I agree. I don't think the icons are really necessary for the station interface. Text could do the job without hogging all the space. Or maybe there could be a nifty small rotating 3D model of each weapon off to the right (just like when you buy a ship). Although I think the icons are still helpful in the HUD inventory area.

Oh, I also forgot one; it would be quite handy if you had the navigator in the station screen; because right now I have no idea where this mission wants to take me to. And it could also be handy to plan a trip in the 'safety of the station'.

CTF!

I was just playing and thinking...

First off, what is this "Hah! You can suck our big fat as*es because we don't love you! NO SPECIAL OR SLIGHTLY SPECIAL SHIP FOR YOU! <whacks with spoon" Ok...is this more dynamic and make the game deeper? Yes. Does it make it more frustrating? Yes. Everyone want good special ships, even slight specials (Like the Serco über vult), but most can't get them because they killed some other person months before. For this system to make the game fun and whatnot, it needs to be easier(and more fun) to up standing. For instance, once you gain docking privileges, you can bribe the faction every 1 point of standing costs 2k credits (so if I am -600, and I want +1000, I'd pay 2 million (something like that, my calculator is spazzing>.<)) just make it costly, but not super duper you'll-never-be-able-to-afford it, just enough that you'll have to do some trading for it. I mean, if I want the SkyCommand, it's not worth killing 3000 bots...which brings me to my next topic.

The new ratio of sector size to number of bots just doesn't work playability wise. With say 20 bots in a sector, I basically have to play hide-and-seek in an asteroid belt. So to up my standing say 100 points with a nation, would take about 3 hours, that's just stupid and boring. I would suggest shrinking the sector/s as opposed to making more bots (less lag). Botting is painful enough as it is, lets not make it horrendous.

Minor note...how does trading work? it seems every station has the exact same set of cargo...and the cargo isn't worth much even if I travel 6 systems...I liked it the old way when each place had like 2-5 kinds of cargo,and you didn't have to travel too far before it was worth something.

Once again, Arolte, I don't think you realize how much this game would freaking suck if you were constantly going places you didn't want and/or need to go to. It'd just be a waste of time.

I'm sure I'll be posting again.

Cheers.

I know that levels are needed in a game... But damn, we just dont have enough options at the lower ones. I REALLY REALLY miss my eff/fast charge combo for trading. It was possibly the most useful thing ever... Now I don't even know the levels for it or anything.

One last thing. Yes, nice all empty sectors. I like how everyones complaining. Maybe we could add a frig or two... or maybe a junkyard. Something cool looking anyway.

Spaz.

More content will be coming. more missions and the like.
Ray (i think it was ray, maybe it was a1k0n) has allready said the bots will be compacted closer to each other in the sectors.
Also, reputation increase is just about right as it is. In a MMORPG you dont want everything to happen quickly. Cash should be hard to come by.
Leveling up should take approximately 3 days * level you are attempting to attain if you play 2 - 3 hours a day. (hence level 0 to level 1 takes 6-9 hours, level 1 to level 2 takes 12-18 hours etc)
Reputation with a faction should take equally long to increase. to go up about 100 points should take approximately 2 hours, wether you are botting or trading. (on that note the reputation increase from trading needs to be modified up a bit +4 rep points for a 6 system long trade run is a tad low even in my opinion)

>Once again, Arolte, I don't think you realize how much this game would freaking
>suck if you were constantly going places you didn't want and/or need to go to. It'd
>just be a waste of time.

I don't understand your logic in this. That's like saying I need to go to system 20 but I'm only in system 5, and since I have to travel through other systems (where I don't need to go) then the navigation system is completely boring and useless. It doesn't make any sense. Why do you suppose batteries have an energy limit?

Why should ships have a limit in warp drive? It feels more "real" that way. Right now your warp drive makes you drain your battery completely regardless of whether you make a jump a single sector or twelve sectors. It doesn't make any sense. If you can travel that far, why is it that your ship can't boost nonstop inside a sector?

These are factors that are meant to make the game feel more "real" and challenging. Saying that traveling through desolate or bot-only sectors is boring and useless is just as silly as saying that we should all be given insta-warp capabilities that can take us wherever we want to go in a single jump. Navigation is supposed to take time.

I agree with arolte on the warp drive limit. However, I feel it should be ship-based rather than engine-based.

