With the death of Space Quake (God rest its soul) the niche of "pirate" isn't the same as it used to be. The faction system and the new lonely universe have made the game extremely hostile to any sort of PvP action. That's why I think it's important that we provide a few new concepts and features into the game to make space a more dangerous place.

1.) Scanners: Scanners are what tells your ship the goings on of the outside world. When you target someone, your ship scans the frequency they're outputting and interprets that as data that tells them my ship, loadout, and the ID of the pilot. If they scan cargo it tells them the contents of the cargo, etc. But we need to make this more robust. What if there was a delay to scan someone? What if it took your ship's computer time to interpret who you are targetting? So you point at someone and press "g." Then it tells you the nation affiliation, then, 2 seconds later, the loadout, then the pilot after a 3 to 5 second wait. The amount of detail you can pick up from a ship also depends on how far away they are. So you may be able to see that a ship is Serco from the edges of your RADAR range, but you don't know who it is. This way, it takes time to figure out who another ship is. If you want to find things faster, you upgrade you scanners. Since you have the encryption key for your own nation, it takes no time at all to get info on your countrymen, but will take longer to get it on people of other nations.

2.) Jammers: With scanners come jammers. Jammers increase the delay to get certain bits of info. So a generic ID jammer would mask your ID for a couple of seconds longer. A really good ID jammer would let you broadcast a fake ID that will stand up to the scrutiny of all but the best scanners. Naturally, these would only work on people of other nations. A serco can't jam a serco.

This way you get new classes of characters. Pirates and assassins are rewarded for keeping secrecy. If a victim can't ID you they can't report you and you won't get a permanent mark on your record (but you will get chased out of the sector until you get a new ship or a new paintjob.) Naturally, all Defbots have the top scanner so you can't fool them if they ever get close enough to you. You just have to avoid them. If any non-allied player in the sector can get a positive ID on you, they can report you and you'll get a black mark. Here is the hypothetical scenario:

Pirate has a jammer. Pirate attacks trader and kills him. The local defbots attack the pirate.
-If the trader got a pilot ID on the pirate before he died, the pirate gets a permanent black mark with every faction that he deserves a black mark from.
-If any bystanders get a pilot ID on the pirate they can choose to report the pirate name by typing /report criminal "pirate name" and the pirate gets a permanent black mark.
-If any of the scrambling defbots get within a certain limited range (within say, 300 to 500m) pirate gets a permanent black mark.
-If none of that happens, however, the pirate can get off scot-free. The ship the pirate attacked in will be KOS until he/she gets a new one or a new paint-job, but once that happens, the pirate feels no ill effects.

This rewards swift and sneaky killing. You have to make sure there are no bystanders or defenders nearby and see to it that you kill the victim quickly. Very quickly, before they can ID you. Otherwise, as soon as you land a hit on them their scanner starts working.


The new warp system also demands some new toys.
1.) Disruptor beam: An L-Port weapon and looks like the beam cannon except it does 0 damage and only works on a limited range. It drains 25% of the battery once fired but makes the victim unable to warp for a limited amount of time.

2.) Disruptor field: An S-Port weapon that makes it impossible for ships within a certain range of you from warping. It keeps your battery at 25% capacity for as long as it's on. So you better catch them quick.

3.) Interdiction field: A Heavy (capital ship class) weapon that provides a huge disruption field. Each sector is broken up into a grid right? Well, what this does is whenever a person is warping from point A to point B, they pass through a large area of the grid. As long as the interdicter is within that area the warping ship will have a percentage chance of automatically warping into the same sector as the interdictor rather than at their destination. To escape, they must get 3000m away from everything. Varying levels of interdiction fields can improve the chance of a hit. It would never break 50% though. That would just be unfair.
The smaller the ship you're in, the smaller the warp area you create, so this is mostly a capital ship to capital ship type of thing.
http://img42.photobucket.com/albums/v130/Pavan2099/Untitled-1.jpg

What do you think?

dont like it.

if you want pvp : then use the outerregions. There should even be a couple sectors/systems where even pvp wont have any effect on nationspecific standing. This will contain the pirates lairs.

Beside for the moment pirating aint that hard, only problem is that due to the vastness of the game not many people will be encountered in the same sector. But as soon as more people will enter the game again, then pirating/acting like an ass will again be as preevalent as before

cheers

If you instantly relate pirating with acting like an ass don't reply to this thread. You have a problem with the whole concept of pirating Rene and that doesn't help refine Magus's idea.

I like the ideas, particularly because it gives our ships some non weapons related tasks to do and I think that adds a lot of deapth instantly. What I mean by that is you can interact in more ways than just causing dammage to other players. Sounds good.

I like the ideas in general. But the small-port interdictor would have to have no more than 500m or so range to keep it balanced, and even that much would be pushing it.

Really bad ideas, the first two. Keeping battery at 25%?? Boost forever?

As for the Interdiction field... awesome. I like it a lot.

I think he meant limiting battery to 25% (as in it can't recharge above the 25% mark). Personally, I'd prefer just disabling recharge on the battery (make the field use, say, 35 energy/second. This disables or severely limits battery recharge).

And what's wrong with scanners and jammers? They ought to be there...

>>The ship the pirate attacked in will be KOS until he/she gets a new one or a new paint-job, but once that happens, the pirate feels no ill effects. <<

what if the pirate just sells his ship and buys a new one? (negligible credit loss). there must be some way to make the "black mark" more permanent so that it actually works :D.

I think part of the fun would be that it is a temporary black mark. We already have a means for more permanent affects (such as faction standings).

