One of the big reasons people keep playing a game is because of desire. Desire to have the best score, best stuff, highest level, whatever. In many ways VO lacks character development and things for people to strive for, and a terrible lack of opportunity for specialisation.

One of the things that struck me the most was the lack of variety in weapons. There's enough weapons, to be sure, and I wouldn't suggest adding many more. However there's really only a few worth using, better in all respects than the others. I would suggest breaking these all apart and redesigning each line for particular advantages. Neutrons might have slow speed, heavy weight and poor energy efficiency while having great tracking and dps. Phase may have the best speed, while medium weight and average energy efficiency. Ions could be extremely low weight, relatively fast and very efficient but poor tracking and somewhat below average dps. And so on - you can work out the details later, so long as the roles are well defined.

Having done so, you've created the basic framework for specialisation - by defining the areas of speciality. It might be possible to then devise something the player can work towards to reward the specialisation. Perhaps badges based on weapon experience gained while using that weapon (tie it to the mob's licence point value), which provide very marginal benefits in some area - damage/energy/etc for that weapon type, or unlock a special weapon on that path.

EDIT: I would also take it a lot further. You look at mark IV/V or the existing named as special things for working hard at something or winning some skirmish, or just very expensive or gated through the weapon class badges. Because you've defined the weapons roles well, you're not unbalancing the system. It doesn't become a must have weapon, but just marginally the best along that particular specialisation path, and takes appropriate effort to obtain.

Once you have well defined areas of specialisation, you open a whole range of ways to safely reward effort with various marginal benefits.

It sounds like you're looking for EVE

That being said, I do agree that there should be some degree differentiation between weapons and ships - ideally enough so that you have to chose one class or another to specialize in as a pilot. As it stands, that just isn't going to happen in this game.

this suggestion makes sense therefore carebears and GS will have none of it

..what? Peytros, if that's the most useful insight you have, feel free to not contribute it on here at all.

Getting back to the topic, yes, we could stand to re-work some weapon balance. There have been other discussions on here about that. Specialization was an original intent of mine; ours was a relatively early MMO to use XP derived from usage of a given addon type for progression (although generalized into light/heavy/etc). This could be broken down further into specialized accomplishments that come not just from the weapon type used, but the manner of its use. For instance, a "sniper" track that's opened by shooting certain NPCs from long range with railguns, and the like. Progress upon that track, by more and more distant kills, could open up new content availability; or to add another wrinkle, the ability to manufacture new content of specific types (allowing us to tie the components making up the content to drops from bots under these specialized conditions.. you kill X bot entirely with N weapon at greater than Y distance and it drops Z addon-component, which may then be rolled togeother with drops from a different bot type to create an improved railgun).

Anyway, I welcome further feedback on this.

aww inc come on im on a trollin roll and even you fell for it.

anyways i think the main problem is that most of the weapons are only different by a few m/s of velocity or have slightly less energy.

while it works in some cases the difference between and ion and phase aren't enough to make them worthwhile for most and the only neutrons people bother using are 2s and LENBS

gauss and neuts have enough difference that they provide for interesting fights and more of that is what is needed I think

Specialization is sort of meaningless unfortunately when there are only a few viable combat roles. There aren't any weapons that affect another ship's energy and it might be interesting to add that. The same thing is true with weapons that briefly disable a ship's turbo or prevents them from warping. Anti-ordinance stuff would be cool. This is maybe off topic but hopefully it is still constructive. >.>

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posting below the troll line

And you know, badges don't always have to give anything. Look at what the achievements system did for valve -and especially tf2. Online gamers love bragging rights even more than the next guy.

Anyway. I tend to only drop in now and then due to a demanding job and the unkillable 'u' list, but this game is very dear to me, for bringing what i had dreamed of while playing descent years ago. Sometime I might draw up something to see how it could look. Might at least generate some discussion and get things going.

Maalik I wouldn't say that's necessarily true. I think there's enough room for variety within the current system. Plus to start with we should try to find solutions which use what we already have.

In keeping with VO's rock/paper/scissors theme perhaps if weapons and armor were subdivided a bit.

