If you have all this money, you need to be strong enough to keep it. How do you do that? Every faction would have a home base, a star-base. Improved armor on your base, requires money. For a base…LOTS of money, millions. To add weapon platforms, torpedo bays, missile launchers, shield generators, mine fields, mercenary fighter wings (players or AI for which you have to buy the ships/weapons), all this would cost money and maintenance. The more powerful and heavily defended the base is, just like the AI bases, the harder it will be for another faction to come and take your stuff, but it will also cost a huge amount of money to maintain. As a faction, maybe you could hire battleships to stay next to your home base at all times…or build battleships from shipyards? This would be, of course, enormously expensive. Say 20 million a battleship.

Raiding other factions:

So you don’t want to trade? No problem, you go raid other player run factions and take some of their stuff, weapons/credits/commodities. When you raid however you only get whatever equipment is salvageable and 35% of their total worth. This would not affect individual member’s net worth. A raid would be considered successful only if you have destroyed all opposition and taken out their base’s shield generators/weapon platforms and defending ships. If a defending ship gets more than 5k away from the base and/or leaves the system, it is considered run-away thus you have no need to kill it to complete the raid.
You have to consider though, do you have enough members and trading going on to support a massive starbase for your faction? Do you have enough people/ships paying taxes to pass through your system? If you don’t, buying and maintaining that level 10 shield and its generators for your base, wont work. The AI will eventually sell it if you run in a deficit with your faction.

Continued on next...

"Impossible" is just a word...

Engagement Rules/Raiding and PK (player killing):
You shouldn’t be able to kill anyone in the game you want. No reason for a level 30 player, running around in a Titan with Nomads, to kill a rank 6 players who’s trying to make some money with his newbie ship, for his next ship and get 10% of his money. This wouldn’t do. If you are NOT with your faction and in RAID STATUS, you cannot be harmed by a player more than 5 ranks above or below you. This would prevent mass killing of newbies for money.

The only situation this would not apply would be in Raids against home bases of factions. When raid status is declared, all players can harm all other players. This way, you can have 10 level 15 players, gang bang those 2 level 30 Titan pilots and their super guns, in defense of their base. I’m sure that probably level 30 pilot in a decked out Titan, would not survive 15 level 15 players with their average guns/missiles if they decided to gang him to defend their home.

A last remark for player killers. If some rank 15 guy sits around that rank and just kills other people, maybe newbies, all day long, eventually after he has killed enough, and does not gain ranks, he comes in the PK range of higher and higher level players. Eventually, the rank 30+ players will be able to PK (harm) the rank 15 guy who’s been slaughtering newbies for fun all day long.

continued on next

"Impossible" is just a word...

You died?
A player death, to another player will result of forfeit of all weapons and eq on the dead player’s ship, unless a friendly player is there to salvage it for him and run.
The dead player will also lose 10% of his cash to the one who killed him. This would be automatic. At this point the dead player return to his home world (which is where you started when you began your character). I think the player home world can be any populated planet or starbase. It can be changed once you join a faction, or changed at any time for a price, of course. If you die to NPC you lose your ship but all its contents will be in space where you died, if no other PC has come by and salvaged it while you were returning with your new ship. Also you should be unkillable for 20 minutes just after you died. This would enable you to return to your wreckage ship, without dying again. Also worth requirement is upped for your next level by 20%. So try not to die to NPC’s. You have no business going to the super tough, aggressive pilot sectors when you’re level 6.


Login time & Certain Items:
Make certain powerful items limited in number, based on your player base. Lets say that you have 1000 players on your server. That means, only 50 level 10 weapons of each kind are allowed, and other such things (shields/hull armor/ships) This would give players a reason to kill other players and having an uber-decked out ship, all loaded up with limited weapons/shields etc will eventually get you killed when someone scans your ship. Some players might decide to gang you for your nifty stuff. Also, if you are under level 10 as a player, you may not carry limited items. Factions/Stations/Planets can buy but not store limited items. Once limited items are sold, and the server crashes/reboots, it is gone from that planet and can be picked up again, wherever it came from.

Limited powerful items would naturally make people want to hoard them. There should be some anti-hoarding code, which automatically makes limited items crumble if you have not logged on your char in a week/2 weeks for more than 1 minute, so you don’t get killed.

Limited items would make a very interesting environment. This way, not everyone will eventually have all nomad weapons on his ship, and if you want them, find out who has them and kill him if you can. If you can’t kill him, gang him, or pay someone with equal weapons to kill him.

In my opinion this would make a Freelancer universe very competitive and also hella fun to play. Its no fun having a bad ass ship and nothing to do with it.

continued

"Impossible" is just a word...

One more thing.
Something you would need for this would be a “EGC” Emergency Gate Creator, a device which costs about 50k, and can be placed on any ship and bought at almost any starbase. You can only buy this device if you are a member of a faction. This device would allow players to be transported to their home system (faction base) through a temporary jumpgate. It would work only in one direction and only once.
This is so that in case of a raid, all faction members can RECALL to defend. This would not transport you RIGHT in your base, but 10 klicks away. So you should be able to get there fairly quickly using cruise engines.

Curious to hear opinions.


"Impossible" is just a word...

Everything sounds good except the newbie dying thingy. Personally I belive that the penalties for dying should be like they are now (which is no losse of anything except cargo COMMEDDIES and nanos. Its bad enough u fly out real far on a trade route 8/9ths way there and you get killed, but then losing ur cash and ur equip and upping level requireiemts?!??! THATS JUST HARSH! What kind of sick leetist saddist are you? If a n00b wants to risk there lives thats there choice, no need to say they have "no bussines" Its not like they are bothering you so why shouldnt they go out there? If you want to play a game where its all punishment and no reward go play Ultima Online.... Don't ruin this one for the rest of us.... Otherthan that the rest of the ideas are good