Arolte, you *do* have to go through other systems because they are part of the way there, and aren't much of a hastle to travel through. Now, you said it'd be more real, and I couldn't disagree more. First off, all Sci-Fi's have different ideas of ships and capabilities, I mean, look at (Babylon 5 I think) all of it's human based ships need large spinning parts, see that in Vendetta? No. We obviously aren't going for real, I mean, we're looking at a freak accident involving space anomolies 2000 years into the future. Now if it were realistic and the people separated had low supplies, and were all dying of some retarded alien disease, that'd suck. (By the way, didn't they make a game about life that tried to be realistic? Yah, and it was craptastic. 'nuff said.)

I'm just saying that I don't think that traveling one system every 15 minutes would be very fun, for *anyone*.

I'd really appreciate it if a Dev posted here and said if they liked any of the ideas...while I'm no code writer I'd assume some of these wouldn't be very difficult to do...color...and minor balancing issues...as a tester I'm just wondering if the best of these ideas will be put into the game before what will hopefully be a "mature" release (I mean that I hope it's at it's greatest potential and ready to go).

Cheers.

I just traversed 10 systems in about 20 minutes. Including 2 pit-stops because I wanted to check inventory. That's, if you ask me, much too fast.

As it is now, ships come with their own engine when you buy it. However, you can still unequip that engine and swap it with another ship's. I'm not sure if this was intended, since you can't buy engines in stations anymore. If it wasn't, I think the ability to unequip your ship's engine should be disabled.

I remember a while back asking for a black ship, one of the devs said that there is a problem with black or something....don't remember exactly....it was something about not supporting textures or something or other

To tell the truth...the game should in general just be less frustrating. It's being dealt with alot by protecting n00bs and traders with the SoonTM to be defence system. Now time to look at minor details. (in this game you want people to now go "oh god, now I *have* to do this", you want them to go "Meh, I'll just get this over with in a jiffy and get back to the fun!") So everything that isn't a big deal should take not alot of time. Traveling? Not a big deal, not alot of time. Leveling? Bid deal, quite a bit of time. Tradeing? "Medium" deal, should take between alot and a small amount of time. Faction standings? While it is a big deal, it should certainly take less time. (I've heard rumors of a1k0n putting out a new patch where bots "huddle" towards eachother in sectors, this would help alot if they're in convenient places, it'd really make the process more fluid) I really am just restating what I've already said, but these are playability issues that the Devs refuse to comment on. o.O

Cheers.

Here's how I see it.

Let's say we balance the game so that if you trade for 20 minutes, you can make 2000 credits, regardless of the navigation system we implement.

Would you rather spend that 20 minutes hopping from wormhole to wormhole, watching warp animations and clicking in the nav menu?

Or would you rather spend that 20 minutes flying through potentially dangerous asteroid fields, seeing new places while sneaking past (or fending off) pirates?

We've got a mechanism planned (and half implemented) that should foster more of the latter type of gameplay. It's not what Arolte described, but it's got the same spirit.

... And yes, I'll be shrinking down sectors so that you don't have to fly so far to find bots.

Thanks Vlad! That should definately make the process more fluid!

Now I can't quite remember...I was thinking about it last night...hmmmm...

Well anyways, this is on another thread but I'd like to see a crossroads connecting the major areas.

And I don't like the new trade system...it seems all of the places have the same cargo...I'd preffer it if each system specialized in say 5 items, and all of it's stations sold those items at different prices. Now, when I trade, I buy something for like 500c, and sell it 7 systems away for 700c, that just doesn't work, I'd like to see the old system a bit more, but maybe instead of traveling 3 sectors, you travel 3 systems, and instead of buying 1k and selling 7k, you buy (for) 1k, and sell for 4k. This will make it so making a million creds would take anywhere from a few hours to a day depending on how good the trader is.

I'll be posting as I remember my ideas!

Cheers.

EDIT:

NOW I REMEMBER!

When I kill an Itani, I loose standing in Itani and NT...I think when I kill an Itani, I should loose Itani standing, but *gain* Serco standing, and NT shouldn't be afflicted unless the person was like +1000 NT. The current system where I gain .5 Serco for every Itani kill, and loose 50 Itani and 35 NT doesn't work very well. It limits killing *SO* much. And killing players is more fun then killing bots, so instead of killing bots or trading for faction standing, I can instead go sneak around and kill (Say I wanted Serco standing, I'd kill Itani) and I'd get something like +50 Serco.

