Forums » Suggestions
This notion has been rattling around in my head for a few decades, but this recent comment brought it to mind:
It's hard to talk some people into attacking a station when they think it's just an expensive furball with no end in sight and no benefit.
What if all inventory assets of a station, including those held by other players, became accessible to those conquering a station?
Meaning that: if Guild X were constructing capital ship components, but left them in-situ at the station, and the station were then conquered by Guild Y, they could effectively "steal" whatever components had been left by Guild X. This would create an inherent "reward" to conquering stations, which might offset the above "risk" criticism, without having to add in "game-ish" type specialty rewards handed out as a "game mechanic".
There are a few concerns and contentions that immediately come to mind..
- Station conquest solely for inventory theft would become a major factor. This could be an influence on how conquest mechanics work in the future. Particularly if "keyed" people regain the ability to conquer, trust becomes an issue, etc.
- Inventories could still be flagged by individual, so if someone were friendly to both contentious parties, they might optionally not have their stuff get stolen, if both parties liked them and chose to leave their stuff alone. I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not.. it might be better to just have everything "appear" to be a big mix of anonymous stuff, to reduce trolling after the fact.
- Distribution and access to pillaged rewards would have some complexities. It would seem a bit weird to make it solely the "first person to dock and set a new key". Relating to this..
- There could be some kind of time-delay on inventory access. Like a "time lock" concept on a vault: Conquer the station, and then N hours later the inventory could "release" and become available. At that point, it could release to all people who had access keys, with the assumption that players would demand access keys to continue defending the station (during the timelock period). Keyed access, once given, could be irrevocable until some time well-after the inventory unlock period.
- If the prior owners re-conquered the station and set the key back to what it had been before, they would potentially regain their stuff. If they re-conquered after the time-lock had expired, they would regain whatever was "left" by the previous conquest. If they re-conquered before the time-lock expired, they would not lose anything.
If you currently have a large Conquerable Station inventory, don't freak out and feel you have to begin immediately transporting stuff to a Nation Capitol or whatever. This is not going to happen tomorrow, this is just an early discussion of the possibility.
Plus, because I know that people retain pretty massive inventories, and we've never had pillage-able station inventories before, I would want to give considerable warning on this kind of game change. Like a newsletter announcement and a month, etc.
Anyway, let the discussion begin..
It's hard to talk some people into attacking a station when they think it's just an expensive furball with no end in sight and no benefit.
What if all inventory assets of a station, including those held by other players, became accessible to those conquering a station?
Meaning that: if Guild X were constructing capital ship components, but left them in-situ at the station, and the station were then conquered by Guild Y, they could effectively "steal" whatever components had been left by Guild X. This would create an inherent "reward" to conquering stations, which might offset the above "risk" criticism, without having to add in "game-ish" type specialty rewards handed out as a "game mechanic".
There are a few concerns and contentions that immediately come to mind..
- Station conquest solely for inventory theft would become a major factor. This could be an influence on how conquest mechanics work in the future. Particularly if "keyed" people regain the ability to conquer, trust becomes an issue, etc.
- Inventories could still be flagged by individual, so if someone were friendly to both contentious parties, they might optionally not have their stuff get stolen, if both parties liked them and chose to leave their stuff alone. I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not.. it might be better to just have everything "appear" to be a big mix of anonymous stuff, to reduce trolling after the fact.
- Distribution and access to pillaged rewards would have some complexities. It would seem a bit weird to make it solely the "first person to dock and set a new key". Relating to this..
- There could be some kind of time-delay on inventory access. Like a "time lock" concept on a vault: Conquer the station, and then N hours later the inventory could "release" and become available. At that point, it could release to all people who had access keys, with the assumption that players would demand access keys to continue defending the station (during the timelock period). Keyed access, once given, could be irrevocable until some time well-after the inventory unlock period.
- If the prior owners re-conquered the station and set the key back to what it had been before, they would potentially regain their stuff. If they re-conquered after the time-lock had expired, they would regain whatever was "left" by the previous conquest. If they re-conquered before the time-lock expired, they would not lose anything.
