I wouldn't mind if a moth cost me a million. Seriously.

Just make sure you never EVER nerf a ship that expencive because it's "uber". Adjustment and balance is good, but if I pay a million for a ship I expect it to rock.
I wouldn't call the last moth adjustment a nerf. It's still a flying trader fortress, so that's not what I'm talking about.

What I mean is that if I pay a million for a moth one day, and then log on the next day to see it has only a 80cu cargo hold, I'm going to be very disapointed unless there is a very good reason.

Instead, why not bump the price up for balance? That's a factor of the ships overall usability too.

Did that make sense?

You said you have station limits ready to roll. Can you tell us what they are? Or is it a surprise?

-tm

I agree with Demonen. 250k was low end to put feelers out. I honestly feel you should need money to make money, it will also give more use to guilds being able to help out n00bs financially so they can test things out and learn to become better.

I think this is exactly what we need,

And to the people who don't have much money to burn (like me)

So you have to do some trading. And all of us will have to, you're not alone.

Not to mention, that for once we'll start seeing some lower cost variants in the battlefield.

TRADERS IN THE SPACE LANES!

A RANGE IN THE SHIPS THAT YOU SEE!

I don't know if that would be a good idea upping the costs with such a factor.

Since as stated before it will increase the annoying behaviour of not sticking till the end of the fight.

It will seperate the newbs even more from the vets or even worse make it as so many of those other games where not skill plays a role but time played and thereby create an even more elitist feel then there was before. At least people could play the way they wanted to, in stead of being impeded by moneyconcerns. I know many people that hate having to blast bots endlessly or run rounds just to get money on the table. Seems more like a work then relaxation to me. And seriously I don't really care that someone has 200 billion credits while i have only 1 mill. As long as I can sustain it for a long enough time and do what i want to do, its ok for me.

And just for the record, it took me on an average traderun (with the behe) without taking advantage of the fixed price at odia 2 hours to make a million and that during times of low piracy. Mostly by taking advantage of faction money missions with the occasional extra cargo for profit. And during normal playtime I would burn through a mill pretty fast.

Anyway, its only my opinion, do with it whatever you like.

cheers

I agree with implementing a price spectrum that makes sense.

I.e. I agree that ships should in general cost a lot more than they do now, and that it would be nice to see a broader range in prices.

Of course this would mean another round of balance tweaking, most likely...

I strongly disagree with making all ammo prohibitively expensive... ammo should be relatively cheap. It doesn't make sense that weaponry costs more than the ship itself.

That being said, I think there should be four tiers of ammunition, each belonging to a separate price range:

A) unguided, contact detonation ammo (xith pellets)

B) unguided, prox detonation ammo (flares, jacks, screamers, mines)

C) guided, contact detonation ammo (stingrays, yellowjackets, fireflies)

D) guided, prox detonation ammo (gems, swarms)

With A being the least expensive and D being the most expensive. And yes, a new launcher should have the price of a full load of ammo factored in. For tier D weapons, the price of a full load of ammo should be 70-90% the cost of a launcher, tier B and C 30-70%, tier A, 10%. Something to that effect. A lump of metal should cost only a fraction of the device used to fire it, whereas a sophisticated, self-guided missile should be worth more compared to the hardpoint or bay from which it is launched.

Of course, a ship should almost always be many times more expensive than the weapons it carries, meaning I think ammo based weapons (and blasters) should be a lot cheaper relative to ships.

And while we are on the topic, how about limiting the purchase of ammo to stations which actually sell the launcher?

for those that are having issues with the increase in cost of ships, I'll let you in on a little secret.

Yesterday I read the news in-game. There was a daily trade route from Divinia to Divinia. I bought a moth. In less than 2 hours (that includes quite a bit of chatting, letting the dog out, watering the trees in the back yard, bathroom breaks, etc.) I made an easy 1.4 million credits.

It can get boring just running back and forth from station to station, but if you're after the money, it's quick and easy!

kernel.panic

If you still take out /explode, or even better, give it a timer like logoff if nothing else for now, im all for it, if this is your way of stopping people doing that, no :P

instant /explode AND "home station" oughta go. The BOOM-teleport trick is just too funny.

I'm quite the abuser of the /explode teleport because I'm such a lazy ass. I guess I'll be sad to see it go, but I totally understand why. (Probably half of my deaths are from /explode)

Increasing ship prices will:
1) Make ships mean something
2) Create more runners (they don't want to lose their ship)
3) Create more opportunities for escorting your buddies
4) Increase the difference between the haves and the have-nots
5) Reduce the amount of PvP in this game overall
6) Tend to make the really good PvPers bored, since no one will want to fight them and lose their pricey ships.

Right now I can fight and die with impunity, since I can go mine for 2 hours and make a cool mil. But if my ships started to cost 100,000 cr, theeeen I might think twice about fighting Shape for the fifth time tonight.

I'm more interrested in the station "hold" limits than the ship prices... More details, please.

7) Make piracy and escort protection more valid. Traders will be more likely to pay for an escort/pay a pirate's passage fee when their ship now costs more than the fee.

