Are there too many Atrains?

[El Nino]

Meh i voted Yes, and Yes,...

What i'd like to see, is an Adv.Train with diffrent stats.. A lot less Armor and very much cheaper to build. As it is genercic the only diffrence between the little train and adv. train is 4 extra cargo pods, so why is it so much more expensive and why does it have so much more armor? I'd like to see it as a generic cheap large transport, that really dies to just about anything and must relly on escorts. Other large transports should be more expensive and better armored at an expense of some cargo and naturaly higher price.

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Skype: jure.grbec
My primary char: Jose El Nino - Corsair Elder captain of the SS Greenhawk

Currently Inactive due to pursuit of life long dreams, will be back...*edited* As promised am back.

[Unseelie]

Why should transports be nerfed/restricted/changed at all?
Maybe I'm exceptionally sub par when it comes to transport combat, even though I consider myself exceptional, but I find it rather difficult to survive an encounter with a VHF in my transports, any of them, let alone a bomber or a Gunboat. I feel like I should have something of a chance, from a gameplay perspective. If a ship is restricted, it should be stronger than others...if the only problem it has is that it makes money, or is very common...Well.

I've begged, for years, for custom and varied cargopods. Interesting things to look at. For more transport models, for possibilities to make my transport more mine. A new texture, a few kilobytes. People get new ships added, but tell me that my request would take too much space.

If your upset that I'm earning money...why aren't you angry with arms dealers? Miners? System modders? How about the admins, who have the right to finance their characters from .addcash? two of these groups generate money, are, essentially, the bottom of the food chain. Admins, who have the right to finance Themselves(and no one else), in exchange for their admining. Most of them don't. And then you have traders, the grass, the trees, the shrubs and the algae of the server. They buy the missiles, they fund the characters, they support such things as the arms trade and the bounties and the piracy. They often pay sums such as 20 million for a gun, or 3 million because they were bested in an unfair combat.
Tell me they don't have the right to at least as much cash as they already make? Does anyone believe that?

The Atrain is the pinnacle transport. Its mildly strong, and earns a lot of cash. It costs an awful lot, and cannot manuever very well. Demanding people avoid it is like demanding the BAF not use Templars. Nerfing it is the same. There's a lot of Atrains in game. My suggestion? A 5k fighting transport. A 5k whale, and, even, a new variant: A pacifist Armor tank, the opposite of the whale pacifist speedtank. Thats two types of ship -incapable- of fighting, but who still stand a chance getting away.

Edit: Hey, Jure, heard of the Whale? Yeah, thats the ship your thinking about.

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[tfmachad]

My apologies Gronath if I am coming across harsh. I understand all the work you are putting in and all that goes along with trying to make everyone happy. Near impossible. My tone comes from the new mentality i have been seeing lately with the rules and changes that are making it harder to go in game and just RP and have fun. Nerfing and restricting never leads to more fun in my opinion.
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Well, Skoorb, the thing is: I believe there is an unilateral view of things going on amongst some of the participants of this community. We all have to start from the premise that everything that's being done in this mod is with the intention of making it better. Sure things aren't being made better for everybody, but that's because there's only so much angles people are capable of understanding things from. That's why I'm saying that it's important that people who can come up with a good argument to participate in matters. When I say this, I don't mean that the people directly involved in improving the mod are all evil doers, I'm saying that they are not infallible and that it's likely they won't come up with perfect solutions for all matters that concern them.

The reasoning behind restricting the larger transports for corporate characters was that in doing so there would be an incentive (or call it whatever you think that is) for players to come up with characters that would fit those organizations somehow and to have those characters behave in a manner that is sensible inside that context. In other words, it would "force" people to at least spend thirty seconds thinking which company their trader would work for/with. Also, it would give groups that are supposed to specifically interact with this or that NPC faction someone to actively pursue their RP with (or someone to play with).

Think about it: How nice it would be for the Hessians to have the mining companies represented in game by the traders? Even if the people flying those trading ships wouldn't bother RPing back, the Hessian players would have some RP platform for their roles other than the RM (and RFP).

Also, on the matter of Discovery becoming ever more restricted. Not many months ago, the [RM] faction was very restrictive of every aspect of our role (the ships, the responsibilities, the space, everything). Nowadays it's a rare thing for us to fly patrols which don't include at least one independent player. And I see that happening in a lot of places. More and more some factions are relinquishing some of their power. True, it came through great pressures from the community and, in some cases, this pressure had to be represented in the form of admin issued instructions, but these changes only really happened because of people that voiced their concerns and ideas.

