Stupid idea by n00b

[Warhawk]

These threads were always fun. The fun was in proposing things that will never happen, but you just knew would work, or at least shake up the status quo that everybody seems to love to hate but do nothing about. Here, I'll show you how an old-timer would do it:

- Disable Connecticut for a week
- Reduce the number of star systems by 50% or more
- Reduce the number of bots, but make them all as deadly as the player characters; no preferential treatment zones outside of a starting area like Pennsylvania
- Reduce all armor and shield stats, including multipliers for armor upgrades, but keep weapons lethal, so that battles are fast and furious, not grind-fests where those with the most stamina win
- Reduce cruise charge time significantly and add the ability to fire while cruising
- Get rid of all the slim-Scimitar knock-offs, go back to weird, wonky and distinctively themed lines, but then make an extreme effort to distinguish them in dissimilar ways: Fast turn rate but poor level speed, better top speed but worse acceleration, no mine layer slots at all but more countermeasures, tweaked thruster and cruise speeds for all ships rather than by overall class, etc. etc.
- Ensure that all factions have a go-to minimum ship type, at least some notch above a starflea, and then have ship permadeath on loss, respawning as a weaker unit
- Combine with distinctive unit/equipment prices to balance factions accordingly: Ships demonstrated to be the most powerful should also be the greatest loss when destroyed
- Remove the post-defeat time limit on players in favor of forcing them to reengage quickly with these weaker units right away, or retiring to lick their wounds
- Prevent pirates from demanding credits, only cargo, forcing them to sell those goods somewhere instead
- Make the most contraband-contraband extremely lucrative, but limit carrying it to freighters or smaller
- Aggressively update the supply/demand in systems using micropatches, without waiting for whole patches
- Let POBs produce commodities by combining two others, then combine with the above to make for a semi-dynamic economy inside the game as well as from the outside via patches
- Combine the above with only allowing certain commodities to be made via POB manufacturing, so bulk traders are less effective without an overall plan
- Don't upload that market data anywhere public. In fact stop uploading omniscient data about the game as far as it can be done and force players, especially the existing ones, to learn where things are, where things can be bought and how much they cost all on their own, or by rumor, word of mouth, or bar character message/rumor. Keep wiki-like data to the minimum to make informed decisions only about ship statistics and game mechanics.
- On that note, after slashing half the galaxy away, refresh those stations that still exist and make them even borderline interesting to visit for lore purposes again; redo the rumors, the info for money and the news reports; get a few dedicated writers together and have at it, because right now vanilla looks better
- And why stop there? Move jump holes. They're supposed to be fluctuating in canon, right? Move connections, or make entirely new ones, or shut them off, temporarily or permanently
- Make jumpgates refuse to operate for hostile factions, but make exceptions for thematic ones such as Lane Hackers as far as this is possible
- Make jumpgates destructible in-game if you're feeling feisty enough, or at least speed up the construction/destruction required by local roleplay via those micropatches
- Make nomads an AI-only faction but aggressively maneuver their spawn zones/bases around via micro-patches so that they're the real antagonists again
- Make any faction which has clearly failed to garner player interest AI-only as well, consolidating what few people still remain into groups that actually exist

Or my personal favorite:

- Reboot everything back to 801 A.S. Remake Discovery as the roleplay-focused, immersive, player-driven world that it pretended to be in later years, despite its origins as just a another ship mod that attracted some more attention than other mods at the time. Work all of the above into it with a clean slate and roast the sunk-cost fallacy on a spit.




Oh, and extend idle time kicks on planets so that two people can land, flip open the bar music and roleplay for a little while on the surface. But that's just a pet peeve of mine; the bar music is great.