Re: Possible Player Wipe

[DarkOddity]

Roleplay, yep, great, but nearly every pilot interaction I've had was "can you transfer $$$ for me?" or "where can I buy a battleship?". This is a natural consequence of the situation : easy trade routes, invunerable traders, cap ships available to all -- pilots just trade to get a "cool" ship. Dude.

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Dude. lol...

Anyways, as for easy trade routes, they wouldn't be easy if the trading ships weren't invulnerable to NPCs as you said, and has been stated by a great many people, already.

For isntance, if a train was DRASTICLY reduced in it's protection, the Freeport 11 Passenger run would become near obselete but it would still provide one hell of a profit for those who had enough skills to get a train through hordes of nomad fighters & fleets ect. as it stands now 5 nomad fighters can pound at you and have no results at all. In my opinion one nomad fighter should be a *DEADLY* situation. this is the problem at the current point in time. Hopefully Igiss is looking at something to change the train invulnerability vs NPC (TIVN) issue that is currently in-game.


As for restricting capital ships:
I see a major issue with this. #1 restrictions already exist, you are not allowed to purchase just any kind of cap ship, you have to purchase one tagged to your character. Granted "nuetral" characters don't have that requirement currenlty, which they should (Hence my ID Reword suggestions in the past) not even be allowed to fly a capital ship as a nuetral pilot. That should be the restriction.

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[JC.]

As for restricting capital ships:
I see a major issue with this. #1 restrictions already exist, you are not allowed to purchase just any kind of cap ship, you have to purchase one tagged to your character. Granted "nuetral" characters don't have that requirement currenlty, which they should (Hence my ID Reword suggestions in the past) not even be allowed to fly a capital ship as a nuetral pilot. That should be the restriction.

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"Restriction" is perhaps not the most correct word. As it is, you have to trade ( a lot ) to buy a capital ship. As I'm suggesting, you would have to work as a faction character to get one.
For example. You want a pirate battleship. The pirate faction leader says, get a pirate character, ID, and pirate 25 traders ( player traders ); then maybe you can have one. Or for a military faction you have to perform patrols, battles, etc.
Put it another way : say you are a new pilot on the server, as it is now. If you get a fighter and role play it as a military pilot ( for example ) you are never going to get a battleship. If you want one, you have to trade. The economics of it discourage roleplay. I'm saying -- change the economics to encourage roleplay.

JC.

[DarkOddity]

Put it another way : say you are a new pilot on the server, as it is now. If you get a fighter and role play it as a military pilot ( for example ) you are never going to get a battleship. If you want one, you have to trade. The economics of it discourage roleplay. I'm saying -- change the economics to encourage roleplay.

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Ok that is completely false, fortunately, especially the statement I highlighted in bold.

High end missions yield up to 500,000 a mission, and there are several players on this server who have strictly RP'd to get their stuff, trading specificly for their faction, (For instance I smuggle Corsair artifacts into NY for my money, granted I bring back passengers, but hey the more people in the area the more ships to pirate :D) be it either with the forementioned trade goods FOR their faction or whether they do missions for their faction or kill their factions enemies and bring back their escape pods for reward. Trading is not required, but granted is the fastest way to make the money.

So what I am getting from you (and in ways it is a good idea, but I don't think it is right for whats happening here) is you want RP to be forced onto people who want a character with any capital class ships. Is that a correct assumption?

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[Dab]

Like DO, I role play my trading. I won't go so far as to tell anyone my trade route, and I want to keep it to a minimum amount of people knowing it, as it is a good alternative to the FP11 - NY route, and I'd rather not get swarmed after that one is removed.

Now, I trade as a Zoner, I have a Zoner ID, and when I get my money, I'll be getting a Zoner Tag. That Zoner train pays for AW (pretty much allies of Zoners, using Zoner ID) to buy ships from Zoners and Outcasts. But regardless if it is RP, I still have to have someone help transfer that money. Its a part of the server that others would like to get around, but cannot. So you can't say they don't RP because they asked for a transfer.

The noobs you see asking for battleships are just that. Noobs. They don't RP, or haven't gotten used to RP yet. But they likely will.

About that RPing as your ship. Almost everyone who RPs, RPs as their ship. Though that neutral trader thing gets on my nerves as well, which is why I went with Zoners. Turns out most Outcasts don't pirate the Zoner train, but could care less about what happens to the neutrals. Worked out in the end..

When I'm on my Ableben I RP as the Ableben, with Luciaden sometimes aboard, and sometimes not. Though he doesn't much like to talk to you "pathetic" humans.. He caught Raf'el's contempt for you people. Shortly after he had an entire army under his direct control, just by twisting their minds. I love my RP powers. :D

So if I play as a Bundschuh character I'm not going to be friendly to the AW, just because I lead them, as I am not in my AW role, but in the Bundschuh terrorist role. I'll treat them neutral. I might talk to them on private chat, but private chat is seen as a no-RP zone, where you aren't restricted to your RP when you talk to others. Almost every other RPer does it the same way I do.

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[JC.]

Ok that is completely false, fortunately, especially the statement I highlighted in bold.

The reality is that pilots I've seen on the server for the most part do exactly as I have described ( trade to pay for a battleship, with little or no RPing in the process ). That's not purely a Discovery problem, any modded server with expensive ships has similar issues, but it's a matter of degree. In Discovery the already discussed issues of overly powerful transports, easy trade routes, etc, especially encourage trading. I have now about 80 hrs on the server, and in that time I haven't seen any battles ( even though battleships are common ); dueling is a rarity, and pirating is a rumor. No one has tried to recruit me for a faction; typically 2/3 of players do not have tags. I'm not trying to be critical, I'm just describing what happened. On the other hand, I was on Procyon yesterday for 30 minutes ( a vanilla Freelancer server ), and clan tags were the majority, pilots were fighting and dying etc.

