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That ship? Special price, only for you..
One of the things that disturb me a bit about computer gaming is how easy it is to deduct 'the truth' about something by heading into Excel (or your favourite open source equivalent) for a few minutes with the absolute stats of the stuff ingame. Case in point - the weapon tables, quickly deducting 'the ultimate combination'* from the statistics. Same thing goes for ships to a lesser extent.
As anyone who bought a car can quickly attest, you don't always get exactly what you pay for. The damn thing starts to rust three days after the warranty expires, you wonder where on earth the manufaturer came up with the miles per gallon figure and worst of all, the CD player skips every time you pass a roadbump (Granted, if you ran into all of those in the same car, I'd suggest a refund by threat!) Then there's the intangible bits that you can't put a number on - how comfy is the car in the first place? Will this attract blondes from 120 feet or only 60?
All in all, it'd be quite meaningless to draw up simple statistics and try to deduct the truth about cars from that alone.
To give ships and equipment a bit of character, introducing non-obvious advantages and disadvantages would partly give another knowledge aspect to the game (it takes more than five minutes in excel to have an informed opinion about ships), partly give some more variety to the various models. That's the general idea. Some examples (which may or may not be good, general idea nonwithstanding) can be found below.
Good idea or bad idea?
The effects should, of course, not be major - slightly faster than advertised acceleration. Weak side thrusters. Slightly offset thrusters so thrusting up gives a very faint Z-axis rotation. Badly covered cabling, giving more damage if hit in a particular area. Slightly bad sensors (range -3%). Less than perfect gyro so rotating a lot gives a 100ms delay when you stop the rotation. Peachy decelerator so you come out of warp with more energy than usual. Whatnot.
(I'm sure you all can imagine something similar for weapons without the need for more examples)
* Although I don't quite agree with the logic that damage/second is the only thing you can go by, it's an example you can relate to.
As anyone who bought a car can quickly attest, you don't always get exactly what you pay for. The damn thing starts to rust three days after the warranty expires, you wonder where on earth the manufaturer came up with the miles per gallon figure and worst of all, the CD player skips every time you pass a roadbump (Granted, if you ran into all of those in the same car, I'd suggest a refund by threat!) Then there's the intangible bits that you can't put a number on - how comfy is the car in the first place? Will this attract blondes from 120 feet or only 60?
All in all, it'd be quite meaningless to draw up simple statistics and try to deduct the truth about cars from that alone.
To give ships and equipment a bit of character, introducing non-obvious advantages and disadvantages would partly give another knowledge aspect to the game (it takes more than five minutes in excel to have an informed opinion about ships), partly give some more variety to the various models. That's the general idea. Some examples (which may or may not be good, general idea nonwithstanding) can be found below.
Good idea or bad idea?
The effects should, of course, not be major - slightly faster than advertised acceleration. Weak side thrusters. Slightly offset thrusters so thrusting up gives a very faint Z-axis rotation. Badly covered cabling, giving more damage if hit in a particular area. Slightly bad sensors (range -3%). Less than perfect gyro so rotating a lot gives a 100ms delay when you stop the rotation. Peachy decelerator so you come out of warp with more energy than usual. Whatnot.
(I'm sure you all can imagine something similar for weapons without the need for more examples)
* Although I don't quite agree with the logic that damage/second is the only thing you can go by, it's an example you can relate to.
Good and non-obvious. yey :)
i think that's a great idea
Sounds like a great Idea to me, plus, you could have each ship just have a particular range of values, even from the same station. You might end up buying a valk with an extra 50 kg, or a neutron III which occasionally uses a little too much energy. You could have a station which makes sure that these Items are perfect, but, which charges much more for each item.
Clever. I like it.
Slick like butter.
Three thumbs up.
Three thumbs up.
only if their was somewhere I could go an pay more for a ship that I can tell whats what on it. Like paying for a carfax report. It gives me the if ands an buts of the ship so I know what I'm getting. Or be able to take it somewhere an pay for a test to be done on it an reveal whats what
No. No. NO.
The entire idea behind kriss's idea is to PREVENT min/maxing.
Not to give people an opportunity to do it MORE by letting them endlessly buy ships until they get one that has 'all the perks.'
The entire idea behind kriss's idea is to PREVENT min/maxing.
Not to give people an opportunity to do it MORE by letting them endlessly buy ships until they get one that has 'all the perks.'
As a used vehicle, it will be cheaper than the standard variety, but for each 10% off the new purchase price, it could have three dings and a bonus. Each ding is a modifier by -1%, attached to a different spec. Each bonus is 5%.
For example:
Player sees a Rag for 20% off. That means that the ship will roll for 6 dings and 2 bonuses when the buyer clicks 'buy ship'. Until the ship is bought, they won't know what is applied where
-1 ding attaches to booster. Top speed is cut by 1%
-1 ding attaches to left thruster. Output is cut by 1%. Ship will 'pull' left when thrusting
-1 ding attaches to right thruster Output is cut by 1%. Pull to the left is negated, but total output is -1%
-1 ding attaches to left small weapon port. Weapon in that slot will deal 1% less damage.
