As most people have noticed, the distribution of ships, weapons, and station inventory is essentially the same everywhere. While this is okay until a more plausible framework is put up, there are some pretty HUGE conflicts between this, or any similar setup, and the storyline as outlined in the VO manual.

Due to hugely differing technological developments between the different factions, there really should not be ANY crossover in terms of ship distribution.

Itani ships are based on an entirely different tech tree from Serco, and while both of these factions have traded with the UIT, the UIT has its own, completely different technological history from which most of its ships would derive.

I can see things like busses being the same for all factions; the explanation being that busses are pretty much surplus stock from earlier times, when the different factions had not diverged so much. There should be some differences, ideally, between the factions' busses, but for a start they could be the same.

Sticking to the storyline, the Itani ships would be lighly armored, fast, and highly maneouverable, depending mostly on their actual shielding for protection.

Serco ships, only recently having been introduced to Xithricite-based alloys, would have much, MUCH heavier armor, higher ship mass, and less overall speed/maneouverability, and, not incidentally, be close to indestructable.

UIT ships would be highly dependent on their exotic alloys, probably resulting in good maneouverability and strong armor, though definitely not as strong as the Serco, or agile as the Itani.

There would undoubtedly be crossover between the UIT and other factions, with UIT utilizing Serco and Itani derived technologies, while Itani/Serco would have adopted techniques and technologies shared with them by the UIT. It's even possible that some minor technologies would have been traded to the UIT by one of the other two factions, and then traded to that faction's enemy by the UIT subsequently, but this would most likely be a very rare occurance.

As with ships, weaponry would almost certainly have developed differently between the factions. Itani would undoubtedly favor energy based weaponry, since the weight of ammo would compromise their ships' maneouverability, though I can see them using some high velocity guns and possibly long range missiles to soften targets. Itani weaponry would probably emphasize light weight and projectile speed over damage.

Serco would prolly rely on more conventional weaponry, like missiles and projectile weapons, though it's likely their energy weapons would have been bolstered in quality by relations with the UIT. The Serco's tradition of carrier-based combat would make ammo conservation less of a consideration than it would be for other factions, as well as weapon and subsystem(see parenthetical comment below)maintainability. Weapon damage, however, and range, would be a top priority for the slow, ponderous Serco forces.

The UIT would almost certainly have a good mix of all weapons types, having exposure to both Itani and Serco technologies, and undoubtedly would have come up with their own, specialized implimentations of these weapons. I would think that with a survivalistic element present, the UIT would use weapons that were easy to repair(a factor to be taken into account later, if subsystem specific damage ever is implimented), provided a good weight/damage ratio, or had few logistic considerations, like ammo, to worry about. I also had ideas for beam-weapons, derived from advanced UIT mining lasers, but that can be discussed later

Station inventory would also be very different. Not withstanding the considerations of an economy based on actual game-useful items, even the basic "trade items" should differ vastly from nation to nation. All the "basics," and items that any civilization would need, like food, consumer electronics, manufacturing tools, common ores(UIT should be the only significant source for Xithricite-based ores), and other such items would remain the same, but things like weapons/ship components, advanced alloys, and other miscellania would differ greatly, especially between Itani and Serco, with the UIT being a mix of the other two, with a smaller number of specialized items of their own.

War dynamics: as it stands, play dynamics are pretty much the same for everyone at the moment. The "traditions" of the different societies don't make any difference at all right now, which ruins a large part of the immersion the storyline would otherwise provide. The different factions place equal emphasis on the same licenses for the same reasons, which does not mesh with the vastly differing worldviews of the different factions in any way. The fact that there are three combat oriented licenses, one trade license, and one mining license at the moment don't help at all; there's no way to gain licenses, and thus recognition, for any other aspect of play at the moment.

There are other issues along these lines, but this is what I can think of right now. Any other issues of this nature that need addressing should be posted here for further debate.

Good points.

The current items, ships, and weapons are very homogeneous, but the ships and weapons in the Chronicles are certainly what we could consider high-level ships. So the Rag (EDIT: meant Prom, of course) and the Valk are probably the only examples that fit the back story. But for the game-play aspects, there needs to be low-level ships as well.

The trade items (those that have no direct influence on gameplay - as you mentioned) should be very diverse. That will just take time and creativity, since the basics and the trade systems are (mostly) in place.

Releasing a back story as detailed as the Chronicles is risky business, since they are in a way bound by its precedence. But they're also bound by the need for good gameplay, so some things have to be "fudged" a little. Like having the same ships and weapons for levels 0-8 - at least in the first few months of VO's life. As we get more mechanisms for better gameplay (huge example: mining), we'll get better content that better follows the story line.

