About the countdown timer:

Phaserlight, I'd like you to go to an enemy sector where you're KOS and warp out with a 5 second no-move delay. Good luck, since the bots can cross ~1.5KM in that time. And if you're not moving, they can probably fire from 500m. So you'll need at least a 2100m lead on them to get out of the sector.

roguelazer: I know, I've been practicing invading Serco space with my Itani character (Morpheus). Those seeker bots are MEAN. I still think that there should be a short no-move delay. It should take a dedicated TEAM of people to make an incursion beyond an enemy border, this is not something any old Joe should be able to do. Remember when we had those killer bots back in the 1 mil reward capping days? Everyone thought they were impossible at first but it didn't take us long to learn how to use teamwork to fool them and get past them to grab the flag.

I think the same principle applies here. Invading enemy territory is serious buisiness and it should take a dedicated team of competent players. If you want "free" PvP go to grey space. The timer would make this more practical.

I think the requirement of a full battery for in-sector warp would be a step in the right direction, provided the engines are tweaked to consume slightly more power. A no-move delay spells death...

It didn't require teamwork to flag cap in the end.. it could be done solo...

I've got an idea on the old trader/pirate system. The whole effcient engine/fast engine thing was a very good idea, though with a rather nasty problem- The Trader is usually a sitting duck.

Now, let's tweak it slightly- say, a change in behavior on the part of the Trader. What do you do when you have a shipment to get through hostile space? You get protection. This is a very basic solution, usually achieved in two ways:

1) The Trader groups up with other Traders to form a caravan (safety in numbers). This is good against the lone raiders, since a whole lot of traders can beat the stuffing out of one attacker. However, large pirate groups are still a problem.

2) The Trader hires protecters. A few good fighters can certainly give the trader ample time to get away, unless the attackers don't paticularly care about getting missiles up the wazoo.

Both can be implemented easily enough by the playerbase, but finding people willing to do the job for every run can be rather time consuming, if it's possible at all.

Therefore, how about creating Trader/protector bots? They would fly with the Trader that hired them to the next station, where they would vanish with the completion of their job. This cuts down the time to get some friendlies significantly, and since they're bots they can provide a decent fight for the purpose of saving the Trader.

However, this shouldn't be a free run for the Trader. They'll have to cough up the cash to get the protection, which can really eat into the profits. A Trade caravan should probably subtract a hefty percentage from the profits earned, whereas protector fighters should be a direct payment (total profit could be negative if the cargo isn't valuable enough to cover the fighter costs).

Also, the defender bots should offer rewards of their own when destroyed. Caravan bots ought to drop similar cargo to what you're carrying, whereas protector bots ought to have a hefty experience bonus for sucessfully destroying them.

With a system as described, there should be a fair bit of fun in the whole thing for both sides. The Trader gets to live more often, and the attackers aren't always presented with an all-or-nothing situation. I see both sides walking away with something in this deal, and a general encouragement towards larger piracy groups (those who want to play the pirate can group together, whereas the person who just wants to be an ass will find themselves with few friends and fewer viable targets).

You could have grading on protector bots i.e. the better the trader the better bot he can hire.
But that also means the cargo is more worth the fight from pirate point of view.

Me personaly, after being a strong advocate of space trade/fight games. i think vendetta dug itself a big hole into the way it was setup...i mean it just doesnt seem to have a clear vision on how it wants to work when its finished, or so it seems so to me.

Now i like to think of Freelancer, which to me...was one of the BEST put together privateer style game out there as far as balance went.

in terms of gameplay space was built around the ships not the other way around. you had large open sectors, and you could fly via cruise mode or using direct highway style routes (cowboy beebop style) with trade rings. then to get from one zone to the other you use jumpgates. every sector has many ways to get into and out of the sector, but enemy ships where given dence area'sto hide themselves, and able to take down a trade lane, able to attack merchant ships and keep them from activating their cruise engines with disruptor style missles.

