Add a pilots turret. You enter it and you pilot the ship, when nobody is in the ship it warps to a randomly chosen empty sector in the system and idles untill re-summoned by the owner.

Once summoned it flies the most direct route to the station it was summoned from and either waits for a "go away" command (accomplished by /msg trident name "go away") or for a key holder to dock. Only the character that has an owner key to the trident can give out various levels of keys to the ship.

There should be 5 levels of keys to the ship:
Owner; has full privileges, can give out and revoke any key.
Captain; can act as pilot gunner or simply land and repair
Gunner; can act as gunner or simply land and repair
Docking; can land and repair.
Protected; Will be defended by the ship's non human controlled turrets, message will be displayed to all turret gunners that a protected ship is under attack.

As for buying the Trident, it should be a hybrid crafting/purchasing mission. You have to bring a bunch of components (scrap, ion core, xrite, vismetal, etc) and pay 3 million credits (number pulled out of thin air). When trident is bought it gets a name of the purchaser's choosing.

As for using to to carry cargo. The cargo hold should be upgraded to 400cu, total, among all with docking rights. This means you could summon the ship, and dump two loads from an xc into it, fly it somewhere, and then either jettison the cargo, or tender it to the station.

Another thing that would be nice is to be able to purchase ec89's and free batterys on the ship, this would allow it to be used to transport ships, all ships without active pilots need to have an empty cargo hold (to keep people from moving 9 million cu of stuff at once).

As for weapons on the ship, turrets should be added, one on the edge of each engine, and one extra heavy turret on the bow. Extra heavy turrets can mount dual capitol gauss, or four of the standard turrets. I'm still not sure how to work that I guess they have to be in the ships hold, and the gunner selects what is mounted, with a one minute delay while the weapon is changed. the extra heavy turret can be fired in either chain fire or salvo mode, with automatic turrets always being salvo fire.

As for the automatic turrets, they operate in three modes, Safe, Target Lock, or Free.

Anybody with a Captain, or Owner key can designate targets hostile.

Turrets default to safe. They simply don't fire except at ships designated hostile by captains or owners.

In Target Lock mode, they only fire at one target, regardless of others previously designated hostile. This allows captains to designate a top priority target if a given turret lacks a firing solution on the primary target, it shoots anything else designated hostile.

In Free fire mode, anything designated hostile, anything attacking the ship doing more that 2% damage to the sheilds, and anything attacking anybody with any key is fired upon, with preference being given to closer targets.

If everybody abandons ship it simply goes purely ballistic for up to 30 minutes. After that, it defaults to "Go Away". This keeps people from abandoning ship to protect it in deep space. This also means an abandoned ship is hard to get back onto. as it keeps drifting ever further away.

All this is really rough rough draft, but i think most people will get the idea, I realize that piloting something like a trident won't be easy. But that's part of the risk to it.

This is a great idea, but this same basic idea (minus the key functions, which are more recent) has been proposed for half a decade now.

It could be done, it should be done, and it won't be done. Just let it go.

Yeah, and station conquest has been proposed for over half a decade too. Big deal. Key functions, and authentication, are pretty central to doing anything like this; that alone drastically changes the potential for implementation.

I'd appreciate constructive feedback on this, particularly feedback that does not morosely claim that nothing will ever happen.

I really like this idea, and it looks like a fun implementation. Just one problem, how would this work for the teradon, exactly? It has no docking ports, therefore no way to board it.

The same way gunners currently man behemoth turrets, I imagine; the individuals responsible for the job have to board at the station.

The real question is how we're going to avoid players from stuffing an obscene number of XCs full of cargo into a Capital ship that does have a docking bay to circumvent the internal cargo limit.

>_>

already mention visitor, ships without pilots, have to have an empty cargo hold. If they can get 40 players together to pack 40 xc's into the ship, more power to em. their also taking a huge loss of investment risk.

"The real question is how we're going to avoid players from stuffing an obscene number of XCs full of cargo into a Capital ship that does have a docking bay to circumvent the internal cargo limit."

Thats easy, make ships count as cargo. It won't completely eliminate the issue but, it would cut down on it. Also take the ships weight into account with respect to maneuverability and getting up to speed.
[EDIT]... Or we could take the more realistic approach, cappies can only hold X amount of ships... (in addition to what is stated above.) [END EDIT]

Over all I like the idea for other cappies... the Connie, Terradon and HAC. I am still of the opinion that the Trident should not be a capitol ship.