It's not the cost of the new ship that limmits the pirate, its the cost of jammers and the difficulty of staying out of scanning range.

Being able to ditch your get-away ship for a new untainted ship sounds cool to me. I also like the idea of trying to chase a pirate down to within close scanning range to identify the true perp of the crimes.

Much like the newer deap space communications we are now using I think more limmited scanning would add a lot of 'outer space' feel to the game.

Yea, that's what I was going to say. You might have to go to a shadier station to change your ship too since legitimate factions won't cooperate. It makes piracy a lot more challenging and simultaneously more exciting while also making it a lot more fun to hunt them. It becomes a game of cat and mouse between defender and pirate. If it's fun, more people are likely to become defenders and pirates are likely to actually promote fun gameplay as opposed to just shooting people up for shits and giggles.

I should probably add that killing the ship before finishing a scan would let you automatically ID it.

I thought of this idea less to make piracy and defending more fun and more to create a game class that incorporates sneakiness and assasinnation rather than brute force. It's something that's missing from the game.

"But the small-port interdictor would have to have no more than 500m or so range to keep it balanced, and even that much would be pushing it."
-I wasn't sure whether it would be better to make the disruption field L-port and the beam S-port or the other way around. I guess whichever would balance better would be the way to go.

And yea, 25% of battery capacity, not keeping it fixed at 25%.

Look: if you can switch ships to escape black marks, then everyone will. Which means that everyone is going to spend a minute or two in the station clicking the 'buy' button. The faster you can click around the faster you get your new ship.

Somehow, I don't wish such a stupid, repetitive, tedious task in ANY game, even for pirates. Keep in mind that Vendetta will be a game, not a simulation of reality. Funitude is more important than realism. If you add too many elements, things get complicated, and complicated-ness does not fit into a real-time twitch combat game, even if it's in the station.

If there's going to be a scanner/jammer system, it had better be simple and concise.

Only some kinds of black marks FutureRuler. Use more specific examples of your problem maybe.

First everyone won't do it because only those that have used a jammer to do something nefarious will have a need to. Its not like the idea is that a new ship will reset your TGP standing after a bad trade run or something.

It's more like using a stolen car to rob a bank and ditching it before the cops find out who was driving it. And if they catch you before you ditch it then obviously there is no point in switching it anymore.

I'm having trouble envisioning a scenario that leads to this mindless repetative clicking you speak of. Care to elaborate? Just how fast and often will you be able to buy a ship get a jammer pirate someone successfully without being identified, make it back to a station without being scanned and then sell your ship for a new one?

Heh, Hoax is defending my idea better than I could.

A time delay before a jammer can start working might also help prevent wanton killing. A killer would have to plan it before using it.

And Future God, I really don't understand what you're refferring it. This is seperate from faction standing. You commit the crime and your ship becomes "wanted" so that they can catch you and find out who you are so that the factions can give you a black mark. It's a way of avoiding black marks, not removing them.


As for complexity, it's really not as complicated as it sounds. It just takes time to explain because it requires a lot of detail. I could illustrate it better if I knew how to work with flash.

What I imagine with scanners is that instead of having the info appear instantly on the screen, a little progress bar or percentage pops up to show you how close it is to completion. Then, once it's done, the info pops up. Jammers just delay the length of time before the progress bar finishes.
You do something bad your unidentified ship gets wanted status. If your ID is discovered you lose standing. If not, and you manage to get to a pirate station unidentified, you ditch your ship and are safe.

"If none of that happens, however, the pirate can get off scot-free. The ship the pirate attacked in will be KOS until he/she gets a new one or a new paint-job, but once that happens, the pirate feels no ill effects."

How rarely do you think that will happen? I suspect often enough.

However, I just realized that the part of this that I have e problem with can be really easily fixed. Stations can offer "paintjobs" like in GTA's Pay-n-Sprays.

It's tedious to buy a ship and an entire loadout, even if you have to do it a few times out of ten.

I think the radar system is still broken though..

Anyone thats not in the same nation as player show up as red. And some players seem to have a bad habit to kill anything thats red on the radar, no matter what it is.. bots, newbies/anyone from the opposite nation.

And I think the friendly fire with the same nation is still off.

But I'm not trying to eleminate PvP.

"How rarely do you think that will happen? I suspect often enough."
-The frequency of it would depend largely on the skill of the pirate as well as the skill of the people who are hunting him. Ideally, bounties would be placed on people with "Wanted status." But the thing is, a good pirate is not only a person who can fight and type "arr" a lot. A good pirate is also a person who can avoid combat when not necessary. They'd also have to have enough skill to avoid patrols and various areas, keep good standing with legitimate factions AND keep good standing with pirate factions.

"However, I just realized that the part of this that I have e problem with can be really easily fixed. Stations can offer "paintjobs" like in GTA's Pay-n-Sprays.

It's tedious to buy a ship and an entire loadout, even if you have to do it a few times out of ten."
-Both of those ideas work, but sometimes you might just want a new ship and not bother repainting your old one. Either way, you lose the wanted status until you get IDed.


"I think the radar system is still broken though.."
-The RADAR is broken but that was really beyond the scope of what I was trying to cover. The radar could just be fixed by adding more colors.

I wrote this as a prospective bounty hunter/mercenary. I want to hear a hardcore pirate's view. Arolte, Phoenix, Icaurus. . . where are you?

I am not a hard core pirate, quite the opposite :) But I realy like the idea. It makes traders less a shining bullseye and if you fix it so that you can have either a scanner or a jammer it would be fun to make anti-pirate runs. If you spot a ship scan it, if it's a know pirate blast it, or try to anyway, if not carry on trading.

HT