I don't think leasing ships is a good idea.

Simply because the lifetime of a ship in vendetta is... small.

But hiring stations seems ok to me :)

Would anyone mind me asking why encouraging guilds is a bad thing?

To be honest (no offense to ITAN - you guys rule :)) but as the game expands, we should encourage guild like play and right now there seems to be a monopoly of 2 or 3 important guilds.

To put it bluntly, in my opinion, single player owned stations is ridiculous. seriously, ridiculous. Player owned capitals a little less ridiculous but not massively. I can see the transport ships being single player though...

anyway... my thoughts.

Spine

Encouraging guilds is a bad thing because the purpose of a gulid is non-functional. Therefor if you give it a function other than simply existing, it can become mandatory to have a guild for it's function. This results in everyone being in their own one person guild. This results in the Devs coming up with a hard-line minimum number of people for a guild. This results in players using meta-gaming techniques (such as disposable trials) to get around these hard lines.

Basically, it forces an ultimatum where everyone is their own guild (so why have the guild function anyways?) or creates a Player vs. Dev situation where the smartest way to the play the game involves situations that become increasingly, perilously close to exploiting the rules. (*ahem*, EVE)

The purpose of guilds since time immortal has been nominal. You *are* something, and simply *being* part of it is the purpose of it existing. When you become something in order to get something out of it, conflict is inevitable.

That's interesting and I see the potential problem situations.

But.

<hate to bring up eve again...> POS's. They are only deployable for corp/alliance. With my personal wealth I could have bought, fitted and deployed 40 small ones. I was rich but it's still a managable 1 person operation.

Very few people exploited that one with 1 man corps...

and the kind of prices we are talking about for stations aren't one man amassible <new word> figures.

That's my view anyway.

Spine

Ohhh yes they do... that's why anchoring isn't available for trial accounts.

My point is it's not common practice and even the people that do do it don't cause a problem...

The anchoring is also probably to do with the fact you could easily buy a ton of small secure cargo containers and deploy them in their thousands causing uber-online-spacial-lag-terrorism in jita.

Spine

They don't cause a 'problem', no, not in the sense you use it in. They cause something worse; they cause the uneasy feeling that if you play the game to win, some GM may swoop in and tell you that you're exploiting the system, or worse, 'griefing'.

For example, I used trial accounts to create my guild, because there's a hard limit involved; you need 10 people to join to make it. Now I feel coerced to come back and troll people, and pretend that I'm actually doing something productive, so that it doesn't get deleted.

Another example is the /vote mute system. It has a hard limit of 20 people, so if you don't like someone, you can start campaigning against them and force people who didn't vote at all to lose communication with that someone. This actually has strategic value, and when we have more people, it *will* get used as a weapon against your enemies, or it will get changed.

TLDR; giving guilds advantages forces people to each be in their own guild to be competitive. This makes guilds pointless. The only fix is a hardline minimum number of members. Democracies ruin MMO's.

Certain guilds think they should own, or have access to, certain things because they think they are "special".

If a person not in a guild has the resources required to build and maintain a cap ship, and the eventual loss there of, then let em have em.

Saying otherwise is like saying only airlines should be allowed to have big jet airplanes. If Travolta wants to fly his own 707 then let him, it's between him and the neighbors :)

I personally think guilds are the flesh of an MMO. They encourage players to combine forces, strategy, and (in our case) credits. They allow for people of like interests to come together.

And vardonx, and everyone of your disposition, has a great point: If they have the money, time, and desire, why not let then build cap-ships? They can, but they need to realize that the function of a productive cap-ship almost necessitates multiple players on the turrets to engage multiple targets. And, at this point, they might as well start a guild to go with their common interest.

Cap-ships should not be limited to guilds, but stations should be. Stations offer services that a lone player should not have access to.

