What about a "Device" slot?

Mon Mar 17, 2003 12:09 pm by Comont54

This would solve various problems, along with people wanting to "Level" and have "Skills". What about every one of the ships starting with the defender (so low levels dont get too good too fast) have one "Device" slot under their engine slot, the player buys one thing, and this adds one bonus to his ship. In the following list, ill just throw out some ideas and see what you guys think (prices will range from super-cheap, to extremely expensive, and may have different models of effevtiveness such as the thrusters like Basic/Improved/Advanced):

Repair Ray: A gun, mixed with Nanobot technology which allows another player to use it on another player to repair Hull Only damage, including fixing all guns and pretty much everything on the ship, thereby completely removing the need for repair at stations (keep in mind it is only at a players own leisure that he repairs you)

Mining Laser: A high powered laser, it gives the player the ability to mine even the largest of asteroids to get even more goods from them, a large ice asteroid may drop 20 water when shot with a mining laser etc,etc

Contraband Compartment: A scanner scrambler placed on a ships cargo hold, which gives scanning police a 30/50/ or on the advanced version 70 percent chance of not being able to succesfully detect contraband

Extra Thruster: this thruster adds to the ships overall maneuverability, boosts its impulse by 40 and its cruise by 50, gets higher depending on version, but never so high to be overpowered

Cargo Compartment: Sacrifice a small amount of maneuverability to be able to store more cargo, versions 20/30/ and finally 50 more, each taxing maneuverability to a extent

Wormhole Device: Allows player to open a temporary jumphole to enter through to any area within the same system, has 10 minute cooldown time on all versions(wormhole lasts approximately 1 minute and can only be used by creator and group members)

Gun-Pod: allows any ship its mounted on to mount one extra gun or turret depending on model

Battery: in three versions, Shield/HullPlate/ and Generator, for shield it gives increased regeneration, and up to a maximum of 300 added to shield cap, on hullplate it adds up to a maximum of 300 armor to a fighter, and on Generator it gives a higher maximum energy and a boost to recharge

Trade Lane Support Device: As model number grows, so does the devices chance to funnel energy directly from the generator to a trade lane attempting to be hacked, effectively keeping it online, basically, the better you buy, the higher the chance you wont be stopped when people are hacking lanes

Improved Sensors: increased your scan range on how far you can see enemies and such

T-O-W Cable: with expansion, this adds one more feature after dying called "Distress Call" which allows you to stay in your busted ass ship and wait for someone to pick you up and tow you to a nearby base for repairs (this would include cruise speed, and you could un-hook at any point) but there would have to be a higher death penalty, such as lost credits and such

Boost: The most advanced version of device available, allowing any dead player to be ressurected to battle in the field (both the TOW and the BOOST will call in another game addition, which gives your ship a 30 percent chance to survive once hull has been breached)

Docking Hitch: (Freighters Only) allows you to mount a hitch on your ship, which allows a player to effectively "Dock" with you which allows them to, share both your hull and shield (useful when leading a newer player to a more dangerous system) and allows players to install equipment in space. Improved and Advanced versions being able to restore a full hull and shield to a ship in 1 minute, and ADV. version in 30 seconds (keep in mind, docking would take a good 5 seconds aswell)

so thats as far as ill go. But so as about Levels, I think everyone should have 6 traits (Guns, Piloting, Exploration,Diplomat,Trader,Fighter), in multiplayer, each and every station has random people appearing all the time right? ok, well, now theres a new type of person, called a Trainer, and along in different stations, lucky players find these "Trainers" which for a nice lump of money will advance them in any one trait, 3 levels for each trait. Eventually, when a player is max level, and has found all his trainers required for him to be professional in all traits, he not only gets all the bonuses of the different skills, but also gets the ability to recieve medals. The abilities are as follows:

Guns: Improves energy efficiency, fire rate, Range, and speed of rotation on hardpoint of all guns

Piloting: increased meanuverability of ship and overall speed (speed up to a max upgrade of 10)

Exploration: Effectively increases Scanner Range

Diplomat: allows you to get more information from hailing any pilot, and at most advanced levels allows you to dock at hostile bases

Trader: lowers buying prices and heightens selling prices on everything from equipment to ships to commodities, the bonuses being improved when player is flying a Freighter

Fighter: bonuses to overall speed, manueverability, weapon efficiency, bonuses being better when player is flying a fighter

These trainers would spawn randomly, the better ones being more rare than others, eventually, a guy in a sabre or any other ship for that matter, after looking for a long time, will have Professional Skill in ALL his professions (this way players dont have to worry about making wrong decisions along the way) and lower level trainers can train in more than one profession. Now, after all that, the certain Player will be able to recieve medals, a fighter medal, a trader medal, and a exploration medal, and Elite medal, each having three ranks, bronze, silver, and gold, depending on how much the player does, lets say a player kills 1,000 fighters, he gets a gold medal in Fighter, and a trader would be required to trade 10,000 in commodities all in all to get a gold trader medal, and a Exploration to get a gold he would have to hit ALL systems in the game and as for the Elite medal, this shows the players overall prowess and power, the Gold Elite medal requiring 100 destroyed battleships, this way, a highly decorated player can have all the different medals and corresponding colors painted onto his hull automatically, small, somewhere by the cockpit, so when you fly by a guy with all gold medals you know hes the badassest of the badasses, these painting should be somewhat small, next to the cockpit, and be able to be seen in the scan cargo, stats, and next to a players name. there we go, im gonna go pass out now, have fun reading

PS: with all these additions, there should also be a anti-cheat program installed and the ability to ferry characters from one server to another

Edited by - Comont54 on 17-03-2003 12:14:23

Mon Mar 17, 2003 4:12 pm by DataDroid

Uh, those are all great ideas, but they sound more like E&B or some other such "real" RPG. Why not just take those ideas to a game dev (or if you're skilled enough, do it yourself) to make an entirely new game since the kind of stuff you're saying would be pretty much impossible to add via patch or mod to the existing game.

