Ok, just got on and checked out the update. Very professional, looking good.

Not sure how i feel about the "need 10 people to form a guild" thing yet. we'll have to see how that works out once there are more players in the universe. At the moment, it just seems tedius and annoying. You are allready limited to 1 guild per person, so why require 10 to create a guild.
If its deterring people from creating guilds and then uncreating them and creating new ones every other day, just add a counter to the account (not the character) and charge 1 million credits (or whatever) to create a guild for every guild they have made in the last month. (you create 9 guilds you pay 9mil for the 10th one, the first one is free)

The new bot names, nice, adds some character, now how about adding some form of in game mechinism that will allow players to "buy" information about where they are located, OR give us the ability to make notes on our nav maps. keeping a paper list of those bots is gonna get tedius.

New bot tactics, they seem smarter, or at least the ones i was figthing in odia were more aggressive, and i think i saw them swinging out wider than they used to in order to attack me from 2 sides. may have been imagining it, but i took lots more damage when botting than i used to.

Group missions now scale the XP awarded to each group member, nice, a good addition.

I'm getting tons more damage from bot explosions than the bots themselves. Was it like that before?

they are just getting closer i think.

Oh how I yearn for notes in the nav screen.

Yeah the guild thing seems odd.

I know a lot of the game population currently has other communication channels, but the way it's set up now, I can see the board being flooded with "help create our guild" posts detailing what that guild wants to do.

It might work better to just let people create guilds by themselves, and just invite people as they go. Build a reputation for what they stand for with their tag on, so that others can see the kind of person they will be following.

I don't know what special "guild member" features are planned if any, but maybe have the 10 or even 20 player limit open those up. I can't see the harm in someone flying around as the commander of a one person guild while he decides who he wants to invite.

Also, the council member thing, Is it the first 9 invited members who become the council? and if so, should not the entire guild be able to vote on who stays and who goes?

For example, "members" can vote for who is in the "council" and then the council votes to change the "commander" if it comes to that, and the commander picks his "lieutenants"

Alright I'll stop rambling now. :D

-Cam-

I have a better solution to message board spam.

Ban all "help create our guild" posts. :P

I agree with the sentiment that guilds are supposed to be a really big deal.
I think a page on the website sort of like the "Guild central" thread would function better. Rather than using the game system, people can get on the website, submit their name to join a budding guild (by supplying a password), and after the proper amount of people submit, the guild gets created. This averts the problem the alpha guild had where half the members are European and the other half American.

But then again, the retail version was supposed to have seperate servers huh?

1. New bots: hm.. it's intresting but yesterday (acutaly it was already today ;>) I have seen a pack of strike force bots KOSing everything on their way (It was in DauL11 and DauL10). Includeing me, and some NT n00bs ;)

I think that whenever you shoot near station the agorithm marks everybody insector as hostile.

2. The HUD. Well.. it's nicer. Espceialy that 'buy ship' menu. But (yes there always IS but). Cargo hold and armour should also be displayed in main window.
What about colors in buy/sell menu ? For example small weapons could be green/light green, large weapons could be blue/navy blue and so on. Right now it's a bit confusing (of course there were post about filters if you remember ;>)

3. make equpement slots! :) Every additional equipement (like radio, scanners) should go there. Everything has been already posted so I would not repeat it now ;P

4. Economy. Well. it's better, the widgets cost vary more, but it's still not enough. Most ships are way to cheap (weapons are good, but i think that taych should be cheaper than centurion).
Widgets can cost even 2000c. It's good but imagine the thrill if you have a cent full ow widgets 10kc each! Will you manage to distant station and earn 100kc or you meet icarus on your way and loose everything ?

There could easily be a "Help create our guild" forum, or just use "Role Playing"

i think the limit should be lowered to 2 members to create a Guild. for a long time i played a similar game to this (Jumpgate) and was in some pretty small squads and had a blast.

Due to RP reasons, our squad had to be kept small in order to operate effectively. Under the guild rules in this game, those squads wouldn't of been able to operate at all.

so in total 3?
i am for the "10 players needed", since guilds, in my opinion, should be larger than just a gaggle of fighters or two (2-4 players), that they provide a way different from teh factions: if you don't want to go to war with one of the major factions, go for a guild.

