Although it was mercifully well-received, ya can't call people "_______" here.

/me extracts jownhawl's name from the mud, leaving Cunjo free to wallow away. >:P

I wonder if any of the devs could tell us whether this would create any lag ingame. I am DEFINITELY against anything that would create additional server load. The poor thing's been through enough, I say...

but but but!

Grrr. ___________'s.

actually leber brings up an interesting point. If the weapons increases in shot speed or duration and the like it needs to pass that information to the server and then to the rest of the clients for graphical display and error checking.

I'm not sure if i'm against this idea or for this idea... I've long been a proponent of being able to "tweak" weapons and ships when given time, in game learned crafting skills, and requiring resources along with a chance at failure... So giving a small chance that over time a weapon you use a lot could be 'tweaked' isnt that much of a stretch.

You could actually rationalize it by saying that every time the weapon/ship is in the shop you adjust it a little bit, kind of like lecter does with his car. It's not his using the car that makes it better, its his learning it's little idiosyncracies and taking time to improve small problems when he has the chance.

The idea has merit, but now that leber has mentioned it I actually do wonder if it would add more server load.....

FM, your an ______________ :P :D

I love what you've done with the thread FM... it's very ________ stylish.

you people seem to be missing the point... first you bandwagon with trollmeister saying that the game needs work because its too much about acquiring the good equipment, and then you say you need the equipment to improve more for special people who waste more time on it? well which is it? for _____ sake, make up your bloody minds.

And while you're looking for your minds to make up, please stop suggesting that weapons need to be levelled to in order to compete. It's just stupid. Isn't becoming good at using a weapon you practice with enough? the weapon itself doesnt need to improve to make you feel special and accomodate your overinflated egos.

Now, if you want to be able to eventually pour money and experience into 'tweaking' weapons (ie. favoring power over weight, or exchanging autoaim for fire rate) I'm all for that. but I do not want to see weapons get just plain 'better' as you 'level' them. That only serves to irritate newbs, and give elite vets even more of an edge, which they ultimately don't need.

/_____

I don't think increased ship and weapon performance makes much sense, but I would like to see utility equipment hold information and thus increase in value as it is used. The mining scanner is a perfect example. What kind of scanning equipment today has no memory? I think giving this item a memory and making it resalable will open a new market as it were, and make possibly the most boring and useless part of the game more interesting.

I could see this idea in other equipment as well. Perhaps a trade computer that stores purchase and sale price of goods at specified stations. Perhaps even an piece equipment that links users who have it equiped (a trade guild for example) and automatically updates all the linked user with current price information when a member of the group lands at a station. It could be pushed further by making it recoverable, meaning that if the ship who possesses is destroyed, there is a percentage of the time when another ship can pick it up and equip it, opening up possibilties for intrigue between players.

-tm

i think the best way to handle the "that takes less skill" issue is to limit the inpruvments to areas that while they make the new weapon superior don't nesesarily make them easier to use. such as energy drain (you can fire more shots without recharging but you still have to hit with those shots), or perjectile duration, ie range (since no one fights at ranges over 200m+- anyway how does increasing range from 300 to 305m unbalance anything?)

the point is auto aim, guidance (for seeking weapons), and rate of fire should not be inpruved with time used. I'm on the fence about damage.

as for the question of why this should be concidered, it's because vendetta needs some sence of continuity and consequences. the truth is you should be able to get attached to your favorate ship. as it is now, anyone who trys to do this for RP reasons is fighting against a series of ingame dynamics and stigmatisams that make it increasingly difficult.

One also could make the changes more drastically affect weapons that are harder to use .

This reminds me of a trashy novel someone gave me, the Practice effect? anyone heard of it?

Basically this physicist ends up in this world where things become better by use.

So the servants are forced to wear the masters clothes all day long, just to keep them sparkling.

Shape: Nope, never heard of the novel.

Lecter: I don't think L-port weaps should ever become S-port weaps.

Tumble: I read ...opening up possibilties for intrigue between players. as "Make it so when I kill you I can take your stuff." ... and there's NOTHING wrong with that! :)

Cunjo: I do not want to see weapons get just plain 'better' as you 'level' them. That only serves to irritate newbs, and give elite vets even more of an edge, which they ultimately don't need.
Cunjo - you seem to be focusing too much on the weapons. The newbs won't notice a 1% to 10% improvement in range or rate of fire. The vets will, and this will make them only marginally better, anyway. And if you kill them their "improved" weapon goes away.

