Ship Cripple on Death

[75th Mosquitos]

lol you people arent listening.

The cost of repairs is a poor reason to vote no, as that's the entire point of such a policy. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that, on the assumption that the no votes consist mainly of those who can't be bothered to get credits or who fly their cap a lot, that their no vote is misguided and pretty selfish.

..."having to grind just to fly the ship" seriously, how often do you get killed?? by the sounds of it you just are planet diving for the fun of it, just undocking and heading to camp in the nearest star.

if you die that often, you are doing it wrong.

you dont pay if you dont die, this isnt a poll for "making sitting in space cost fuel" at which point, just flying your capital ship would cost you money continuously.

[Geeky]

Voted no, for reasons already outlined in this topic.

[McNeo]

I guess when you put out a good argument, most people just put their fingers in their ears and talk like broken records.

I guess my point is that I can see this change limiting as much good RP as it creates. What if someone plays a suicidal or thoughtless character that is supposed to engage anything he sees. The SCRA SCUD squads were pretty fun to encounter, why should we punish that with the bill for repairing their nova launchers? I've had one or two positive responses to my Marauder Hegemon (inspired and adapted from the Reavers in Firefly), which if it came across a battleship would very clearly attempt to pirate it and attack (unsuccessfully I'm sure).

That's great. It's also completely stupid behaviour. Idiots tend to get punished with death, and that's something that out here, beyond the pixels, you don't come back from.

What is the basis for you having a suicidal character, or for there to be a suicide squad? RP? That's RP? Actually, to people who want to be immersed in the games they play, suicidal characters who somehow don't die are completely game-breaking. I'm not too familliar with the SCRA's policies, but I am very familliar indeed with the Hellfire Legion's tendancy to take their pair of battleships into New York, sit on top of manhattan and wait to get swarmed. Sure, it's "fun", but to deal with something like that every day? Same goes in reverse too, how can Liberty really prevent three of their dreadnoughts driving up to New Berlin, or Jarek in his great big RMBS visiting New York every four hours? In both cases, FR5s or disciplinary action ensued, but the only thing that stopped it is that they got bored. Can you really say that's right?

There needs to be a mechanism to stop rash, stupid fleet movements that make no sense. The motivation to avoid those out here is death. The motivation ingame is currently what?

However, in RP the captain of the capital ship doesn't pay for it, the state does.

So you've seen a problem. Sit on it a while and come up with an idea on how to solve it. I've got a pretty good idea knocking around in my head but I doubt those who would be required to do the leg work would see it as a neccessary idea. Suffice to say, it involves an as yet uncreated FLhook plugin that measures commodity purchases and sales in an area that a government owns, generates a new body of credits based on "taxes" of trade (without impacting the sale/purchase price of the commodities), tallying it up and directing the credits to an account that a government can draw upon. That's the basic framework, which encourages governments to promote trade and such. Contraband would have a negative impact on that figure if they reached the point of sale.

In the end, it's not about being realistic. This, plainly, isn't a realistic policy; if it was, we'd be arguing about ship loss. This is about providing an incentive to stop people being stupid and cutting themselves off from safe harbour, or isolating themselves to die. That makes this game less about hopping into your ship to drive around to your enemy's base and shoot their stuff, and more about making people think about what they're going to do, and how it's going to cost them.

Right now, I can and I do pay next to nothing to fly around in hostile territory. It doesn't scare me to do it, and it is, I hate to say, just as cheap in a battleship as it is in a fighter. I've got 400 million from scraping together everything I had and selling some stuff I used to own. That's enough to last me a year, provided I die on three characters every day. How on earth is that even close to believable? In fact, I've survived half of that for the past two years. I haven't traded more than about six hours in that two year period. Is that supposed to be possible?

