Please provide us a good usage for Player's Tridents: FERRY SHIPs

The simpler implementation, restricting only to ferry:

Three small changes required in game UI:

A>Make ships docked to players' Tridents remain there, with ownership, if player /explode
B>Allow a player to select another ship while docked to a player Trident
C>Some way for Trident owner to drop/scrap/sell whatever ship is docked there

Procedure: (bold are new features required)
1. Hire a Trident. It must be parked just outside your home station.
Repeat
| 2. Buy/Pick up a ship, launch, dock to Trident
| 3. Issue /explode... or add a button, or magic buses, whatever.
| ... Someway to leave the ship there and return to station
until trident=full
4. Get another ship and escort the trident to your destination
5. Unload ships in destination:
| 5.1. Dock, get a free bus, launch and dock to trident
| 5.2. Open PDA, Ships, select another ship and launch
| 5.3. repeat until unloaded all ferryed boats

6. Trident Owner sells/scrap all ships remaining

=========//=========

LATER, to go one step farther, and also allow the Trident owner to SELL SHIPS, we just have to

S1> make possible for the Trident owner to take over and drop ownership of whatever ship is docked there without a pilot present
S2> Allow any player swap ships inside a Trident foir any ship without a pilot and not owned by Trident's owner

So, the player owner gets someone to load ships, as ferry procedure above and take ownership, then sell them to any other player, simply dropping ownership after receiving the payment form docked players.

Sure, but make it so they occupy a space on the docking bay and they can only hold 4.

Why not use /gunner leave instead of /explode?

**** me alloh how on earth do you manage to come up with a different set of organisational/numerical schemes and text separators for every single post. Boggles the mind.

So you can referenca A or 1, TRS ...

sounds better, ARF...

-1

I don't want to see Serco in Valks or Itani in Proms, or nothing but Valks in B-8 etc. This is what would likely happen if players could trade ships and ferry them around as the OP suggests.
Capships should have a captains shuttle (for loading/unloading), but not the ability to ferry pilot-less ships around. The current system helps maintain the value of several lower tier ships simply due to their accessibility.

Dent.

Dented, that WOULD happen if we'd go all the way to Selling ships... Even so, it just levels up the field, since in a single day a Vet player can get both Valks and Proms, raising standing with one side, purchasing hundreds of ships, then repeating with the other faction. Done, you'll have 100's of X1s and SCPs.

Ferrying ships is nothing but grinding. In case of top-tier ships, as X1 and SCPs, not even risky.

So, we're just changing GRINDING into P2P interaction, with increased Risk, since trident owner can "confiscate" the ships, or the unshielded Trident may be blown in transit. And tridents are much slower and easier to hunt than any Valk, the fastest ship in game.

I am okay with the general idea here. I did not and probably won't read the specific implementation proposed.

Dented: Stockpiles do eventually run out if you don't maintain them. For example, my favorite weapon is the Gauss Cannon MkIII, which is only sold in national barracks. So I stockpiled a couple thousand in Sedina D-14. However, I have recently run out (other than a few already equipped to various old ships) and cannot easily replenish it since I'm KOS with the Serco and UIT. If I wanted to do it myself, I'd have to ferry them down from Jallik - and that's a long trip through greyspace with a very heavy and valuable payload in a moth. So for now I'm making do with my now dwindling supply of stolen AAPs, and when that's out I'll switch to plain old N2 until I get around to rebuilding my stockpile.

And keep in mind, I can move 120+ units per trip, which are enough to equip 60+ ships. Moving actual ships in a capship would be much slower, since you could only move a few at a time, and capships are slow. So building up a stockpile of hundreds of ships would still be very time consuming.

So, +1 at least to the general idea of using capships as ship movers.

Simply adopt the already proposed CAPACITY for docks, in CU... so a 800cu docks can hold either 2 moths, 3 Centaurs, 4 warthogs or 8 centurions... depending on ship volume / size.

It would make no sense if same dock can take 4 moths or 4 centurions...

