I think it'd be very cool, convenient, and innovative if you added in a feature that allowed people to change nicknames. For instance say I get bored of my nickname, all I have to do is "/nickchange ______". In my "CharInfo" there is a section that tells people what nationality I've been before and what nicknames I've had before, so you can tell who's whom. And about changing nations, you can only change if your rating is 600+ and that nation loves you more than your current one does. Please post your opinions, and suggest ways to improve on this method. Thank you! ^^

Changing nick and nation, could be done for 'covert missions'. But then the change would only be temporarily. But I think that changing nick is too confusing, even if it's in the charinfo. You'd still need to be within 3000 m of that person to figure out who it is. But changing nation, sure!

This has been suggested before and has been pointed out on these types of threads, changing nations/nicks without starting a new char == bad idea.

I'm with furball on this one. Icarus could be anyone. Who actualy charinfo's EVERYONE in a sector? and if they're in a station or somewhere, you forget about it then you dont know he's there untill he's shooting at you.

As for nation changing, i'm all for that, by missions. If you want you could start taking missions that would pull you away from ____ and move you to itani. because everyone wants to be itani.

Well some Itani would want to be Neut. And some Itani could change over to Serco for the money (espionage missions and stuff).

I think that the user should be unable to change nicks. However, changing nations should be possible in two ways:

1. Espionage missions which do a "repaint" of your ship and modify your Friend/Foe Identifier to make you temporarily look like another nation. This kind of change should be possible to "see through" with a deep scan.

2. Permanent nation change (defection). In this process, you lose all of your license levels, cash and inventory (but not your xp points) and go over to another nation. This is only possible if you have a +600 reputation with the other nation, and can only be done once every month. As you can see, this makes you trade your way back up to your high levels because you have lost your potentially millions of credits worth of licenses. You are put at -1000 with your old nation and are labeled a defector in charinfo.

I like rogue's idea where most of your standings stay the same *but* you loose all your license levels and inventory etc. This is a reasonable setback that would take probably a couple of hours for someone to fix (as opposed to dozens of hours spent leveling up a new character). The changing name idea was rather hokee, so scratch it. But we should really try to develop the changing nation system so *if* the Devs do decide to implement it, they don't have to waste too much time on it.

The devs have said that it will be possible to change alliances, but the process will be long, painful and costly.

Alright, add a 2-day "no play" period while your character is changing alliances, and my system is sorta long, painful and costly...

Hehe, I agree Rogue

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"2. Permanent nation change (defection). In this process, you lose all of your license levels, cash and inventory (but not your xp points) and go over to another nation. "
scenario: bob is itani and has 17 million. bob sells all his ships and converts it to creds. he gives his 20 million to his friend Fred. bob converts to serco, and Fred gives bob his 20 million creds back.
to make it long painful costly, you could just make "immigration" include a huge fee; you'd actually have to pay millions every time you wanted to change.
and hmm. have a quota. most nations have one

Harvestmouse's Idea is a great improvement, thank you for your ideas! I especially like the immigration fee. I'd make it like 5-10 million.

Define "quota"

quota: how many people can switch to a certain nation from a certain nation in a given unit of time.
like: "only 200 NT can immigrate into serco nation every two days"

That's fine for NT, but for Itani, since it'd be defection to go Itani <> Serco, I think that instead of a quota there should be a "loyalty mission". Ya know, go kill some high-ranking Itanis or steal some Itani secrets or something.

I'm just wondering, but how would you start the switching over process? A mission in the fringes of other nation space? killing your team? failing missions?

Obviously, you'd enter into a series of missions culminating in the "Defection" mission. :D

i disagree with the name change...

i agree with nation switching... its my option as a person playing an RPG to do whatever i want...

i like the idea of having to buy into it... like a 1mill switch fee and some kind of a loyalty mission.... and definetly a negitive impact on nation standing from where you came.

The cost of defecting would have to be based on how much time you've put into playing Vendetta... if you played for 2 years and have 20/20/20/20 this it should be very expensive for you to switch, seeing as how you've done a bunch of campaigns aginst other nations at that level... if your a noob with 2/2/2/2 and decide that serco is not for you, it should be really cheap to switch to itani or NT.

on the flip side of that... serco and itani are at war... it should cost more (money and loyalty missions) to switch between those two and cheaper to goto NT.

loyalty missions could include assasinations, stockpile of propriatary nation goods, flag caps (if they bring it back), attacking stations (which would lead to being able to damage stations, at least the dock's so people cant use it for a while. in 7k+ sector universe it wouldnt hurt to not be able to dock in some places.).

MorbidlyWrong[VC]

Morbid...the problem with your loyalty missions is that *none* of them are really possible right now. *Maybe* stockpiling, but the rest aren't available.

I think the process would involve you going to that nation's homesector, so you'd have to at least be able to dock. When you go there there will be a mission saying...

"So...you want to become a _____ eh? Well your going to have to earn our trust first! First off, you'll have to kill 5 _____ Nation Defence Bots, and then you'll have to kill 3 characters from _____ with 50+ _____ kills. Once you have accomplished this task, come back and pay us a measly 5 million immigration fee. After this, you will be an officially sanctioned _____ pilot. Good luck!"

Notes:

_____=Name of nation
5 million would depend on how much they like you. If you are like -599 then it should be expensive to "bribe" them into letting you join. But if your +601 or something then it should cost 3 million because they like you much more.

Once again, post any suggestions to make the process better!
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Cheers!