Multiplayer was fun for the first 4 days. The game is too easy, and teamwork is not encouraged.

I'd like to make the game much more difficult, so that you actually have to work for any and all improvements to your craft. When you own your favourite ship, and have all the best equipment, the game no longer has a point, so I'd like to make that journey as long and difficult as possible... like a week or two, instead of several hours.

Here is a list of problems I see with the game, and proposed solutions. If even a few of these problems were dealt with, the game would be substantially more fun. I'm not expecting to get everything, especially not on the first run.

- problem: you can make too much money too fast, the game is essentially over in a matter of hours
+++ solution: make money harder to earn, make equipment more expensive

- problem: factions can be neutralized to make trading unchallenging
+++ solution: start players off with unbalanced reps in mpnewcharacter.fl, or mod the game somehow to make nuetralizing impossible (e.g. unbalance the increments and decrements of rep points so it's easier to become hated than to become liked?)

- problem: missions don't require teamwork, missions are too easy in general

- problem: too much money can be made from higher-level missions
+++ solution: edit diff2money.ini or disable missions altogether?

- problem: too much money can be made from running freight
+++ solution: average out commodity prices at bases, or lower the number of cargo holds on ships drastically (especially fighters)

- problem: pirating doesn't have a quick enough negative effect on your reputation
+++ solution: blowing up a faction's vessel should have a much more drastic negative effect on your reputation with them

- problem: fighting/running away from NPC's is too easy, they also drop loot that's worth too much if they're high enough level
+++ solution: make them tougher, give them regenerating shields, make trade rings go down for much longer, and/or remove shield batteries and nanobots from players entirely

- problem: the best ships in the game have almost no flaws - the Humpback has awesome shields, and the best fighters have the cargo capacity of a Rhino
+++ solution: tame down the ships a lot, give them strategic weaknesses

- problem: cheating is rampant
+++ solution: catch 99% of them by watching for million credit increases, automatically kick and ban them?

- problem: death means nothing to fighters
+++ solution: lose your ship? lose 10% of your net worth? lose your account entirely? maybe each player could have a certain amount of lives and when they run out, one of the above could happen

- problem: manually docking with Trade Lane Rings and entering formation with transports going through Jump Gates unbalances the game substatially between players who know how to do this and players who don't
+++ solution: fix auto-docking so that it's smarter and faster?

I'm definately open to ideas/debate on anything I've written here. I've merely posted these ideas to find people who are interested in working on a project which is along the same lines. I'd be happy to reconsider anything if you can bring some skill to the table!

I'd also like to make the mod extremely easy to install/uninstall. It would be even better if we had a wrapper mod which was able to recognize what mod was running on the server, and apply itself as necessary. That might be a pipe dream though.

*** I'm not interested in adding new ships! ***

That might make the game fun for an extra hour or so, but I'd much rather fix the inherant problems I see with the game and allow people to have fun for weeks or months. You'll quickly get bored of flying *any* ship if there's nothing new to do.

*** Modders (and only modders) wanted! ***

If you don't have any relevant skills, please don't post. I'm afraid this mod won't have need for modellers or texture artists anytime soon. I'd also like to ask people to stay away from frivilous dicussion on mod ideas (e.g "Yeah! Great ideas! And while you're at it, you should add a working Jump Hole to Alaska and make the sun pilotable!"

If you can offer technical reasons why some of my proposed solutions won't be possible, suggest feasable alternatives you are fairly confident would work, or propose ideas along the same lines as above, please post! But what I'm interested in right now is finding a team with roughly the same goals as mine. We'll flesh out the exact details later.

Edited by - Thundercleese on 27-03-2003 01:59:03

Edited by - Thundercleese on 27-03-2003 02:01:35