So I recently played Star Wars Battlefront II. You can take control multiple lives in your army, pretty much changing people when you die, but if you do certain deeds within one life, then you get a bonus. How about each ship has it's own stats too? Let's suppose you can't christen a ship with a name until you've made 10 kills with it. That would mean of course that you can't lose that ship while getting those kills. Perhaps ship colors can be made that way too. Let's say at 20 kills. But how fair is this to traders? Who would be able to kill 20 ships in a Behemoth? How about the pilot receives these points to spend instead? Thus, these ship customization points can be used on other ships. Although that ship may not be worthy in itself, but the pilot would be. This can also result in top VO pilots owning ships stowed away just for looks. Engine colors, ship lights, ion trails, the ship customizations could make a very long list. Not only would someone envy a pretty ship like that, they'd also fear the pilot or want to blow it out of the sky. Perhaps killing the ship can reward 1/10th the points used on the ship. Furthermore, these ship customization points should be tradable. You know either that pilot has a lot of skill, or have a lot of influence. It's a good way to incorporate ship customization, besides using money or ores.

That's kinda like what I said, here:
http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/12269
(except I was talking about widgets originally, but we eventually discussed Ships)
But I like yer idea, F-nug.

I´d love to take my 100 kill value behemoth pimped fo real to the racingtrack to see it go up in smoke and thunder or some WH-warpkill (damn spammers) leave nothing but scrap left... that will make me a sad panda..

But great idea, i dont like the tradability with other players, as it it too easy to exploit, farm w/e. Actually farming is the worst sideefect here so we need to cap the value of killing the same player more than x times in y time

Maybe a better idea is to pimp the cappies coming Soon™. Let kills go towards styling your favorite luxury cruiser or contraband factory.

So what you suggest here is that only killing blows are worthy a reward then that is not very balanced, as last time i checked this is a MMO not spacequake, so other aspects of this game would have to get equal rewards for their investments in time and skill to say; mining, racing, high faction standing, trading or crafting. Not with similar rewards but something like balancing the different aspects of this game. This can also be discussed in other threads like leber´s, but im just pointing at some HUGE balancing issues.

> I´d love to take my 100 kill value behemoth pimped fo real to the racingtrack to see it go up in
> smoke and thunder or some WH-warpkill (damn spammers) leave nothing but scrap left... that will
> make me a sad panda..

So make it so the player can recover the scrap metal, pay a huge rebuilding fee, and get a decent amount of the optimizations back.

I wouldn't approve of this on ships, but I'm all for it for cappies.

Beolach said:
"So make it so the player can recover the scrap metal, pay a huge rebuilding fee, and get a decent amount of the optimizations back".

How about someone steal the scrap, as you will probably lick your wounds i a station far away, pay even more and get a decent amount of the pimpness back. Behold, a true trophy!!

[edit]
But i suggest a miniature size as to ensure only bragging rights are kept. And maybe if you gather enough miniatures there are some bonus/reward/medals to be added to the xmas-tree

@fooz2916:

Uh, having a unique ship would be most appreciated by an individual pilot. Since Capital Ships are usually going to be owned by groups, rather than individuals, if only Capital Ships can be custimized it wouldn't have any where near the "coolness" factor. I'd much rather have my own unique ship than my guild having a unique ship. It's not nearly so cool to have a unique ship that I have to share.

And what's your objection to it for non-cap ships?

@Beo: See Leber's thread. Basically, it makes uber players more uber, and encourages running.

And capships are probably going to have a lot more potential (and drastic) customizations, so I think that it'll have much more "coolness" than upping the armor on your cent.

It also makes non-uber players more uber. And running is NOT A PROBLEM in an RPG.

What Beolach said. I'm all for running, specially since it's not as easy as some people suggest.

Running can be a sound tactic to any battle. It should never become impossible to do so. But its not a good idea for it to happen most of the time.

Anyways, I'm not so keen on your ship getting magically better the more kills you have. But there is a similar way of improving a single ship: missions. Quite simply, you complete a particular mission, and the mission provider (or opponent itself [i.e. a queen]) would give you a single unique widget/gadget... or possibly give you a separate kind of 'currency' that you could trade in for a unique item.

Something like: You finish off some extremely high-level, difficult, and time-consuming mission for a particular faction (you would have spent a lot of time getting this faction to allow you access to higher-end faction-specific missions), and you are given the option of permanently mounting a cloaking device on a certain kind of ship.

