Ok, let's take a quick lookie here.

Money: Yes, level is determined by net worth. Yes, levels determine what you can buy and what you can't. But also, so does money. IF you can't afford something, you simply can't have it. Therefore, leave the levels in the game, but throw out their usefulness. The level becomes simply a warning to other players in MP, and a device to signal the next story mission in SP.

Things need to be more expensive. You can't even by a car for $8000, but that's what a new Rhino's worth. I say the trade-in value on a Starflier be bumped up to $10,000 and the next chapest ship be worth $30,000. That gives you quite a bit of time with your little Starflier. Enough time to get used to how it works, etc. It may even give you enough time to become attached to it.

Trading is way, way too profitable. Your choices: Trade, and make millions, or Fight, and make a few thousand. What's a smart capitalist going to do? I thought so.

Ships: There has to be a reason to keep any particular ship. A Patriot NEEDS some advantage over a Titan. Otherwise, why fly it? The key here is to tone down the Titan just a little bit, but increase the value in the Patriot. Make it so it can run rings around a Titan. A group of four should be able to get a Titan's shield's down, I gather. Maybe six? Liberty's strengh is in speed and numbers, so I think they can spare six.

Another great balancing act is handling. By increasing the mass of a ship, you decrease the affect of drag and make it slide all over the place. A careful balance of raising a ships mass and lowering its linear drag makes it slide around like a semi with bald tires in a hurricane. I think that makes for an excellent deturrent.

Weapon Classes: They can be totally revamped. Class 1 guns can be lasers. Class 2 can be plasma guns, etc. Then you can go through each ship and make it so it can only use certain TYPE of weapons, instead of certain strengths. That gives any ship with a type 1 hardpoint the ability to use class 9 lasers.

Doing the same for missels (all missels, or EMP missels/hull damage missels) creates bomber ships. Give them a couple of laser points, and four missel launchers. Make missels more powerful, or more pleanty with better homing (like the Gundam missels ) but less powerful, and you've got yourself a lean, mean, fighting machine.

Armor: If you increase hull points on, say Liberty ships and make all light fighters NEAR each other in hull strenght (say, within 1500?), then you can use armor to upgrade your hull. It's fairly easy to put in game, and can be very effective. The only problem is balancing it with larger ships. Anyone can use armor, and it works on a percentage scale, meaning that if you can double a Patriot's hitpoints, you can double a Titan's with the same amount. Volume balancing has been suggested for this, but that would require a carefully crafted set of armour, powerplants, and engines. It can be done (I may do it over the summer, and a number of others are doing it now), but it'll probably drive the modder mad.

Factions: UNbalancing the factions has been brought up, done, and is still a great idea to do. Make it so Rhineland and Kusari are on good terms, as are Liberty and Britonia. But maybe Britonia and Rhineland really don't like each other, and Liberty's jealous of Kusari's H-Fuel monopoly. Whatever. And making it so you have to get on HORRIBLE terms with one group just to go neutral with another increases the difficulity of the game. It helps the ship balancing issue, too. If someone with a Valkyrie can't even get into Liberty, they can't very well go smashing up Starfliers left and right.

Same goes for unlawfuls and lawfuls. Some unlawfuls could be allied with other governments (say Liberty helps fund the Unioners?). Also, the unlawfuls don't have to be buddy buddy with each other. The Junkers and the Xenos hate each other. Therefore, you shouldn't be allied with both at the same time.

Equipment & Money: Like I said before, everything's unreasonably cheap in this game. A giant laser gun for $500? Bring it on! Now, I know this is the future, where luxury items are cheap as dirty, blah blah blah. It should still be a chalange. There's no sense of accomplishment when, starting off, you can buy a class 3 weapon. You didn't earn that! You started with $2000, and it cost $1800! I say, when you buy a ship, you buy the hull. Nothing else. What you start off, you start off empty. You have to buy those two class 1 lasers, for big bucks, too! You have to buy that class 1 shield, those nanobots, etc. If you want to add engines and powerplants, you have to buy them, too! You can start off with cheap, basic ones for beginners and all that, but now if you want to go faster, you can spend the money on a new engine, whatever. You know? Of course, starting money would have to be a lot higher for this, which brings up other issues, but I'm sure they can be worked around.

That's all I can think of now. Hope this helps
Peace out!

UT:

I like your Factions idea. It sounds about right to me. Especially if one unlawful in liberty was a friendly mercs group in Riegnland. Sort of a cold war going on.

It occures to me that the pirates operating in a system could have their allignments against the police in that system used as the baises for other lawful navies. So the more pilot shoots unlawfuls in liberty, the worse his rep is in Riegnland and so forth. Which is basically what you are describing.

However to do this, i think i'll need to make one of the merchants a neutral with everything. Otherwise trade wouldnt be possible. Allowing the player to do missions for this trading guide (say the republic trans) would neutralise the effects of friendly and enemy alignments for other factions. They might work out pretty well.

