Neebi Q:
I wanted to buy a better ship, I have the needed licenses and enough mony but many ships are still unavailable.
reason displayed:
"Specially sanctioned personnel only"
What does it mean? There is no more explanation to make it more clear. Do i have to finish special missions??

thanx for help in advance
springphul

The message you see means that you are missing a badge or other requirement.

Which ship is the one you are trying to purchase? If you can find it on this page, you should be able to see what the requirements are.

Go to: http://www.vo-wiki.com and check out everything.

This brings up a valid issue with item requirements when it says, "Specially sanctioned personnel only", it hardly helps the player as to what is required, either faction, badges/ribbons, or mission completion.

Telling them to go to a wiki is helpful when they're out of the game but not while in the game. Can these "Specially sanctioned personnel only" requirements be changed to what is actually required to buy the particular item?

I still support completely hiding all unavailable items. Let there be some surprise!

I agree with roguelazer. It was better the old way. However, I think that blank slots should be displayed for all unavailable items, so you know stuff is there, but not exactly what. Maybe details of things that you can almost get should be displayed, within 2 license levels and 200 faction points away or something, but the rest should be blank.

Blank slots with a question mark.

Or even just, names, no stats.. instead of stats, use the ?s

I never figured out the requirements for the EC-88.

The EC-88 is gotten through a mission tree that starts in any nation's capital with a request to hunt rogue bots. It then goes to a mission defending a research vessel in a really hot fight with crazy numbers of bots. There is more but I won't spoil it for you.

One of the best mission trees of the game if you ask me.

EC-88 is, as yet, inaccessible.

once again lecter proves he never logs into the game or else he would know there is a mission tree allowing you access to the ec-88. pls lecter no moar misinformation

When I do log in, doing pointless missions isn't high on my list of priorities. I prefer to fly about and pirate while I can.

You can finally get the old gov bus? Someone tell who?me?!

I think that all those "inaccessible" items should be completely invisible until you do whatever it is that gets you access.

BUT.

You have someone from that faction tell you that they're available.

For example, upon reaching the 25 pk's badge:

Your nation sends you a special encrypted message:
"Congratulations, <PILOT_NAME>, you've demonstrated skill in eliminating other human pilots, and this has earned you the right to purchase Railgun Mk. I's from any station where you can do so. Good hunting!"

Or, for receiving some Corvus badge for, like, killing 150 convoys:

"You are approached by a stranger in the bar. Hey, you're <PILOT_NAME>, right? I need ta have a few words with ya... seems you like killing stuff, and Corvus needs some good pilots on its side, so we'll let you have these Corvus Widowmakers for, oh, 1,000,000 cr. a pop. Whaddya say?"

Essentially, make the discoveries MUCH more like Escape Velocity with some roleplaying and such and much less like XBOX "Achievements Unlocked!"

Of course, these will all make it into the wiki, so no need to worry about giving hints about what's available.

That does require people to read the wiki to comprehend advancement.

Part of our problem with new-player retention has always been that people don't know that "more" gameplay exists. They don't think more ships or equipment will become available, because they don't see any. We've had this specific complaint many times, which led to the current (less-than-ideal) situation, where we tried to balance awareness of new equipment with some sense of mystery. I support having a certain number of items be completely secret and unknown (aside from those who read wikis and things), but the majority of items should be visible. There is a whole section of the gaming playerbase that wants definitive goals to pursue. And simply telling a new player "go shoot a lot of bots, eventually something may happen" sounds like a lot of stick without much carrot.

If anything, the more "invisible" stuff should be higher-level. Lower-level content should probably have even more information displayed (what badge, what faction level, whatever).

So, I guess I support the initial comments to display what actual requirements are needed; and then perhaps adding new stuff at higher level, which has more opaque clues (like NPC chat text, mission info, etc).

yessss, please more high end game content!!

and random events and all that fun stuff