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Escape Pod fix for Space Quake

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Aug 04, 2009 peytros link
ok honestly bojan what the fuck is wrong with you? do you have some sort of confrontational complex or something? is having a consequence for losing and then losing your pod such a horrible thing? is roleplaying a serco killing an itanis pod griefing? if anything pods transporting people back to their nations capital will make people harder to grief because they wont be homed in d-14.

I really hope the devs will see through these baseless "griefer" arguements honestly bojan is starting to sound like hes running for office or something. Every time someone makes a suggestion to change the game it's the same crowd yelling "The greifers wll take advantage of this!" this is a simulation game and when you die and lose it should have consequences for "griefers" and care-bears alike
Aug 04, 2009 Dr. Lecter link
I've gotta second peypey here. First, the idea that these will be impossible to take out solo is fucking retarded. It's an escape pod, not a goddamn Tron bike: the only real point of making it beefier than an observer is to prevent it from dying accidentally. If someone wants to take 15 seconds out of their busy day to turn their attention to your pod after they pop your ship, then one bright spray of red ice in space later... you should be waking up in the nearest Nation capital station with which you have good standing (Odia if Tri Nation KOS). The whole idea is to give people an option for making death mean more than "Oh, I'll just respawn in the exact same rig and be back in the sector 10 seconds later!"

Second, this won't be abused. Remember, it's an OPTION. One with significant negative consequences if seeing your opponent again in the near future is somehow important to your gameplay. Pirates? Generally won't employ it on traders, but will on VPR if they're working. VPR? Won't employ it on pirates when furballing for fun, will employ it when working. Serco? Itani? Same fucking thing, kiddies. If you're having some fun fights, you'll let the pod leave so you can keep playing with your pal. If you're playing for keeps, you'll send the loser home to mommy, and you better have some other reason for being in that sector, because they won't be playing with you again any time soon.

True griefers? Yes, they'll kill your pod just because they like frustrating you. There's a solution, however: get a friend and kill them and their pod. And guess what? They won't be back in 10 seconds either. At worst, they'll have to come from Odia. If you really want to chill in Grey space, deal with it. Otherwise, continue on with whatever brought you there and then leave before he's back from the dead center of Grey.
Aug 04, 2009 diqrtvpe link
I agree with most of your points, Lecter, but I'm still of the opinion that these will be extremely difficult to take out by yourself. I'm pretty sure that with any of the stats posted above I could evade a single person trying to kill me with relative ease. Immediately after launching and while jumping are the only two times I would think these would be reasonably vulnerable; the version without turbo and a high normal speed would be more susceptible to jump-killing, but would also be a lot easier to evade other ships. Running, as we all know, is pretty easy, and these would be built to run, they'd just be easier to bring down if you actually landed anything.

Bojan, your last post wasn't all that coherent. You seem to be arguing against really zippy pods, but then complaining about people arguing against really zippy pods. However, I know that you have a good deal of experience, and probably useful things to add to this discussion. How would you design the pods? Not necessarily specs, but holistics like number of people required to catch them, or the ship you'd have to be in to catch them by yourself after killing someone. How would you make them "realistic?"
Aug 05, 2009 bojansplash link
Sorry guys, i got carried away by sarcasm.

If we want realistic Denji, then, pods should be slow moving/floating bubbles.
Real pods could be picked up by other player ships and carried to stations or they could move slowly at 60 m/s speed and get to station themselves.

Alas, we cannot count on any morals/honor/compassion from majority of VO players so real pods would be blasted instantly.
There is a way to prevent that to an extent by instating universe wide punitive measures (assets and funds confiscation, faction hits, etc) for killing pods but its a slim chance Inc and playerbase will go for this solution.

Unrealistic solution is to make pods hard to kill but not overly hard so pod killers can have their fun too and without any real consequences.
All "unrealistic" pod ideas represented in this thread are just that - unrealistic.

I love VO and for the sake of better immersion I would prefer a realistic solution but ... its not up to me.

Edit:
OK just got another idea that could work.

Older players will remember VO bounty system.
When someone got a bounty on his head and it was collected, he lost -1 on all his stats and bounty hunter got a nice cash reward.
How about we make realistic slow moving pods but punish pod kills by -1 on all stats for a pod kill, KOS faction hit with pod killed faction, and a bounty on pod killer.
On collecting bounty , pod killer suffers another -1 on all stats and bounty hunter gets a nice cash reward.
We can also have a reward system for pod saving: player picks up floating pod, delivers it to station and gets money and faction reward.

Now death will have meaning and pod killing will have ramifications too.

Aug 05, 2009 Dr. Lecter link
I'm pretty sure that with any of the stats posted above I could evade a single person trying to kill me with relative ease.

This is probably true, which is why your stats should never be implemented.

And Bojan, you've just crossed the line from vaguely incoherent to fucking retarded.
Aug 05, 2009 bojansplash link
Scared of losing stats and standings Lecter?
Want to kill pods and be a sacred cow?
Yea, perhaps I am a retard, but at least I am not a chickenshit like you.
Aug 05, 2009 bull350 link
Good Lord why does any discussion have to reduce down to inane name calling? Are we all 12?
Aug 05, 2009 diqrtvpe link
From their responses, both Lecter and Bojan are advocating for something somewhat different from the pods that have been proposed above. It now seems like there are two discussions going on, one of which is berating the other for not discussing the same thing.