Only pure neutrals could actually pull off long trade routes across multiple frontiers then. Trigger happy types would have to fight they way through.

Money is another area and i think your right about and ship hulls coming empty except for engines and thrusters so they can still fly. You raised some interesting points. Im going to give them so serious thought.

Giskard

I am working on a mod to address the equipment issue, but I think what the game really needs to make it more long-lived is mission variety. There needs to be a way to import multi-stage missions. That would allow the community to develop stories of it's own.

The mod I am working on now will eventually have a player buying a empty hull and then having to put engines, powerplant, scanner, tractor, everything else into it. I am also changing shields and engines to actually require power. For example, I have re-developed shields in the following way:

Type 1 - normal
Type 2 - +50% regen, -33% armor.
Type 3 - -50% regen, +33% armor.

So depending on how you like to fight, you pick a different shield. A light fighter wants to get in, tag the enemy and run, you use a Type 2. A frieghter with escorts wants a powerful shield and isn't going to stay to fight, so you want a type 3. Also, shields use power based on class. A type 1 class 1 uses 10 power all the time, +10 while regenerating. A class 2 type 1 uses 6 all the time (less to maintain), but +15, while regenerating (needs more power for the higher rate). This means that if you put a big shield in a ship with a weak generator you might need to choose between guns or shields. It also means you can sacrifice something like gunpower in order to maximize your shield power, as in the freighter example above.
I have also removed the weapon damage types. It was interesting in theory, but I think it breaks down in actual game play. I am working on my complete equipment mod, and will post it when I am finished.

Ceylon

I've been thinking about such tactical equipment myself. Instead of balancing engines by volume (except for cap ship engines, and maybe large freighter engines), I was thinking about balancing them through useability and price. Say you can put a Titan engine in a Starflier. It SHOULD just fly across the screen. But it should also increase the mass of the ship to the point where it's not really flyable. If you're REALLY good at flying, by all means, use the uber-powerful engine. Else, stick to your own class. Unfortunately, I've come across issues with the linear drag, and I'm still sorting that out. I've put this all on the back burner while I design a cargo ship, anyway.


As for the previous statement about trading....excellent point. I really didn't take any game play issues into consideration, simply ship balancing. Bribes would be a good way to balance this. Also, trade between waring factions would have to generate a lot of money, thus making trading MORE profitable for those who can survive. I'm sure there's a way to get around this, I just can't think of it right now. Hrmm....

OH! It won't work in single player, but in multi-player...
You could set up a transport network! YOU have contacts in Rhineland who can buy at Police and Army bases. THEY can then trade with you, who then takes it back to Liberty. This could even be the start of a more dynamic economy. Why sell it for full price and make six system jumps, when you can make one and sell it for half the price? You save a lot of time, and it becomes more profitable. Unfortunately, I don't see people actually being willing to do this. They're just too damn lazy and selfish.

I haven't had such a good read on this board in a LONG time. You guys have a LOT of good ideas here.

The 3 types of shield thing:
You could actually associate these types with LF/HF/FR shields. make them all of the class light_fighter_shield, so any small ship can use them, the other 2 classes can be reserved for capships!

The factions / cold war / terrorists have outside support:
So right. So very very good an idea, could recreate the mood of pre WW1 Europe!

The engines, armor, volume thing:
I've been messing with this for a while, especially the engines. What i did was make larger ships have larger linear drag:

LF 1
HF 151
VHF 401
FR 901

So for an engine with 60000 thrust, speeds are:
LF 100
HF 80
VHF 60
FR 40

Larger ships have more powerful engines, so while they're slower, it's not that much: FRs are at 80-90, LFs are at 130-140.

For the volume thing, there may be another way: reserve a shield class for ENGINES! haven't tried it, but if you make LF shields into shields for all types of small craft, and HF shields for capship shields, what do you do with FR shields? That's 10 classes for engines!

Will try that tonight.


i prplx

PS Keep levels in the game! They determine the types of ennemies you encounter! And they keep you from purchasing a battleship before level 50

Edited by - prplx on 24-04-2003 21:13:36

Basically...

The best way to elongate gameplay would be to find some way to insert global effect missions into things. To allow the players to /really/ change things in the system. It would allow for new, different goals, besides for just getting the best ship.

EG: You talk to some guy on New Berlin who instead of wanting you to go kill some local pirates, wants you to deliver a package to some individual on Cambridge.

BUT, some Liberty company (say, Synth Foods) doesnt want that to happen so they're flying interference on the way.

So, if you manage to get that done, then there will be a shift in the balance of power. Perhaps the information will open other missions, involving findings from cambridge and how to re-engineer things so other crops besides synth foods will grow. Or even it just simply lowers the amount of "power" synth foods has. Meaning that there is a shift, and the LWB and Farmers Alliance start to win more in their battles. Any way that the player can feel that they are affecting the global stories that are going on is a good thing.

Now, this is a massively huge effort and I probably should be saying it Microsoft, but, if you are really serious about increasing the longevity of the game, this is the sort of thing you need to consider.

-James