If you currently have a large Conquerable Station inventory, don't freak out and feel you have to begin immediately transporting stuff to a Nation Capitol or whatever. This is not going to happen tomorrow, this is just an early discussion of the possibility.
Plus, because I know that people retain pretty massive inventories, and we've never had pillage-able station inventories before, I would want to give considerable warning on this kind of game change. Like a newsletter announcement and a month, etc.
Anyway, let the discussion begin..
+1, this idea here gives nationalists and pirates more of an incentive to attack and struggle for control over the conquerabe stations. My only issue however, is that, say you conquer it and novody is on for hours to take it back. You enter it and find an absolutely massive ammount of items. Could they theoretically begin transferring items, rendering building capships useless, when you can just pillage? It would eliminate most of the grind that was intended to be tied to manufacturing.
Could this lead to trolling where, say, some guild that is allied to the owning guild, reaches an agreement where the owning guild lets the second guild capture the station in order to confiscate resources a third party had been building up there?
I feel the in order to prevent the above from happening, you'd need to have some other sort of constraint like only owner-key inventory is lootable.
Alternatively, it doesn't need to be player inventory that's looted, maybe the first 5-10 players who dock are 'gifted' some of the stuff manufacturable at the station, with caveats. It would probably need to be limited to mid range manufacturable items like cap-rails and FFSA, not 200MW. And it would also probably need to be on a 24 hour cooldown to prevent station-flip farming.
I feel the in order to prevent the above from happening, you'd need to have some other sort of constraint like only owner-key inventory is lootable.
Alternatively, it doesn't need to be player inventory that's looted, maybe the first 5-10 players who dock are 'gifted' some of the stuff manufacturable at the station, with caveats. It would probably need to be limited to mid range manufacturable items like cap-rails and FFSA, not 200MW. And it would also probably need to be on a 24 hour cooldown to prevent station-flip farming.
-1 at this time
It's hard enough to manufacture alone. Making it so people have to bring in all material and bring out all results in one session makes it logistically harder to be efficient. A solo player or small team of players would find it difficult to evacuate and defend from attack at the same time.
It would be easier in teams but there are obstacles to working in teams, such as the inability to transfer large amounts of cargo in-station between players without going around in circles in moths dropping and picking up stuff at a station for an amount of time.
This would be a huge gift for pirates and a huge disincentive for the traders. It would be sort of neutral for the nationalists.
This would incentivize the use of spy characters in trade guilds to ascertain when their inventory was most vulnerable.
This is something that should wait for a more populated universe. Right now a lot of mfg is done solo or in small groups like 2 or 3 people. If we had much larger groups to work with (like 30 on a side at once) then I would not be objecting.
It's hard enough to manufacture alone. Making it so people have to bring in all material and bring out all results in one session makes it logistically harder to be efficient. A solo player or small team of players would find it difficult to evacuate and defend from attack at the same time.
It would be easier in teams but there are obstacles to working in teams, such as the inability to transfer large amounts of cargo in-station between players without going around in circles in moths dropping and picking up stuff at a station for an amount of time.
This would be a huge gift for pirates and a huge disincentive for the traders. It would be sort of neutral for the nationalists.
This would incentivize the use of spy characters in trade guilds to ascertain when their inventory was most vulnerable.
This is something that should wait for a more populated universe. Right now a lot of mfg is done solo or in small groups like 2 or 3 people. If we had much larger groups to work with (like 30 on a side at once) then I would not be objecting.
Thinking some more on this, these are some general effects that I could foresee as a possible outcome:
* Attacking the stations is more incentivized
** Caveat to this is there's no way to know what's in that station so the risk-to-reward is variable. If the stations end up being super volatile assets (conquered frequently), and no one wants to keep inventory in the stations, then the incentive this provides will probably trend towards zero.
* Using the station as a station is de-incentivized, since there's a lot more risk to keeping your stuff in them.
* Players are going to be less willing to pay for long-term keys since the ideal behavior becomes keep the minimal amount of material in the station, manufacturing fast, haul to somewhere else fast.
* Paying for keys now depends on how well you think the owner(s) can defend the station
* Owners could start adding 'assisting in station defense' as part of the cost of keys, which seems inherently monopolistic
* If guilds of established players (people with capships already) are generally the contenders for the stations, then it's more likely that newer players will be the ones who suffer the most, as those will be the people trying to build capships and getting their parts looted.
