Yes, this could go in the toys thread, but that's too long.

Serco Ammo bay - Uses cargo space and converts it to ammo bays for all of your ammo-based weapons.

UIT cargo pods - Cargo pods that attach on the exterior of the ship to weapon hard-points. Two flavors: small-port and large-port. Small port add 10 cu, Large port add 25 cu.

Itani shield generators - Are housed inside of the cargo bay or on weapon hardpoints. Generate a slowly-recharging shield of variable strengths.*
- S-port shield charger: 750 hp per port
- L-port shield charger: 1250 hp per port
- Small cargo shield charger: 10 cu creates 1000 hp shield
- Large cargo shield charger: 30 cu creates a 2000 hp shield

Itani long-range sensors - Take up 2 cu of space, extend your radar range to 5km.

* Shields will be controversial, I know. Perhaps to level the ships, we can lower the armor of Itani ships.

My valk gets the nerfing boot of rejection?
NOOOooo......

I do want sheilds, and more diversity, A lot of this has been suggested before, but, to put it in a new thread my help some.

I think that we should be able to load weops and batts ect. into cargo slots so that transporting weopons is more applicable.

I also think that for certain ships ammo should be limeted or expanded.
Example: rev c holds only 8 sun flares and prom holds 20.
These aren't exact numbers by any means, but I think something like that would be good.

ye olde disableing ion blasters...
Make destructable subsytems, this isn't imperitive, but it would be awsome.
ion blasters right now are worthless. Completely retarded.

More ships, that would be way too cool. Harry Seldon has some awsome designs in the design contest thingy.

Player controled bots:
-rather expensive, maybe, but good scouting
-cheaper bots: observer, arena seekers the rest are more expencive, to protect from overuse
-when you get killed in "bot mode" it doesn't register as a death
-your bot does not have your player's name on it, maybe a datacore picked up from it's ruins tells who used it.
-uncustomizable weops, only what that bot realy has.
-bot like dodging, not fancy manuvering.
-other bots don't attack your bot if your bot has the same IFF
-good for assainations, an "Itani" bot controled by a serco that goes to kill some unsespecting Itani.
-you need the licences that that particular bot has for you to be able to buy them.

I like the idea of player controled bots. It would be interesting.

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I went WAY off topic, sorry, I'll post some of this stuff elsewhere
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I was thinking the Sedina Race tracks. They're Nations, not races. I bet the devs have something in mind already, don't you fret.

I disagree too. But I'd still like to see diversity. I'm thinking more along the lines of the alpha version of Vendetta, where each nation had their own formal design for their ships (and maybe even stations). When nonspecial ships were introduced that sense of identity was sort of lost. I think the same should be applied to factions as well.

Backstory reference time: the only mention of any shielding technology in the backstory is the use of an Energy Focus by Itani monks. However, the only detailed description of it being used to shield a ship is by the Order of Eo's Abbot of the planet Eo, one of the most powerful monks of the Order, and he died from the effort it required. Anyway... if shields are implemented, I don't think they should take up any cargo or weapon slots. The energy focus used to focus the spiritual life energies into a "seemingly impenetrable field" would not be equipped onto the ship, or stored in the cargo hold, it would be kept with the monk who was using it, who would likely also be the pilot. And I'm not entirely convinced shields should be implemented, except for the rare NPC ship. I have a hard time seeing the general Itani player population qualifying as highly skilled monks capable of shielding a ship. But it depends on the way the shields are implemented, there could be ways that would work.

The other special ability described in the backstory is cloaking. On the final page of the backstory, we have the following:

An Itani defensive fleet, undergoing training exercises near the Itani-UIT border, reports contact with multiple Serco fighters of unusual configuration. Attempts at pursuit are thwarted when the enemy vessels seem to "disappear". The Serco government is unresponsive to inquiry.

When I first read the backstory, I thought the cloaking technology would be restricted to Serco, as the Shields would be restricted to Itani. But upon further reading, I think it may be possible that the Serco actually reverse-engineered the cloaking technology from Order of Akan ships. What makes me think this, is that the Serco had been reporting "bombardment from unknown vessels, near the UIT border . . . For their part, the UIT deny permitting passage to any such fleet, suggesting they would have prevented the passage of such ships, rather than jeopardize their now-valuable trade franchise with the Serco. When data is requested on the attacking fleet, the Serco are vague and report difficulties in identifying the ships."

