(12-12-2012, 08:17 AM)AeternusDoleo Wrote: Upon docking with a base you will be disconnected from the server briefly while your character is updated. You will start with a simple light fighter of that faction."
Then have bases like "Liberty Navy - Liberty Police - Liberty Rogues" etc, which docking to one automatically causes a /restart to kick off, transferring you to a starting base for the faction, with a small sum of credits. No more repping required, you get a LF with rep to the faction plus the ID.
Many roleplaying servers I played on before (NWN ones) had such an area where you could basically customize your character prior to entering the game world. Discovery could benefit from something similar. It would require some minor FLHook programming to tie docking to specific bases, to kicking off a /restart action. And additional /restart templates would need to be built, but that isn't too hard to do.
Nice idea. But I think that takes a lot of system-designing and programming, so maybe something to aim for in the longer run. I still think 4.87 should be released really fast so the major problems with system layout get fixed before people leave because of boredom. A lot can already be done by jam-packing Pennsylvania with bar characters that give people a lot of information useful to play the game and find what you're looking for. What can't be explained there can be explained by additional "/help $subject" commands with a little more text.
But in the long run a really small oorp starting system would be a good thing. But it should be simple in design, not eye candy. It could have a starsphere that doesn't look like your in space, but in some kind of oorp limbo. Maybe a totally white one, or one that has the star constellations you see from earth and the milky way. The systems will be a good place for admins and angels to hang out. Maybe admins in the evil lookign ravens claw and red lights, angels, in shiny white ships
Only 3 things should be in the system:
1. Station where you start out with. The barkeeper tells you that talking to bar characters will help you get started. If its possible to transfer that "talk to the barkeeper" message you get at the beginning of the SP campaign into the start of the mod, include that. The barkeep could also explain that if the server has "RP" in the name, you need to role play as a certain character when you talk to people in system or local chat. The bar characters will be people from the 5 houses (any affilitiation), a Miner, a Freelancer. I don't know if its possible to put 7 people +barkeep into a bar without hiding any randomly and always telling you the same thing, but that way it would be best. At least there are some bars that have more than 7 chairs. Those people will tell you about restarts and as what you will restart. For example: "If you type /restart Freelancer, you will become a Freelance spaceship pilot situated in the Coronado system, who seeks his fortune doing odd jobs around Sirius. You will have access to civilian technology, and your reputation will be neutral with most factions. You will be able to fulfill bounty, escort, and scouting contracts, and your reputations will allow you to travel safely through most human-inhabited places." The other texts will be similar, just like "you will start as a citizen of Bretonia, etc". Each of the people can also tell you about one additional aspect of the mod, for example the miner will also mention that you can use /givecash to transfer money to other characters, the liberty guy can mention that you will be able to adjust your reputation enough to join the navy and buy a LN ID if you do missions on West Point. I think there is also the possibility to put talking chars in other rooms. The equipment dealer could tell you about the tech compatibility, the ship dealer how you need to transfer your ID by selecting the cargo hold (I hope that finally gets fixed tho, another issue of noob friendliness). The commodity dealer could tell you about trading and mining strategies and /givecash.
2. navigation buoy that reads "Talk to people on the station for help on the game, before you take the gate to the Sirius sector"
3. one-way alien hypergate that leads to the dead hypergate in Coronado, or Pennsylvania, alernatively. Because some non-english people may be wanting to play the mod as SP and wont be able to understand the /restart stuff.
For a more speedy release, you could write the bar infocards and provisionally put those guys on planet Erie.
That will help the people who are willing to read integrate faster, but there's still the issue if the mod is "beautiful" or not, or high quality or not. For that, you should really fix the issues that all the vets got used to but noobs find terrible.
Like getting stuck in stations, hanging in lanes and gates, mentally challenged overzealous npcs, too many unlawful npcs near lawful bases, losing your ID if you dont select cargo hold in ship purchase, having no ingame explanation or help about the tech nerf or the repninja IDs, getting only capship missions at places most likely for noobs to take missions, copy-pasted bar characters that don't know who or where they are, absence of lore or sense to certain places.
