Hey guys I have some market research to run by the Disco community. In recent months I have gotten involved in a mod project called Shattered Worlds. While I cannot release information on the mod as of yet we are currently facing a dilemma that troubles most mods; Capital Ships and how to reduce whoring. I have developed a theory for a way fair way to allow cap ships into the hands of the every player but reduce whoring.
I am bringing it up here because if there was a community of freelancer players capable of finding a theory's weakness's and plausable corrections, its the Disco community. Any input would be greatly appreciated.
So here it is....
Instead of selling the cap ships themselves, each of the military shipyards will sell Space Frames for each of our 3 classes of cap ship (corvette, cruiser, and battleship). When a player buys the space frame they post in a thread similar to discoverys own name change thread, and request the cap ship that they would like (vessels prices are based on class, not individual model). When it comes time to fulfill the requests the admins review the total hours the player has played on all of the characters on that account (or another main account in case of a secondary one). Each capital class will have a minimum hour requirement attached to them in addition to price. If the player meets the hour requirement their space frame is turned into a cap ship.
Hmm... The ship frame idea is nice, but I don't think it should be tied to time on the server. In PVP servers, that'd turn into a battle of who's been around the longest, and in RP servers it's completely unrelated to the quality of their roleplaying.
hm, it involved admin extra work. and the hours you play does not really reflect a responsible handling of the ship, - especially when you think of secondary, tertiary accounts.
while it works on a server with a low population and an enviroment where "everyone knows one another" - such a system may fail on disco with its large and sometimes anomymous playerbase due to the sheer number.
besides, who says that something is out of balance when 200 players out of 200 players fly a capital ship?. - the roleplay enviroment is still healthy in terms of balance. - when you compare the use of fighters of a faction to the use of capital ships, the faction will still use a lot more fighters ( NPCs ) - so whats a few hundred capital ships to countless fighterwings. ( of course you must think in roleplay terms and not in pvp terms - where only players count )
anyway, there are universes that only have capital ships. ( like star trek ) - which cannot be called unbalanced. in terms of "realism" its much closer to make use of capital ships when travelling space than sitting alone in a fighter. - so all the screaming about too many capital ships is rather one sided anyway.
however, - if your system works for the mod, - its all fine. - just again - the quality of the roleplay is not really the ship that is used, but the player roleplaying the ship. a civilian eagle with civilian weapons can be worse than a rheinland battleship with nomad turrets. - unless you put so much importance onto the ship and the equipment ( which i know - are part of the roleplay ) than the actual roleplay itself ( and that means interaction in the game, communication, identification with the person etc. )
we'd need a bunch more admins to do the work, and should of course, be evaluating according to member rp, and again - what can determine is this rp is decent or not exactly?
you can write terrible but have good idea, or write very good and have the stupidiest ideas...
i think its more about how you play in-game. a story is only one thing, especially a history. - but whats more important than "how you got the ship is" .... --> "what you do, now that you have it". i often hear, something like. ... write up how you got the ship and once you did that and everyone is satisfied, its all right.
but the really important part is - an ongoing story. - and preferable ingame. i don t need written chapters, long novels when i cannot see it in the game itself. - what i like is to see a ship / player ... and have an idea what he is about.
of couse, i m contradicting myself there - cause i allways say, the ship doesn t matter... but well. a battleship stands out. - a ship with a name, a ship that people refer to ( as opposed to fighter number 923 out of countless )
so, like the stationary battleships.... i like to know that - battleship arizona is indeed on active duty defending california. and battleship nagumo is deployed at holman outpost. - if a player is flying a battleship ( or - in a perfect world, any ship ) - i d like to see it and know, "hey, isn t that battleship <insert name> - the ship that is stationed in this system to defend this traders corridor?" - doesn t mean the ship must not do other things... but its the reputation the ship builds up.
so, the story of how to get a ship or the reasons why can be well done and everything, but they are nothing but a little sidenote of why the ship is there ( unless its stolen or otherwise aquired ). - chapter one starts when the the captain enters the bridge the first time .... and i expect the history of the ship to be played, not written.
Yeah I was just talking to the mod director about that and we came to the same conclusion that hours played alone are not a perfect system. Someone could always undock and go sit on the remote edge of a system and rack those up. Another idea we were just discussing involved a ratio between hours played, total NPC kills scored, and forum activity. From that we could score the player and grant the cap ship. Our battleships will be tough needing 3-4 of our bombers to knock out (corvetts 1-2 cruisers 2-3); thus why we are so concerned about this issue. We want only a top player to privately posses one. (Factions capital vessels are being handled separately)
Unfortunately we cannot score a player on role play because that is subjective. What is to say what one person writes is good or not. That is a road best left untraveled. As for OORP equipment thing, the developers went to allot of trouble to balance all of the weapons so we are hopping that the re-addressed weapons will reduce the desire to mount Krakens on a Titan.
For your idea, I would have a group of "moderators" who look at the RP and decide if it is logical. Not if it is good, interesting or anything. But if it was just written to justify an oorp ship or something, question the writer.
NPCs killed, doesn t tell you anything about the roleplay - BUT if its the "right" npcs, it tells you something about the "determination". - of course a battleship that killed 50.000 hackers, rogues, xenos is determined to its role. ( unless the 50.000 kills include traders, police, navy, too )
but thats going along what i wrote before - its not really the kills that count much. but a battleship in new york that has like 50.000 criminals destroyed has most certainly build up a certain reputation as someone who is activly hunting criminals. in terms of roleplay - there is hardly a difference to make between a NPC and a player char ( thats just something players make up ) - so, yes - this part "may" work to a certain extend.
forum activity doesnt mean much. it allways puzzled me why even on this forum, players with like no post counts were belittled while others with 2000+ were taken much more serious, even if what they just posted was utter nonsense. - but there aswell, its not so much the postcounts, but its for what you re reknown as. ( again repuation - but that time as a player )
unfortunately it all comes down to a very subjective decission. and one could aswell say - capital ships to those that the team likes and denied when the team dislikes you. - that sounds unfair and nasty..... but ... maybe its more honest.
Yeah, what I meant about forum activity is also quality, not quantity. Some people spam and don't contribute much to discussions, while some only pop online to discuss issues.
No Capital class ships to non clan members - single individuals are unlikely to amass the cash to purchase one.
Clans can have at most 1 capital class ship for every 5 members, or just a flat 5 capital ships per clan.
This eliminates cap whoring entirely and if an individual wants to fly a capital class ship, join a clan and prove you deserve it. (you can as an option allow small class capital class ships for open purchase but limit the larger ones)