Another idea: Maybe there should be some kind of device available that will redirect a ships emergency teleport system to a holding cell instead of having the pilot instantly return to their home station if their ships is destroyed, but make it so expensive and use so much energy that it would only be practical to deploy them in a large, fleet-scale battle. It could also make fleet-scale tactics more interesting since destroying the enemy's teleport interceptors would be as important as destroying their capital ships, possibly even moreso.

drooling,

what's the practical use of that holding cell?

cheers

Keeps enemy pilots from respawning until the end of the battle. If you get killed in a major battle, instead of just teleporting back to your home station so that you can get a new ship and come back to the fight, you're out of commision until the battle ends or the teleport interceptor is destroyed.

that is a interesting idea

and naturlly when you shoot that holding bay, when there are people already inside it, you can send them back to their home station.

But I was wondering, would they still be able to chat, for instance to point out that somewhere there is stashed away such a bauble :D

cheers

Well, something that uses as much energy as a teleport interceptor would leave quite a large radar signature, and it would only affect pilots in the same sector as itself, so it wouldn't be too hard to find anyway. Realistically, it would be unlikely that an army would allow its POWs sustained communication with their own forces, but I think it might be best to go against realism in this case, just to that the captured pilots would have SOMETHING to do.

Just out of curiosity, how do games like CounterStrike handle this? Can "dead" players still chat?

In games like Rogue Spear and Ghost Recon, "dead" players can only talk to other "dead" players. Then again though, I don't think it's fair to keep people locked up in a ship for 10 minutes. People want to have fun, not commit their whole lives to the game(although that can be fun too.) =D

/me stuffs MrMellow in a boring old tube

/me wants to see how much fun he is now gonna have, while other people are being fragged, and you sit idle, withouth being in the possibility for even shooting at something :D

/me is imagining that while something like that happens, he is just going down to the fridge to get a couple of coockies and a little icecream together with a lot of chocolate :D

cheers

Well, if you get captured, you wouldn't even need to stay online. You could just logg off, do something else, then a few hours later when you come back to the game the battle will most likely be over and your pilot will have already teleported back to the nearest station.

Skills System: My point is precisely that you don't have full control over your pilot, and you'll have even less as this size of the ship increases.

I agree that skills like 'Gunnery' and to a large extent 'Piloting' or redundant and probably harmful. I agree that the combat system we have is far better than having an 'attack' button and then going to make a sandwich while the battle plays out.

But that isn't what I'm talking about.

Examples of skills:

'Negotiation': Each point in the skill increases your profit by 1% when you sell something, and decreases the cost of buying something by 1% (with some low maximum, 10-20%).

'Diplomacy': Increases you effective reputation so long as your reputation is positive letting you get promoted faster and access more expensive equipment faster than you would otherwise.

'Electronics': Improves radar range (and similar electronic gizmos) by 1% per skill point.

'Science': Allows you to complete science research missions faster, and find and use new wormholes easier.

'Mechanic': Improves the number of hull points repaired by 10% when you repair a ship. (ei 1100 instead of 1000).

'Engineering': Improves the refresh rate of your ships batteries by 1% per skill point.

and so forth.

I'm not talking about replacing the skill of flying the ship. Most of what I'm talking about would effect the RPG aspects of an eventual RPG game (reputation, access to missions, profitability, etc.), and only some of it would give a slight combat advantage.

None of this is any worse than allowing experienced players access to more valuable equipment (blue ions instead of green), and in my opinion a whole lot more fair because if you are an experienced player that looses all of your money you don't feel like you are starting over from scratch.

I think it is a bad idea to lock players away from the game for any length of time. People are paying for the game, and whether they just died or not they should still have a right to play. Some of us don't have enough freetime to wait for hours every time we die.

I agree completely with Celebrim, thats where nations come into place. Depends on which nation you are on, the further you can advance in a certain skill. Say you are in the neutral nation, you may have higher caps on Electronics, Mechanic and Engineering. (aka let you get a higher skill). But you would only be able to get a low diplomancy and negotiation skill.
For example: Neutral nation

Electronics level 15 max (you can't go any higher)
Mechanic level 20 max
Engineering level 15 max
Negotiatioin level 5 max
Diplomancy level 3 max
Science level 8 max

etc. Each nation will have differant maxes on each skill. Therefore positives/negatives that are differant for each nation.

Exactly.

(Although that wasn't the plan I envisioned, that accomplishes the same purpose.)

At some point, you got to expect that the RP is going to start being put into the RPG.

I like it,

and on topic of the being put in a tube and not being in the ability to play any more, I didn.t like it neither, just to let you know :D

cheers

Its been a long time since i've looked at the msg board. And im impressed, what a great idea. I think gaining experience from scores per pilot/ ship life is important. It really brings an edge of real game play. Instead of fighting to the death on a suicide mission, people really have to use some sort of tactics.
Or think about ther next move.

I think the dev's should implement a rule where players buy pilots or co pilots for each craft. This is where the rule for experience can be added.

