Inc's always saying he's trying to make VO more "interactive", ie all players working together. However, I really like the capturable stations idea, but to my knowledge it has always been suggested as a PvP/Military mission, no use for traders or miners.

But then I was thinking, it wouldn't make sense for a station who's ownership continually changes to keep the same unlimited supply of goods. Maybe for a high amount of money (this makes it very worth while for a trader or a miner to be involved in the conflict), traders bring in outside supplies, and miners mine them, and then whatever they sell becomes buyable, but again at a big price so that its extremely worthwhile for a trader to do this.

However for this idea to work best, we'd need weapons and equip as cargo. Also I'm not quite sure on how traders would stock the station with ships. Any ideas?

And to make this even more heart-pounding, you could remove any stations from one or two sectors surrounding the capturable station, so enemy pilots can blockade the sector if they don't yet have enough people to take the sector. Then eventually weapons would run out, and the blockaders could get in and take the station.

I don't like the idea of losing your station. It's just too much to lose. Somewhere else, we had a "siege" example of how you could destroy a station, but it would take a LONG time and the unopposed, concerted effort of MANY people.

For most people/guilds, a station would cost like 100 million just to START. I mean, that's a years' worth of trading & mining. No one will ever build a station if there is the chance of losing that.

That's why I suggested having "rental" space in existing stations instead of completely new stations somewhere. Because the whole POINT of having a station is that it's always there, even when you're not online to defend it.

I propose that stations be vulnerable when they are in the initial construction phase, but when complete, they are as industructible as the ones we have now. I don't particularly like the idea of "capturing" a station, either. It will skew the balance of the game towards SOLELY people with combat skills, and the whole REASON to have crafting and stations and such is to make this game more interesting to people who are NOT interested in PvP or are not good at it for whatever reason. ( ...like Smitt >:P )

But if you have a station that doesn't make goods on its own, and doesn't have any friendly stations within a few sector jumps, to adequately defend it you'd need supplies. Supplies brought by traders and miners and those who are too crappy at fighting to do anything else (like Leber). It's not destructable as a station, and wouldn't take any money at all, besides the cost of your ships and any supplies you fly in.

Thus your argument loses all validity.

Well we could always make chars and hand weaps and fight inside the station for control while fighters are docked! :)

I think that stations should be capships in stationary form. You could set the station to run at a certain hull %.

I'm 100% with Leber, rental space!!

As for how to trade and stock ships at stations, easy, that's what capital class vessels are for, with the large cargo bays. A HAC sized vessel should be able to transport at minimum 20 light fighters/10 medium/5 heavies, at once.

Wow, great idea, sure to bring more heart pounding to vendetta!
I cam up with a few other heart-pounding ideas:

*More lag. Few things compare to the heart-pounding one experiences during a bad lagspike. Will the bot kill you? Will you get away unscathed? And even after, when the former proves to be true, the heart-pounding just goes on!

*Greater divide between newbs and the rest of us. Granted, not so much for non-newbish people, but think of the heart-pounding a newbie experiences when a clever ace sweeps him aside repeatedly, without any sort of consequences! And newbies is where the heart-pounding has to strike! We have to hook them while they're young!

*More smack-talk. Alright, there isn't much the devs can do to increase this bit, except for maybe make more stats and badges to feed peoples' egos, but there is no denying the heart-pounding powers of smack talk. This is an opportunity for us, as a community, to band together and make smack-talk of global proportions! Also, the badge thing from the devs would be nice.

*More pretentious reviewers. Why, just today I met someone named "Andrew d'Bacon" or something of the sort, and let me tell you, that was one hell of a heart pounding! I say we breed more of his sort, get MacFormat to publish one article each, and then get them a permanent job at blogcritics.com. Soon enough we can have millions of little Andrew d'Bacons running around, instead of just tens of thousands, like we do now.

*Less balance. Kinda covered in the "newbs-vets divide" suggestion, but hey, it's important, so let's mention it again! The heart-pounding that happens when your ship is torn apart by an entirely unbalanced one is AMAZING, and let's face it, regardless of what the optimists say, there just aren't enough of those moments in VO. This is something the devs should get on ASAP.

You know, I think I'm gonna split this off and make a new thread. These ideas are just too good to be framed by this thread.

"And let me tell you, that was one hell of a heart pounding!"

Genka, you've made me break my "Just ignore him" stance. Nice job.

Lol

What about turning Deneb into a system with capturable stations? That is, the stations can't be bought, but the two warring nations can capture stations and keep control over them (until lost again). This would be a real escalation of the war, which IMHO is in line with current RP events. These stations would have to work in a different way than regular ones:

* the station has a finite amount of goods, so trade convoys will be strategically important

* weapons are created from raw materials (which would be "consumed"), so a supply of specific ores will be necessary

* when some good is sold out, it's no longer available. this will make blockades effective in helping to overtake the station (unless broken :)

* equipment will by market mechanics be expensive at these stations (more expensive than corvus)

The tricky thing is how to allow people to keep a station without being online all the time, but at the same time give the other nation a chance to take it.

I think a reasonable compromise would be to have a "Station Siege" / "Station Defense" mission that becomes available at certain times a week (like an event). This mission gives the opposing nation the opportunity to capture the station back, or it is a defense mission for the nation currently in control (UIT can join following the same rules as for Border Patrol).

The criteria for taking over a station could be that you need to dock with a serco/itani station mainframe computer in your cargo, which should be very heavy and/or many cargo units, so the ship docking with it will be easy to intercept and kill for defense fighters.

I don't know if there needs to be a mission, I was thinking that if people want a reward, they can bring in some ferric ore which sells for like 20 times more at this station

Also I think it would be best to have some empty systems surround it, so that if someone dies (and is not homed there) its more significant. Also this way trading becomes a bit more dangerous as there's more spots to be killed