oo start, a ship without an escape pod is dangerous. but why do we need an escape pod. and how to use it.

imagine that you are a trader and you are in a cargo ship (we'll say the atlas for now) it has been rebalanced to hold 50 tons and it is very slow with a full load. it is flying unprotected and is stuck in an ion storm. when *BOOM* it is attacked by pirates, they are equipped with disrupter beam (1) after the guns and engine are down and communication is crippled. a cap ship (about the size of 3 atlases long and 2 wide) comes next to the ship and some marines pop out and board the ship. 10 seconds later. cargo starts to leave at 5 sec per cargo and 5 sec per 50 credits. (would work like mining beam.)

why board. well when a ship is destroyed a random amount of cargo is destroyed from the blast. say the atlas was destroyed and this time 75% was destroyed and the next time its 12%. and whoever is in the group the % taken is divided equally. making group pirating better.

now as the pirates are disabling your ship you decide you don't want them to have your money (2) and would rather not let them have your cargo, so you initiate a 10 sec self destroy (3) and eject from you ship (4).

you escape with all you money and you think you disabled at least one ship (5) and damaged there marine cap ship. (6)

(1) Disrupter beam -Distroyes sub components of a ship (aka ion gun) when equipped can target the HUD-disabling hud features (exempt Chat) target weapons-so they cant fire back. target engine-so they cant move. communications, can't call for help.

(2) stations have a bank but in order to buy something at another station (on that you don't have an account with (cost say 200 Credits) you need to bring money with. and you can't get an account with a different nation unless you have at least 500+ points on there liking. )

(3) Self Destroy can be used by Pressing Shift D then Shift Y (D-destroy) (Y-Yes Blow me up) the blast is from 1000m-10000m (1000 = 1000 credit 10,000=20,000 Credit)

(4) Eject pod as a stealth allow that can't be targeted and has two speeds stop and go (go = 300) thus making it a fast get away. (escape pod costs 10,000 and automatically takes all your money with you.)

(5) when you lose 50% or more of your health in one blow you have a % chance (up to dev's or that %) that you ship is disabled for x sec+ x damage taken sec. this can be counteracted with the healing beam which takes 30 seconds to totally fix ship.

(6) marine cap ship has a 2s 2l and no turrets, only small ships can dock with it and it has a cargo of 75 and a max speed of 150. to make it even. it as a slow turn rate and is very big, which means that it cannot dock with stations. so the owner must have to ships the cap ship and one for transporting cargo to the ship (more elaborate details on next post CAP-SHIP CARGO SELLING.

FOR MOR INFO E-MAIL ---gaginian@hotmail.com--- will elaborate and thing for you.

Not certain which escape pod thread to post this in....

But having an automatic ejection would explain away the "how do you keep respawning," question. Instead of "dying," you're simply ejected in an escape pod that while it is targetable (cuz that'd be cool), it cannot be hit and/or killed, and after a 10 or 20 second show if your flying away from the scene at breakneck speads, you respawn at your home station (a la Escape Velocity).

I don't really have any comments for the other proposed ideas, but I do think that the escape pods would be worth adding to the game, if only for plausibility reasons.

I don't find escape pods plausible. While I don't believe in reincarnation either, I prefer to think that we are dealing with its technological equivalent.

Why aren't escape pods plausible? We have ejection seats in combat aircraft, why wouldn't we have ejection systems in our combat spacecraft?

I happened to stumble on this topic (using the search option!!! heeeyyy, haha ;) and must say, i realy like the idea of escape pods, because the reincarnation system now bothers me a litle bit. For realism, i'd allso let the pod just fly to the nearest station, where you then can buy a new ship, or a bus if there's no money nomore.
Now what happens when you get destroyed in space without a station (i'm allready thinking exploration)? Call for help and let someone scoop you up like cargo to bring you to a station.

thats not bad, we could even have different options of escape pods:

0 c= no thrust, no nothing, needs requiring. (after 2 min your faction sends someone to pic you up and bring you back (the higher the standing the faster the pick up. 2 min=starting standing so like with 1600 (if possible) the nation sends rescue asap from closest station.

2500 c= 250 trusters for closest station

5000 c = 400 speed to home station

of corse MANY people wont like this because the way it is now is ok...if you can explain reincarnation aspects.

oh no ,i can forsee the end of bus warping!!!

oh well it was at best an exploit anyways.

Escape pods are very plausible. You think the Serco would have invested so much into augmentation of their existing bodies if they invented 'reincarnation'? I would think they would be like 'oops, I'm feeling old today - time to reincarnate as a twenty-something again.' No, the Serco perspective is to use gene therapy, and other techniques to extend the life of their existing bodies. Of course they would have escape pods for their highly valuable pilots.

Likewise, from an Itani perspective, preservation of their bodies is paramount. You don't invest that much effort into turning your body into a temple only to happily dispose of it in a dogfight, expecting a new one to be made. Reincarnation in Vendetta is the one thing that absolutely does not make sense, and escape pods would neatly side-step the whole issue.

