It would be nice to have a 'mini-fastcharge' battery for use by traders. Basically, it's just like the current one except that it has a low capacity (like 50-100). It should be available at a particular trade level (like 2-4). Perhaps at a few stations in UIT space.

The idea behind this is that you don't need to bot for hours on end to get a battery that would really only be useful for a trader. A battery like this would let traders infiniboost, but not much else. There could even be various versions of this with different recharge rates (perhaps ranging from 50 to 55).

Are you thinking of an addtional battery to the one already in the ship?

I would think a backup battery that you need to switch to manually in case of emergencies would be cool, or one big SUPER booster shot, kinda like a hyper space shot.

No... that wasn't what I was thinking about.

Just something to let the traders infiniboost without having to do a lot of combat.

I've actually thought that missiles should take up cargo space and have mass, a couple of emergency batteries would be good too. A one shot recharge of your main battery per spare. Then you have to consider your loadout a bit more carefully.

I like this idea. Currently, ALL of the non-free batteries require certain combat levels. So somebody who wants absolutely nothing other than to trade still has to get up to combat license 4, so that they can get the F/C. Now granted, I can't really see anyone not getting combat licenses so that they have access to things to defend themselves, but I would like to see a nice low-level trade battery that beginning players with a focus on trade would find useful.

Give it 50 capacity, so it'd be next to useless in combat, and require -/-/-/4/-, and 50 charge. Maybe also require the trader badge that everyone gets.

The one problem I see is that if used in a loadout of non-energy using weapons, it might be more useful in combat than it perhaps should be. But it wouldn't be any better for combat than the F/C.

With Beolach's stats I don't see why this couldn't be implemented.

And then watch the whinning about missle spamming traders commence.

Screamers currently take energy to fire. Would expanding that to all missles solve missle spamming?

It wouldn't really change anything as far as missile-spamming goes. Traders who can buy swarms already have the combat licenses for the F/C, and this battery would be no better for missile-spamming than the F/C is now. It wouldn't be any worse either, but that's beside the point. I really don't think missile-spamming would increase any.

[stamp of approval]

50 energy, 50 charge, trading license 3 sounds good to me. Added bonus of super-fast warps, since you only need to wait 1s even if it's empty. Might be too good for CtCers. Time will tell.

"Might be too good for CtCers. Time will tell."

Yeah, that was one of my worries as well. But I don't think it would really be much better for CtC than the F/C, so I'm not too concerned. And even if it would be really excellent for CtC, as long as it was universally available like all the other batteries, it wouldn't unbalance anything.

Well, the fact that there's no delay at wormholes would make it desirable for CtCers.

Setting it to a capacity of 120-180 and recharge of 49 might do the trick. That should let you turbo for about 2-3 minutes and you will not be full when you get to the wormhole.

why would anyone work for the fast charge battery when they already get to reap the major benefits with a mini one? the fast charge battery isn't great for combat anyway... a mini one would just allow newbies to load rockets up, rocket ram people and run with infiboost.

leave the incentive reward of the normal fast charge battery.. when i first started playing, that was one of the exciting things to work on getting that reward.

The idea was to give traders something to work towards that would not require them to do endless botting.

The difference between the mini-FC and the FC would be that the mini-FC would be near useless with energy weapons. Since we are proposing to make it available at trade 4, why would anyone use that to rocket ram when they could get the regular FC at combat 2 at a corvus base?

Honestly, it's easier to get your combat up high enough to get a regular FC than it would be to get your trade up high enough to get the mini-FC.

Fastcharge is, mathematically speaking, better for dogfights that last more than half a second.
I like the idea of a speedy-charge (49 charge) at some trade level.
-:sigma.SB

I'm in agreement that there definitely needs to be SOMETHING available for those who choose not to increase there combat licence that would give them the Fast Charge capability of infiboost. Not everyone is a stickjocky waiting to prey on the next player to pass them buy. And to force them to do combat to get a FC Battery just doesn't seem fair. I also liked the idea of having it tied into the trader badge, though that badge needs to be tweeked so it's not just handed to you, perhaps having completed (10-25-50) or (25-50-100) timed missions successfully?

johnhawl218, what are you talking about? If you take the beginning combat mission through to fruition, you will have combat level 3. That is just bot hunting and not one player need be harmed in the aquisition of said combat levels. This mission can be completed reletively quickly. All you will then need is trade 4 and viola... A Fast Charge battery can be yours. You can get it at trade level 2 if you brave Grey Space and venture out to Corvus Prime and pay the exorbinate prices charged by Corvus. The downside to that theory is death = another trip out to Corvus and more extortion monies payed.

A "trader" shouldn't have to complete a "combat" mission to get a good battery, that's what this is all about. Doesn't matter if it's as easy as typeing "lalalalalala" if someone doesn't want to do combat then they shouldn't have to. Of course they don't get the nice 250/FC battery, which is why the suggestion is to make it a 50/FC battery. I think it's a good idea.

i just wanted to point out that the first mention i heard of this idea was when sarahanne posted it a while back

The way that you phrased your post originally johnhawl218, it sounded like you where PvPing for that combat level, not doing combat missions. Your point is taken.