Even if players can't trade ships P2P, the ease of stockpiling ships "FerryDents" would grant would still mean the lower tier ships become redundant. I know vets can stockpile now, but it's a grind. It should be. Pizzas example of Gauss3's is as it should be! These are the penalties for being KoS! Increased effort to stockpile valuable items! Restricted travel/commerce options. Making do with whats available to reduce risk/effort! Again, this is how things should be. As it is, there's an abundance of top tier ships (and add-ons for that matter), despite the often made claim that pilot skill counts for more than ship quality.

As for the "risk" of hauling ships in a Trident, the given examples of "risk" are illusionary. Tridents offer security, not risk. Why else would we haul trident components in them? (OK, the increased capacity helps). Who would hire a trident they didn't trust? How many Tridents full of valuable cargo have "gone down"? Sure, it can happen, but it would be a very rare occurrence. The only player trident kills I've heard of were when the player intentionally took the trident into a mass conflict situation.

Dent.

I was NOT complaining about stockpiling Gauss, or about KOS. I fully agree with you on that point.

What I was doing by bringing it up was to say that, contrary to what you seemed to believe, stockpiling is not a perfect solution, even for something as easy to stockpile as a 1cu weapon that can be hauled 120+ at a time.

Stockpiling ships via trident, if the trident could only move a handful, would still take a long time, and those ships would quickly run out. They would run out much faster than my supply of Gauss.

Do you have any idea how many ships PVPers burn through in a real furball? Sure, people like Nahin might be able to count them on one hand. But the rest of us can easily burn through twenty or more ships. In some of the really good furballs I've been in, I died more than 60 times! I've had a couple that approached 90. And I usually score a few more kills than I take, so it's not like I just suck or anything.

So my point is that being able to stockpile ships slightly more effectively than we can already would have little negative impact.

And as for positive impact, it would improve player to player interactions. See, I am a very lazy fellow. My much vaunted Gauss and Consumer Robotics stockpiles? I generally don't build those myself. Way too much mothwork. What do I do? I hire traders! (Gasp!) Well, maybe we should call them smugglers. But the point is, I find people who actually like moving cargo around, and I pay them to bring me weapons. It's a win-win. I don't think Alloh's particular implementation allows me to just hire some guy to bring me Valks, with me just picking up the delivery at the end. But it would still be more convenient than moving them myself, and it would require my getting another player to help me out. So of course I'd be paying that other player, or possibly compensating them by helping out with a station attack or botting expedition or something. Whatever the case, it would be player to player interaction.

As opposed to the current situation, where I just home at Jallik, fly a valk down to Sedina, swap for an EC, explode, and repeat. All solo.

I haven't timed yet, but won't be surprised if it would be faster to fly 3 or 4 X1s from Jallik to Sedina then exploding buses than a Trident take to fly all the way from Jallik to same station in Sedina... so 4 or 8 X1 or SCP isn't that much...

For me, VO needs more P2P support in engine, as alternatives to P2E grinding.
Ferrydents improve P2P instead of existing P2E and also increase tridents' usefullness.

Good points. I'd also prefer P2P interaction over P2E, and more reason to encourage Trident use. I'm still not convinced P2P ship trading wouldn't break things, but the potential benefit of Ferrydents does seem to outweigh potential risks.

Dent.

+1.
But only 4 ships is too low. Last sunday night I lost about 30 ships in greyspace really fast.
What about divide the ships in compact parts, and we assemble them in any station? I'd say to fit inside a Trident enough parts to assemble 10 ships.

while thats a great idea kabuloso, too much work for the devs for something that could be implemented a lot more simply by just letting you put 10 ships into a trident.

Actually, he kind of has the right idea. There once was a time when a buggy convoy system would load convoys with itemized versions of ships. Each ship was a 100cu item. If you killed the moth carrying it and brought the captured ship back to the station, after unloading it the thing would automatically appear in the ships list. Unfortunately, VO ships have hidden engines that we cannot access, and those itemized ships did not have engines. Some convoys were in fact carrying ship engines, but even if you looted one, you couldn't equip it. So those stolen ships were mostly useless.