On the one hand, we have the bulk of this thread up to this point, discussing what would properly be called an escape pod. Small, fast, and weak, it would allow you to escape from your wreckage and try to evade further death, requiring some coordination among foes to bring you down. These would get you back to the station to get a new ship fairly quickly, but anyone wishing to pop your pod would need a team and some good shooting, most likely.

On the other hand, we have what might better be called a life pod, which would be slower, more sluggish, and far easier pickings for killing. You would not escape further death from almost anyone wishing to deal it, and it would also make for a pretty long trip back to a station to get a new ship. A proposed fix for the ease of killing this pod would be to penalize such killings; however, the prospects for abuse are rife, and I think we would quickly see griefers using pods to make people accidentally get punished by flying into fights, or something of the sort.

It is clear that neither idea is perfect as it now stands. It is my view (and that view probably biased my descriptions above, and I welcome other descriptions to more accurately describe what people want) that the escape pod idea is far more effective at what we are trying to achieve, and that the life pod idea has serious flaws. But others think that some of the pros I see in the escape pod idea (it could not be brought down by a single person without great effort and some luck) are cons. Clearly, much to work out.

For that specific example, needed multiple people to reliably bring down a pod, I would like to get more input from you, Lecter, on why you think that is a bad thing. (and others if they would like to chime in as well)
Aug 05, 2009 moldyman link
Crazy idea, and simple to implement: A timer.

No pod, no random station to spawn at (though I like both ideas). Just a timer until you're allowed to respawn. And said timer is the average amount of time it'd take one to get back to their home station, ie a facsimile of a pod's journey.

Just to make death more meaningful NOW, as opposed to "whenever it's low hanging fruit".
Aug 05, 2009 Dr. Lecter link
The timer has been rejected as artifical and boring.

Diq, your "there are two approaches under discussion here" is (1) a bad misreading of the last 7+ pages and (2) missing the point that I orginally proposed: a pod that requires focus and some work (i.e., a chase) to kill, but not one that isn't soloable. It's an escape pod: the purpose is to make a nastier form of death OPTIONAL--if your opponent wants you really dead, they can choose that fate for you with some reasonably high level of chance of getting the pod. If they want to let you scoot back to the nearest station, they can do that without worrying about your pod accidentally getting popped by them or other nasty stuff flying about the sector.

I don't get Bojan's fetish for magic penalties: if you want to make pod killing in monitored, non-Corvus space some sort of especially bad act, knock yourself the fuck out. But we've rejected XP/level cuts as a penalty for everything from noob killing (used to have it that way) to making death more meaningful. And imposing any sort of penalty for pod killing in unmonitored space is, as I said, retarded. Just because people will frequently not want to pod kill doesn't mean we need some sort of special rule/penalty against doing so. If it's that goddamn bad, stick to space quake entirely and don't implement at all.

160ms non-turbo? Or 5 seconds of magic shields and a near maxed out turbo speed? I just assumed when people proposed that earlier that they were kidding and/or the Devs would never implement anything that fucking dumb.
Aug 06, 2009 Rejected link
Lecter brings up a good point. there hasnt been any real agreed upon solution for one of the questions incarnate brought up: having your pod accidently popped by random fire in a war zone, which would add unnecessary extra effort. invulnerability may be the best option but i hate to bring unrealistic "magic shields" into this game. blasting off at high speed in a random direction may be a viable option, but could too often work against the player by, say, shooting you right towards the enemy's cap ship, or back towards other unfriendly NPCs or players. The stats that have been suggested range between a low shield ultra maneuverable bullet to a turbo-less cruising speed pod.

Ideally, I'd like to find the middle ground between these two extremes. The pod should be small in profile, smaller than say a vulture, and easy to maneuver. A slim profile is a definite advantage to the player, and makes it much more unlikely that the pod will be hit by random fire, and would require a targeted attack. Give it a free power cell (hey these things need to be mass produced, no government is going to pay for an ultra change power cell for every pod) and the ability to turbo, at a drain of say a moderate 40 m/s, which would very slightly drain the free cell (which charges at 38 m/s), or maybe even infiboost would be better, since it needs to escape fast, and just cap its cruising speed at 60 m/s and its top speed at around 160 m/s. Defiantly not 160 m/s non turbo, or only 60 m/s with no turbo.
Aug 07, 2009 toshiro link
I maintain my stance that an escape pod is not supposed to be a lingering soap bubble, it's supposed to go straight, fast. Give it next to no spin torque, (comparatively) strong thrust and 225 m/s infiniboost, or virtual infiniboost. Shields can be as described (designed to survive a certain amount of secondaries).

And I agree with Lecter, magic XP penalties are contra-productive to immersion and just plain silly. I dislike gameplay concepts that give an XP penalty simply to punish people for unwanted behaviour.
Aug 07, 2009 vIsitor link
At the beginning of this thread I said that this idea has merit, and I stand by that statement. However, since then, many valid concerns as to the implications of such a system have been brought to light. Until those issues can be adequately addressed, I'm afraid that I can't fully endorse this system, given that our current one works fine (even despite its shortcomings).

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