I know Vendetta has been designed to keep levelling up and heavy stats to a minimum... but what if making credits could be made more in-depth than simple trading from A to B?

I was thinking that characters could specialise in say, 3 of the following skills. Like:

Energy weapons: allows the char to create energy weapons (Itani start at 5 skill)
Munitions: allows creation of rockets, homing missiles (Serco start at 5 skill)
Reactor knowledge: allows creation/improving of batteries
Rocket science: allows creation/improving of engines (Neutral start at 5 skill)
Armor-smithing: allows tempering of ship hulls for extra HP, and armor plate creation/improving (Serco start at 5 skill)
Forcefield technology: allows creation/improving of shields
Ultrasonics: allows creation/improving of scanning devices (radar range) (Itani start at 5 skill)
Computer science: allows creation of auto-aim-improving devices (Neutral start at 5 skill)

Etc.

Ill give an example. Say you wanted to go into rocket science. First you go to a station where classes in that technology would be available for a small price, and you would gain rocket science at 0.1 skill. To improve it, you need to start fiddling around with engines and stuff.

At first all you would be able to make is a light engine, requiring, say, 2 scrap metal and 1 low-grade reactor fuel widgets to make. You dock with these, then snap em together and create (hopefully) a light engine. At first your success rate would be low at best, but with every successful engine you make your skill has a chance of going up 0.1.

At a skill level of 2, light engines are rarely a problem, and you have about 70% chance of making them successfully. Not only that, they are slightly better than the ones sold at your average station. Now you can try making an efficient light engine, requiring... more widgets and stuff. Your success rate would be low again, but the chances of "skilling up" are higher for each success- since you get skill-ups from ordinary light engines less often as you level up.

At 5, your light engines are getting better, almost up to the standard of the shopbought light-efficient. Your own light-efficients arent to shabby either- they often have a slightly lower energy drain or higher spin torque than the shopbought equivalent.

Etc again.

Basically, as you level up your work skill, you can create more and more complex pieces of equipment. Whereas it started off expensive, soon you start making profit from selling your wares to not only NPC stations, but players as well. At a certain level you are able to improve an engine's stats that has already been created, with a small risk of destroying it.

This is a rough idea, but it could broaden the whole economy of Vendetta. Think about it- smugglers carrying holds full of expertly-fabricated gauss cannons, made by an enemy craftsman, to sell on the black market for vast amounts. Governments contracting players to supply them with X amount of weapons for Y reputation and Z gold. Stuff like that.

I like this idea Uncledave. It fits right in with my feelings that vendetta's skill system should allow you to improve your combat abilities by tweaking your ship, given time and parts, instead of giving you better reactions from your ship from say a "pilot" skill.

One of the problems I've had lately with discussing the suggestions is that people are getting increasingly elaborate visions of how the game should work. I'm probably directly to blame for that.

Alot of people's general ideas for what direction the game should go in are pretty good. I've got nothing at all against manufacturing as part of the game. I've mentioned it in the past. This is a fairly good, if vague, vision of it. But any manufacturing system is going to be highly complex. Are we to the point where we can even make useful suggestions about a manufacturing system? How many other things have to get added to the game before we could have a manufacturing system? Player owned facilities? Skills? A manufacturing 'tree'? A method of treating inventory as cargo? A manufacturing interface?

I don't know. I'm increasingly unsure of what a useful suggestion to the devs is. Much as I like the idea of a manufacturing system, if I composed a list of things I'd immediately like to see implemented, I doubt it would get very high up on my list.

Right, thats why I said it was a pondering. Same as months back, you were pondering on the ideas of capital ships. This *is* a suggestions forum after all... :p

Well, right now what I'm pondering is the question, "What should I be pondering?"

The reason that I was pondering capital ships is that I thought (apparantly erroneously) that if the engine was capable of handling the motion of a ship of one size, that it was capable of handling the motion of ships of all sizes. So, I thought that the development of capital ships - or at least ships bigger than what we have now - would be something that was 'soon(tm)'. Heck, I even thought I had some tantalizing reasons to think that.

I was therefore trying to anticipate all the problems this would create. Among that list was:

1) What should happen when a big ship impacts a rigid feature of the environment (a 'roid) which is smaller than the ship? In general, how will a bigger ship 'fit' in the environment?

2) How can we balance larger ships against smaller ships?

3) How can we introduce ships of totally different scales without having to completely reinvent engines, batteries, weapons and other 'gizmos' for each class of ship?

4) What can we do to make flying ships of every size attractive?

5) How can we manage the huge burden flying a larger and more complex ship entails?

