The year is 2015 and your Transport ship has one turret slot. You have a choice do you put a mining array on your Transport or do you put one turret to shot at the really annoying NPCs?
Typical day to day of a Transport Captain
Man this cargo is worth alot of money. Sure seems like there is a lot of players out there, oh man It's looking pretty risky.
I better hire a Freelancer, oh look there is one right now. I knew I would find one it don't take to long.
Hey man are you for hire ?
Yes
Cool, go half's on the payment?
Sure sounds good, how many other runs you doing?
We could do a few maybe ?
Yeah let's do it
The year is 2025 and transports have 7 guns and Infact the dev team are gonna add more and more.
Man I can't really find any freelancers and if I do they ain't getting half the pay like back in the day because I got so many guns now that I don't really need Freelancers because this is Transport Tycoon in space.
Some focus on what the game is about please.
Edit : For the record I am against your rule changes.
Transports Defense Should be
1. Your Wallet
2. Your Escort Pilot
3. Your Mouth (Roleplay)
(That used to be made up of alot of Freelancers, today it seems very faction based if you have a escort)
You get more player interaction this way Trader, Defender, Attacker (Pirate maybe two Pirates now the one Pirate sees a Escort)
I laughed the first time I fired all the turrets on my return to the game on my 5K transport it just seemed ridiculous. Sure one turret was rubbish but it sure made me and many others looking for escort pilots.
Do you know why some of us have the escort pilot go ahead of the transport? Because some of us don't check the chat menu and also don't have players joining and departing showing for immersion. (What's left of it)
If you make these rule changes your not gonna need to worry about these Silent traders. Because your never gonna see them again they will either leave the game or have the chat menu on 24/7 and constantly checking whos joined and whos leaving.
Honestly I think I've been enjoying the roleplay on the forums more lately than the game it's self.
Again I find myself training people. This person can Not PvP at all and has real trouble playing the game due to some handicaps and is practicing in a 2500 Bretonian Transport. That's the type of people your looking to target ? Come on, people have different skill sets some people enjoy the roleplay environment light game play.
Conns for fighting Right?? It feels like your trying to make more of a conn environment into the roleplay environment. You need the roleplay and to encourage more of the old ways.
It's good to try new things and new ideas but sometimes you might want to look back at the past and go why was it setup that way and how did that work and why did it work?
Anyway no to these changes it's gonna do more damage then good. Btw this is a Roleplay Server not a PvP Server. Your literally on the forums right now. PvP enhances Roleplay not the other way round this is why the game is in trouble.