My only serious issues with the idea... (other than Tridents being considered capitol class ships)... is this...

"As for buying the Trident, it should be a hybrid crafting/purchasing mission. You have to bring a bunch of components (scrap, ion core, xrite, vismetal, etc) and pay 3 million credits"

This has the very real potential to limit ownership of cappies to
A. The richest guilds with the most members
and,
B. The richest players with the most time.
Which IIRC the devs wish to avoid. Better in my opinion to just flat out buy them. I don't really like the key system for ships either. I realize we want to control who can and cannot gain access to our cappies but it seems to me we already have a mechanic in place for this, in missions where cappies appear the only people who can dock with them are people participating in the mission, people who are grouped with the cappie. Pretty simple, Ecka wishes to dock with the SS John Eldritch Trident...

JE: /group invite "Ecka Estenck"
EE: /group join "John Eldritch"
"Welcome aboard! Feel free to repair, reload or man a turret. Enjoy your stay!"

[EDIT] I still don't think Tridents should count as cappies, I posted an idea for tridents here...

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/23079#287050
[END EDIT]

I like this general idea, but I would suggest either making there be a limited number of docking slots, or make ships take up cargo space (in which case the cargo space available would need to be increased). I wouldn't put any limitation on what a docked ship can have in its hold, it should just take up an amount of cargo greater than its total cargo capacity. It should be more efficient to just use it to carry cargo, rather than to stuff it with cargo-laden moths.

EDIT: Just read Ryan's post. I definitely disagree about the key issue, as this is one of the main areas where a hierarchy of permissions is really useful. I like Look's layout of key levels, and you can't get anything like that with a group. It's more complicated, but the situation has the possibility of being fairly complicated, so I think it's justified.

I didn't say "nothing will ever happen," smart-ass. I said this specific idea, which has been proposed many, many times and -- given the long time for which caps in general and tridents in specific have been in game -- is seemingly more readily implementable than station conquest . . . has been constantly passed over with lame ass excuses like "gee, we don't really have a way to dock them" and "it's just too cumbersome for players to handle, so you infantile people who don't really know what you actually want will just get frustrated."

Thus, I'm just saying you're not getting around to this anytime soon. You've proved time and again that this idea isn't a priority. Lots of other stuff has happened, and I'm sure will continue to happen. But saying "I'd appreciate constructive feedback on this" insults our intelligence and encourages a specious waste of our time.

Honestly I think the key system is more complicated than is necessary. Mayb e if you can elaborate on how "the situation has the possibility of being fairly complicated" or "as this is one of the main areas where a hierarchy of permissions is really useful." it would seem more logical, but for now I don't see it.

I thought Look did a pretty good job of setting out one good reason for there to be keys. Sure, it'd be possible for one person to own the cap, and anyone in the group to be able to dock and man the turrets. Or even for a group of people to own the cap, and any of them be able to pilot it, and then anyone in their group can dock and man the turrets. But it doesn't have to be that simple, and I personally think it would benefit from not being that simple. The gradations available with a key system could work very well, and I like Look's breakdown. Sure, it's not necessary, but it'd greatly add to the concept.

Another issue is the behaviour of groups and missions. Say your guild has a trident (setting aside for now any objections to its being included), and one of your members wants to do a trade mission taking him into grey. Or a manufacturing mission (in their currently broken form; a complaint for another time), which requires a lot of goods from all over. Sure, you could be in the group to transport the goods, and then take the mission. That would work fine for the manufacturing, but maybe the trade guild missions change, and you can no longer get that fantastic 100+k procurement.

A somewhat less game-changing reason, though still perfectly valid, is if you're flying your cappie around and happen to want to use VC with a friend, but don't want them to be able to dock. The reasons for that could be myriad, and you shouldn't have to either stop your travels or postpone your conversation just because you don't want them to be in your ship.

I just think that this should be implemented separately from the group system. Both have their good points, but in my opinion the key system would work much better for this situation.

Meh, I suppose groups and keys both have their good points and bad points depending on your view. I wonder if there might be a middle ground?