Also, bombers can kill most light caps before fighters can kill them if they have any skill at all. I don't ever fly battleships so the stubborn armor that they enjoy and that also gives them time is not available on cruisers and battle cruisers. Sure, I am positive some pilots will say olololicanhaz bomber kill in 5 seconds with 1337 pwnage get escort n00b, but if the only time you get to play is when there are 60 people on the server and 90% of the time your escort consists of new players who you are trying to help get setup, lolbombers are going to pick you apart pretty quickly.

If you don't fly around in a dangerous way, then you wont be killed, and you wont have to pay a repair bill. If you do, then it's your own bloody fault. As for escorts, as I said, Sina manages to find some very talented friends to fly with him and generally have a bit of fun, what stops you from doing the same? There's also a similar risk for bombers with such a system, as if they die, they pay for a repair bill on a supernova and/or nova, and they aren't that cheap. It encourages people to think twice, and that's the point. Plus, as I said, a scheme like this should be accompanied with a general strengthening of the capital ships (otherwise you'll get something like the barge killing club thread that Akura started, if anyone remembers that). Right now, caps are balanced to be beaten by fighters and bombers fairly easily because they're just as cheap to run. If they weren't, then it isn't unreasonable to expect that cap pilots want more bang for their buck. This would be possible and balanced as those caps would be around less.

[Lunaphase]

Reguardless of theory, this still hurts capital players and RP more than it ever does snubcraft pilots.

RP is RP, it shouldent be FORCED upon the player, since in some places, pulling out a warship and sending it to reinforce the lines IS solid rp.

This is the same as not forcing your RP on others, by doing this, you are doing just that.

you want to RP damage? rebuy your guns each time you die. thats a good 40 mil right there for bs and some bc setups. Do not force upon me extra grinding in my ptrans on npc just because of some random idiots who cant fly a big ship tacitcally. (the ship size isnt the problem, nor is the price of repairs. its the PLAYERS who consistently do stupid things. Those who do, generally are those who would do them ANYWAY even with this in place.)

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[Backo]

In theory loosing a whole dreadnought class warship is a lot more tragic then loosing a single pilot fighter craft, no? When you got that big brick to fly, you should've known that inRP you're not going to be repairing with just duct tape.

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Republic of the Sword and Sun

[Taffic]

Perhaps this cost of repair could be scaled over time.
If you immediately start flying post death, then you pay full whack.
If you don't use the ship for 4 hours then standard GC laws apply
Anywhere inbetween would be charged proportionally e.g. 1/2 for 2 hour wait.
Can this be done?

I think Civi & recruit IDs should be exempt

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[McNeo]

Reguardless of theory, this still hurts capital players and RP more than it ever does snubcraft pilots.

In conjunction with more powerful capital ships, it's meant to instill a better sense of reward when people kill a cap, as well as making them better able to defend themselves and fight.

And I dispute your claim on its foundation actually. If a battleship costs 20 million to repair when it dies, but a bomber costs 5 million, that does look uneven. However, given that it takes about 4 bombers to take a battleship down with any real speed (let alone if the caps get a buff), both sides are risking the same amount of cash in repairs. That is what a system should be geared towards. Risk for individuals may be different, but the risk for each side should be roughly equal in any given and hard fought battle. Such a system prevents stupidity (folks charging at a horde of bombers with caps because they're 'impatient') whilst promoting engaging cranial capacity and problem solving.

RP is RP, it shouldent be FORCED upon the player, since in some places, pulling out a warship and sending it to reinforce the lines IS solid rp.

You are aware that, as this is an RP server, the rules of the server are geared at forcing RP upon the player? Forget players forcing RP on people, that's what the admins do.

Perhaps this cost of repair could be scaled over time.
If you immediately start flying post death, then you pay full whack.
If you don't use the ship for 4 hours then standard GC laws apply
Anywhere inbetween would be charged proportionally e.g. 1/2 for 2 hour wait.
Can this be done?