However to get the most cargo or profit you had to target cargo containers, which ment pirates had to have a steady balance of speed/offence/defence to get in close and reap rewards. if you didnt destroy the merchant or cargo ship, you didnt take a faction hit.

I'm not sure if these massive amounts of little tiny zones in a sector is such a good idea, because it revolves around instant travel. it has its good points i can see that, but i dont know. it just seems they have backed themselves into a corner.

Posted by CAM
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It's really not that hard for a Serco/Itani to get across the border and kill one bot.
That's all I had to do and now I can roam Serco space freely.

But I think the point has to be brought up that what you are seeking as PvP would not be consensual. If you want to fight someone, you /duel them, It's not supposed to be easy to pirate/kill randomly.

Don't you think your own nations space should be relatively safe?
How would you like it if you got shot out of the sky every time you undocked, and didn't even get a chance to level up in order to defend yourself?

As for the border patrol missions, they are indeed PvP, just it tends to be rare that a Serco and Itani manage to take them at the same time in order to meet up in the sector. I think if you wait a week or so for the over 1000 noobs to get settled you'll see a lot more PvP action.
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Yes you may get across the border and get your standing up but then actually killing someone would be a sucide mission now wouldnt it.

/duel is not an answer to PVP. If you cant have noncon pvp in this game .... looks around ... maybe im in the wrong room filed with carebears and im about to puke.

On border patrol missions, well ya whatever if you want just hang around and play bodyguard to ... well nothing but empty space.

This discussion is about faction RP pvp. As in one faction sending a war party to attack another faction. This has nothing to do with pirates. So keep you teenage fetish about pirates ... well somewhere else.

Folks need to go back and read the "Be Nice" page. Please make your arguments, but leave the personal comments out of it.

The PvP aspect of the game is still being tweaked. Formerly we had a lot of concern over pirating and griefing. People were VERY upset about this not too long ago and worried that the new players (that would be all you new beta testers) would be torn to shreds immediately and leave forever. The current system deals with that nicely, but may be too effective. I ask for a little patience in fine-tuning this, as the beta is in a "honeymoon" period as people level-up, learn the ropes, or wait for new players to venture out more. Let us live with it for a little and see how it works as gameplay normalizes. We've had a huge influx of players and that tends to skew things a little. Acting on this now is likely to result in the wrong effect. Keep in mind that many of the options for tweaking are server-side and will have no great impact on the release.

The Itani/Serco war needs to take place in the grey systems. It should be like a PvP switch. Stay in your home sectors and you're safe from PvP. Go to grey and you're at risk. That way, you've got something for everyone. Those who want PvP can, those who don't can avoid it.

It won't happen until there's a *reason* for it however. Such as the ability to take control of stations.

Take a look at DAoC for some inspiration. They've been doing faction vs faction for years.

Korban : The voice of reason.

A simple, elegant solution.

What if we wanted to see PvP in faction space?

"Folks need to go back and read the "Be Nice" page. Please make your arguments, but leave the personal comments out of it."

Awuh? It's looking perfectly civil to me...

Anywho, speaking as a (usually) trader, I agree. I could use some excitement now and then. ;-)

The idea that two factions should have to travel to a neutral area to fight a war is completely out of the question. Its like asking france and england to go to africa to fight thier war. (yes i know they did indeed fight battles in africa but not the point) There needs to be drawbacks to ganking noobs but not like what we are seeing now.

There should never be a pvp switch. I supported it in JG, but looking back I really wish there hadnt been one.

Have to agree, as usual...

I went into Itani space today and blew up another player. The result? A rating of -881 (Hate) among the Itani, and a total ban from all of their space.

Not that I don't see the point in this but it does seem a little harsh for just one kill, and maybe there should be some way of regaining your status in a nation from outside it's borders?

Yokom: But if you can claim stations, it's not neutral anymore :).

You know, there *are* some people who don't want to PvP ... shall we tell them to go away ... we don't want your money?

An actual PvP switch is a bad idea. Having areas where you are safe from PvP attacks is a good idea.