I think we're all very wary of the upcoming changes. After all, as I understand it, 4.85 is monumental in those terms and humans are always so very excited and fearful of changes. I'm just saying that we should look at things from different angles from time to time and be a part of the change regardless of a particular agenda.

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Meet the Kriegers - The story of a family and of two men that shared more than just a name
Fantasmas de la Nube Siniestra
I Mon'Star: The Strange Case of Elizabeth Wallace

[RedlineInc]

People seem to like using the "space trucker" metaphor for indie traders, but I see FL trading as being more like modern-day sea transportation. THe huge superfreighters are only owned by the big corporations, not by small-time independant individuals.

Perhaps, however you are incorrectly applying the "polite society follows rules" to outer space.
And I don't believe this is valid. A hard working person who amasses the money could buy a train if they wanted. There is more than one privately owned railroad in my area. Sure, it's for fun and not hooked into the main grid, but the point is, the man bought a train! The "Advanced train is a Train (or even a cargo ship?!?) but the Transport is the truck" thing doesn't work out mathematically. I mean, a Large train is only slightly over twice the hold of a large transport, and the Atrain only 500 more. That's merely an Armored Transport's cargo hold of difference. Something with a 50,000 hold would be a train, 100,000 a cargo ship.

You just can't tell me that in the free-for-all of space exploration and expansion that men of daring and diligence couldn't get a ship equal to a corporation's largest transport. Where there's so much money to be made from "limitless resources", it absolutely would happen, and with startling regularity.

Now, if what people are saying is that you have to qualify for a vanilla corporate ID in that your faction empathy is correctly aligned and we can all be sure that you're enemies with everyone you're supposed to be, then I could agree with that. But to say you have to "belong" to that faction and RP as that faction, in order to have a ship larger than a transport, then I'm back to "screw that!" It just isn't correct in any way.

Again, I'll bet that everyone who is saying "yeah, that's right, it should be nerfed." isn't a trader.
And this should sound warning bells if it's the case. I'm telling you, if you lose traders, you lose this server.
I can't put it any simpler than that. Question is, how bad do you want it? Enough to enjoy it's "correctness"
for only 6 or 8 months? You heard it here first ladies and gents, don't forget! Give me my due when it happens, because it will, I promise you. It wouldn't be the first time.

Gronath: everything you say in the above post would be brilliant if it didn't fly 180 degrees contrary to human nature.
They don't like changes, they hate to lose things they've worked for, they don't have faith that it'll be better around the corner, they don't believe in their fellow human to do the right thing. And the problem is; they're right!

[tansytansey]

There certainly aren't enough adv. trains that come through California. They are extremely fun to pirate.
You give people access to a ship that is better than others and they will use it. You make another 5000 cargo ship, and people will use the faster of the two. If their stats are exactly the same, they'll take the cheaper, if they're the same price they'll pick the closest. You restrict their use of 5k cargo ships, they'll pick the next best thing, and so on.

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[tfmachad]

...
Gronath: everything you say in the above post would be brilliant if it didn't fly 180 degrees contrary to human nature.
They don't like changes, they hate to lose things they've worked for, they don't have faith that it'll be better around the corner, they don't believe in their fellow human to do the right thing. And the problem is; they're right!

In 4.83 there were Mercs flying Kusari battleships in Rheinland. The Mercenary ID was nerfed to completely wipe the possibility of the role in itself ever including battleship class ships again (or at least until they were re-introduced, if ever) regardless of how much effort people had put into buying those ships.

In 4.83 there was a ridiculous "route" (if you can call it that) between Planet Harris and the Battleship orbiting it, McDuff (?). Tau-31 was a cesspool of ooRPness and PvP abuse, but it also was the faster money making route in the mod, unparalleled in both money making speed and ridiculousness by the current Diamond/Niobium run. It was removed from the mod. I'm very sure a lot of people didn't like it. But I'm positive that it was an improvement to Discovery.

Everyone lived, 4.84 has seen a drastic increase in activity and we're all better now.