I think Civi & recruit IDs should be exempt

This is a good idea, I just wonder about the strain it will place on the FLhook infrastructure if it needs to keep track of every death in a four hour period. How many server deaths are there, how many tiers of cost will there be to this (so how many times will each dead character need to be checked and amended by the plugin?), and will repairs be made automatically even if you hit respawn and then log off, rather than just logging off? Will cost/time profiles for each ship and piece of equipment need to be manually constructed, or can they be randomly generated within a certain specific band? How much time is spent overwriting information and does it interfere with other actions of the server?

All of these are issues (I hope I phrased them well enough for people to understand them) and must be thought through...

[Blodo]

There are some serious fallacies in the argument that "Sina manages to find escorts". First of all it's the worst example, considering that Sina spent some 4 years on and off this community, and the groups that he flies with are not "his groups", they are simply a bunch of people who are of similar skill and hang out in connecticut at most times. Now the problem with your argument is that while NO it is not that hard to find escorts if you get on peak times (though in the case of Varyag it is, you try and log on the Durango and find escorts at 3 to 4 am european time and even in Liberty you will be hard pressed, but this isn't the core of my argument). The main issue is finding escorts that count. Which pretty much makes the only effective group of escorts being... well the best players on the server which are mostly europeans. While a battleship with escorts is one thing, a cruiser with escorts is completely another and the escorts either need very specific tactics (which newbies have no idea about) or exquisite skill to kill enemy bombers as fast as is necessary so that the cruiser survives. In this case escorts aren't the be all and end all.

The other thing is that this will encourage massing of players, as you outlined. This massing will include piles of capital ships more often than not. I mean, what is the best way to not die while attacking? Go to enemy territory, camp their base and rape the ever living hell out of anything that undocks before they can actually get their group together. This will create a flood of cries, sanction reports, drama and hate as usual. The vaunted "fair play" of this server will go away in favour of "i'm not going to let you kill me, especially not in a fair fight". And it won't just be a problem with capitals. Everyone knows how groups like indians mass vhfs, and although they pretty much universally suck if faced against even a smaller group of people who know what they are doing, they can still get whole groups to just give up when they see the indians in their system every 4 hours all the time, every day. Now imagine them massing vhfs but instead of actually taking people head on just like that, they are encouraged to mass together with indies so that they can kill more of the enemy while having a screen to run away so they don't die and lose money.

And lets not forget grief killing. "I kill you so you lose money" is going to be so prevalent. More so even than "I kill you so I get blue message" that is nowadays.

So you must think about what you want: fair play or realism? The two do not go hand in hand and never will, especially not on this server.

[Taffic]

This is a good idea, I just wonder about the strain it will place on the FLhook infrastructure if it needs to keep track of every death in a four hour period. How many server deaths are there, how many tiers of cost will there be to this (so how many times will each dead character need to be checked and amended by the plugin?), and will repairs be made automatically even if you hit respawn and then log off, rather than just logging off? Will cost/time profiles for each ship and piece of equipment need to be manually constructed, or can they be randomly generated within a certain specific band? How much time is spent overwriting information and does it interfere with other actions of the server?

Glad you like the idea :)

Whenever a ship takes damage the state of disrepair is recorded as default - this is part of the game mechanics already.
If a ship is destroyed then the server could set a repair bill (appropriate to ship class & equipment) & then all you would need to do is log time of death & log time of launch & do a sum.
I'm not a dev, but I have done games coding & believe the strain on the server should be minimal.

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[Hidamari]

accompanied by a broad strengthening of capital ship abilities, particularly their ability to protect themselves from bombers.

accompanied by a broad strengthening of capital ship abilities, particularly their ability to protect themselves from bombers.

accompanied by a broad strengthening of capital ship abilities, particularly their ability to protect themselves from bombers.

accompanied by a broad strengthening of capital ship abilities, particularly their ability to protect themselves from bombers.

accompanied by a broad strengthening of capital ship abilities, particularly their ability to protect themselves from bombers.

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