I, for one, am not worried by these inconsistencies. The devs know the back story better than any of us, and they know that there needs to be more parts of the game that reflect the back story.

I mostly want to bring it up as a subject of discussion, since many eyes are better than few.

I also want to contest what you said; I think that instead of saying the valk and prom are the low ends of the Itani and Serco representative techs, that the differentiation should be present in all levels of tech, above the most basic, obsolete things that can be bought.

The backstory isn't terribly forgiving, and honestly, if the devs wanted more wiggle room, it would have been good to go with a different storyline.

You can pretty much never have too much art.

MORE SHIPS. That's all I have to say. Maybe 30 more ships total. 10 for each race. That would diversify it :) And the valk and Rag can still be the high end of the ship list.

/givemoney Devs 2c

Did I say that valks and proms should be low-level Itani/Serco ships? It doesn't look that way to me..

I said that they are representative, yes, but not that they should be the lowest representative ships. How can you do better than the valk when making a lightly armored, highly maneuverable fighter? Or a more heavily armored ship than a prom (without getting into cap ships)... There can and should be other ships that follow the different philosophies/strategies of the nations, right down to the bus-level entry ships - we agree completely on that. Sure they'll perform roughly the same, but a different look would really help with the story.

There's an idea... All we need are somewhat different 3-d models and different names - the flight models and characteristics could remain (secretly) identical across the nations, but if they look and are named sufficiently unique, it would be believable that they are older (cheaper to produce) technology, and each type of comparable ships were roughly the same level across the races.

That could be a good first step before designing a slew of new ships.

In another thread I posted my idea on how to fix this simply and quickly (relatively)

Take all the non-special ships we have now (everything but the Valk , Prom, and Maud) and make them UIT made ships. UIT then sells these ships to both Itani and Serco as cheap disposable ships.

Then have both nations, Itani and Serco, make 5 nation only ships.

Advanced Fighters- Itani would be Valk, Serco would have one nought quite as good as the valk, but close

Advanced Bombers-Serco would be the Prom, Itani would have one nought quite as good as the prom, but close

Advanced Traders- Itani and Serco would have ships almost as good as the Maud, Itanis would be faster with less cargo, Serco heavier with more etc

Mining Ships- needed anyway

Noob start special- give the initial feeling of imersion. The ships could cost 1k or so and if the newb dies he can get a free EC-88 still.

Now add this into my ship price idea (see other tread) and I think we have a good working modle.

10 new ships, UIT of course could get either Itani or Serco ships depending on relations, Itani and Serco would have national ships and the current ships could fit into the backstory.

Durgia: Your suggestion is too generic, too limited, and does not fit the storyline at all.

There cannot be 1:1:1 correlation between the different nations' ships. The different nations are so utterly different that they would have ENTIRELY different ship lineups. The whole "every faction has a miner, a trader, a small fighter, big fighter, cruiser, bomber, etc." is just stupid. Real diversity is needed, to make the game dynamics interesting.

The valk is a good mid-high end ship, but the prom could use some serious upgrading. With the whole "bots can't innovate" thing, there's no reason why there should not be conventional, fighter-class ships with 50,000 armor, since various guardians have better maneouverability than a fully loaded prom, while having that much armor themselves. Seriously, when I meant massiver armor, I MEANT massive armor. The Serco ships, following their "bruiser" philosophy, NEED to be able to take constant pounding, and still have the longevity to kill a fast-moving ship like a valk or vult.

The Itani ships are, basically, highly oriented toward scouting and defensive fighting. The valk really should be the heaviest-armed fighter available, though the Itani would definitely have a light bomber or two, which would still be much faster and much more lightly armed than their Serco or even UIT counterparts.

I'm not sure quite where UIT would fit in this scheme, but I was thinking that they would have the best overall mass/damage/thrust ratio, but would not have any particular aspect of their ships be outstanding. The UIT should definitely have a few weapon implimentations that are unused by the other factions, since innovation IS their strong suit.

Basically, this is a call for REAL diversity, not cookie-cutter ship designs for all the factions, with only slight variations in specs to differentiate them.

Edit: the idea of the UIT selling entire ship designs to the Serco and Itani, as a way to make a number of generic options available for lower levels, is a great idea, but ONLY if used as a suppliment to augment a far more comprehensive ship lineup.

Edit2: Same goes for weapons/batteries/etc., of course. Just don't get into the rut of assuming that lots of ships implies lots of diversity.