I assume that the devs have thier own answers to these questions, and so I assumed that we would see first baby steps 'soon(tm)' that created the things that would be needed for the things that would be needed for 'big ships'.

Anyway, that was what I was pondering then - as you said. Now I'm pondering, "What did I miss?", and "Where did I get confused and start making suggestions for making Dance Space Bass Fishing 2004 instead of the game that the devs are making?" "What really is the next 'easy' step(s), and for that matter, what was the _last_ step and what suggestions should I make about that step?"

If you like, I can make suggestions about your suggestions (my only objection is it looks like skill advancement is 'tedious task' based), or I can list my own ideas about manufacturing and we can argue over the details, steal ideas from other games with highly developed manufacturing subgames, and quibble over whether or not 'blueprints widgets' add or subtract from gameplay.

Or you could feel in the questions: how would you implement manufacturing facilities (finite supply, infinite supply, station based, ship based, or both, single facility or multiple qualities and addons), what exactly would your manufacturing tree look like and what sort of widgets would you want to add or subtract from the current supply, how would you let players move inventory to cargo and vica a versa, and what would a manufacturing interface need to have to let a player become a galactic tycoon?

Or you can just ignore me (that would be my recommendation), and discount this morose pondering of "What is the meaning of the word 'suggestion'?" and cynicism as just a case of mild depression on my part which is likely to go away soon and be replaced by my merely normally ignoring self. ;)

Well, actually this pondering was over the state of the economy. Sure it would be a bit tedious at first, but I thought:

1) What if all objects could be treated as cargo?
2) What if they could be combined and made into other parts?
3) What if THIS was the driving force of the economy, instead of just random thingy widgets being transported from A to B?

This would encourage player interaction and... yeah, Ive done that bit. But anyway, the next logical step for the economy is to move away from just nominal bits of cargo, and make them actually MEAN something in the game. As you said, the devs do have their own ideas on what Vendetta will become, but so far 99.9% of the suggestions have been in the field of PvP and PvNPC interaction through combat and flying- this would be PvP trading. Bringing everybody deeper into the MMORPGness.

I meant for this to be as basic as possible. Just find the bits, combine them at a station into a useful gizmo, and add a little bit onto your skill number. Im not a developer, but its only balance I can see as the problem with this, and its school tomorrow, so youll have to excuse me. :p

In reply to leveling up:

I never liked leveling up in a game. Level 99s can beat the crap out of anything. I don't think there will be leveling in Vendetta, but maybe you're right, and we can have special skills. If you want to own a weapon buisness, you might be able to build weapons for a cheaper cost because of your skill, or something. Nothing that would give you a huge advantage, though.

well, what he suggested here makes good sense as it wouldn't make the PvP buisness "unbalanced" just because you have a certain skill maxxed out like a powergamer.

However, it does feed the social/Trade structure, Which is a cool thing.

The intention was that as you get to the 50s and 60s, the parts would become much harder to find- but the weapons would be the kind only mountable on much larger ships.

Basically, hand-crafted weapons would be a little better than their shopbought counterpart, but would fit in the same place. Does that make any sense? :p

that's a really cool idea. it's not just "leveling up" to the 99th level (I don't like tedious games where you have to gain "experience points" to advance to new levels); and it would add to the role-playing so much.
Even a high-level player wouldn't have a tremendous advantage. He could make a lot of money by having the ability to make large varieties of engines/weapons/batteries/ships, but the quality of the items shouldn't continue to increase forever. There should be a leveling off (asymptote?).

Right. The higher your craftmanship, the more likely the items are to be better than the shopbought stuff.

If you have your own buisness, will you be able to somehow mass produce your products?

Combine 2 xith + 2 rare metals for a medium-efficient engine

Combine 200 xith + 200 rare metals for 100 medium-efficient engine?

Would this take more or the same amound of time, you think?

it would be interesting to see how a full demand economy would work in Vendetta. ie In order to buy a valk you need 50 Mineralx 30 ComponentC and 21 RareZ plus credits. This would possibly require traders to be paid by others to deliver cargo for mass production. Also if you buy a sunflare the price of them would go up until Components U and Y were delivered.

This could be done 2 ways. Global or Personal. I would like the Global system better as it encourages team work.

I don't think there should be different levels however. I dislike that whole system. Just make goods harder and more expensive to find for some items.

Hmm, thats a good idea. Instead of credits, some people may just want to sell the ship for some useful minerals. This wouldn't work for normal ships, only special ones. We're going to have to start treating everything like cargo, only some of it is equipable cargo.