Of course I'm assuming they must be under the control of the player. That's the point.

I like this idea and think it will be a great addition to the game. My concerns have already been brought up in other posts but I think they bear repeating.

The idea of where to spawn needs to be fleshed out a bit. I'm Serco with good standing in Nation space. I don't like the idea of going all the way to grey to mix it up and have to fly all the way back from SOL every time I get boomed. It is far too easy to die in VO for that. It's not an easy solution because I can see the point about controlling sections of space and the ease of respawning in the same system or even the next system and being back in the fight within a minute. I would suggest a "cloning" station at the outer system to each nation and maybe some scattered through the nation for a start.

For Border wars, Itani and Serco clone in the closest sector to the fight which is basically the same as booming. For UIT, allow them to spawn in that same sector for whichever side, if they boom in the border area.

I'm interested to see how this would work out in grey with "non-nation" players spawning with the potential of being a jump or two away and their opponents being several systems away.

The only way to know for sure is to slap it on the test server and go for it...I would be willing to log in and test.

Yes, the idea of where to spawn does need to be fleshed out a bit, that's why we're having this discussion. Thank you for actually making a suggestion in that regard : )

If I'm not mistaken Serco has a Capitol station closer to grayspace than Sol II. If not, perhaps one should be added. It would also be for Serco and Itani pilots who want to see a lot of action in gray to achieve high standing with UIT (800 makes sense I think), which will allow them to be cloned in Dau.

Yes, this slows down the pace of truly aggressive combat, but that's the point. It bears repeating that your pod will not be destroyed all the time, or even necessarily most of the time. With the current stats for the pods it would take the coordinated effort of multiple competent pilots to kill them with any consistency. My guess is that in an environment like the border wars, your pod might die 1/3 of the time if you're particularly unlucky. I think a good balance would be if the pod gets killed somewhere between 1/3 and 3/5 of the time if people are trying to kill it, and almost never by accident. This is why we have a test server.

Cloning stations in the border systems of nations should not be added though; it would be too risky to loose a station containing millions of people's cloned bodies to a lucky strike team incursion. I think a minimum of one jump through nation space as a "buffer zone" is a necessity.

I won't argue that people who are tri-hate get a break with the Odia cloning station being right in the middle of grayspace. However, that would be the first break they've gotten since the game's inception. Also consider that gray is essentially their nation; if all of a sudden everyone started doing most of their pvp combat in the middle of Serco space, it would make sense that the Serco have a bit of a home field advantage.

A cloning station in each Eo and Betheshee would be sufficient for the purposes of the border war. Playing with that on the test server would be the best way to determine exactly how frustrating it is, though. My stance is that you should be thankful you get a second chance at all after dying. Where I grew up, if you die you just get buried and society finds somebody else to fill your role.

Good points...

I'm not sure yet where I stand on Itani/Serco "cloning" in UIT space or vice versa. I'm going to give the genetic code for my star pilots to another nations?....

Tis true your pod may not always be killed. However, an organized group of rats spawning in Corvus can basically shut off access to certain areas of grey since they spawn close enough to get into certain areas quickly. I'm concerned about them having dedicated pod killers simply to keep pods from reaching a station. The whole push of late is to drive traders to grey and this may make them less likey to head that direction. Again this bears more testing.

I didn't envision a station full of frozen clones. :) I was thinking a machine at current stations that had communication ties to the capital and the make clones at need.... "Starpilot X4278 just died. Set the machine and let's get him back out there" *poof* comms get's the genetic code from capital archives, and the machine make a new one....take the station...the code is in the capital

Agreed...grey is the backyard of the rats, but by choice.... we can debate that later...my thinking is that GS has been trying to drive traders to grey and this has the potential to make traders not want to bother....

BW is a whole other animal...

yeah but I'm not thankful that I get to live again in a video game....I'm not sure I'd play one where you start over every time...heh

Haha, the original Sonic The Hedgehog was like that, and so was Nethack. It sucked beyond belief to start completely over every time you died...

From the standpoint of pure realism I agree with you about Sercos being cloned in UIT or whatever, but it isn't too large a departure from realism and it would probably add a lot of playability. I'd like to hear what others think about that as well.

I imagine most pirates want traders to come into gray. It gets mighty lonely out there with no one to hunt. As such, they probably won't kill trader pods. Escorts might get podded though, along with the people who fly around grayspace with swarms and just shoot anything that hails them in case it might be an ebil pierat.

Indeed. Here's how it works: you fly a trade ship in Grey and don't pay me, and I'll kill you, take your cargo, and leave your pod alone. With luck, you'll try hauling something else past me soon enough.

You fly anything else and get in my way while I'm working those trade ships? I'll pop your ship and then I will most assuredly send your ass back home to momma. [VPR] et al. are a distraction from being a pirate, not the reason I became one in the first place.

Odia is the corvus capitol....not sedina.

It is a hard thing to trust the sercos not to re-engineer us and I am certainly suspicious of zealots like the Itanis But whatever is a UIT to do? Youse pays Youse monies and youse takes youse chances..

