At some time in the futer please implement a ship building system, for example:

Each ship has nessicary components
Crew Module
Manuvering Thrusters
Engine
Reactor
Hull

Extremly usefull but not required componets
Weapons
Cargospace
Armor
Sheilds
Radar
Communications Dohicky

Each peice would be 3d and could snap together with other peices at specific points. Componets of appropriate size could be substituted later on. This would allow for tons of ship varity as players are left to make what they imagine (include a few predesigned ships for the non-creative types)

Finally someone who is thinking in more of a RPG aspect.

/me hugs Daon Rendiv

There would also have to be a verity of different kinds of each "dohicky" as you so well put it each having it's own attributes and faults, that's my main problem with this game, everything is a super item, there are almost no faults or penalties to any weapon or ship configuration. I think with Radar your com-link should be boosted even more. I'm hoping this is what you mean by "snap together with other peices at specific points"

I think he is thinking more along the lines of lego's, which is kinda cool, but which is an unbelievable amount of work. In fact, I dare say a 'snap together' component based ship construction system which makes ships that actually look good is about as much work as the entire rest of the game in and of itself especially if what we want is lots of option - and I assume we all do.

The good news is that a certain ammount of this appears to be planned based on my conversations with various devs. I've heard mention of such things as having the weapon port change appearance based on the weapon mounted thier, and attachable external cargo pods.

The bad news - if what you want is a 'Vendetta ship construction kit' - is that in all likelihood many if not most of the items you place on the ship won't be reflected visually in the ships appearance. And for that matter, should they? An F-15E is a big upgrade from an original model F-15 in terms of engine capabilities, avionics, radar, etc. but they don't look externally all that different. An M1A2 is a big upgrade in every way from the original tank, but most people would have to look pretty hard notice even the most apparant visual change.

But it is my sincere hope that ships will ultimately become very configurable, and if you have lots of ideas regarding gizmos and do-hickeys then I strongly encourage you to find my 'toys' thread on the Suggestions forum, read it, and add any ideas that you think I've missed.

What I'm thinking is have strucual "bars" of different lengths that have evenly spaced connection points. A system of bars makes your spaceframe. Then componets with their own set of attachment points are linked to the frame at the meeting of said points. Then you select a set of bars to make a hull plate between them. Certain components ,like weapons and thrusters, must extend form out of this hull. For the ingame moddel the hull and protruding componets are reduced to verticies and a association specific skin is added.

Oh wow, making your own ship from wire-frames? That would take a lot of work.

Daon Rendiv: I know what you are saying. I'm just saying that what you are thinking isn't easy just because saying it is easy.

And you are considering that this is massively multiplayer, right? Just how much information about a particular ship do you expect the server to send out whenever a new ship jumps into a system?

"For the ingame model the hull and protruding componets are reduced to verticies and a association specific skin is added."

I think that is an example of easier said than done. For one thing it would require that each client maintain in memory a uniquely rendered ship for each ship in the system. Whenever a ship jumped into the system, each client would have to make all the calculation necessary to render the final ship and the server would have to send out the full component list to each client in the system so they could start the rendering calculations.

While I agree that more configurable ships is good for game play, I think its kinda going off on a tangent to make the focus of configurability the appearance of the ship. IMO, that's alot of work for very little increase in gameplay. The changing the appearance of the ship only marginally increases the richness of the game compared to changing the characteristics and abilities of ships even if the appearance of the ship is (mostly) the same.

/me digs up the 'toys' thread:

http://vendetta.guildsoftware.com/?action=msgboard&thread=1494&page=6

(edit: my personal favorite:"55) Homing Beacon Launcher: Fires a short range very fast missile. If it hits, the target always appears on radar, and a message is sent to your console every time the target jumps between sectors. Lasts 30 min.")

Also, slightly off-topic but Daon's post makes me wonder: will crafting play any significant role in the MMORPG? If I have a high electromagnetic weapons technician skill can I sit around in a station making better gauss cannons and selling them for profit? With my starship engineering skill could I design a better hornet with more armor/cargo? Will I have to go mine 'roids for the raw materials to do so?

Seeing as combat is not governed by stats and levels like in other games, any design stuff should be based on your REAL skill. People with design skills might beat better players due to a tech advantage, and yes they could sell their better wares for a profit.

Note: Design shouldn't just be a cosmetic thing, I'm thinking physics based stats

We could look at adding some simpler things.

1) Have certain ships that are available everywhere like all but the special ships.

2) Make a person "earn" a special ship by collecting special pieces throughout the universe ie Valk engines are only made in sec 13, valk batteries in 5 etc. You would need to mine astroids for metal and collect other things to make the hull.

3) All things must be taken to a special system that makes a certain special ship for it to be created.

This solves 2 problems: some special ships are better than others so this allows all nations the same opportunity to create one, and most people won't rely on a stockade of a certain special ship and will try out other things instead.

"design stuff should be based on your REAL skill."
-And how would you pull that off? Make you solve some sort of puzzle everytime you want to design something?