But, if cloaking isn't restricted to Serco, then any type of shielding that's implemented would either have to break with the backstory, and be available to both Itani and Serco, or else be balanced by some Serco specific ability.

[edit]
Re: Fnugget
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/8418
Wed, Jan 05, 2005 raybondo
According to dictionary.com, a race can mean any sufficiently different group of people. It's a pretty generic term.
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In regards to the UIT cargo slots, the Marauder is supposed to eventually get that option, isn't it?

Here's the problem with giving the Marauders (or anything else) the ability to increase its cargo space: thrust. If you have a Valent Marauder Rev. B, you start with 56 cu of cargo space, and 210 kN of thrust. Once the Valent Maud is filled with cargo, that 210 kN of thrust is barely enough to handle its mass at all very well. If the Valent Maud had purchased a second cargo module, so it could hold twice as much cargo, its 210 kN of thrust would be vastly incapable of handling its mass when loaded with any amount of finesse. And it still only has 112cu cargo, less than a Moth. In order for it to exceed the Moth, it would need a third cargo module, but then when it's fully loaded its 210 kN of thrust is barely even going to move it.

Giving it enough thrust to handle 168cu (three cargo modules) would make it so when it's empty, it has insanely high acceleration, becoming extremely uber in combat.

I can think of two ways to solve this problem: either give the empty Mauds an *enormous* amount of mass and thrust - I'm talking at least an order of magnitude more than the Moth. That would make the additional cargo mass have less of an effect on its acceleration, so that it doesn't become crippled when it adds cargo modules, but it can keep the acceleration from being too uber. That solution has the drawbacks of being very difficult to keep balanced for combat, and also looking rather ridiculous, with this one ship having so much more mass than anything else.

The second solution (that I like much more) is the cargo-mass reduction for Marauders that I suggested recently: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10737 Maybe I'm just biased because that's my suggestion, but I really think it would make it viable for Marauders to have expandable cargo space without becoming crippled, or having all of the nasty balancing issues.

Or you could just have it so that "cargo pods" have "external thrusters" that add to the turbo thrust of whatever they're attached to...

But then people could go around adding cargo pods in order to get the extra thrust, and would leave them empty so they would have the uber acceleration again. If it's only adding to turbo thrust, and not to normal maneuvering thrust, then it's not a really big deal, but I still like my cargo mass reduction better, because it would allow decent (but not uber) acceleration for both turbo and normal maneuvering.

Building on rogue's idea:

variable-thrust ballasting cargo pods:

They make up in mass what they don't produce in thrust. I.E., if you fill it up halfway, the mass either compensates for the other half or the thrust is automatically reduced by 50%. Sure, it sucks, and has no feasible storyline, but it's a game, and we gotta keep things equal.

That's effectively the same as the cargo mass reduction I suggested, SirCamps. Check out that suggestion I linked to earlier (here it is again: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/10737 ), and see what you think of it.

or you could hire someone to protect you overladen ship. If you are going to get extra cargo space on that level, the best payment for it is that you are a slow turd. Plus, if they use a weapon port, your arnt likely going to be fighting much either.

Nobody's suggesting making the Mauds uber, tramshed. I just want them to be decent, with an acceleration advantage over the Behemoth.

How slow? If the Mauds were able to get cargo expansions to match or exceed the cargo space of the Moth, but didn't get any change to their thrust, they would have a serious problem getting moving at all. IMO right now they barely have enough thrust to handle a full load, without adding any extra cargo space. And IMO the Maud should have some type of advantage over the Moth, it's supposed to be the UIT Nation Special ship, which means it should be good.

How about this: use my cargo mass reduction suggestion, and have each cargo module added to a Marauder subtract 10m/s from its max turbo speed. So it would still have decent (but not uber) acceleration, and they would be paying a price for their extra cargo space.