* Attacking the stations is more incentivized
** Caveat to this is there's no way to know what's in that station so the risk-to-reward is variable. If the stations end up being super volatile assets (conquered frequently), and no one wants to keep inventory in the stations, then the incentive this provides will probably trend towards zero.
* Using the station as a station is de-incentivized, since there's a lot more risk to keeping your stuff in them.
* Players are going to be less willing to pay for long-term keys since the ideal behavior becomes keep the minimal amount of material in the station, manufacturing fast, haul to somewhere else fast.
* Paying for keys now depends on how well you think the owner(s) can defend the station
* Owners could start adding 'assisting in station defense' as part of the cost of keys, which seems inherently monopolistic
* If guilds of established players (people with capships already) are generally the contenders for the stations, then it's more likely that newer players will be the ones who suffer the most, as those will be the people trying to build capships and getting their parts looted.
...and theratt10 brings up an excellent point about possible exploitation...
+1
FAMY supports this initiative 100%
FAMY supports this initiative 100%
"What if all inventory assets of a station, including those held by other players, became accessible to those conquering a station?
There are some players in this game who're not actively playing or have no idea what's going on in game, when said players will return to play this game & hear about their cargo been stolen by other players who captured station that will leave a bad taste in their mouth. You can ofcourse email them & post in newsletter but if someone is genuinely busy in real life & don't have time to put up with game then it will hurt their feelings big time when they come back.
I however like the idea of capturing station & having access to other players inventories or being able to destroy station but i'd love to see that implementation in Guild Based/Manufacturable stations... where you should be able to build all manufacturable parts but it should be destroyable or should be able to being captured by others & having access to players inventories if they left items in said station...
There are some players in this game who're not actively playing or have no idea what's going on in game, when said players will return to play this game & hear about their cargo been stolen by other players who captured station that will leave a bad taste in their mouth. You can ofcourse email them & post in newsletter but if someone is genuinely busy in real life & don't have time to put up with game then it will hurt their feelings big time when they come back.
I however like the idea of capturing station & having access to other players inventories or being able to destroy station but i'd love to see that implementation in Guild Based/Manufacturable stations... where you should be able to build all manufacturable parts but it should be destroyable or should be able to being captured by others & having access to players inventories if they left items in said station...
-10.
i think this would fit the idea of guild made stations more then the current conq stations.
+.25 if I understand the suggestion correctly if you can take all the items from the others player station inventory that I little overpowered you can probably build a dent in a month from just doing this. Counter suggestion - station must be held for 24 hour - 1 week to even start taking items and the items accessible are very expensive manu parts i.e reactor,mmcs,IBA (nothing below IBA)but you must put in a "request" for the item the "request" is a timer that counts down and once it goes down to 0 then it's given the bigger the item like a mmcs will take up to a week for the request to be completed. And for the old vets you can only take from the people who have logged on in a month.
I had 15mins the right this of any errors I'll fix them later
I had 15mins the right this of any errors I'll fix them later
If we get manufacturable stations then this should apply, but for conq stations, it doesn't make sense. -1 for now.
I have a better idea. Let's learn the lessons from decades of other games like World of Warcraft, etc. etc. etc. and de-couple manufacturing from stations that are conquerable.
Every game starts out saying "pvp", "pvp" until they see their member numbers dwarfed by a game like Farmville.
The simple truth is, most people don't care about pvp, they just want to build stuff.
In the case of VO, the price of manufacturing is simply too high considering the nature of the groups that end up controlling the stations. I have no desire to scream obscenities on #100 and grief newbies for the privilege of fitting in enough to be issued a key.
I would think that $10/month should be sufficient motivation to be allowed to participate in manufacturing, without having to sell my soul to Satan.
Some of us are honorable and actually spend hours and hours and hours collecting the supplies we need to manufacture, as apposed to taking advantage of exploits in mass or stealing them from other players. Yet we seem to always be made the victims by not only the pirates, but also the game creators.
I think it's time that we demand equality.