Actually, Somone vocalized ingame to make the valk a -light- fighter and make it actually -light-.

That is, drop its armor down below 5000.

A "high armor" valk would be around 7000, heavier than default (approaching the weight of a vulture) whereas the really light valks would be around 4500 armor, making it a fragile shell with arms, the still magnificent boost that it has, and really not the ship you want to bring up close to any kind of explosive matter.

this would make sure that valk pilots require a different playing-style for their ships, but lets remember, Itani have more viable fighters than the valk, both the border cent and various levels of Vultures around to measure the traditional combat styles.

/** part divisor for celebrim **/

The idea that the current valks have more armor than any other combat ship, have more weapons than any other combat ship, have more acceleration than any other combat ship, have more cargo than most vultures, and is lighter than any other combat ship strikes me as very absurd.

Even worse when people bring out that its a "decent target area" as a very good reason that it should be so fast, light, armed, and accelerating.

If a ship that can run in circles around other combat ships, that can equip 3 guns and be as light as the only viable resistance is when its -empty- should be that.... What?

I liked this thread better when it was actually focused on story considerations. Some of us are around who remember when Prom's had 26,000 or so hull points. I grant you that Prom's have been overly nerfed, but like many things that have been nerfed they got nerfed for a reason.

The problem with almost everyone's calls for balance is they never seem to want to do things incrementally. Instead of humbly assuming that they don't know exactly what is the best final state and calling for small conservative changes, they always want to overturn the apple cart and rewrite the whole book. Instead of increasing or decreaing some stat by 10% or so each update until balance is achieved, they always want to make enormous changes with numbers that they've pull out of the air (and always nice round numbers like 100000 instead of numbers like 18455, why is that you think?). Instead of being happy with subtle advantages, they always prefer big gross advantages and then are outraged when these gross changes in stats never seem to be bear the fruit of balance or improved gameplay.

Color me shocked.

I think you rather misunderstood me, on purpouse perhaps?

I said it was a musing, and one that could actually be worth considering. as far as I'm aware, the role I described is supposed to be filled by the centurion, but from bugs in how the game handles small/thin ships, it isn't the case.

However, the second part of my previous post is a separate argument in itself. I'll edit it so its more obvious for you, Celebrim.

No I don't misunderstand you. You are suggesting that there should be no special ships at all. Interestingly enough, if I were making the game just to please me, I would be in full agreement with you. I really have no love of unbalanced ships.

Some people however do. Some people like that some ships are strictly better than others. If we didn't have special ships, believe me that there would be lots of people here whining for them.

So as long as we have special ships, we're going to have to get used to that some ships are better than others. Things are much better now than they were in the past.

But my comments were directed more generally than just at you and your suggestions about the Valk. They are directed at the general idea that we should procede with attempting to find a play balance by making large changes in the game or by weakening whatever happens to be the favorite ship or weapon at the moment. That procedure has never worked in the past and I don't expect it to work in the future.

Celebrim: agreed.

However no-one has mentioned the primary consideration for each nation not having specialized ships at this time.
-Waylon is the only artist dev, and he's been doing content, not artwork. Seriously, i know incarnate has posted somewhere that they really would like to have more ship variety, but with each ship taking approx, 1 man-month to create and graphically "fit" into the game, they just havent got the time for it right now.

Incidentally the idea to reduce the valks armor was mine, and i actually wanted to drop its armor to just below that of the vulture to start, then work down from there.
(given it's agility i suspect to balance it would require taking its hull all the way down to about 3-4k armor. Unless either the rockets, N3 blasters, and L-port guns recieve a mass change, the prom recieves an armor boost, or a little of both.)

Celebrim: the reason that I suggested sweeping changes is that nothing less will suffice.

What we have is COMPLETE AND UTTER DIAMETRIC OPPOSITION between what the storyline says and what actually exists in the VO universe.

Frankly, the balance right now is awful, the ship designs are monotonous, and the difference between the different factions can be summed up by the following sentence: "UIT can't get neutron-3 blasters."

This does need to be remedied, or the backstory changed. I'd prefer to see the ships fixed, because right now things are not interesting from a variety standpoint.

I am not suggesting that you give any one ship/faction/class of ship an advantage over the others, save in obvious progression among increasingly advanced models of similar ships, just that the ships be different enough to make piloting them interesting from a purely experiential standpoint.

Same goes for weapons, there needs to be more variation. I really could not give a rat's ass what sort, but I want something interesting here. Right now the upgrade from one weapon type to another is a matter of "it goes faster and does more damage." There're no shotgun type weapons, no useful scatter guns, no interesting variations in missiles, no beam weapons, etc.

