RPEP

[Zeb Harley]

Would be really great on all my ships.

[color=#000099][color=#000066]"We will not make it! All crew members abandon ship!", calls the transport-captain as more and more of the hull structure erodes away in the pirate's gunfire.

On the pirate-gunboat the captain smiles as he sees the bright flares of three escape-pods leave the transport's bridge and speed up towards the close mining-station. "Wow, I almost feared they would take their cargo to safety right in front of our eyes. That was a close call"

A blinding flash of light tears the transport apart like an over-ripe fruit as the reactor explodes. Cargo-boxes, ore, spare-fuel and ragged metal-parts scatter all around the vicinity and are quickly collected by the pirate's tractor-beam before they can drift apart.


I imagine these pure roleplay (and absolutely voluntarily) items to be like this:

Hardpoint for a gun in the cockpit (or near the bridge) of any ship where it is possible to mount a rocket launcher. This should be either a class 1 or an extra-class hardpoint so that noone is tempted to mount an efficient combat-weapon there.

A special launcher which would be mounted there. The model would have to be invisible or non-moving, since that's where the escape-pods are launched. The launching intervals could be very short so bigger ships can launch multiple escape-pods before they are destroyed.

The ammo is called Escape-Pod and can be purchased like normal missiles are. They should have slight tracking abilities so they can move towards other ships which then would take part in the roleplay as securing the pods onboard.

The Escape-Pod causes no harm upon impact, since it is supposed to be taken into the targeted ship. I imagine the appearance of the pods to be a big orange flare without smoke-trail. They must be easily distinguished from a real missile. They should take up speed slowly and accelerate to a speed of 150 to match cruise speed if they are fired by thrusting fighters towards a station. The TTL should be long enough for them to reach a ship or station about 10k away, although they must not really be able to reach a station at all because missiles seem to be unable to lock on stationary structures anyway. It's only all about the effect of launching escape-pods when the situation becomes critical.

The possibilities of small fighters carrying only one and huge ships carrying up to 70 escape-pods seem to fit the purpose, too.

What do you all think?

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for those who missed it: the moral of it all is ----> traders with teeth are fun for pirates. - within reason.

[Bobthemanofsteel]

Sounds AWESOMELY pointless.
Pointless, but AWESOME.
;D

[Gaz83]

I think this sounds like a good idea.
It'd be great seeing loads of escape pods launching from a transport, or a capship.

[tansytansey]

Personally I think we should just add the escape pod models to the debris from exploding ships. Small escape pods for fighers to gunboats, and big ones for cap ships. The models already exist in game, shouldn't be too hard...

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[schlurbi]

Would mean that every Ship we have would need an Edit to add another Hardpoint.

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[Zeb Harley]

Sounds AWESOMELY pointless.
Pointless, but AWESOME.
;D

Yes, it has only a pure RP-value. It would clear the roleplay on what happens to the crew after a ship is destroyed. This would solve the RP- problems that occur whenever your ship is destroyed and the opponent says something like: "Now you're gonna enjoy a nice life as a slave on Malta", or something similar. If you would stick to your roleplay in that case you would have to write up a story how you escaped the pirate, the slaver or your later owner from Malta before you can respawn the ship and play your character again.

It's a lot easier if there were actually escape-pods not only dropped but moving with cruise-speed towards a safe spot, so it's very unlikely you get enslaved, killed or whatever else that would destroy your own roleplay.

Would mean that every Ship we have would need an Edit to add another Hardpoint.

Well, hmmm. This actually is bad. Or is this bad? I don't know. I have never added any hardpoint anywhere. But we are talking about hardpoints that have nothing to do with the combat-balance of a ship, so I do imagine that it would be a lot less work than usual.
Many ships have hardpoints already that are not usable for combat weapons like many back-firing turret hardpoints on fighters.
Maybe there could be an easy way to equip that escape-pod thing there and see how it turns out.

I would really like to have something like that... so if someone tells me how to do it, I would surely find the time somehow to put hardpoints for the escape-pods in all hundreds of ships we have.

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for those who missed it: the moral of it all is ----> traders with teeth are fun for pirates. - within reason.

[jxie93]

Do you offer different projectiles appearances as escape pods too? Cos Felix's ecape pod has a state of the art cloaking device and ECM capabilities.

Escape pods better cost a fortune. Or you'd have those idiots sitting outside Manhattan firing escape pods into others.

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[Gaz83]

Escape pods better cost a fortune. Or you'd have those idiots sitting outside Manhattan firing escape pods into others.

Considering some of the types I've met in New York, that's true.

[Zeb Harley]

Do you offer different projectiles appearances as escape pods too? Cos Felix's ecape pod has a state of the art cloaking device and ECM capabilities.

Escape pods better cost a fortune. Or you'd have those idiots sitting outside Manhattan firing escape pods into others.

Well, that would be fine if they even cost a million a piece by me. There was a time I carried name-change-certificates around to motivate pirates to try a little harder. That was before I realized: they don't have a chance if you go around them.

It would spice things up if escape-pods that are not fired could be sold for a good value by any pirate.
100k to 500k would probably be realistic.

On the other hand: What would be the problem if people used those escape-pods to shuttle people around at close quarters? I think it is quite realistic to use them as small ferries between ships. They don't hurt the ships and would simply disappear close to the receiving ship. I could imagine some roleplay with that.

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for those who missed it: the moral of it all is ----> traders with teeth are fun for pirates. - within reason.

[Switchback]

+1


I support this feature. I support this idea Times 9000. \

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Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.