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world:
those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Mon Mar 17, 2003 9:50 pm by Comont54

actually, these would all be added easily via expansion. The "Trainers" would be just like people you bribe, they offer you training in a certain profession for a set amount of credits, after being trained in all of the skills you recieve medals which are displayed to others. Also, the "Device" slot would just be another equipment slot, but bases would sell just another form of equipment which i listed out above, devices should be hard to add, not even with a patch, a small number of devices that gives ships improved or unique abilities depending on which model and device bought. This way, ships can be more unique depending on what the player chooses, one player may have chosen Docking hitch and stay at his normal speed while another chose Extra Thruser and now goes faster. This would add a little variety to players ships, so they are more unique depending on the players decisions.

Mon Mar 17, 2003 11:27 pm by kak

Those are some fantastic ideas I think. Really well thought out. They would definitely add to the depth of the game.

Tue Mar 18, 2003 12:06 am by Coda A27

Send 'em in!

Want to tell Microsoft to improve Freelancer?
http://register.microsoft.com/mswish/su ... us&gssnb=1

Tue Mar 18, 2003 11:29 am by Comont54

i sent in a copy of the whole post, i hope some of those devs read it out and take it into consideration, i sincerely think it would do a lot to make this game more enjoyable and long

Wed Mar 19, 2003 1:40 pm by mustang

Good idea's but far to complex for the devs to make a patch for, you'll either be looking to Freelancer 2 or the Mod community to put that together.

I don't really run this place but I have an understanding with the people who do.

Wed Mar 19, 2003 2:59 pm by DataDroid

I think some of the stuff could be implemented by mods, but not the skills stuff, it's simply too complex and would require too much additional coding.

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world:
those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Thu Mar 20, 2003 6:35 am by Crash-Drive

What about the cloaking device used by the Rheinlanders in the SP game!?

Thu Mar 20, 2003 11:34 am by Comont54

yeah, cloaking device aswell, i was also thinking of this:

Anti-Radiation Barrier: at first 2 versions lower dramatically damage took from radiation, and at Adv. version completely removes it

Also, a additiont o DIPLOMAT skill would be that when being a professional DIPLOMAT you would have another HAIL icon open, which actually opens up a cargo scan interface and asks a targeted ship to drop te targeted amount of cargo (you would scan a ship, find some commodities you like, and then, instead of the recycle bin icon for jettison, it has a little hail icon) which asks the pilot to drop it and the amount you need. On those BIG cargo ships (with 80,000+ commodities) when you ask him to drop, you can only ask him to drop as much as you can carry and none more. And, this should continue, say u pirate a ship carrying water, if you kill of all its escorts, theres a higher chance it drops its cargo, so you can "negotiate" with it like that, albeit, in a barbaric manner

. But nonetheless, my biggest hope for this stuff is a EXPANSION PACK to stuff these things in. along with more ship variety, i hate that theres only 6-7 freighters (i mean, come on DA, your more creative than that!) and that there only 2 high level fighters!, also, this game is in DIRE need of some high level content, im bored stiff with my sabre andall the best weapons, thats all i gotta say

"I Would Rather Die Standing Than Live On My Knees"

Thu Mar 20, 2003 7:23 pm by Crash-Drive

Something I would like is a way to channel your weapon energy into your sensors. Much like you can take your weapons offline to power your cruise thrust, you could boost your sensor efficiency using the weapon juice. This would come in handy trying to find stuff, particularly in dust clouds, rather than having to drive all around in potentially hazardous areas.

Thu Mar 20, 2003 7:39 pm by bountyhunter

Great Ideas they could easly put all that in addon. Which what they did for ages of Empires 2 to Age Of Conquers. Massive differences. At same time they could add new systems and new ships. Also that T O W thingy could work then you find an abandoned ship you could ow it in and either sell it or trade it for your ship.

Thu Mar 20, 2003 10:41 pm by Comont54

awesome ideas guys, yeah, all this by expansion is the idea here, also, one more thing:

Expanded Critical Targeting Device: Allows a ship to target specific ship systems using "Sub-Target Interface" so once u target a ships engines, when you fire on that ship, you only do damage to that one part (say you target engines, as you fire on the enemy you only do damage to the engine, but each time theres a chance you fail and destroy the ship) eventually, you destroy it, and the ship is stranded there. After that, and after diabling a field of enemy fighters, you goto a nearby station, mount your T-O-W cable, tow em all in and sell them out to the base

(the way this would work, is you tow him out in front, you request to dock, and a option comes up, sort of like the after death screen, which asks you what you wanna do with it, theres Sell, Switch With Current Ship, or finally Unhook, which just drops it out floating in space.

I been coming up with more and more devices, none that are overpowered which is sort of like a martial rule i have

just enough to be significantly useful, but not overpowered.

"I Would Rather Die Standing Than Live On My Knees"

Edited by - Comont54 on 20-03-2003 22:44:45

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