Every game starts out saying "pvp", "pvp" until they see their member numbers dwarfed by a game like Farmville.
The simple truth is, most people don't care about pvp, they just want to build stuff.
In the case of VO, the price of manufacturing is simply too high considering the nature of the groups that end up controlling the stations. I have no desire to scream obscenities on #100 and grief newbies for the privilege of fitting in enough to be issued a key.
I would think that $10/month should be sufficient motivation to be allowed to participate in manufacturing, without having to sell my soul to Satan.
Some of us are honorable and actually spend hours and hours and hours collecting the supplies we need to manufacture, as apposed to taking advantage of exploits in mass or stealing them from other players. Yet we seem to always be made the victims by not only the pirates, but also the game creators.
I think it's time that we demand equality.
I love this idea,but I imagine 99% of the player base won't. This discussion started from a player who felt wronged after being on the dominate side for 10+ years ,but for the last year was no longer.
Agreed Rioricki. Why should some lazy ass be able to leach off of our own hard work just because they conquered a station? Incarnate, pardon my french, but what the bloody hell are you smoking? Why do you always make updates catered towards pirates, and nothing that impacts the average folk in a positive manner? And OFCOURSE famy would like this. You claim, Incarnate, to neither support rats or traders, YET you sure do release updates that the rats benefit from the most. I call you and your dev team's bluff. (Oh wait it's just you and another person because hurdur for some unknown reason you refuse to bring in more people to help code VO.)
What's next incarnate, automatic sales of cappies from inactive players to the player market?
Or perhaps you nerfing the ability for cappies to move stuff?
What's next incarnate, automatic sales of cappies from inactive players to the player market?
Or perhaps you nerfing the ability for cappies to move stuff?
Yet we seem to always be made the victims by not only the pirates, but also the game creators.
You seem to be confused about what this game is. "No Safe Place" is one of our fundamental precepts. There are lots of other games without PvP, or emphasizing crafting. Most MMORPGs, in fact.
This is not one of those games. If games were ice-cream, I would not pretend that this is the most popular flavor, or the most accessible, or the one that will acquire the most fans.
But it's the flavor I happen to make. If my flavor is not to someone's taste, then I encourage them to try other flavors.
It is okay for there to be different flavors of ice-cream in the world, everyone doesn't have to make vanilla.
Could they theoretically begin transferring items, rendering building capships useless, when you can just pillage? It would eliminate most of the grind that was intended to be tied to manufacturing.
"Intended to be tied to manufacturing" is a bit of a misnomer. I've already written elsewhere about future potentials for conquering or stealing capital ships, going back to their initial debut.
Taking someone else's components from a station is no different than pirating those components while they're in-transit between stations. I'm sure people already have capships built with stolen components.
if someone is genuinely busy in real life & don't have time to put up with game then it will hurt their feelings big time when they come back.
I'm not going to stop making major changes to the game, simply because someone has stopped playing and will be unhappy with the results when they return.
Plus, we already do things like stop-accumulating the storage fees on accounts that haven't logged in for 6 months or more, so those people could be exempt from conquered inventory exposure.
If we get manufacturable stations then this should apply, but for conq stations, it doesn't make sense. -1 for now.
i think this would fit the idea of guild made stations more then the current conq stations.
It is important to understand the context of why the conquerable stations exist at all: They are a prototype for conquerable stations everywhere. Manufacturable, minor factions, whatever.
So, we have these conquerable stations specifically to test mechanics. The capship content was glued to them, because without that there would be no reason whatsoever to have any conflict.
You claim, Incarnate, to neither support rats or traders, YET you sure do release updates that the rats benefit from the most.
Really, you mean like all the updates for the last year on automation of capships? Are you under the impression that primarily benefited pirates? Do you have any concept of how time consuming all that work has been? I'm really getting exceptionally tired of this stupid-ass argument.
I am not interested in further opinions about how "biased" I am, or what content we release at what time; stick to debating the exact content in the OP, or I kick you off the forum.
You seem to be confused about what this game is. "No Safe Place" is one of our fundamental precepts. There are lots of other games without PvP, or emphasizing crafting. Most MMORPGs, in fact.