All of these problems you're mentioning seem to stem from the fact that the game is not yet finished.

Yokom: I agree that RPing a "soldier" in the Itani/Serco war is not yet a real option, but as stated the border patrol missions are the beginning of what you seek. As new missions are added maybe something more to your liking will come about.

Perhaps the defbots should "patrol" border systems less frequently than the capitols. So the Itani, and Serco border systems will have less protection with only guards in the station sectors to protect the peaceful traders.

n0id: The amount your standing changes is relative to the standing of the other player. The developers are very aware that gaining standing from a hate ranking is near impossible and are working on solutions.

Maybe at the same time as reducing defbots to promote war, the monitored sectors could be cut back. If the 2 wormhole sectors on each side of the border were unguarded, and unmonitored it would provide at least some place for each side to fight.

-Carebear Cam- :P

<The idea that two factions should have to travel to a neutral area to fight a war is completely out of the question. Its like asking france and england to go to africa to fight thier war. (yes i know they did indeed fight battles in africa but not the point) There needs to be drawbacks to ganking noobs but not like what we are seeing now.>

And your alternative is what? France and England don't bother to defend their borders, just protect Paris and London and leave the rest of their countries open to become warzones? If you want to talk about geopolitical realities, I have a million of them to back up my case. But analogies to reality have no place when it comes to determining gameplay and balance.

One small group of people SHOULD NOT be able to waltz into the middle of an enemy nation. If you want an incursion, you will need to have an armada. These kinds of armadas only come about from missions and campaigns. If you want to fight, you fight in certain contested areas where neither side has a strong presence. The "wild-zones" mentioned in the story are where things like this are supposed to happen. All you need are reasons to go there. RPing a soldier doesn't mean you can just run around killing the enemy whenever you want. It means being part of a chain of command. You kill when you get the mission to kill. Otherwise you sit in your barracks. Since the real story driven missions and long term character development have not been put into the test (not game) YET, we don't see them.
Additionally, piracy is the only sort of PvP that makes any RP sense in this context, so it's more than a juvenile fantasy. Soldiering is subject to the rules mentioned above.

To start. A delay for warping is an ok idea but anything longer than 2 seconds means suicide for the one running. Also waiting for a full battery is also suicide as it can take much longer to fill. If you consider a hornet with 4 tachs can take down a aputech 5 guardian in 6 seconds with a well aimed burst it becomes obvious why "wait to warp" timers would be a bad idea.

I think that certain areas should be "carebear friendly" but not nearly as much as it is now. The capitol systems for each faction and mabey the systems within one jump from them are good canidates for no pvp or /duel only activities. Maybe the neighboring systems to the starting area are only no-pvp or /duel only at the gates and stations. Noobs need a place to get combat xp and trading opprotunities without the hassel of watching their backs. With this system they get that opprotunity to learn without ruining the challenge to the more seasoned folks.

In addtion to this idea I think getting rid of the /duel alltogether a good idea. Instead replace it with an in station function to turn on or off pvp. If you want to pvp you turn it on and it cant be turned off until you dock again. The players with this on could show up on the radar as a orange dot or other distiguisable mark and would allow them to pvp even in the non-pvp areas with people that also have this feature set to on.

As far as engines go I think that engines should be purchasable just as batteries are. Like others said, the bigger engines would give more speed but eat more energy. There should also be a wide variety of engines and there should be size limitation for engines on each ship. As well, there should be a wider variety of batteries and limitations of on the engines as to what size of battery can be used with it. These ideas would give a better feel of customization of your ship thus making the game more fun.

You just described the 'Tag' system used in Jumpgate. I'll let the hardcore JGers ramble about that themselves. Personally, I do not think it is necessary in a game that has station defense bots. They should not defend WORMHOLES, certainly. And they should be easier bots the farther out from the center you go. Just my 2c.

Wormholes are the gates to a nation's system, out of all areas wormholes and capitols should be the most heavily guarded.

Dueling is one of the only ways to facilitate consensual PvP at present, why on earth should it be taken out?