space of influence and reengagement

[Jinx]

first of all, i know its not possible ( or most probably not ) - and i know its not wanted by the dev. or so i d expect it. but i still write it down - cause its an idea and i find it funny - so if you re affronted by my dozends "what would be funny to have in game" posts, don t read...

allright, imagine that:
there has been a lot of discussion about re-engagement, about influence zones, about defending space and attacking, about generic IDs etc etc. - most of it comes down to "when can i respawn and stay or fight, or when do i have to leave and avoid certain systems and who has a right to enforce"

what if a player dropped a "mission cargo pod" with a timer ( perishable ). timer set to whatever - 30 min or so. the pod could be beamed up by anyone, friend of foe and sold anywhere for cash ( possibly at least freelancer pod value 15k, but might be more depending on what ship the victim was flying ) so what do we get then.

we get a real prize ( if you label the pod with the players name, its even a trophy, like ears in diablo 2 ). there is something a winner gains from a pvp. a mission pod does not take up space in the cargo hold and it will vanish once you died yourself ! ( uhh - make running away with your valuable trophys an option, cause there is currently little difference from dieing in pvp to running away ) mission cargo pods should be made impossible to jettison, too. ( commit suicide and you ll loose your trophies )

currently, there is nothing so much as a sidenote of the console saying player X was killed by player Y. if you re unlucky the console states that player X was committing suicide or died to a NPC. player X can respawn, and its all like nothing has happened. so where is the satisfaction for a win. this leads to stuff like "leave my system" and so, to at least give the defeated player some sort of player sanction. - which again leads to discussions about having the right to do so, and things easily turn out-of-character, cause being forbidden to fly through or resting in a system is something that affects the players freedom.

what if a player also carried a mission cargo credit card. (500k fighters, 1mio transports, 2mio gunship, 3 mio cruiser, 5 mio battleship - or whatever) that card could not be sold by the player himself, but once he died, it would take the cash directly from his budget ( is it possible to leave a player with negative cash? ). now if a friend beamed that card up and turned it into a friendly base, the player would get refounds. if a player turned it in to an enemy though - it would be all lost. such a credit card would be perishable so would disappear after like 1 hour? - as long as the credit card is in existance, that is in a cargo hold or in space, the dead player would be labelled with a special colour, telling everyone that he has died and is not yet to be allowed to engage again.
in any case, it would not be the sell value of it but ONLY work for faction. ( the winner allready got the rescue pod to sell if he likes ) - but turning in the card to a a base would increase the faction with said base and decrease it with the other faction. - there s no faction for player vs. player so that might be an idea, cause in the end, out of all ships around, playerships are allways "VIP". or who would fight the npcs when there is a hostile player around, too.

in addition to that - why stop there hehe...

display the number of rescue pods someone has to their tag - maybe behind the rank. giving others an idea what that person is about. or make classifications for it. (5 kills would display = veteran, 10 kills = ace, 20 kills = ace of aces - whatever ) yes, that would make the tag even larger - but like i said, its an idea.

why do i think that might be nice to consider something like that? - its a roleplay server, i know, but its also a pvp server - no need to deny that, most of the fun of playing online is to compete with others. competition on a roleplay base.

the very disadvantage of such an idea is.... we get all the pvp whores :( - and that weighs very heavily. Anyway - i d like to hear opinions or ideas to make a pvp win more of a satisfaction while still not promoting pvp for the pvp sake and sanction a pvp death on a rather roleplay level, than cloudy rules about ZoI and re-engagement.

ps.: if that idea allready existed and i missed it on my search - i appologize and no, you won t get the time that it took to read the post back... :P

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