Spellcast:
That's a valid point, but I did not expect this overnight... just that the devs say something like "Yeah, this is an issue, we want to work on it when we can." That's all they can promise, and will make me perfectly happy for now.

they have soltis, i'm on my way to bed right now or i'd dig up some of the posts and link them here for you.

Spellcast: cool.

I will take your word on it, though it'd be nice to see those posts sometime if you don't mind.

I've heard a lot about cap ships and other things, but not about a complete rebuild of the ship lineup, which is what I'm advocating.

It's a relief to hear that that is on the list, though.

"However no-one has mentioned the primary consideration for each nation not having specialized ships at this time."

It was what was on my mind when I said, "You can pretty much never have too much art."

I doubt that there has ever been a game designer out there who turned down more good art in his game. I seriously doubt that there is an artist out there who has said, you know 'I've absolutely run out of ideas to make this game's art better'.

In one way Soltis, you are absolutely right. The game _would_ be more emmersive if they had a greater variaty of ships and more faction specific art. But that's not a particularly productive suggestion, nor is it a point of debate or contention. EVERYONE agrees that the game could use more art. Everyone, and I dare say most especially Incarnate, would love to see the game universe more fully realized.

"I've heard a lot about cap ships and other things, but not about a complete rebuild of the ship lineup, which is what I'm advocating."

You haven't been around very long. Not only is the suggestion an old one, but I suspect if the devs had everything that they wanted, all of the existing ship models except the 'specials' would just go away because they don't reflect the aesthetics of any of the factions. To a certain extent they are like dinner guests who stayed around so long they ended up becoming members of the family.

I can easily see the current ships having a *place* in VO, just not a predominant one.

What prompted me to make this thread is that I actually think having more ship diversity is more important than other topics which were mentioned in places as being long term goals. IE., I think that not mentioning, as a long term goal, that the devs hope to address the ship situation just means that I, or other players of a similar perspective, will wonder what the deal is. I am pretty patient, since I somewhat believe in what the devs are trying to do here, and have a pretty good opinion of their chances to pull it off. What worries me is the detrimental effect that not bringing this up could have on prospective players to whom this is a big issue, and who aren't familiar with just how devoted the devs are.

Maybe my evaluation of just how important this is is skewed, but I can only work on what I believe to be true, ne?

not to re-fry old beans but,

my long term suggestion about adding 10 new ships does fit into the backstory very well, and yes you need to have relative ship equality between nations.

First off the UIT supposedly makes and sells many things to both nations. This would easily explain why all the current ships look a like. They are all made by UIT and sold to both sides.

Secondly both nations do need an adv fighter,bomber,miner, etc

I never said they had to have the same stats, look anything a like or anything else, I made the simple statement that it is needed. In fact the whole point is that they don't have the same stats, look, or anything else.

You cannot however make one nation have something powerful, without giving the other nation something to counter it effectively. From a reality and a game perspective it does not make sence. In all major wars opposing nations had certain classes of things that were realitevly equal. The german attack planes may have been bigger with more guns, but the allied attack planes were faster and more agile. The same goes for Vendetta, while both nations need to create individuality, they both need their versions of those 5 classes of ships. More ships would be great, but to me those 10 ships are optimal. This is obviously a "in 6months" suggestion but it easily fits the backstory and game.

If you followed the backstory to a T the Serco would be flying ancient junk upgraded to compete, while Itani would have superior ships with shields etc. This would make for a horrible game though since Serco would be at a massive disadvantage, and while some people like the disadvataged role its is generally not good for a MMORPG unless it is very slight.

Actually, you're quite mistaken.

The story stipulates that with the new influx of UIT tech, the Serco were rapidly becoming a real menace to the Itani.

Having ships of each class is a good thing, I agree with you, but not with 1:1:1 correlation. That's just stupid.

The UIT especially would have LOTS more types of ships easily available(not necessarily BETTER, just different), since there's a huge amount of corporate competition that goes on inside the UIT between its contituent corporations.

The Serco 'crusher' mentality would encourage lots of ships that were heavier and nastier, while Itani would prolly have more scouting and light combat vessels.

The thing is that a light vessel doesn't NEED to be able to dish out HUGE damage or have good armor, because it can dodge and evade while whittling down its opponent.

A large ship with lots of weapons needs huge armor so it can keep going after it takes hits, since it won't dodge most things.

Each of these, or anything in between, has advantages, and it's preferred style that makes the difference.