So the scenario is, the player has his/her ship destroyed and is ejected in a pod. The fire from nearby hive bots may cause the destruction of that pod, and too much armor or thrust in a random direction can result in the pod being inside an asteroid or getting away too quickly with almost no damage at all.

What if a small time of invulnerability, say 5 seconds where you cannot be locked (too much time can let them get away too fast, too little can cause a quick death. Definitely a debatable time limit) allows the player to boost away as fast as possible from the fire, at a speed that lets a combat ship catch up, but not necessarily every time. For example, 215 m/s is probably sufficient to get away from that fire fast enough, but still be catchable by ANY COMBAT ship (maybe not a bomber rag, but a bomber rag on pod duty sounds out of place). Also a debatable number.

This post is about time limit, don't troll about the speed.

~CS

PaKettle - no one claimed that Sedina is the Corvus capitol.

Sraer - 5 seconds is about 4 seconds too long. The only time you have a chance at hitting this thing is before it accelerates. Also, I think we have more or less come to an agreement that we're giving the pod a non-turbo speed of 160 m/s and no turbo ability. Unless you want to bring in a fresh argument against those stats, please do not make posts that assume otherwise. The fact that your post ignores several points that have already been discussed and more or less decided upon, without mentioning any of them, leads me to believe that you haven't skimmed the thread.

Giving you the benefit of the doubt and addressing your proposal, I'd have to note that a ship that starts at 215 m/s and gets 5 second head start is literally uncatchable. An empty X-1 or hound couldn't do it, much less a normal combat ship with weapons. 5 seconds is an immensely long time. If you don't believe me, get into a dogfight with somebody, and right in the thick of it, let go of your controls and count to 5. Or race someone across a couple sectors, giving them a 5 second head start. Or have someone turbo directly at you in an infiniboost ship at 215 m/s, while you are sitting at a complete stop. when they pass you, start accelerating. After five seconds, you may begin firing... except that they won't be in the same sector anymore.

The pod should ideally start at somewhere near 60 m/s in the direction the destroyed ship was heading. I personally am not in favor of any period of invulnerability. However, if we must, a period of 1 second of invulnerability would be more than sufficient to prevent accidental spillover damage. This, combined with a maximum non-turbo speed of 160 m/s and an okay thrust would make catching one of these a fair chase for an average combat situation, I believe.

@ladron

Just a couple of question....
After you blasted your opponent ship why would you chase defenseless pod in the first place?
Do we really want to make a "pop the pod" griefer festival a regular game content?
Do we really want to encourage griefers and make them extra happy by allowing them to blast pods?

After I blasted my opponent's ship, why would I chase a defenseless pod? Well, I wouldn't. Unless I had a good reason that I wanted to hurt that pilot. Some examples of good reasons are:

1) I am an Itani or Serco pilot fighting the opposing faction in a sector I am trying to control. It is impossible to maintain superiority over an area of space with enemies popping up like whack-a-moles, so I kill them all as permanently as possible.

2) I am a trader or escort pilot, and a pirate has attacked my convoy. After destroying his ship, I want to remove him from the fight as far as possible to insure the safety of my cargo

3) You get the idea. If you actually play Vendetta Online and not "shoot stuff Sedina B-8", I think you could think of plenty of reasons to shoot pods, and plenty of other scenarios in which you simply wouldn't.

Do we really want <blah griefers wah hugs plz etc>?

The idea is to add realism to the game. Realism makes the game more believable and more immersive, and by extension more fun. Making death matter will not encourage griefers, it will discourage them. People would be considerably less like to just fly around shooting everyone if it were possible to impose retribution on them.

I love the idea and would be glad with anything that will make dying actually matter in Vendetta, but it sounds like it has a few kinks to work out.

-(Exploitable) Traveling using the escape pod: Theoretically, one could purposefully /explode and then run around in circles forever or they could just stay in the pod and travel really effing fast. My proposed fix would be to add a fuel timer and then keep the "home" system (if a player manages to get to any station then they'd be transported directly to whatever they set as their home) so the fuel timer on the escape pod wouldn't discourage players from traveling too far from their station with their favorite ship. This doesn't make a lot of RP sense (the homing part at least) but it will keep it simple enough for now to it to be implemented immediately. In the future we could make it so that pods can only dock in "escape pod rescue bays" located in every system, sort of a reverse of the "graveyard" idea of most other mmo's. (The idea being that station docking bays aren't compatible with escape pods and an escape pod rescue bay would be. But since those don't have any spare ships for you to purchase they would just send you on the first uber-shuttle flight back to your home or the nearest available Capitol station.)

-Lightning Mines: anyone notice that if you used lightning mines to pop your opponent's ship, whether you want it to or not the lightning mine is going to burn right through the escape pod as well. This also goes for controlling your weapon fire after an opponent has died (i.e. they only needed one flare to die but you shoot two because you only wanted to net them, turns out your first one hit and your second one landed on the pod. "Oops!"). I don't know how to fix this one, maybe you can have a button that toggles whether or not you do damage to pods? Give it a nice big red UI spot so you know whether it's on or off? Can anyone else provide more input on this one?