The higher your score (for example: for every 10k) Your pilot/ co pilot is awarded 1 skill level (of your choice). Players should be able to have as many pilots as they have ships.
And for new players there should be a rule, for exmaple for upto 10k score all pilots are free. (only on buses).

This means that for experienced players, if you was to go bankrupt through carelessness then you would have to start all over again with a new character.

Any way, enough said whats your views guys!!

Laters,

White Magic.

when a ship is destroyed, the pilot who escaped death by some means, should get transported back to the closest space station. from that station, he should be provided with a ship that has no weapons and no ability to hold cargo and is slower than the space bus. (i think the ship should have minimal thrusters also.) the pilot then uses this ship to return to his home base. if a pilot has a certain amount of money then he should be charged a certain percentage of his total money to use the space taxi.

Hmm, Why dont we just have random alien attacks, where by they use there "beam me up scotty" transporter and steal your pilot. Giving you the option to buy him back for a fee. Or beter still other players could raise the steaks and bet for him themselves.

In all seriousness, Yes maybe you could buy your pilot back by using multipliers on the cost for a limited amount of time. IE. first death = x3 the orginal cost. The second death = x5 the orignal cost. Then the third and final= x10 the original cost.
But he should only be availble to you from any ship. but if you dont purchase him back then other players could bid. It would be a bit like having a trade room for pilots across the galaxy...
Accessable from any station...? (ok maybe not)

WM

Well, when discussing the final game we should probably get away from this idea of 'score'. I seriously doubt that 'score' will be kept track of us such.

But, let's assume that players acquire experience points from some source. Most likely:

1) Players may get experience (effectively) by sending Guildsoftware and its associate publisher money. Probably your character will get a certain ammount of experience for each month (maybe in daily or weekly allotments) that you have paid for that characters account - whether you log in or not. This allows people to play the game as much as they like, without making them feel like they have to be online 24 hours a day to keep up.

2) Players may get experience by completing missions assigned to them by NPC agents. I would personally prefer that experience of this type be divided amongst various categories of skills so that a character that was completing mainly diplomatic and enonomic missions didn't suddenly acquire extra skill in something combat related.

3) Players may get experience for killing other players.

But what the devs will/have decided on I can't say. They may not like skills at all.

I wasn't really thinking along the lines of Pheonix's skill caps, but more like a starting bonus to certain skills. Either way works for me.

A simple chargen system might be something like the following.

Everyone starts with 3 attribute points to spend. They can put them into Charisma, Athleticism, and Intelligence as they like - all three in one category or one point in each category or whatever. For each attribute point you get a +1 bonus in skills of that subcategory.

You are then given say 6 skill points to spend. The first rank in each skill costs one point, the second rank 2 additional points, the third rank 3 additional points and so on. Spend the points as you like.

Each month you pay for, you get as many skill points to spend as you have attribute points. For instance, suppose you create a merchant with 2 Charisma and 1 Intelligence, then you get every month 2 points to spend on social skills and 1 point to spend on mental skills.

You also get say 10 - 1000 xp for completing a mission/destroying a enemy player depending on the difficulty of doing so. Each 1000 xp can be spent to buy an additional skill point. Missions with large rewards should probably be a one time thing, and missions that can be repeated should probably be balanced with regards to how many skill points you can gain per 8 hours of play.

Max skills should probably be like 10 or 20 - or maybe as Pheonix suggests capped with regard to faction; and, clearly under such a system no one is going to get a 10 skill in anything (costing 55 skill points) much less a 20 (costing 190 skill points) anytime soon (well the more dedicated players will probably have 10 skill within a month or two). But even if you had a 10 skill, it would only be a marginal improvement over a player with a 5 skill who probably had 1/5th your experience (ei playing time). Your own skill at playing the game would be more important than the benifits of having a 'good' character. And with skill caps, the most likely benifits of vast playing time would be a more well rounded character. But if we had 20 skills or so it would take YEARS of play to get all of them maxed out, so someone would always be better at something than your character.

Anyway, that's just a sample system. I'm sure the devs have thought about the question more than I have.

When I saw the "pay for experience," I winced. That would just mean all the rich people would slaughter the not rich people. The second one sounds good, though...

i'm not sure how points for skill, experience, attributes will factor into this game. this game has more to do with how fast you as a player can move your fingers around the keyboard and mouse to defeat your enemies. maybe there should be two or three ranking systems: money, bots killed, players killed. some people value money. some people value kills. i personally would want more player kills than bot kills. money doesn't really mean a lot when you have a lot of it.

the original post focused on how to make death more meaningful to discourage reckless play.

"When I saw the "pay for experience," I winced. That would just mean all the rich people would slaughter the not rich people. The second one sounds good, though."

Then you didn't read what I said, nor did your write something clear enough that I can know what you mean. The second what sounds good?

DaeHan: Well, I suggested that if death cost you experience points, reputation, skills, and other character resources that it would be meaningful.

Then I got sidetracked by a chorus of people telling me how silly the idea of skills and experience were in a RPG.

sorry missed that part