden sectors with stations that'll sell unknown alien ships with more strengths than weaknesses, giving the pilot a slight advantage over others. However you would probably be required to travel VERY FAR and dodge EXTREMELY hostile bots to get to 'em. That way someone can't just jump back into battle every three seconds when they die with this extremely powerful ship. The pilot would have to take very good care of not losing this ship.

I agree completely with the above two posts. In the real game I think we can expect a wide range of ships, some being very powerful and VERY expensive (like a ~1 mil credit advanced fighter or a ~50 mil credit cap ship). A way to avoid the abuse of such powerful ships would be to place great responsibilities with piloting one. You can't just become the captain of a frigate because you've saved up enough credits to buy it, you would be placed on active duty with the respective government the ship belongs to and if you even so much as thought about pirating with the said ship you'd have it yanked from underneath you faster than you can say "court martial."

lol.

I also hope their will be more diversity than just fighter/bomber/transport in the smaller ship classes. For example, I'd like each ship to have a radar "signature" like in Allegiance, which determines the distance from which enemies can spot you on the radar. You could for example have stealth ships with low hull points (and low signatures). The signature would also be affected by your behavier (firing weapons or turbo boosting would greatly increase it, temporarily) and any cargo/weapons you're carrying. You should also be much less visible on radar when you're "hidden" behind an object/asteroid. That would introduce the possibility of... hiding :)

Oh, and does the frigate regenerate hull points by itself? I think it should (slowly).