How about having a combination of skills & experience?

example you start with a basic skills like weapons, ship control, engineering, shield interface and trade & industry. like Eve, then you gain experience from fighting, courrier, trading and npc killing, the higher this skill the more certain factions like you.

Example: a level of 5 gets you unique fighting ships and opens up certain dungeons/missions/complexes.

Basically the higher you get the more you get, be it loot, Blueprints, skills book drops etc. Have it so you can but basic skill books from the market, but to get anything better you have to complete certain missions.

The higher the skillbook level, the better the ship/ weapon you can use.

Example: to fly a interceptor you would need skill books Ship control lvl 3, Interceptor Skill lvl 1, Engineering lvl 2, Speed Control lvl 3. Now as i said earlier some will be avaliable on the market, some are only avaliable from certain missions, and random ones drop from Bots or Pirates.

To fly Serco/Itani/UIT ships you would need to build up the faction and buy/complete that factions missions or kill there npc's/bots to get there relevant skills.

Trade and Industry you could buy from rare factions, to help develop certain unique weapons and even ships. the level would also affect this. You could also have mining certain ore type, have moon mining. There is also the possiblity of having player structures similar to star sonata or Eve.

And way in the future planet landing, planet building and resource control.

I would love to be able to help Vendetta achieve this btw.

More as i think of it :)

First: Form. If you edit your posts to be set up like a text you would find in a book (i.e. with paragraphs), more people are more likely to read it attentively, instead of dismissing it out of hand.

Second: Content. It is considered 'bad form' to bring up EVE Online in here. I do not know why, but there is usually a harsh reaction to its being mentioned.

Also, the developers did not intend the current skill/level system to persist until the end of time, but instead perceive it to be a place-holder until they have time&space to introduce a Better Version^TM, namely one that employs mission trees (I am imagining something akin to EV Nova, another no-no, IMO).

Please note that I do not think your idea is bad, wrong, or a combination thereof, but that I only tell you how things currently are, or seem to be.

when trying to copy stuff from other games, you should focus on the good parts. the skill system in eve is not one of those.

Actually, VOs license system, while not made up of the same skills, already functions much like that, in terms of what content the skills unlock. Higher license level give access to better ships, more advanced weaponry, and new missions, just like you suggest they should.

So I can't really understand what you are proposing. A complete skill make-over that mirrors the skills of EVE? (Brilliant game, by the way, but extremely different from VO. You would find more similarities between EVE and WoW)

As for you other suggestions, such as resource control and player structures, I know that many such features are planned. Planet landing is not. After all, NOT EVEN EVE has implemented that... :-P

The next game from Egosoft may/may not include planet landing/building and resource managment. thats all i can speculate on.

Sorry for mentioning games like Eve,Wow etc, this is for comparison only.

Yeah, but the X series are single-player games, so far. Makes quite a bit of difference.

But I still don't understand the purpose of your original post. What changes do you propose to VOs license system?

none, apparently.

Either add to it, or make it easier by introducing more, this will also enable you to expand for future updates :)

Oh and forgot to mention, X is looking at MMo/MMORPG :)) and it will happed soon, they want to get everything working right in single player, graphics etc first.

planet building?
i dont even think the devs will ever make planets much more important than looking pretty and spinning around.

I think I remember the Devs mentioning something along the lines of player skills, such as the Itani energy focus (psychic shield thang). Those would probably take the player above and beyond the normal range of gameplay though.

true that, pointsman

That sounds so cool, Mynt, perhaps in conjunction with the mine forcefield idea.

I must say that if Egosoft releases an X Online game, VO might be in a bit of a tad of a bunch of trouble. I've played around with X3: Reunion a bit, and in some ways, it's a game that combines the fast action of VO with many of the more advanced micro-management features of EVE. The combat is nowhere near as fast or fun as in VO, of course, but it is more advanced, thanks to turrets, weapon configurations and more combat-related equipment, and still twitch-based. And the micro-management stuff is fairly advanced, and well-suited to a MMORPG. Even the trading has a few good points that VO lacks.

But then, we're talking about a game franchise that has been developed over the course of three games plus and expansion, so perhaps VO will surpass the X games in all those areas eventually. Since VO's combat alone is enough to make me stay with Vendetta even if some sort of X Online monster is released, things can only get better from here on ;-)

Egosoft will at some stage release an online game, X games started out to be like Elite, it has evolved both in micro-managment and fighting, as well as the latest graphics technology. Every game has evolved through each release, they will have stiff competition with other games in the same field.

I have also emailed John about joining the team to help with VO, it does have a great potential :)