Again, from the UIT perspective: what trader wouldn't want to invest into technology that would save his butt? It just makes sense. Especially with pirates out there willing to 'test' the reliability of the pod. Consider it life insurance.

I agree there would probably be implementation issues, but nothing that couldn't be worked out. It could even help to increase the penalty of getting shot out of the sky in Vendetta, if the pilot had to fly back to the nearest station in a defenseless pod before re-equipping and re-joining the fray. Victors may not be able to shoot the pods, but they sure as hell could taunt the loser as he headed back to the station.

The main reason we didn't implement escape pods and/or ship disabling is because it's no fun to sit helplessly in space until you're brought to a station. We just kind of insta-teleport your "escape pod" to its home station so you're back in action ASAP.

Although the "technological equivalent of reincarnation" idea is quite interesting - check out Altered Carbon and Broken Angels by Richard K. Morgan for an entertaining story of how this might be possible.

I can understand that point of view. There are ways around that though - give pods an insane top speed (less mass, greater power to weight ratio) so it doesn't take as long to get to a station. Then pod flying could be a 'fun' activity, if only for the speed rush.

But the real benefit isn't for the time penalty that getting shot would incur. Take the example of one player griefing another, waiting by their home station to repeatedly destroy them. Since the pod is fast, the weaker player would be able to put enough distance between them to hop to another station without the griefer being able to know where they went. It gives the player a way around the trap set by the griefer, as they aren't guaranteed to exit from the local station.

Of course, you could get dirty with it and make pods targetable. Then bounty hunting missions would be either to destroy the player's ship, or a true assassination (destroy the ship, and then the faster, harder to hit pod for the kill.)

Pods would also be useful in a spy/recon mission, as they might be harder to spot (gotta be close before they appear on radar?) meaning players would need the ability to manually eject. Also, if the mission goal was simply to spy on someone, making it back with just your pod might still be considered a success.

Pods could bring another fun element to an already great game. I can only imagine the stories that would start to appear in the RP section of the forum.

@a1k0n

While "Insta-teleporting" escape pods allows for no interuption in game play it also devalues life. There is no big deal in dieing in VO, other then you will have to buy a new ship and possibly fly to one or two more stations to get your equipment back. Having to sit in space for two minute or even a minute while your escape pod is rescued or flys slowly to the nearest station, to me, would make death something to avoid, and would make people think twice before acting. When you die in other MMO's you have to jump though hoops to get your body with it's belongings still on it, why not here as well? Also, it would cut down on blowing up just to quickly jump back to safe territory. It's also a good idea for another money sink as Knight_of_Order suggested. And of course it's much more plausible. But you all do what you wish.

But this game is focused on PvP. There is no cost to repair, no skill loss for dying and the ships are priced so you can replace them with out too much effort. I don't think death is supposed to have consequences in this game. If it did I feel fewer players would want to PvP or duel becuase they'd have to wait even longer to get back into the fight.

For all we know, you could just be remotely controlling your ship. In reality, you are, so why not in the story? This way life isn't devalued, but the ship certainly is.

Anyway, I'm definitely not opposed to the idea. It could be fun; especially if you had backup (or at least some dude with a repair gun who can help you) and a chance to recover your ship. But it would also be a really drastic change to the status quo and would probably be initially hated by most people.

No one likes changes but sometimes it's for the best!!

a1k0n, I just mean having an "ejection system" as a way to explain why you don't actually die when your ship is destroyed. Sure, the Serco could clone and implant memories (as despicable as that sounds to me) of dead pilots, I would tend to think that the Itani would not do such a thing.

But if you don't want to make significant changes to Vendetta (and not have to add an escape pod model), just simply change the "You have been killed" message to "Critical damage! Ejecting!" and then the player sees the "Returning to Home Station" message. That would make it so all ships have some sort of built in ejection system (teleporter, whatever) and explain why the player doesn't actually die.

Anyone remember autoduel? You had to buy 'clones' of yourself, and if you died, you would become the clone.

I dont quite understand the 'instawarp to home station' thing though. It is kind of an exploit in travel, you just take cargo somewhere, sell your ship, buy a free bus, /explode, and instawarp home. I have used this to speed up faction gaining and others have used it to speed up ore transport to other systems.

This is a bit off-topic, but ....

Seems to me the way to prevent that bus exploit you describe is to only offer the bus to players who match certain characteristics: low XP, or low credit balance. If anyone can get a freebie, anyone can use the bus exploit, but ... what if you can't be granted freebies [let's call it welfare or government assistance] unless the granted authority agrees that you meet some basic criteria for NEEDING freebies? If you can afford a ship, your nation probably doesn't want you wasting the presumably limited resources of free buses, batteries and weapons.

Us serco just make backups. Ive got a whole spindle of me sittin at the genetic processing plant.