Since they're all 100cu, a trident could carry six of them. And before anybody complains about a moth taking up the same amount of space as a vulture, I should point out that a moth is basically just a metal balloon with engines, whereas a vulture has very little empty space. So while it should probably still take up more space when collapsed, it's not too far off. Anyway, that's something the devs could tweak.

So all the devs would need to do is to give us a way to itemize our ships, ensure that they don't lose their engines when itemized, and possibly tweak the volumes a little. Although that would automatically give us the ability to sell ships to other player. The OP's version, OTOH, would retain original ownership of the ships. So people against players selling other players ships should prefer the OP rather than the itemized ship approach.

Personally, I prefer itemized ships. Simpler all around to deal with. Though I am definitely in favor of some kind of contraband system, where bypassing faction reqs via player trade could have consequences for both parties involved. That's straying off topic though.

I prefer to use complete ships, docked normally. So the number of ships depends on the size of the ship and the docks.

Like, a regular Trident docks can hold 600cu or 800cu, and we can use same stats for ships docked to stations, where small/medium/large ships takes 100/200/300cu respectively... (but moths should take 400cu). Simple rules are allways better, and later we can have specialized tridents, large docks and no storage (figher carrier or ferry)...

Finally, P2P ship selling can unbalance game, while ferrydent is balanced.

I'm gonna swap sides here. I think rins idea sounds cool where players can trade ships amongst each other. There is no limit to this for weapons, why should there be for ships? Think about it, you dont need 5/5/-/-/- or axia standing to obtain aaps from someone willing to give them to you, for example. Or queen badge for mega posi. And the list goes on.

tbh, if they're 100cu this won't affect the game too much as they will be a pain to move around or trade, which makes sense.

Ferrydents would need to have a max ship capacity, rather than based on the size of the ship, or Itani have an advantage. The top tier Itani ship/s are much smaller than the Serco, but have about the same game value. I'd think of it as using the 600cu cargo space to fit say, 4 more "docking bays", allowing a dent to carry 8 shis total (the normal 4, plus 4 in the "refitted" cargo area).

If players could sell ships P2P, Crusader, all we'd see would be SCP's, X1's and IBG's.

I'd be more ok with p2p ship trading if the licence requirements were still a factor. I can see using p2p trading to skirt standing requirements, but not licence requirements.

Dent.

No you wouldn't only see SCP, X1, and IBG's. they'd be priced as at least 1m+ given the hauling and effort needed to get them, plus trade them to another player. Also, just make all ships 100cu to skirt the problem of serco/itani getting an advantage. Also, think about what your saying. Aaps, lenbs, etc are the best energy weps on the market. But does everyone use them? No. Whether it's because of variety, cost, hauling time/effort, whatever people choose to varry it up with the weapons. In fact, its most common for people to use Neut IIs because they are readily available at a station! If you pick up 8 IBGs in jallik, load them on a capship using two accounts (ASSSUMING youve already got a cappie, which is a big assumption) and then haul over greyspace to sedina instead of just enjoying pvp with a corvult for all that time, that is just bordering on ridiculous. For that amount of effort you could've picked up at least 200 aaps, which would supply 100-200 ships depending on the setup.

The license bypass would only work in greyspace. And that's the whole point of greyspace! No laws! Stay in your nation if you can't deal with that.

And p2p selling of ships would still require actually moving the ships down in the first place, so it wouldn't really be any different than the raw ferry-dent in terms of ship popularity, other than allowing people to bypass faction limits.

And yeah, like crusader said, the ships would be expensive. My own price estimate came out at about 700k each rather than a mill, but I've never flown a trident from Jallik to Sedina, so I just ballparked the price at 4.2M per trip. And I assumed six ships per trip.

I should point out that the above price is only considering the cost of transport, so it applies to the OP as well, whether or not the ships are then sold to players.