Well, you're getting into implementation territory, rather than behaviour. How the bots "remember" was less important to my point. Yes, it would be trivial to adjust the user's faction standing, assuming one existed. Doing any other checks against the character data would pretty much require engineering a faction system anyway.

I was figuring on game time, not play time.

Sloppy fixes. I don't know what's worse, people judging us by the flaws in our game, or people judging us by the crappy ways we fix them. Anyway..

Just have a 200m jam zone around the stations. "You cannot fire due to station proximity" The zone can be fired into however, but anyone can clear 200m before invul wears off (leaving station). Maybe that would keep fights "off the ropes".

-homestar

Remove the avalon for now.

Hehe, its time for me to compare games :D

Lets take a look at jumpgate. When you dock in jumpgate, you wait a few seconds before you actually dock, and are still prone to damage during that time. Hence, if you nuke exploit, the nuke sure as hell hits you too.

What you are all looking for is a way of addressing a problem with a direct approach. This ususally leads to games being unbalanced. Get something that affects the whole gameplay : Yes, it will be annoying for people who are fleeing from battle and get shot as they try to dock...but then, im sure by the time the devs actually read this and do somthing about it, we will be in a version where stations open fire on people who are attacking people who are docking.

So, in short, and to clarify what i wrote, because im not entirely sure what ive blabbered on about now :P

1-2 Second FadeOut delay when you dock. GO play jumpgate to see what i mean.
Nuking, or any other damage done to a station, results in consequences. This should be paying money if its a small amount, but if you nuked it then they steal your ship, half your money and kill you 5 times. Yes, it seems harsh - especially if you accidentally hit the station with a nuke - but this only comes in play if you dock with the station. Keep it realistic in an RPG sense : as in, they cant do jack to you unless they have the ability first, and you give them the ability by docking. Hence, Nuke a station and dock, they hurt you. Nuke a station, realise you missed that irritating capital ship/frigate/randomly placed vulture and flee. Then there should be something like a bounty system as there is in JG, which is different from the bounty in this. Its the station bounty, and when you dock at a friendly (non-neutral) npc you pay money which is related to how much station bounty you have, and a deligate will communicate with the somewhat irate station, and make it clear it was just an accident.

However, I think we need to consider weather or not stations should be destoryable. If they are this would add a whole new addition to station nuking.

If there where many, many docking ports (lets face it, your average space-station doesnt just have two/six) it will have hundreds. The stations in Vendetta are tiny : they are smaller then the capital ships. This seems somewhat dodgy to me seeing as the capital ships are supposed to have been built in said stations anyway.

=\

So lets say we had huge stations, and damage that was done to a station had a visible effect. Example : someone nukes a station, and it results in the docking platform he nuked being buggered up. He then has to pay a huge amount for this, in addition for them killing him etc etc.

Why does this help? Why not just impliment my idea but not use the destructable stations thing?

Because if you want to destroy stations in the end, its not going to be that realistic if a fleet return to base and pay a few hundred thousand or a few million - nothing to some people -and then be friends with the station they attempted to annihalate.

Basically, I'm not exactly sure of how well my idea would work or anything, and im just bouncing this off the community at this time. I will sit and think about it later today, and will hopefully come up with a reasnoble solution that would actually make sense and benifict the community, eliminating station nukers and still keeping the game relatively balanced.

At the end of the day, i dont think that a good RPG comes from a prevention method : i think it comes from a consequence method.

Who's played Morrowind? Me. What happens if you kill all the people in Balmoria for example? Nothing, you just cant continue the quest. but the game doesnt end or anything silly : you can still do exactly as you want. You can still travel to everywhere (even over to ghost gate...levitate over the wall :P)
Nothing ends if you do something bad. The same should be of Vendetta. If you want to nuke a station, you should be allowed to. You just have to suffer the consequences.

And make avalons more expensive...

Leqiator: "This seems somewhat dodgy to me seeing as the capital ships are supposed to have been built in said stations anyway."