And for those of you complaining that griefers will love this new feature, they probably won't. Think about it, it gives a second option of where to respawn if you are being station killed or system locked.

@ladron

There are some basic flaws in your theory:
Main one - pods idea is all about delaying player re-spawning. It takes xx time to get to a station with a pod, get a new ship and get back into action. Destruction of your ship has a meaning, you are out of action, you end in a tiny pod and have to paddle to a station.

1. Border skirmish: if you pop a pod, player will instantly re-spawn at station and return to combat (basically the same as it is now).

2. Trader/pirate conflict: if you pop a pirate pod (presuming action is in grey-space) he will be pissed and call his friends to ambush you or get back in action asap. If you leave pod alone, it gives you ample time to get away before he returns (he has to get to station, take a ship, etc).

3. I don't get the idea. I do play VO for fun, not just to shoot ppl in b-8 and I can think of only one reason to shoot a pod and not just any pod at that - only a pod of a known griefer.

Things are not always white and black, gray area is vast. All actions have reactions and this "pod" case, if played like you propose, could lead to a lot of bad blood, griefing, station camping and generally transform VO into a playground for frustrated teen misfits.

A lot of bad blood, griefing, station camping and generally transform VO into a playground for frustrated teen misfits.

All of which we have now. The whole point is to make death a bit more painful and debilitating.

Not to that extent Lecter. Pod killing would move things further.

"Not to that extent Lecter. Pod killing would move things further"

This is what my earlier posts were alluding to. A rat will boom you and let your pod go hoping you get to a station and try to ship your goods/run through on a mission again so he can boom you again.

A griefer will boom you then your pod and not even think about it. Doesn't really care if you are shipping something of worth that can be sold or not. There are far more of them than rats it seems these days.

I agree that death needs to mean something, I'm just not keen on going all the way back to the capital stations everytime. In the grand scheme of things, how often do we have people trying to completely own a sector? The rats want traders to come through and the traders want to come through....the PvPer want to boom each other. All of this without flying half around the galaxy to do it.

Not an easy solution.

Apparently no one read what I had said about it getting rid of griefing if anything. If a player's pod is destroyed, they return back to a Capitol station of the highest reputation to them and the closest of those of them. Also, being transported to Corvus (the only unprotected Capitol) would mean that that player has triple nation KOS and would probably actually be able to fend for themselves or afford a greyhound or something. It would make griefing a lot more difficult unless you think that the definition of griefing is simply killing somebody. Right now, all open pvp MMOs have different methods available for respawning to prevent camping in the case it gets too serious except for VO. Something like this is exactly what we need seeing that it performs the great feat of doing all this while giving death the meaning it needs in VO.

Thank you Shank.

In addition to Shank's point, I'd like to add that most "greifers" are actually just people looking to jack up their pk count. They definitely don't want to kill pods, it would just slow down that process. There are, of course, some people who are just looking to repeatedly kill noobs, and those people will be foiled by the pod system if they kill the pod too.

There is something that people seem to be losing sight of in the "omg griefers will kill all our pods!" discussion: the pods are going to be very hard to kill by yourself. A griefer working alone would have a very hard time killing you and then killing your pod, unless you stopped paying attention. If you've just been killed by a griefer and you're in your pod, with the various pod specs that have been discussed, you should not die to the same person, unless you're a noob.

The problem would only start to be serious when you had groups of griefers banding together, which is pretty rare, at least for real griefers. As ladron points out, most of the griefers of which you speak are just bored pirates who, with no traders to shoot, have turned to killing things for fun. If you kill a pod, the things you're killing are not going to come back anywhere near as quickly, and that's not as much fun. It'll be extremely hard to do, even in a reasonably sized group, and unless you've managed to really piss them off they probably won't even try.

Also, to address a couple of Bojan's points, the pod respawn point for Border Skirmish would be placed farther away from the action than the nearest stations to Deneb (at least in all the discussion so far that's been the implication). That way it would take you longer to fly from getting your pod killed than to fly back in your pod and get a new ship. The way you are couching your arguments, it is true, there are very few good reasons to pop a pod; however, your arguments ignore a good deal of the discussion that has happened so far, and addresses the points that you bring up.

tl;dr The pods are going to be damn hard to kill, to the point that it will be unlikely that dying in your pod will be the most common occurrence. And there are good reasons to pop pods.

Lot of assumptions and speculations about pods appeared in this thread.
Most of them are about kind of "superlight" zippy, hard to kill pods, etc, etc.
All in order to escape griefers and pod kills and yet quite a number of replies are from guys who would just love to kill pods and are jumping to the opportunity to make it happen.
Uber pods yes but not so uber that me and my buddies cannot go around and kill them all. Looks like a lot of small devilish griefer alter egos are sitting inside otherwise decent players.

Sorry guys, if you want things to be realistic, this is not the way.

If unrealistic uber pods are ok with you, then, fine - make them invulnerable and automated transports to the nearest station. Players can just sit and enjoy the scenery.
No pod kills, no griefers to worry about. You have your uber pod, you live forever.