Physical damage vs Energy damage
Area of effect vs impact.
armor vs sheilds

Armor would protect against physical damage
Sheilds would protect against energy damage

... Idea needs a lot of work obviously

Oh and Pey, Admit it - you were pwnd

I've always found specialization to be skill-based vs game-based. By that I mean people can spend weeks/months learning to whoop ass with rails or learning to kill proms in a centurion.

What I'd like to see is a little more competition/differentiation for the high-end ships. Rarely ever do I see a valk other than the X1 flying around... why not bump the IDF Valk's stat's just a bit more so that it's more worth flying even with the fatter profile (say, boost it's turbo thrust by another 15N)? Or why not bump the Valk Viligant's non-turbo speed to 70m/s? The Corvus Vult also outshines most other vults in everything except price/chasing capacity, so why not bump the Biocom XT vult a bit to make it a more specialized chase ship (especially as it's further away from the main grey action)? While there are a lot of well-balanced ships and ship versions, I feel like the top combat slots (X1, Corvult) could use a bit more variation.

Moreover, adding more bombing roles (unguided bombs etc) or smuggling missions/etc might make things a dash more interesting. Also, once crafting becomes more mainstream, mining with be a far more profitable/economical role than it currently is (as far as I can tell, mining is great when you want to be on VO, but watch a movie or do homework). I'd like to see crafting more of a bulk procedure rather than a "you need to spend X hours grinding (or pay someone else for X numbers of grinding) in order to get 1 of Y". Crafting items should be akin to mining/railing for LENBs: 20-30 should take about an hour to make. Currently most craft-able objects take about 10+ hours for one, which means there is far less incentive to create it since it's unlikely that you'll use it often (since you want to protect your hours of work).

I actually dislike Inc's idea of tie[ing] the components making up the content to drops from bots under these specialized conditions.. you kill X bot entirely with N weapon at greater than Y distance and it drops Z addon-component, which may then be rolled together with drops from a different bot type to create an improved railgun, as it puts too much emphasis on game mechanics rather than player-driven economics. I'd much rather see "you kill bots of type X enough time so that they drop Y Z times, and that gives you the components to manufacture 10 specialized railguns" (see and earlier suggestion of mine for some more ideas). The more rules and rare items that get put into manufacturing, the more the game turns into a grind-fest rather than a game where people do what they like and then can profit from said activities through game mechanics. Of course, it makes some sense for queen processor cores to be needed to create UBER WEAPONS/MINES OF DOOM... but not for much else.

With a better variety of weapons which have different strengths, players would have greater room to experiment, develop alternative strategies and become adept with different weapons.

It should make combat more about skills and planning and less about farming lawneuts because you're automatically disadvantaged without the 'best' equipment.

Atice: I actually didn't say anywhere in there that they would be rare drops, for exactly that reason. Just that they would drop the item under those conditions. So people who were good at killing bots with railguns at a distance (or whatever) could farm the components and sell the manufactured items, just as you say.

There's also a whole other design on here somewhere, from me, about adding an extended rock/paper/scissors system to the game, with a lot of ties into Nation factional technology (X faction hull plating is resistant to Y energy weapon but vulnerable to Z weapon.. etc). But I'm too tired to dig up that thread right now.

(also, Lonectzn, I hope you've noted the changes to the 'u' list in fogged sectors of late; we are moving that way).

From Mechwarriors series:

Armour types:
-Default: lighter than others
-Reflective: 3x more resistent to energy weapons
-Reactive: 3x more resistent to projectile weapons

Also, for Mech, heat management is very important, since energy weapons generates lots of heat, that build up, so you have to equip some dissipators, heat sinks. And you have to limit heat generation using missiles/cannons, which had limited ammo.
But you could add some extra ammo, of course it takes one hard point and extra weight. And there were some automated missiles defense, that also uses ammo and add heat.

The only specialization I could see working at this point is within the following categories:

-Energy based, good target tracking weapons. (Gauss, GT, etc.)

-Energy based, poor target tracking weapons. (Neuts, Posis, etc.)

-Ammo based, guided weapons. (Missiles)

-Ammo based, dumb fire weapons. (Flares)

However, I also think it's a bit too early to introduce this into the game as the ship balancing technically isn't finalized yet and neither are (more importantly) the ship roles. Once ship roles become more defined, then we can begin to tinker with specialization.

Why waste time trying to balance a system your just going to rework anyway? Introducing specialization of this nature will change things and upset any balance thats acheived.