No one said that.

I basically agree that the best way to handle the situation is RP consequences to your actions. That's good for me, because reading what incarnate has to say (incidently, if you didn't know inc is god), the plan is already to handle the situation with RP consequences to your actions. But, there are a couple of things you aren't considering because it appears that most of your game experience is with non-persistant single player RPG's rather than persistant massively multiplayer ones.

Stations cannot be destructible by any means available to PC's. In a single player game like Morrowind, if you destroy some element essential for a quest it only effects your game. In a massively multiplayer game, if you destroy an essential quest element it effects everyone's game. In a single player game if you don't like how your game is going, you start a new game and the game world resets itself. In a persistant multiplayer game any change to the game universe is still there whether you decide to start over or even stop playing the game completely.

Don't assume that the ammount of money available at present (or anything else for that matter) is indictive of the intended state of the final game. Changing the prices of anything at present is rather pointless. The economy isn't even in place yet.

Please stop comparing the Vendetta test engine to other games you have played. It's like comparing a construction site to a finished resturant and complaining about the lack of atmosphere. Heck, they aren't even serving food yet - if they were they would be charging for it.

There are a whole lot of different ways to implement 'reputation' other than the system you describe in 'jumpgate'. I'm hoping to start a thread on reputation systems in the suggestions forum if I have the time so we can kick around alot of ideas in the general vicinity of the devs.

Heh heh, two things I've learned about Celebrim: He gets very upset when you compare Vendetta to any other game, and he seems to be the guru of persistent universes.

He is right about destructable stations though, it would be cool but very tough to implement in an MMORPG.

Devs, *please* don't take out the Avalon. It's a great bomber weapon (very useful for taking out turrets/mines when flag capping) and one of the most beautiful ones in the game. If anything add an 8 second fuse for it to arm itself. A torpedo that powerful oughta have one built in anyway as a safety measure.

/me waits in patient devotion for the coming of the Right Way. ;P

Heh, my bad. I admit, i have very little experience in MMORPG. ok, not to the extremes that you can have a singleplayer game, so perhaps not destructable stations. But the ideals behind my post are the same.

Well, ok perhaps the ships wernt built in the stations. But i still think that the capitals shouldnt be huge compared to the stations. But that is just me :) Community must decide.

I would like to point out that comparing a working site to another, fully operational system does have its benifits.

Space ships, early 70s etc. Stuff like that. Whoever the hell did it first, everbody else, who where still working out how to do it, copied them in the rocket idea. Yes, vendetta is still developing. But the community can assist the devs by pointing out problems and offering solutions. My solutions where basically taken from something that DOES work.

In JG, a pause to enter stations would fix the nuke problems. Thats the general gist of what im saying : what happens in other games would work in this one. And if we point it out, then if the devs havnt already noticed they could observe and as a consequence, it would benifit the community.

Dont hate comparing other games to Vendetta; build on them. Take their good factors, but dont impliment their faults. Thats the best way to make something.

this thread is really long, so let me add another comment :)

In cult game Elite, if you have inflicted damage above certain threshold to the station, cops (vipers) would undock and attack your sorry ass. Also, you would be unable to dock in this system until you warp out and back in.

I think Avalons or any other exploits involving stations would disappear completely if you implement this simple rule that was done 20 (!!!) years ago. There's really not much to talk about.

The stations currently in the game are representative of "tiny, far flung outpost stations", as planned for the final game. Much larger stations, and even station-cities, are planned.

I have no problem with ripping off good gameplay design from other games. That said, seemingly "simple" AI behaviour can be much less simple than it appears, especially in an MMO. As I've said earlier in this thread, we're currently working on that.

"The stations currently in the game are representative of "tiny, far flung outpost stations", as planned for the final game. Much larger stations, and even station-cities, are planned."
Oh, sweet... Will that be in the release after 3.3 (3.4?) that you were talking about in the "In Progress" section?