High end missions yield up to 500,000 a mission

That's an understatement, if anything. The various cargo, pilots, guns, ammo, bots and nanos add up to a fair number of credits, especially if you are smart about where you take missions and sell the stuff. Smuggling, mining are also useful. But still, most people are just trading, or at least making most of their money by trading.

So what I am getting from you (and in ways it is a good idea, but I don't think it is right for whats happening here) is you want RP to be forced onto people who want a character with any capital class ships. Is that a correct assumption?

What you are calling "forcing" is in fact economics. No one is actually forced to do anything, but if you want something you have to work, perform some activity for that reward. Primarily, the activity is trading and the reward is ships. This is the basic economics of plain Freelancer; but just as the game itself can be modded so can the economics. A simple example is if the admins offer a bounty on a player -- they are introducing a new source of reward, which causes the players to alter their activities. Another example is changes to the mineable areas to increase the reward of the mining activity. A slightly more complex one is my suggestion of the admins funding the faction leaders directly, and those leaders rewarding RP with ships that they couldn't obtain otherwise. More complex ( devious?) would be funding a terrorist faction, or creating an imbalance between the two largest factions ( starting a war ).
Essentially, it's a matter of encouraging players to do the desired activity. If more RP is indeed the goal, then simply ensure that RP has the most reward.

JC.

[Dab]

Well first I will talk about you not seeing battles. You happened to get on the server just a bit after we had ALOT of wars. A major one being the SF/TC vs. AW war. That one was very large. With a massive battle in Tau-37. I believe 12-13 people were in that fight. 7-8 SF/TC ships, 3 AW ships. Then another fight in Tau-31, 5 TC/SF vs 3 AW. (Yes, we usually have those odds. We got used to them after awhile..)

Then the DVL vs. AW war, which happened during the CUFF vs. AW war (though you could hardly call it a war, 90% of the time it was AW chasing after CUFF who wouldn't fight us.)

Then after that was the Bs| vs. DVL war.

After that wars settled down a bit for obvious reasons.. 4 wars one after another in the time of a month and a half..

You happened to catch the peace time. It rises and falls on Disco. The war season, and the peace season.



Now for the random battles and dueling. I guess you weren't on tonight, as 7-8 of us were in Connecticut having a friendly pvp/ffa. Where we had fights going on. Lots of dueling. Most memorable to me was the fight between me and Caylith's Dalamar Outcast cruiser. Came down to quite the match. Ended with my destruction and Caylith with sliver of hull left, somewhere around an 8th of a bar. (If only that last shot from my main gun had hit.. :P) Then there was the fight, or more the death.., of the Private Yacht Vidius against 4 phantoms, and 2 pirates. (If you can't tell I don't get even odds often..) And they had been pvping until I had gotten there. Then there are the Phantoms who are always fighting others around the galaxy, especially AW vs. Phantoms when it happens.


Now for the trading bit. We know trading right now is too easy, and the run everyone is doing is getting removed from the mod in the next version, and the other good run likely getting a reduction. We are fixing this problem. Also, the RP of traders is a sign of everyone. I RP-trade, trading only Zoner commodities or from Zoner bases. Atm I do both. My Private Yacht Vidius char, RP trades as it flies randomly around trading on random routes. Its meant to be something pirates can attempt to take on and gain alot of money.


Now about the bounty idea.. The admins don't do that. Players make bounties on other players, and then alot of freelance mercs and bounty hunters go after it, along with AW, as we are mercs, though we are mainly mercenaries that help in wars.

Though I do like the idea of mining being much more gainful. I think mining ships should be able to have a mining laser (100.00 refire) than can mine quickly, or the earlier idea of a mining mine. It shouldn't be as profitable as doing missions or trading, but it should still be profitable and relatively safe. As well as giving noobs a safe way to make money with lower priced ships. a 3 million dollar mining ship is much easier to buy than trading to a train.

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[Wolfpack98]

Uhm.. Dab..


Correction.

Bs| v DVL happened before CUFF got on here :) I'll PM you details some time ;)

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User was banned for: Compromised account
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[Dab]

Whatever. We both fought them sometime around the CUFF period.. Thats all that mattered.

PM me the details? Psh, I could probably find out more about what went on then you did. :P My Intelligence man has proved to be quite competent in that area. And no, I won't tell you who it is.

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[Wolfpack98]

Whatever. We both fought them sometime around the CUFF period.. Thats all that mattered.

PM me the details? Psh, I could probably find out more about what went on then you did. :P My Intelligence man has proved to be quite competent in that area. And no, I won't tell you who it is.

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Uhm.. Dab.. I was 100% involved in that war, as was Josh. No one knows the real details better than He and I :)

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User was banned for: Compromised account
Time left: (Permanent)

[Nightfall]

I was on Procyon yesterday for 30 minutes ( a vanilla Freelancer server ), and clan tags were the majority, pilots were fighting and dying etc.

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you see, I was on Procyon too (Disco was too laggy for me and I often play on Procyon since I found it) and of the 3 hrs I've been there and 15-25 players there were a few 'Player has been killed by a NPC' messages (that's yesterday)
I hit a major battle the other day in Tau-23 between the {Outcasts} and some other clan - like 10+ ppl were in it...

just a matter of timing...

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If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God? - from 'Nightfall' by I. Asimov
The Outcasts consider Siniestre Nube a sacred place for several reasons. Early explorers discovered a jumphole within the depths of the cloud that leads to a strange world of ringed stars and strange craft. All ships in the burrial ground are placed facing that hole to honor the Alien Spirits. - An Outcast rumor