This is not one of those games. If games were ice-cream, I would not pretend that this is the most popular flavor, or the most accessible, or the one that will acquire the most fans.
But it's the flavor I happen to make. If my flavor is not to someone's taste, then I encourage them to try other flavors.
It is okay for there to be different flavors of ice-cream in the world, everyone doesn't have to make vanilla.
Could they theoretically begin transferring items, rendering building capships useless, when you can just pillage? It would eliminate most of the grind that was intended to be tied to manufacturing.
"Intended to be tied to manufacturing" is a bit of a misnomer. I've already written elsewhere about future potentials for conquering or stealing capital ships, going back to their initial debut.
Taking someone else's components from a station is no different than pirating those components while they're in-transit between stations. I'm sure people already have capships built with stolen components.
if someone is genuinely busy in real life & don't have time to put up with game then it will hurt their feelings big time when they come back.
I'm not going to stop making major changes to the game, simply because someone has stopped playing and will be unhappy with the results when they return.
Plus, we already do things like stop-accumulating the storage fees on accounts that haven't logged in for 6 months or more, so those people could be exempt from conquered inventory exposure.
If we get manufacturable stations then this should apply, but for conq stations, it doesn't make sense. -1 for now.
i think this would fit the idea of guild made stations more then the current conq stations.
It is important to understand the context of why the conquerable stations exist at all: They are a prototype for conquerable stations everywhere. Manufacturable, minor factions, whatever.
So, we have these conquerable stations specifically to test mechanics. The capship content was glued to them, because without that there would be no reason whatsoever to have any conflict.
You claim, Incarnate, to neither support rats or traders, YET you sure do release updates that the rats benefit from the most.
Really, you mean like all the updates for the last year on automation of capships? Are you under the impression that primarily benefited pirates? Do you have any concept of how time consuming all that work has been? I'm really getting exceptionally tired of this stupid-ass argument.
I am not interested in further opinions about how "biased" I am, or what content we release at what time; stick to debating the exact content in the OP, or I kick you off the forum.
"Taking someone else's components from a station is no different than pirating those components while they're in-transit between stations."
Wrong. Stations are a safe spot for people to take a sigh of relief after feeling exceedingly anxious moving vital and important components, to know that their nestegg is safe. People will just move their stuff to non conquerable stations if you go through with this, not much else will change. You also fail to mention if this will also apply to ships stored in conq stations. Let's also mention a serious can of worms you'll open with that. UDVs, PROMS, and other faction specific vessels would be available to anyone who captures a station.
Wrong. Stations are a safe spot for people to take a sigh of relief after feeling exceedingly anxious moving vital and important components, to know that their nestegg is safe. People will just move their stuff to non conquerable stations if you go through with this, not much else will change. You also fail to mention if this will also apply to ships stored in conq stations. Let's also mention a serious can of worms you'll open with that. UDVs, PROMS, and other faction specific vessels would be available to anyone who captures a station.
Why do you ask for opinions, and then threaten to boot from the forum those who don't agree with you?
It ain't worth it Rioricki. At the end of the day it's their own creation, and those such as us that will want to continue will have to adapt to these changes as they come. I'm just glad I never mass manufactured stuff because it seems like this is going to happen, sadly.
Why do you ask for opinions, and then threaten to boot from the forum those who don't agree with you?
Because we aren't here to discuss whether or not I'm biased against traders, or people's distorted view of history. We're here to talk about actual meaningful ramifications and tradeoffs to the gameplay change in the OP.
It ain't worth it Rioricki. At the end of the day it's their own creation, and those such as us that will want to continue will have to adapt to these changes as they come.
If you could exercise a little less knee-jerk pessimism, then this thread would be more productive, and you could give more useful feedback to genuinely benefit players with your point of view.
Because we aren't here to discuss whether or not I'm biased against traders, or people's distorted view of history. We're here to talk about actual meaningful ramifications and tradeoffs to the gameplay change in the OP.
It ain't worth it Rioricki. At the end of the day it's their own creation, and those such as us that will want to continue will have to adapt to these changes as they come.
If you could exercise a little less knee-jerk pessimism, then this thread would be more productive, and you could give more useful feedback to genuinely benefit players with your point of view.