Lecter: What you wrote is exactly why you shouldn't post about how things "won't happen" (your words). You don't have enough information to make an assessment of whether things will or won't happen, or what has changed that might enable it. Development occurs, new systems get added, fundamental engine underpinnings get re-worked. No, this is not my A1 Highest Priority, and yes I have made various lame excuses at various times. But there have been some pretty scary architectural issues with using capships, which included the drastic collision/physics runaway loading we were working on last year. None of these major scalability issues are/were present with station conquest. For instance, you can't have players flying 10 space stations into a dense sector and completely nuking the CPU capacity of one of our cluster servers. If you could fly stations I would be much more worried about them (although that would look hilarious).

For what it's worth, I did try to get playable Tridents in the game not too long ago (this calendar year, at least), but ran into a whole series of crappy stumbling blocks. Unfortunately, from the perspective of the userbase, anything that does not successfully get implemented, and isn't widely discussed by us, is "not a priority" and "clearly being ignored". These are frailties of communication, and as a result it is not useful to post, or assume, that "X won't happen". 1) You don't know if it's true (five years or not, a lot of code and engine dynamics have changed, for us), 2) It only degrades morale to frame it like that (both ours and the users), 3) There is no upside to it. You aren't being the "harsh voice of reality", you're just pissing on genuine interest in innovation.

Anyway, let's just keep the rest of the posts focus on the idea at hand.

Lecter, I believe the term is "Owned."

As for ships, I believe that ships should count as cargo just as they count as cargo in stations. For example, a Vulture class ship is 100cus. A Revenant is 200cus. A Behemoth is 300cus. Each ship requires 100cus, 200cus, or 300cus of cargo space in the station, depending on the class of ship. I agree Tridents should be able to haul at least 400cus.

I think the best price for a Trident would be 10,000,000c with no manufacturing included. Even a lone player low on money can procure 10 mil without too much trouble (money being relatively easy to earn, another topic entirely), but 10 mil is not anything you want to blow away or wash down the drain.

EDIT: I remember seeing Inc in a Trident Light Frigate during the Hive slaughtering competition a while ago. The name of the event escapes me....

Well, if there's ships owner and captain, tridents should be conquerable, imho. Say, if shields are down, all turrets are destroyed and hull capacity is <30%, the first docked ship will count as new owner and all current ships with pilots inside trident will be destroyed.

P.S.:

look... no hands: +1. This is definetely good idea!

Ryan Reign: +1 to prices. Simplicity for the win. Atm "crafting" consumes too much time and credits.

tarenty: +1 to ships cargo.

I like the key idea. We should also learn from player made bots and perhaps the owner/captain levels should be able to give them commands that warp them to sectors go/stop turbo/no turbo

The game already has features in its engine to handle player message events for missions I am sure that could be adapted somehow for capital ships

There's always an excuse, and there's never a recognition of the past timeframes that have been involved. You keep on keeping on, Inc. I'm sure your superior informational position will let you make plenty of assessments.

I kinda wanted to make them more valuable then 10 million (not cost more) credits, which I roughly equate to two-three hours work (if you don't screw around). The 3 million/crafting thing sounded about like that, actually, depending on how much of XYZ you need might be less.

Part of the reason for the crafting part is selfish, even at 10 million a pop, people like ecka can burn one every 15 minutes (pretty fast without suicideing on the turrets) for almost a full month, 24 hours a day. This makes the downside to losing them nearly 0 for a small group of players. Quite literally less than 00.1 percent of their fortune.

Make them cost 30 million cash, and only that small group of players will use them. 3 million (roughly 45 minutes work on a good day) and about an hour and a half of fetch this, fetch that, we need 4 of those, etc sounds to me like it wouldn't put it out of the realm of what could be done in the two week trial. The procurement stuffs needs to be kept cheap though, maybe 500k total.

I like the idea of keeping ships as cargo, although I imagine the cargo holds would have to be slightly enlarged to compensate. Come to think of it, Capship cargo holds are actually painfully small for ships of their size...

Lecter: You strongly remind me of one Maureen O'Gara right now. Go read her many articles, over the years, about the recently decided SCO v IBM; there's definitely a similarity to your style and thought process.

Complex things take time to build or untangle, and I dare say VO is a great deal more complex than that frivolous law suit. A law suit which took 10 years and millions of dollars to arrive at a conclusion which everyone with real knowledge of Linux internals was certain of to begin with. Heckle where you're qualified to.