Scenario: So let's say Cunjo, in his awesomeidity, kills 100 players with the same Rev C Centurion without dying, using the same two N3's. He then has a 10% longer range and a 10% faster rate of fire than usual. Then LeberMac warps into Sedina B-8 with a spam rag and sneakily pops him when he's not looking. LeberMac picks up Cunjo's floating weapon widgets from the expanding cloud of vapor that was Cunjo's Rev C, and happily takes it to Sedina D-14 and can either a) sell them for a slightly inflated price, or b) can equip them on another Centurion and go fight, giving Cunjo the opportunity to get his weapons back.

I think it would add a kind of "trophy" system to the current standings. "Look! I got a +10% Chaos Swarm Launcher from BUNNY!" etc, etc.

It's just something to make the game a little more interesting, with the barest of benefits to "not dying so much". So death can Mean something for once, you lose some of your slightly-better-than-average equipment. Not a big loss, but then again it's something.

Leber : Actually, you can avoid "overpowering the vet" (and thus placating the _______ vets and Cunjo) with this idea by a slight twist :

Instead of a gradual "upping" of stats, you give the uber-pilot ability to make tradeoffs to his/her weapons. e.g. Leber the superpilot kills Shape 10 times in a row with his N3 IBG, and gets the option to trade +10m/s of his N3 for a +200kg increase in mass. You can give the pilot, say 5 "tradeoff points" for each PK, which he can use to spend on making tradeoffs (say 50 pts to do the above trade etc).

This way, you get more variety. In fact, you can do away with all those extra "MK III etc..." weapons, and have everyone start with standard weapons.

Lecter:

I wasn't missing the point. Customizability is a very important aspect, but it should not give difinitive advantage.

As Softly (and I, previously) said, trading one advantage for another is perfectly fine; it's a feature I would most certianly like to see. The improved advantage should not however be allowed to universally outweigh whatever you're exchanging for it - this 'balance' must be maintained.

If say, you could earn the ability to slightly reduce the ammo capacity of a flare launcher for an equivalent increase in damage or speed, that's great - as long as the end result isn't a weapon which in all respects has an advantage over the original. The changes should reflect piloting preferance and combat style via variability, not desire for 'the better weapon' via improvements.

If everyone was in the U.S., had broadband internet access, and the minimum system specs were 2.5 GHz, then I would not be against individual items (of any kind). However, this is currently not the case. I really like the customizability idea in general, but I think it should be something left to the crafting system. One can double the number of pre-defined items in a list and only increase the look-up time by 1 check (binary search). If items are individualized, then they must ALL be loaded as encountered... Having 8 varieties of every item in the game would only increase the average look-up time by 3 checks (2 cubed). Individual items are a cool idea, but are incredibly computationally expensive.

Hrm.

I'd like to get a dev's input on this to specifically comment on the amound of extra overhead this would add, especially when there are 1000 people online at any given time, and perhaps 100 players in any given sector.

It won't add too much overhead (practically speaking, none at all) if done right, and this is something we've thought about a lot, actually. It would require a new weapon firing architecture which would in aggregate probably be more efficient than what we're doing now. But during the new client handoff changing this is iffy. We'd have done it by now had it been a priority. You're right though in that from the client's PoV it's indistinguishable from crafting.

Keep in mind that you equip a weapon once for every hundred times you fire it. If the protocol is simply "LeberMac shoots weapon ports 2,5" and everybody knows what LeberMac has because the sector told them already when he came into the sector [or it waits until the first time he fires to avoid an information leak], then it's no biggie to implement. The sector can update your weapon as it gets better, too, not just when you equip it.

All items, including weapons, can already have arbitrary data attached to them. Weapons only contain an ammo count for the time being, but "perks" would be doable.

To be clear, we're not looking at completely unique weapons here, they're still basically lasers and rockets with tweaked attributes. You don't know you're being hit with LeberMac's Neutron Blaster of Doom +4 until you kill him and grab it out of his scrap metal; until then it's just a violet laser with a 210m/s velocity and 700 damage.

The hardest part about this is designing and balancing it.

Thank you a1k0n. I am somewhat surprised by the lack of overhead, but then I had not thought of doing it that way. Sweet.

Supah-sweet.

Thanx fer the reply, a1k0n.
LOL I want my Neutron Blaster of Dooooooom! +4

Which brings up an interesting point: will we be able to "name" our slightly-better-than-normal equipment, weapons, batteries, etc?