Ok, i've noticed that you don't gain any light or heavy weapons xp when you kill another player. I realy don't like this and would very mmuch like to see this changed. I'll tell you why.
I signed up 12-12-2004 and don't regret it for a minute. I love this game and i'm really seriously hooked. Specially now that my character is beginning to shape up and player interaction becomes a greater part of the game for me. I'm realy getting the hang of RPG'ing, and i kinda like it. It gives you freedom that can not be achieved in traditional games, it's like interactive TV the way it should be :)
Now there is one thing i realy detest in the game, just one, and that is botting. Forget it, i'm not going to numb my mind any more endlessly shooting bots, I don't like it. My character is at a level wher interesting weapons begin to be available (4/5/4/6), thank you corvus ;), and there is no point for botting for me no more. So please, please, do something about this awfull ball breaking endless mindless botting and give weapons xp with PK's.

yes.

that's a fairly logical idea, but do we wanna encourage noob killing for points? =S

i think if this idea is implemented (which it probably should be) it would probably best work on a sliding scale, whereby the license levels of the player you killed determines the XP you get.

Or like I posted before the length of the battle between 2 players would determine the amount of xp. The longer the battle (say every 30 seconds it accumulates by 100xp or more) the more xp you would get. And of course if you kill someone before the first 30 seconds you get no xp. This would solve the problem of exploiting it using noob killing.

/givemoney Devs 2c

Kix, just to elaborate, so if two people engage each other, sit in space for 5 minutes without fighting then one of them kills the other they get a really large amount of xp? I can see that getting exploited fast. But I'm sure there is a way of fixing that, though I don't know myself.

In that case, exp is gained in relation to how much damage is dealt. A simple system is that for every 1 point of damage dealt, you're given .04 experience. 100 damage becomes 4 exp, and 600 damage becomes 24 exp. Therefore, a centurion with 6000+ armor will give a total of 240+ experience (divided among what kinds of weapons used), where a Sky Command Prom with 20000 armor gives a total of 800 exp.

The only problem is repair guns. They become exploitable because two players could theoretically shoot and repair each other until they run out of repair ammo. And you don't want repair guns to remove exp either because it's a great support tool.

John:
First of all I picked 100 xp because that's lower than the rate of botting. Unless it's combat xp vs heavy and light weapons xp. Second all you have to do is max out the xp at 3 minutes. Also only the person who wins the fight get's the xp.

Second, I like crippled's idea alot better. I don't think the amount of time that it would take to repair a prom and then shoot it back down would be exploitable. . . . ok maybe it would. Just make a top limit for each ship that you destroy. Prom's can only be 1000 xp or something like that. Also if you were going to exploit this it would cost alot of money after a while. A prom is expensive if your just dieing to give your friend xp...

Ok problems with this are that the skill of the pilot does not really determine the xp gain.

/givemoney Devs 2c

Rather than doing a raw conversion of armor into xp, perhaps individual pilots could carry around a slowly-regenerating xp pool based on levels. Then translate armor hits into xp based on percentages in each.

Example: Joe has 5/4/5/2/1, giving him an xp pool of 300. Joe flies a 6800-armor Centurion into battle. Tasha shoots Joe 5 times with a gauss cannon for 6000 damage. That's 88% damage (roughly), so we distribute (0.88 x 300) = 264 xp to Tasha, half as light weapons and half as combat.

If Joe flees the scene and someone finishes him off in another sector, they'll only get 36 xp, because he doesn't have any armor left. But even if Joe makes it back to a station and repairs, he is still only worth 36 xp until his xp pool regenerates over time.

[edit] This system is weighted against light fighters. That might be a good thing, but I haven't thought much about it. [/edit]

After another agonizing 15 minutes of botting... Bump bump bump...

crippled: I think the repair gun just does negative damage. So if two players are shooting and healing each other, it would basically even out the damage you did...

Why not bring back the bounty system as I understand it (hopefully correctly) from alpha/beta, but have it apply to xp instead of an abstract "score?"
-:sigma.SB

I believe that all of you are "reaching" for a solution that should be extraordinarily simple. XP should be given for PKs but it shouldnt be hard to determine.

Factors in determining the amount of XP given should include the following:

-Type of ships engaged in combat
-Level of experience of each player

Thats it. If you dont kill someone then you dont get XP. Plain and simple. If he flees and some newb gets in a few cheap shots after youve whittled him down then tough luck. Too bad. Get over it.

This is how the XP system should look.

Each player will have a certain player rating (PR) which is determind my the total number of combat related license levels he/she has.

(Example)

Joe has 1/2/1. He would have a player rating of 4.
Mark has 3/3/1. He would have a player rating of 7.

Also each player will have ship score (SS) which will be determined by the type of ship he has. Effectively this will be equal to the armor of the individual ships.

(Example)

Joe flys a Centurion. Ship score of 6000
Mark flys a Valkyrie. Ship score of 9500

[Note: ship armor is guessed for example purposes]

How XP will be calculated....(Ill use names for easy refernce)

Say Mark destroys Joe.

(Marks SS - Joes SS)/(Marks PR - Joes PR)
(9500-6000)/(7-4)
(2500)/(3)
Rounded down equals 833.

A 10% bonus or penalty is awarded for each level of PR.

7-4=3 so Mark will get a 30% penalty for killing someone weaker than him.

833 x 70% = 583 (again rounded down)

583 is the Total xp given to Mark for killing Joe. 70% goes to light weapons (or heavy if he used such for the killing blow) and 30% goes to combat.

Mark would get 174 combat xp as well as 408 light weapons xp.

Now say the roles were reversed and somehow Joe magically managed to kill Mark the score would look like this.

(6000-9500)/(4-7)
(-2500)/(-3)
833 again right?

The difference comes with the bonus/penalty stage.

833 + 30% = 1082

324 combat xp
757 light weapons xp

Ok now maybe Im wrong. Maybe this wont be so easy. It seems it is to me. Took me all of 10 minutes to come up with it. It certainly seems alot easier to calculate than what you guys were trying to concieve. Also I would like to note that You wont get any xp for killing someone MORE than 5 PR points from you. IN EITHER DIRECTION! You could also put a percentage of faction points per kill dependent on each players current faction standing. I do agree that this will obviously need some tweaking to get it just right but this would be a decent base to start from.

[edit]

I originally stated that it only took me 10 minutes to think this solution up and that was a correct statement. However after a short time of thinking on the current set up, if you fought someone with the exact same skill level and exact same ship it would be a darn hard fight but using this system you would effectively get 1 xp which when split to determine how much you get in combat and the corresponding weapons category would round down to nil. This brings an interesting problem with a slightly easy fix. Each PR level has a certain minimum XP that you recieve for killing that person. Obviously the higher the PR the higher the minimum. Still retaining the 5 PR difference rule.

[edit]

ok just to edit my previous edit the formula for determining the minimum could be x^3. leaving you with a table of minimums as follows....

PR-Min
1--1
2--8
3--27
4--64
5--125
6--216
7--343
8--512
9--729
10-1000
11-1331
12-1728

Past lvl 12 the min is 2000

Note that these minimums are before the bonus/penalty factor. This merely states that if you kill someone of this level then you are assured that many experience points.

Maybe these are a little high but its just an idea. Feel free to give me a better solution.
[/edit]

Questions? Comments? Flames?