^ That's just a quick idea, but it makes a lot more sense to me. Plus, unique ships wouldn't just be available for the fighters amassing a kill count.

runnning is fine, sometimes, but when you do it whenever you are going to lose....and you attack people when dueling....and you happen to have a valk....

it is a problem then.

Good thinking Doukutsu. You could also make the missions less dependant on combat skill so that the players who don't get into PvP so much have something to work for.

per usual make different rewards for pvp and pve branches.

I don't know if anyone would complain about appearance changes as being unfair. Ship upgrades that influence combat, sure, but appearance? It seems we get magical access to items the more we kill, so why couldn't you apply it to appearance?

Well anyway, the main point of this is to have some way to visually show your prestige and power with proof, instead of dueling to see who's better.

Personally, I think that any customization should be done though wealth, not killing. It just moves the game back towards pvp too much. There are those that like to trade and just that and they should not be forced to do something that they do not want to. Also, there definitely needs to be a way to give your ship a name, possibley a special look within reason (beyond the standard color choices), would be nice to visually be able to tell what weapons a ship had do to ship port appearance. Decals have been discussed. I don't mind building up points to get some of these cool "unique" stuff, but perhaps it can be for successful missions completed, either trade, mining, border patrol, hive, pirate, etc. Some points could be specific to the type of reward. You successfully complete x number of pirate missions you get x number up upgrade points towards making your ship look more like a pirate ship. You complete x number of mining missions you get x number of points making you ship look more like a mining ship. Think of everyone when coming up with these ideas, not just the deathmatch stickjockies. Or go play Quake or somethingÉ

I'm all for customizing ships through equipment (requiring wealth), but please, no xp equivalent for ships... Guild has been working towards more in-game solutions for most current off-game (mechanical) limitations, and an function like this would push us in the opposite direction.

For no matter how much I think about it, I cannot simply come up with an in-cannon explanation for ships gaining stats through use. Through money, yes, and while I know the stats of the ship could reflect the money gained through using it, there is already an in-game mechanism for that. Money.

So, for the sake of (relative) realism and in-game solutions, I'd rather see custom add-ons to ships, than "magical" improvements.

(And, by the way, the access to better equipment isn't magical; licences are an in-game phenomenon, and represent your and other governments' trust and faith in a proven skilled pilot. A bit dodgy, perhaps, but still an adequate in-cannon explanation for "levels", something I've yet to see in any fantasy game.)

I don't think players should have to pay to change the color after the ship has been purchased--it's just a color. Who cares if you want to change it? This is the 45th century. Given that the "paint" on our ships is probably NanoPigments (ingame description is "Dyes and pigments which can be instructed to change their color"), there is no reason to have a pilot pay to change the color of his or her ship. I can see perhaps fees for certain colors that might not be on the swatch, but changing to a color already on the swatch should always be free.

Ion,
ships could gain stats throug use by simple virtue of the owner's fermiliarity and "special modifications" made over the coarse of ship ownership. yes major modifications would require special retrofits and money, but just using a better than factory stock flux capacityer the next time you have to replace the flux capaciter anyway wouldn't nesesarily cost any more than normal repairs (which are free).
also the more you fly a ship the better you know it's limits (ie, the manual says the Valk can withstand a 10G turn but in reality some can go as high as 12G while others would fly appart at 10.1G depending on the margin of error in the assembly process.

Lord Q
The "cheap mod" argument, I can understand. That I could agree with. Small repairs that might lead to improvements over the course of time could perhaps be reflected in ship stats, instead of bought mods. With you on that one ;-)

However, the familiarity with the ship already has a mechanism: VO combat experience. We gain that familiarity in real life (though still in front of the computer and VO), by improving our skills as combat pilots and in PvP. I'd hate to see ANY kind of in-game mechanism for becoming a better pilot that was not directly related to your ships technical specs. Even something as small as a ship mod for better speed or turning, if it was not based on your ship's specs (and familiarity would be a feature of the pilot as well, not the ship alone). I'd prefer it that was all real-life skill.

Anything else will prod VO, even if ever so gently, in the direction of level-based MMORPGs. Deus Ex was a trip, and I liked how your gun hand became steadier with skill improvements, and how that was integrated with the action engine, but in VO, I want it to be ALL skill, as far as the pilot is concerned.