Back in the Alpha days, we didn't have capture the cargo, we had capture the Flag. One thing I liked about capture the flag is that it almost *forced* you to work as a team because the player carrying the flag had their turbo disabled.

I think it would be an interesting experiment to disable the turbo on ships carrying purified xithricite ore, including the transport. That way it would take a dedicated team to get the cargo to their base... one to carry the cargo, with 3 or 4 to defend the carrier. Hit and run tactics are fun, but this might draw out the capture the cargo battles a little longer.

To compensate for the reduced speed, the transport would also probably have to be given more hull points.

or make it very very heavy, like 5000kg/cu, no?

I'd prefer taking turbo away over increasing the mass; purified xith is already pretty massive, and increasing it more would penalize the light ships more than the heavy ships.

But, no turbo would make it take a LONG time to go anywhere, and I think we'd see a huge jump in spacing CtC cargo. Maybe allow turbo, but only at 1/2 to 3/4 the normal turbo speed.

I understand, but then again, why not? We see too many light fighters in the game. Time to give the big ships a good reason to fly too. Anyway, I was thinking more from a realism point of view, it would just seem silly to me for turbo's to suddenly not work, just because some kind of cargo is in your ship. You can make the cargo even heavier then, say 10000kg/cu, allthough, try running with 8x 5000kg in your hold.

now, i'm not a ctc-er, but i think the extreem mass idea is better than disalowing turbo. that would encourage the use of heavy tough transports like the moth.

i could see a wing of centurons coming in first to engage the escorts, then a group of vultures, and merauders to take down the transport and cover the couple of moths that come after to grab the cargo.

or we could just reduce the hold space for Centurions, Vultures, and Valkyries to 1.

I think that would force teamwork in a much more realistic way than dropping turbo when carrying cargo. Unless you want to see lots of people dying in CtC.

Arash, I think the reason why we see so many light fighters has to do with the fact that there are a lot of players who happen to like to use weps that require accuracy.

There simply aren't enough interesting L-Port weps.

What I'm really looking forward to, is multiplayer ships. Turrets with autoaiming capabilities based solely on the gunner.

Ships that take more damage depending on where you hit them (for example, if you weaken a part of of the cap ship, and its a mission-critical area, the ship starts taking more damage)

Frankly, "heavy" ships are pretty uninteresting right now.

"Ships that take more damage depending on where you hit them (for example, if you weaken a part of of the cap ship, and its a mission-critical area, the ship starts taking more damage)"

ok, lil off-topic, but this I would like to see too.

cp, my vult only holds 2 cargo... please don't drop it to one. :)

as for justifying purified xith breaking your turbo.. maybe it emits a radiation that increases the chances of your turbo malfunctioning and making you go boom, so your ship scans for that radiation and disables turbo when it is found... why do you think ion storms stop you? :)

now no turbo would almost require shorter ctc routes... just a thought.

And reduce the cargo hold of Warthogs to 2 or 3 then :)

Disabling turbo would be incompatible with the current mission design: can you imagine bringing it back to Divinia/Pyronis from Ukari/Edras? 30 minutes? one hour? And what about ion storms? Even reducing turbo would have negative consequences: it would dramatically reduce any possibility to capture the cargo in enemy territory.

Also, disabling/reducing turbo would not encourage the use of heavy ships. They would be penalised in the same way.

I would like to see ctf back, in stead of having to wait 1 hour for an announcement for the cargo, noticing that the ship is going to leave... and then having to rush home from anything I was doing just to notice that the ship just got killed, and I can't find the guy who did it...

I'm just not going to bother with it untill I really really have nothing else to do.

CtC is fine as is, the transports are quick but not untouchable, if your having problems catching people with cargo, set up blockades, don't everyone go for the cargo, have checkpoints to catch those taking the cargo to the stations. Don't Change Anything.

Yes, I agree that CtC is fine as it is... this is really more of a "what if" thread than anything else. I'm not trying to be vettish, but you should have seen some of the battles we had back in the alpha days when you couldn't turbo with the flag... they were pretty intense, often involving a dozen or more players.

The key difference is that now the entire fight takes place before the convoy is destroyed. Once the convoy is destroyed you have to be very good or very lucky to catch the person running with the cargo.

If you were unable to turbo, it would allow more time for players to congregate around the capture attempt, requiring teamwork and drawing out the battles. I don't think there's anyone here who would disagree with the statement that as of right now CtC battles are over pretty fast. Some people hang around and fight afterwards just for the heck of it... why not give them something to actually fight for.

I realize that this would greatly increase the time needed to make a successful capture attempt, which means it would be a BIG DEAL to make a capture. Therefore the reward would probably be increased, and the frequency of convoys would probably be reduced. You would need to get a whole CtC posse together, planning out your strategy and organizing escort wings and ambushes... you would have time to do this because the cargo carrier would be moving at 65 m/s. More time = more opportunities to use strategy.

Arash, there's a big difference between making cargo heavy and disabling turbo. Even with xithricite weighing what it does, you can still get away in the blink of an eye if you run over it at 200 m/s.... you don't lose your momentum. If you want a quasi-scientific explanation for why your turbo shuts off, how's this: premium xith ore is so dense and volatile that the gravimetric field generated by your turbo drive would cause it to become unstable.

What I'm suggesting Has Been Done Before... and it worked pretty well imho.

yes.