[edit]
Actually though, I don't much like the idea of dropping its max turbo speed. It's a Marauder. IMO it should be the ideal pirate ship: it should be able to catch trade ships (which means it has to have a decent turbo speed), have a decent chance of destroying the trade ship, *and* carry the cargo after it captures it. What I'd like to it have as a drawback, is low armor. If it catches a lone trade ship, and evades any mines or missiles, it should do very well. But if the trader has escorts, the Marauder shouldn't be able to stand up in a full blown fight (unless the pirate also has a group, of course).

A compromise I would find appealing, would be to have the -10m/s max turbo speed per cargo expansion module for most Marauder variants, but not for the Corvus Marauder.
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Beolach,

actualy you are wrong about the shields in the bacstory. Every Itani ship since the start of the second war was equipped with a focus that allowed the pilot to shield the ship. The early ones were 2 man fighters so that the co pilot could focus on shielding the ship while the pilot operated everything else, but later on the technology was inpruved allowing a single ocupent fighter to effectively shield itself.

also the focus device was a piece of technology that amplified psychic energies, so it is reasonable for it to take up some level of room.

additionaly there is no reason that the serco couldn't finde a way to mimic the itani shield desine. after all the itani shield their ships by amplifying psychic energies with technology, and the serco are masters of combining life with technology.

As for the maud, why not make the maud's natural turbo thrust very high (to the point of uberness)? So that when it has extera cargo pods it will reduce to normal and then less than normal, but when empty can accelerate extreemly well (in a strate line) up to it's max turbo speed (200m/s).

the result is it will suck at manuvering when equipped with enough cargo pods to out carry a moth, but in exchange it gets the ability to outcarry a mouth. But anyway, we already have a bulk cargo ship that is desined to be the balance between mass hauling capacity and manuverability, why not have one that runs the gambit of unbalanced combinations? And by unbalance i mean the ship is defficent in one area when configured to be striong in the other, not that it is too uber.

Yeah, there is mention of other Itani ships using the shields, but only the Abbot of Eo's use is described in much detail (I edited my previous post to clarify that). Also, it never says *every* ship was equipped with an Energy Focus, only that when the Order of Akan attacked SkyCommand, their 17 ships "contained two people, one responsible for piloting the ships, while another worked an Energy Focus to defend them." I don't consider that to be enough evidence to say that *every* ship had shielding. And the way I read the description of the Order of Akan's attack, the superior maneuverability of the Itani ships is given more credit to their survival than their shields - "Although the abilities of the focus depended entirely on the abilities of the monk, the spacecraft were small and the shield made a big difference in the unlikely event of a Serco successfully hitting them.". Later, it does say "The Order has made considerable achievements in their defensive shielding, which proves more than a match for the improved Serco weaponry.", but nowhere can I find evidence in the backstory that a single Itani could both use the Energy Focus and pilot a ship (although I'm not saying it's impossible for a single person, either). And everywhere the backstory maintains that only highly trained monks can make any use of a Energy Focus at all, so unless you want to say that the entire Itani player base are (or can become) highly trained monks, I still don't see how you can justify giving easy access to shields to all Itani players.

Obviously it would take up some volume of space, but how much? Nowhere in the backstory does it actually say how large a Focus is, however when the Abbot of Eo uses his to defend his ship it says "He, like many academics, possessed an energy focus, largely as a teaching aid for rendering geometric concepts. Now, however, he employed it as a shield for his transport." Maybe I'm getting the wrong idea here, but I see the Energy Focus as more something small enough for the Abbot carried around in his pocket, rather than something so large he had to plan ahead and have specially installed in his ship. So I still think that if shields are implemented, they shouldn't take up any ports or cargo space.

While *in theory* there's no reason Serco couldn't mimic the Itani shielding, I'd rather that didn't happen. See the title of this thread: "Give the Races More Diversity" - something I think would be main point of introducing abilities like shields or cloaking. But if both Itani and Serco have all the same abilities (shields, cloaking, whatever), then they're not very diverse.

Jacking the Maud's turbo thrust sky high would probably be the simplest solution, but IMO it would be a boring solution. High turbo thrust is something that's already been done, with the Behemoth. I'd like the Mauds to have something unique.

As I see it, the Behemoth is already unbalanced, in that its maneuverability is dramatically deficient, but it can haul a large amount of cargo. Why do the same thing with the Maud?