As you can see, I couldn't think of a good tile for this, but please bear with me.

I got the levels I need. I got all the money I'll ever need. I'm in the guild I want. Now what? What am I supposed to do now? PvP all day fore the glory of simply winning? Sounds familiar? Read on.

I feel that the game needs something to work towards, or fight over. I know of one such thing: CtC convoys. If your faction "wins" - you get access to the Neutron Mk3 gun for a week. This is an actual goal to fight for, something that will give you an edge - and something that never ends! It might however be more worthwhile if the CtC gave access to gatlings, gauss and flares - the real top-notch guns. Now that's incentive!

Crafting will do it's share i guess. You'll have to work to produce the neat stuff.

We need more. How about contested territory? One or more systems that change faction ownership, decided by the outcome of the week's fighting? (Deneb springs to mind... Skirmish/patrol missions determine ownership of the system and stations. And the bonus... Hm. Access to a new line of Valkyrie or Promethius maybe? "Ah! Now that we have control over Deneb and the vast Dentric resources - we can offer our top-of-the-line fighters to the public again!"

More. Need more. Miners! Yes... "If you can bring in X thousand tons of XYZ ore to this or that station, next week we will sell THIS special thingee!"

Hey, this works for traders too... "If we receive X units of XYZ-goods, we'll be producing this little widget next week!"

More suggestions anyone? I'm interested in anything that, upon login, makes me go "Yikes! I have to get out there and kill / mine / trade! I better hurry - or the other guys will get the edge!"

Oh and... how about some functionality to prevent people from getting all green faction status and simply buying the cool gear from whoever won? I can think of two ways to do this:

1) Make it impossible to get all green status. Pleasing one faction means you annoy the heck out of another. One turns green - the other turns red.

2) Make the cool gear available to nation members only.

The devs plan to make the war actually shift, ie Itani can capture Geira or Serco Deneb, etc. Imagine the Serco bombing Eo again!

I agree with maclypse, crafting would make the game progress into a neverending stage of flux, approximating the pace of technological change with new weapons, new ships, new devices, etc etc etc. THEREBY: Giving everyone a reason to "play on".

Of course, if you left for 6 months and then came back, the whole universe would have passed you by with crafting. I think that's a good thing.

Oh yes, before the "real" economy and before the crafting would come: the faction standing fix.

With all factions interdependent on the other's ratings and such, with players able to align themselves with the various factions instead of the nations, possible actual player leadership OF those factions and/or nations using a guild-style setup, etc.

Obviously, the faction standing fix would eliminate being able to be liked by BOTH Itani and Serco at the same time, or by BOTH Tunguska and Orion at the same time, etc.

I've got an idea on further faction standing goodness, but It'll have to wait until I get home to post, I'll mull it over on the drive.

Honestly, I had expected more replies to this thread.

You need to flame to get replies :P

Seriously though, it's only been ONE day.

I wholeheartedly agree. I just haven't got the time to put a full response in yet... But, that is a very good way to put it - in Vendetta, you reach "Endgame" very quickly, and even then, there isn't a whole lot to keep you occupied (outside chatting/trolling/roleplaying).

Sometimes a thread won't get replies because the first post says it all perfectly and nothing more needs to be added! :D

Much of this is in the works, as I understand it.

maclypse, I fundamentally hate the no-all-green FS thing. However, I can see from the current system how many would come to the conclusion that it is necessary. The problem is that it is currently too easy to gain standing and too hard to lose it.

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/12124#147518

Yeah, I know a lot of people like to keep the possibility to be all-green. The effect has been seen in many games, this for one, and Freelancer to name another. As long as people role-play and go for the reputations they *should* have, everything is fine. However, not everyone do.

A lot of the all-green advocates are traders who don't want to be attacked by anyone, pirate hunters who never want to have to deal with npcs, and even worse, pirates who want free access to all space without dealing with npcs. No pirate hunter should ever be able to get green rep with pirate factions. No pirate should ever be able to get green nation status.

This game however, like many others, sets your reputation mostly depending on what you do to npcs. You can then freely proceed to behave any way you then please to other players - with little to no effect on the standing with the npc factions. This, in my opinion, is very sad. It also makes the IFF system useless between players, as their actual standings, and therefore color on your IFF has no actual bearing on their behaviour.

While I suppose it should be possible to be neutral with both serco and itani, I don't think it should be possible to be green-green. (As an analogy, during the eighties, the cia would not trust anyone that was associated with the kgb - even if they seemed to work for the cia as an agent.) Everyone that's even remotely associated with the enemy will always be watched, guarded and mistrusted. They might be tolerated (grey) but never liked (green).

Anyway... A side track. This isn't really what the original post was about.

maclypse...yes you hit it on the head. It's my understanding that what you described is exactly what the devs are working toward. Actually, you've only scratched the surface of what they have in mind. Part of the reason there aren't many replies is that it's all been said before, but yes you have the right idea.

I hope that eventually there won't even need to be missions to have the Serco go attack some target in smurf space...a group of people can just decide to go attack and destroy or take over a station. And each side could theoretically take it as far as they wanted...we could finally see the total eradication of all itanis.

It even has a picture.