[quote]Due to RP reasons, our squad had to be kept small in order to operate effectively. Under the guild rules in this game, those squads wouldn't of been able to operate at all.[/quote]

That's why we have the /group command.

Perhaps guilds could be of any size, so long as one were to buy a "Guild Charter" costing something like ~1 mil credits. This would act as a deterrent against superfluous guilds, but those who needed to have a small guild, could.

i would much prefer paying a fee to create a guild rather then having a minimum pilot limit. I just dont see any RP reason why you'd need to have 10 pilots to create a guild. It would just mean that me and my roommate for example could create a pirate guild of our own and operate.

Sure, we could use the Group command, but i dont wanna recreate my squad every time i play the game, and i want stats to be kept persistant and a name for ourselves/guild webpage. If at some point down the line i wanna add additional people, I can look for people I trust. I dont wanna be forced to go out and find 10 like-minded pirates whom i dont know and who could tarnish the name of my guild, just so i can create it.

There is just no RP reason to limiting guild creation to big squads, and it'd severly effect my playstyle as a 'bad guy'. Please reconsider this.

One reason, names. If you have a million guilds being created you also have alot of names and eventualy conflicting tags. I.E. INM which many of us know as the Itani Nation Military could be confused with the INM Ineternational Nordic Militia. (ok bad name but you catch my drift.) This could cause problems with pilot/guild identifcation. By only allowing guilds to start with 10 pilots in them it reduces the risk of such an incident.

How about having the stipulation that guild tags must be unique.. That would make [INM] different from [iNm] and we would just have to be observant. Maybe have the guild tag set in the terms of the guild charter.

The thing is, guilds are supposed to be large associations of people. 4 or 5 people can easily go to their own channel and hang out together and communicate via PMs if they want without much difficulty. 4 or 5 people are also unlikely to have the combined finances that would enable them to do the things guilds can do like get capital ships or personal stations. So there is no reason for 4 or 5 people to need to make a guild. You can have a group of in game buddies to hang out with without being in a "guild." You can create your own website without having to have a guild. It can just be a "gang" or a squadron and does not require formal recognition. If you and your roommate want to engage in piracy together, then by all means do. It's not that hard to make a group of 4 or 5 people, especially with the buddy list system in place. Being in a guild doesn't really confer any stats that regular players can't get. Sure you get the title: "council member or blah blah" but that doesn't really mean anything. Nothing is stopping you from making a webpage about your personal squadron either.
The purpose behind the guild system was to allow very large associations of players to have some sort of order or control within their ranks. These kinds of problems don't crop up with small groups of people, so they don't need the functionality of the guild system. The only argument I see as valid is having to recreate your group every time you log on and frankly, that is a very slight hindrance.

As a matter of fact, considering how the defbot strike-forces behave towards guilds, it would probably be advantageous for a confederation of "bad guys" to remain nominally seperate.

"As a matter of fact, considering how the defbot strike-forces behave towards guilds, it would probably be advantageous for a confederation of "bad guys" to remain nominally seperate."

I'm pretty sure this is a bug, and hopefully will be fixed soon.

Back to the issue of guild size though, I don't see anything wrong with having smaller guilds... adding a "startup cost" to a guild would effectively serve the same purpose as having a minimum membership requirement. If the cost were something that 10 people could afford easily but 3 or 4 people couldn't, say even 4 or 5 million credits, you wouldn't have a lot of excess guilds.

There is however one thing the minimum membership requirement takes care of and that is getting rid of guilds that are defunct. You wouldn't have many of guilds in existence in which most people have left.

Magus, I disagree. I dont see the harm in allowing smaller squads, especially if there is a squad creation fee. Obviously squads of one person should not be allowed, but 2 or more should be possible. What exactly is the harm?

I agree with Magus.

I agree that guilds must be special and limit of 20 is too moderate. it should be bumped to 5% of the total population of active players (who played within last month).

I really hate the idea of where you must have 10 or more pilots to create a single guild. 10 people sounds like too many.

I was suggesting to bump down the pilot limit all the way down to 5 people.

To me I picture guilds as player organizations, or a group of players that are represented as something. Nothing special. I believe in most mmorpgs, I don't think you need a large amount of people in order to form a clan/guild/whatever.