(You could also add in a rogue faction of bots which are as good as players and they use rockets and stuff, and every time you kill one, you gain +50 standing with your nation.)

I got another one. It's for adding another chat tab in the station interface for in-game moderators/guides. If you need help or if you've got a problem with another player, simply click the "Guide" tab and you'll get to talk to a guide privately about your problem. Hopefully a guide at the other will listen to you and solve your problem via this channel. It sure beats yelling "GUIDE!!!!" in main chat and not getting a response 95% of the time.

If the ships being limited to jump at a certain amount of squares make sure that transport missions don't require jumping into another system or 2.

travel and navigation between sectors (not systems) needs to be altered.

right now it's like this: you think, "Hmm, let's go *there*." so you look at the nav screen (10-20 s hanging in space) to find the place. then you go to 3000 m from the nearest biggest object. as soon as you've accomplished that, you need to reopen the nav screen to jump. (5-10 s hanging in space).

those seconds hanging in space can be, later on, crucial for traders, pirates, hunters, you name it. why? because you can be attacked and killed before you even have the time to turn your ship to face your aggressor.

what i propose to do is to change it to this: make the nav screen accessible in the station (this has already been mentioned in this thread) and there, allow the player to plot a course. then he exits, flies to safe distance and jumps by pressing the activate key (much like before).


secondly, i think a counter displaying the distance to the nearest ship would be nice too, but not absolutely necessary. the proximity counter is already very useful (especially for people who backpedal and vulture pilots).

as for the chat system: right now i still hit the wrong buttons every now and then, but it's clearly much better the way it is now. maybe the default key set for talking has to be shifted around (group chat has become much more important imo), maybe a comm menu (pops up in HUD) would help.

Well,

I prefer to be able to if needed, give reinforecement to a certain player to do this fast. If he is held up in sector 22 and im in 1, then it will take me 1-2 hours under your new scheme just for getting there, agaisnt that time the reinforcement aint needed anymore, or my pal is already bored as hell of waiting on me. Or if I want to meet someone for a duel or something else for which I need to travel 10 systemjumps then I would want this fast. Maybe you can have some sort of instant travel if you implement vlads idea, I really dont know "since this can be abused this easilly". But really if you want a trademission that involves that specific traject, then you could make it so that people have to fly through these points. Its easy to do and it gives access to a fast"relative" transportation from system a to b and it will make usage of all the other sectors.

Like I said, its content that drives a game not repetitiveness.

So to reiterate my point:

travelling:

- fast "get to a to b"
- mission "set sectors that you need to cross before you are entitled to use the warp from that sector, but make the trademissions shorter in timespan"

example: level x trade:

- to calculate number of systems to cross: x/4 (round down) OR 1+ x/4
- to calculate number of sectors to cross in system: x/3 OR x/2 and if you used 17 - 18 - 19 , you entered through wormhole 17 , 18. then the wormhole in 18 to 17 isnt counted as travesring 1 sector. only the wormhole in 18-19.

Once you know the amount of system to cross and sectors. there can be a random generation of the sectornumbers within a system that you need to traverse.

The higher formulas are just indicative, but show the general idea.

example: level 8 trader

system : 2 system jumps (17 - 18) OR: 3 jumps (17-18-19)
sector: 2 sectors (B4, L7 -17, R6 - K14 - 18) OR 4 sectors (well you know the drill ...)

But these numbers will probably be changed on the actual time that they will entail to complete a mission. Not to mention that you could make it an objective that you need to run through some checkpoints within that sector "indicated on radar, maybe the powerups from before ???", that will then confirm that you flew through the sector and make it possible to exact controll tha tyou stayed there a while"long enough", and that it can become fun by throwing bots at us or ...


But this will still enable fast travelling if you want. But at least it gives the player to choose and not orders them to do something against their will. It could also at the same time make it fun.

I hope you wont begrudge me for this opinion, but I really dont find it fun that you are obligating us boundaries that in my view arent really fun for a game...

cheers

heh. I like Rene's idea.
scenario: Trader is given mission to pick up widgets. these special widgets/powerup-like thingies are scattered in different sectors, and can only be picked up by the specific trader initially (make the widgets always visible on radar to the hired trader or something. the widgets can be pirated after they've been picked up)
trader follows path to different sectors and picks up widgets
pros: trading missions will involve sectors that don't have stations
the time it takes to trade isn't drastically shortened