ok who thinks this should be a good idea that you can buy capitol ships u know the huge ones i want one of those VO can u make that hapon cause those ships are beast

Everyone, including the game developers, wants this to happen. There is some infrastructure and art that needs to be created first, but it is in the works now.

o goody cant wait to get one

i think there is some debate however regarding whether indavidual players should be able to purchass them or if you should need guild backing to purchass a capitle ship.

My opinion is an individual willing to do the massive work (money acquisition, ores, components, etc) required to purchase and maintain a capital ship should be able to. I know I've been storing ore and saving money like crazy for that day. If I can't, what good is all the money I've been working for?

Don't worry tumblemonster. I totally agree with you, but if it comes down to that happening...

Have no fear for I, Lost Commander Conquest, Commander of the mighty Sylvanas, shall found the Independent Starship Captains' Guild! Its sole purpose will be to provide a foundation through which individuals of particular wealth may organize the purchase and construction of their own vessels, no matter the size or technical legality over in the uncivilized nation-states.

I shall do the same with stations if necessary, because I want to own and control my own station, damnit! :D

actually,
that's a prety good idea.

make guild backing nesesary for captile ship ownership, and in doing so create a player run shipyarding buisness.

Don't require guild backing, just make the prices realistic. It should work out to be so expensive that pretty much the only way to afford one is with guild funds.

This brings up an interesting thought: loans. I know it's been suggested a lot of times to have banks, and I don't think the computer should be a bank. I think if a guild wants to play the part of a bank, let them give loans. One problem is that there would have to be an effective way of enforcement, such as reposession of ships.

the guild could declaire the customer KOS if they don't make their payments.

"You haven't made your last 3 schedueled payments, your account has therefore been forwarded to the Commadore of the First Union Bank, forclosure fleet. upon ecountering a First Union vessil you will be given 30 seconds to pay your balance or you will be destroied. furthermore any damages you inflict on First Union ships will be added to you balance. have a nice day"

Great, the guild could be [LSI] - Loan Sharks Incorporated

That would be a good punishment. I just thought it would be more effective, and you could get your investment back, if when they docked, they lost their ship (or whatever the cap ship equivalent will be). Maybe in addition to KOS, they can't dock in the nation the guild is affiliated with (if they are affiliated with a nation).

well, while it might be more realistic if you could actually reposess their ship, it would be difficult if not impossable to implementg that capabuility for a player run guild without opening the perverbial can of worms.

so if bank-guilds are player run, the will need to have player enforcable punishments.

Any change opens a can of worms. I'm not afraid of worms. Maybe ringworm.

If a guild owned bank abused the power to reposess a ship, would anyone take a loan from them again? This system would probably police itself. In the event that it does prove impossible, it could be shifted to a computer-controlled bank (or a computer-assisted guild-owned bank), and the can would be sealed. There would be competition, just like in real life, for low rates and bigger loans. It would be interesting, but for now this is not important. Once player/guild owned cap ships are available, we'll know more about how loans need to work in the game. As long as no one complains that they don't have a capital ship (because it would be dumb if everyone with an account could easily get one), we'll be fine.

No PC. Such a repossession system would be unable to effectively police itself because there are no accepted official channels whereby one can procure clearly good information, and this will be doubly so once the player base expands significantly.

Also, everyone with an account should be able to easily get a capital ship. I believe a lot of people like the idea of being a captain - and it isn't exactly cool to be captain of a single-man fighter that no one else is in or under you. As such, PC capships are likely to be a significant customer draw, especially for the trading/mining/crafting types - possibly as much as the PvP draw from FPS fighter combat in VO. However, by "capital ship" I do not mean "HAC"; I mean "Behemoth Heavy" or similarly sized gunships/tradeships. I think it should be reasonably possible to get a Trident within 6-8 weeks or so (about 60-80 hours of game time).

Maybe if there was a computer-controlled intermediary for loans that would be unbiased and know when a player defaults on a loan, and notifies both the borrower and lender of the fact. The lender then would have the option to negotiate with the borrower or reposess the ship. If they choose to reposess, and the borrower refuses to give up the ship, then that player gets something on his/her criminal record and if the lender blows the guy up he's justified, and depending on who's involved, the criminal may or may not be allowed to use certain stations until the matter is resolved.

I think that anyone with an account should have the opportunity to get a capital ship, but that it should be a significant achievement. Fine, of course smaller ones should be somewhat easier than bigger ones, and I'm not saying you need license levels of 1000000 across the board (I think we need a different system for licenses, anyway, leveling is boring), but it shouldn't be easy. You would need the money to buy one, and then of course you would have to be able to keep it. I agree it would be a customer draw. If I came to this game today, though, and was able to captain a capital ship next week, either that means that I have no life and nothing to do (true, until school starts) or I would think to myself, "That was ridiculous. Does everyone have one of these?" More kinds and sizes of ships, "capital" and otherwise, would help, and I know they're working on that. It would also be interesting and fun if the way you "level" up to the point where you have a capital ship license is that you serve on the crew of one, and get promotions based on what kind of work/action the ship sees and how well you perform.

Eventually the boring xp part of leveling will be (mostly?) done away with and IIRC there will be mission strings for getting licenses.

I think I would like to keep the "crew" of capital ships down to gunners and the captain.

I agree with you for the crew thing. For now, location specific damage is good enough for me until a good reason is found for other crew to have specific effects. We're not there yet.

I have a silly question. I'm not up on all the acronyms, what is IIRC? I feel dumb asking.

I would hope that fixed missions are eventually gone (other than tuturials) and instead players involved in station activities and government offer most of the missions, and the rest are simply deliver what is needed or a bounty system or nation war or offered directly between players through dialogue. I agree, though that that is a much better and more rewarding way to give licenses. Especially if licenses aren't just numbers but given names such as: Capital ship license, heavy weapons license, Class II mining license, something like that. It's more realistic and fun.

NP, always good to ask - we all had to feel that same silliness at one point or another. IIRC = If I Recall Correctly.

I think there might be a problem with making capital ships prohibitively expensive (we're talking hundreds of millions, anything else is not).

Casual players not in a guild (whether capital ship ownership requires guild backing or not is actually immaterial) will never, ever get the chance to fly one, even though they possibly started playing because they were interested in capital ship combat and drawn to the game by that.

This actually ties in with other posts that mentioned a medium-capital class, containing such ships as the Behemoth Heavy, and corvette and gunship type ships. They could be 'moderately' priced (tens of millions) and would allow even the weekend warriors to get the feel of standing on their own starship's bridge.