* As a note to the function of cap ships, if we really want them to be used by groups instead of individuals, they should nerf the accuracy of the turrets so that it becomes unreasonable to engage small targets. Cap-ships were brought about to counter one another, not a fleet of tiny ships. Hence having players on-board that can launch and defend against smaller fighters, and (in cooperation with their cap-ship) eventually take down the shields of the enemy. Maybe even some new weapons on cap-ships to even the playing field and provide some newer strategy.

Ok, I'll stop now...

-R IBA 3.14rat

Stack you wrote my post for me.

Thankyou.

I'm 100% behind everything the above post says.

*feels empty now he doesn't have a point to put across*

Spine

See, that's the thing though... Cap-ships don't require multiple people, either in consideration of resources, or attention. Some people are just going to be 10 times more productive and skilled than others.

When your logic is "if it might as well, then it definitely should!", well, that's just spitting on any exceptional people.

Spine- Thank you. :)

Super- If you pit one cap-ship against another without support on either side, the recharge of shields will make it so that neither is ever destroyed. Thus, you need more than one person to kill it, and conversely, you need more than one person to operate it at maximum efficiency. There was no 'definitely should' in there, it's simply that if the same people wish to utilize a cap-ship over and over again, the simplest solution is already available: Guilds.

-R IBA 3.14rat

Think so? Only one way to find out I suppose.

The way I see the restrictions and how they should be is simple.

stations - launch for guild.

capitals - owned by players.

I also think stations should be crafted not bought, this would create a more dynamic market for the miners to exploit.

Maybe even have capitals crafted?

Spine

Incarnate has already said that capitals will be crafted...So guilds *will* have an easier time getting them, but it won't be impossible for a player to get them too. Guilds will be more effective with them because they can actually *Man* them. However, in the future, that will be combated by being able to hire NPC gunners and so on...

Well...

I guess the simple make-caps-solo-viable is have npc gunners available on cap launch. But are we sure we want that?

i had a thought... how are caps going to dock??

Do they fit in the normal bays? (I've never seen it...)

Spine

They don't dock. And probably, they don't fly. They navigate. After, what's the purpose of flying a five million ton piece of metal. You're not going to be able to dodge that blast. Essentially, capital ships, esp. the bigger ones, are flying stations.

Phish, you have just said something very profound! and BTW capships do fly, just slowly, read the wiki for more details.

I am thinking instead of Guild-controlled stations, guild-controlled capships that act as stations. Firstly, let me say that this does not exclude individuals from piloting their own capships. These floating stations would be able to fight against one another, maybe have NPC gaurds, and sell items that they manufacture. They would need materials to manufacture things like ships and weapons, and could have their own 'faction standing' to stop enemy guilds' members from docking. They would have jump capability, thus be able to 'hide' in the empty sectors of a system. (who is going to spend upwards of 1.5hrs looking from sector to sector for the enemy capship?)

Wars between opposing guilds would be spectacular!

Feel free to rip apart my idea, or build it to colossal heights!

-R IBA 3.14rat

*raises stacks idea to the heavens*

hehe i like it

but i do think they should be findable somehow, just hard to find.

otherwise capital station wars would be off :/

I like the idea of blasting stations to pieces... with other stations.

Problems:

1) It might look a little silly (crazy pew pew machines killing eachother while traders dock and sell their goods.)

2)The travelling would be confusing to say the least. 'Guys wheres the station?'...

3) Too abstracted from everything else in the game - player ships arent going to break the surface...

Aside from this, id love to see it in game :)

Spine

1) You mean blockade runners dodging firing to supply their besieged station?

The "blockade runners" could also be achieved by attacking a station with Capital ships. I say that you either can't "fly" stations, or the ones you can are smaller ones built for that purpose (essentially be oddly-shaped cappies). Also, Stations should be able to sustain a much much higher amount of damage then Capital Ships, as well as having more fire power.

I also like the idea of being able to take over both capital ships and stations. This would raise similar issues to the "disabling" issues, but I think a good idea in the long run.

Thoughts?