-1 ding attaches to left small weapon port. Weapon in that slot will now deal an additional 1% less damage.
-1 ding attaches to radio equipment. Player has a 1% chance to appear hostile to friendlies, but will not take damage if fired upon.
+1 bonus attaches to radio equipment. Player has a 5% chance to appear friendly to hive bots, and will not be fired upon until proven an enemy.
+1 bonus attaches to booster. Top speed is increased by 5% for a total increase of 4% over stock configuration.
For example:
Player sees a Rag for 20% off. That means that the ship will roll for 6 dings and 2 bonuses when the buyer clicks 'buy ship'. Until the ship is bought, they won't know what is applied where
-1 ding attaches to booster. Top speed is cut by 1%
-1 ding attaches to left thruster. Output is cut by 1%. Ship will 'pull' left when thrusting
-1 ding attaches to right thruster Output is cut by 1%. Pull to the left is negated, but total output is -1%
-1 ding attaches to left small weapon port. Weapon in that slot will deal 1% less damage.
-1 ding attaches to left small weapon port. Weapon in that slot will now deal an additional 1% less damage.
-1 ding attaches to radio equipment. Player has a 1% chance to appear hostile to friendlies, but will not take damage if fired upon.
+1 bonus attaches to radio equipment. Player has a 5% chance to appear friendly to hive bots, and will not be fired upon until proven an enemy.
+1 bonus attaches to booster. Top speed is increased by 5% for a total increase of 4% over stock configuration.
Too predictable.
To easy to test for someone who's played a long time.
The idea here is to give ships some individuality, plus make it harder to completely min/max out one's ship config.
To easy to test for someone who's played a long time.
The idea here is to give ships some individuality, plus make it harder to completely min/max out one's ship config.
I don't know if its too predictable, with enough types of dings, and enough of a cut between new and resale, a person would use a LOT of money trying to get their "ideal" ship. Furthermore, ships are destroyed all the time, who has time to do that for every ship they want?
I know that I'm in a hurry to get to the CTC or to fight someone all the time. I would just take whatever I could get.
Think about how easy it is to make someone waste all that time? I just stop by their station and blow them up.
I know that I'm in a hurry to get to the CTC or to fight someone all the time. I would just take whatever I could get.
Think about how easy it is to make someone waste all that time? I just stop by their station and blow them up.
Trust me, someone would do it, and having a ship with predictable 'dings' or 'bonuses' would make some manner of exploitation possible.
well, if you can't tell what your dings are, how do you know till you fly it around. A single bonus would not win a fight.
even though it'd make my excel sheet of everything useless, i like this idea. Maybe it could also fit in with player crafting futher down the line?
Great idea kriss. One enhancement I would like to see would be certain stations providing ship services. So you could buy a less than perfect craft, but take it to a specialist who could improve certain aspects of it for you.
I don't think this would lead us back to the max/min problem, as has already been stated by others, ships aren't permanent. What a service tech could do would have to be balanced out though - ye canna' change the laws o' physics!
I don't think this would lead us back to the max/min problem, as has already been stated by others, ships aren't permanent. What a service tech could do would have to be balanced out though - ye canna' change the laws o' physics!
Yup, that seems like a natural extension to this idea. Soon we'll have lowriders, buff muscle cars, riced-out wannabe sportsters, etc. etc. :)
**** NO!!!
correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the MAJOR selling points of this game is the fact that there are *NO* *DICE* !!!!
nothing here is random, it's all based on skill..... start adding these pseudo-random "luck-of-the-draw" elements, and pretty soon a lot of that skill is negated... when something goes wrong; if you crash into a roid or get skewered by a bot... unless lag is involved, you know now that it's YOUR OWN FAULT... what this sounds like is a step down the "don't blame me, I just got a lemon" road...
Needless to say, I think we should add luck-based elements such as this only after a good deal of discussion
--EDIT: ack! maybe this is a little too harsh.... sorry, guys :o
correct me if I'm wrong, but one of the MAJOR selling points of this game is the fact that there are *NO* *DICE* !!!!
nothing here is random, it's all based on skill..... start adding these pseudo-random "luck-of-the-draw" elements, and pretty soon a lot of that skill is negated... when something goes wrong; if you crash into a roid or get skewered by a bot... unless lag is involved, you know now that it's YOUR OWN FAULT... what this sounds like is a step down the "don't blame me, I just got a lemon" road...
Needless to say, I think we should add luck-based elements such as this only after a good deal of discussion
--EDIT: ack! maybe this is a little too harsh.... sorry, guys :o
i love how someone makes a suggestion, a lot of people agree, then someone with a brain goes psycho on them. options are nice if _I_ can control them. we definitely need more variety in ship specs, but nothing random, please.
What about a station mechanic who can enhance an aspect of your ship at the expense of another? Say you take your new Warthog TD to the local mechanic and ask him to enhance maneuverability. He does it but it results in a reduction of top speed (more mass?), or armor (loss of hull intergity?), or it could even reduce battery efficiency by causing a small drain on main power (upgraded thrusters?) . . . etc. That way you can never have everything maxed out but can alter your ship to suit your needs/preference.