This change is going to be great for VO. There will be some adjustment phase, but in the end it'll make things more fun.

good good yah.

get these damn valk jocks out of their predicament

I like it.

If ships cost more to buy, two things need to be taken into consideration.

The first is the issue of runners. We will inevitably get an epidemic of non-fighting if the prices are that much higher. I don't think the universe can take it with such a low population- unless there is a slew of group missions and more of the big picture slots into place, increased ship cost has no place in Vendetta as is- since people won't be as willing to mess around in B8, that's practically half the game gone. People will fight and run when they're damaged, unbalancing the heavies from the lights- since valks will ALWAYS get away. This will create a lot of bad feeling, a re-uberization of any expensive ship with infiniboost, and will need a more comprehensive rebalance than simply pushing up the costs ten- or twenty-fold.

Secondly, the price difference between variants of ships will be a LOT more than it is currently (obviously) so the more expensive variants will need to be tweaked once a lot of the free cash is out of the system in order for them to kick more ass and make them worth the purchase in the big picture. Far more effective to send 10 centIIs with neutIs in than a single IBG with twin neutIIIs, so the IBG would need to be upped in performance slightly to ensure that you'd lose 2-3 centIIs in the same fight-time as 1 IBG is downed. That's bloody difficult to balance, especially with the revC/IBG scenario (and a lot of the other semispecials...)

If this is to be a MMORPG, I propose that running should be encouraged!

bleh running is boring, but alas rogue may be right.

if you take out the /explode trick ill just do the boost into a roid or station trick.

there will always be free ec88s.

PS everman: the routes proposed in the news list are subject to the same demand and supply debacle. Meaning you could have made a nice profit, but the ones behind you doing the same will not get the same return on investment (diminishing returns).Especially us europeans considering the news get posted somewhere when we are asleep or working which in most (8/10) cases means a depressed route when we can finally play.

PPS: i have a new idea in stead of making the prices of ships more expesnive make the weapons less expensive :D and the point that weapons should not be a more substantial cost then the ship itself is fulfilled. Or do them both...

PPPS: or what i would consider more likely tumble is people staying with their expesnive ships more in the nation areas. Rendering protection and piracy even more useless. Especially if these traders have lost a couple of these pricy tradeships to pirates.

I concur with the idea of raising ship prices, but believe that it should be more of an across-the-board thing. Note that my target prices are very, very high. This is on purpose. Ships should cost a lot, because they are excessively complex pieces of machinery, and losing one to a pirate or bot should be a big deal.

Here's what I think trade ships should cost:

Wraith MKI: 5,000c
Wraith MKII: 10,000c
Wraith MKIII: 12,000c
Axia Convoy Guardian: 11,500c (because of the faction reqs to get it)

Atlas MKI: 16,000c
Atlas MKII: 19,000c
Atlas MKIII: 25,000c
TPG B-Type: 26,000c
TPG X-Type: 26,000c (Replaces B-Type when available)

Centaur MKI: 35,000c
Centaur MKII: 55,000c
Centaur MKIII: 58,000c
Tunguska Centaur Aggresso: 65,000c

Behemoth MKI: 300,000c

UIT Maurauder: 80,000c
TPG B-Type Maurauder: 82,500c
TPG X-Type Maurauder: 85,000c
Tunguska Mineral Maurauder: 83,000c
Corvus Mercenary Maurauder: 95,000c
Valent Rev. B Maurauder: 83,000c
Axia Maurauder MKII: 83,000c

So in other words, if you don't know how to fly that ship of yours, stick to nation space.

Ok.

Yes, prices should be raised.

No, they should not be raised right now.

Uncledave brought up a good point - our playerbase is far too small and lacks the tangential content to handle ships that cost a lot of money. The only reason people stick around in fights nowadays is because, since forever, "death is cheap". If you take a game with 30 active players and tell them that losing a ship is a big problem, without some simultaneous change in their incentives to stick around in a fight, the game will die. People will run away from each other where before they would have stayed and fought.

UNLESS

More missions that put real reward on staying around, alive and engaged in a sector exist. Right now, there is no such thing. If, tomorrow, you tripled prices, there would be absolutely no reason to stay in a fight you had a chance of losing. It would be foolish, especially for those of us who get to play a few hours a week at most and would like to spend those hours doing something fun.

Now, if there was a "take and hold sector X and kill three players" mission, preferably a group mission, then yes. Raise ship prices through the roof. Make death mean something, but make life mean even more - you can run from the sector and live, but then you're going to lose the mission. Maybe even put in faction hits for losing missions. Not big ones, but big enough that you have to stay on station and fight, rather than lose your reputation. Money comes and goes, but your reputation should be harder to influence.

Otherwise, all you do is make dying such a massively negative event that people will sacrifice gameplay to avoid it. You'd make death worth more than life, to use my analogy from a few sentences ago, and the two should always be balanced.

I would like to point out, that since the new vulnerable jumping has been introduced, I have not noticed running to be a major problem... at all.

Rev C's just can't get away, the drain is too high.

And trader ships are slow enough that with a little economizing of your energy and speed you can take them out before they get a chance to get away.

If someone wants to try to run, I welcome it, they start traveling in straight lines, and my job becomes rather easy.