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Meet the Kriegers - The story of a family and of two men that shared more than just a name
Fantasmas de la Nube Siniestra
I Mon'Star: The Strange Case of Elizabeth Wallace

[Derkylos]

I definetly think there should be more variety when chosing a top-end transport...anyone who is legal and wants to make cash fast is gonna be in one of those things, and, with 5k cargo and enough base armor to withstand a SN, who wouldn't?

But, looking at the 59th Advanced Train gets boring...if there was, say, a Rheinland Advanced Train, a Kusari one, etc, possibly with different stats, maybe simply a new model, people may just buy one for the simple reason that they are bored of looking at the same thing over and over again.

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As for whether it is "in RP" for an independent trader to own one of these things...everyone has a differing opinion on what is right and what isn't. Personally, I think that only the corporations would use the largest, most expensive ships for a number of reasons.

First, who "sells" you the ship? Big things take a lot of resources to make (remember, we are talking the most advanced tradeship out there, a sizeable asset for a corporation), and are not the kind of thing a corp would hand out to any old joe who comes in with a spare 110 mill.

Secondly, how do you run it? They most likely have large crew complements, but running costs do not end here. One has to maintain, unload, contact dealers, repair and protect the ship, all from space (note that, whatever the animations say, you cannot land a train-class ship on a planet, that's what Heavy Lifters are for).

Finally, competition. Any "independent" running X trade route is skimming profits from whichever corporation would otherwise run it. Lots of these corporations will either hire mercs or work with local pirate groups to take down these threats to their profits (I'm looking at you non-Samura/Kishiro diamond runners, here...)

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[Sarawr!?]

If you ask me I think asking that question is like asking if there are too many Super Tankers in real life shipping >.>

*shrug*

Granted, not -Everyone- should have an A-train, I have to agree with Derkylos that it would make more sense to see a corporate pilot flying an a-train as opposed to an independant pilot.

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[LN] Recruitment | Rachel Baker Bio

[RedlineInc]

First, who "sells" you the ship? Big things take a lot of resources to make (remember, we are talking the most advanced tradeship out there, a sizeable asset for a corporation), and are not the kind of thing a corp would hand out to any old joe who comes in with a spare 110 mill.

Secondly, how do you run it? They most likely have large crew complements, but running costs do not end here. One has to maintain, unload, contact dealers, repair and protect the ship, all from space (note that, whatever the animations say, you cannot land a train-class ship on a planet, that's what Heavy Lifters are for).

Finally, competition. Any "independent" running X trade route is skimming profits from whichever corporation would otherwise run it. Lots of these corporations will either hire mercs or work with local pirate groups to take down these threats to their profits (I'm looking at you non-Samura/Kishiro diamond runners, here...)

1. Shipyards, aka those people who make their money off of making and/or retrofitting ships. The same way that independent truckers usually have the nicest truck rather than the fleets of generic "refrigerator white/no radio" models that corporation use.
   
2. They same way everyone else does. It takes a percentage of profits to maintain your vehicle. With the enormous profits to be made taking the raw materials of space to their respective refineries and manufactories, more than enough money is made to maintain ANY ship. Even the smallest companies have a garage and mechanics. Where there are machines, there are people who make their living working on them.
   
3. When it comes to 5 major houses and various smaller entities, there would ALWAYS be a shortage of willing and able space pilots to carry enough materials to keep the the industries cranking. This game trivializes it, but in truth, maybe 1 in several thousand people would be willing to even work in space at all, much less leave orbital space. Just like boating, it's all fun & games so long as you can see land. Anyone can drive a boat, only a few can sail & navigate without visual references. Plenty of opportunity for the brave and foolhardy. and money enough to buy ANY ship from it's point of manufacture.
   

[Unseelie]

Now, if what people are saying is that you have to qualify for a vanilla corporate ID in that your faction empathy is correctly aligned and we can all be sure that you're enemies with everyone you're supposed to be, then I could agree with that. But to say you have to "belong" to that faction and RP as that faction, in order to have a ship larger than a transport, then I'm back to "screw that!" It just isn't correct in any way

You have to have their ID. Nothing more, nothing less. You do not need have their reputation, though if it deviates to far, it breaks another rule. You don't have to join the playerfaction, if that's what you mean, either. You simply have to have that scanner object mounted. Moreover, You've taken things out of purportion. the Id restrictions are only in place on 4.2k+ transports, as I understand it.

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