Let's imagine you are the one administrator and developer for Discovery, the sole person in charge of all aspects of the game, from ID lines and server rules to system layouts and ship stats. What would you do, add, or change? For example, my initial thoughts would be:
-Remove Outworlders, restore all to Zoner
-Make the Zoner ID generic (otherwise unchanged, can still use 5k, caps etc)
-Make Zoner caps civilian
-Make it so GMG can fly them
-Add a rule that pobs may not be placed closer than 5k to any other dockable object, including other pobs
-Give police IDs exclusive utility equipment, such as a CD with longer range and cheap cloak disruptor, also with longer range, bought from NPC vendor
-Ditch the wonky canonisation system, handle ingame mod additions for original official player factions on a case by case perk request basis
-Rework ore by reducing number of fields, balancing them all to be equal to mine/trade, increasing competing faction overlap in mining fields (very easier said than done)
-Buffing the base price of ore to perhaps 3,000 credits on any base outside the system they are mined in so you can sell any you "happen" across anywhere, while maintaining system of primary sellpoints and fences
-Revamp economy putting ore at 1200csu, adding a singular(ish) round trip smuggling route with multiple stops throughout Sirius at 800csu, regular commodities to 400csu (maybe even higher numbers)
Everything is hypothetical. Be nice. <):¬)
This post is not intended to flame current admins or devs. I'm sure they are doing the best job they can. That said, it would take far more than one admin/dev to make the following work:
I would include faction leaders in conversations regarding story development, gaining their input on faction goals.
I would reduce the hour requirement for official factions to remain official and include specific forum RP as a requisite.
I would design ships flown by some official factions ID's to have slightly better efficiency than civilian and borderline ships to induce members to support factions, specifically police and unlawful factions.
I would make one or two remote destination systems extremely profitable for trade routes, but remove ID and server rule restrictions regarding RP before engagement in those systems only.
I would rotate monthly a mining bonus for specific mining factions to increase activity for those factions.
I would create spontaneous events lasting an hour or two where an admin logs on and creates crazy events like short, profitable two system trade routes, or capture the flag type scenarios, or where you beam everyone who wishes to participate from Liberty to remote Nomad systems where the goal is to make it back alive. Or create a one system FFA where it's everyone against everyone and the last pilot standing gets a reward.
I could probably think of more, but I'll get flamed enough for these as it is. Love you guys.
Reform the Economy into player driven, POB centric, convert most of the existing NPC stations to POB's (most invulnerable).
- Completely change mining so they are reduced from roughly 800 csu's hauled over 6-8 systems to about 600 csu's hauled over 3-5 systems. (thereby also giving relevance again to regular commodities.
- Create quasi-lawful atmo points on capital world to serve as smuggling dens for high risk, high reward profits and news hubs.
- Reduce who gets bonuses to just mining factions (with some exceptions, i.e. junkers -> scrap, construction companies -> milsal/scrap, alg ->toxic waste, Cryer -> alien orgs etc), but also reduce mining factions transports to 3500-4k ish
- Add Ore Refineries to Mining POB's to convert the ores into "refined" commodities (i.e. gold ore >> gold) at a 5-4 rate and give them profitable routes.
- Develop specific modules for all specialty factions to line up with their lore/ingame niche, i.e. convert gate construction sites into POB's (with same model) that need various commodities including white boxes, executive inspectors and other unique commodities to reach "completion" at which point they could spawn a gate themselves.
- Integrate a plugin that would pull taxes off gate and lane usage to go towards combination of Houses, Ageira/EFL, and financial institutes (IC).
- Add rotating "Trade Missions" (for shipping focused factions) that are leaked to the community through the rumours system that give bonuses lining up with current Story arc/faction RP
- Develop a custom docking module for the Barge to allow it to be used as a mobile mining platform and trade hub, players able to dock on it, buy/sell etc.
- Develop many new types of modules for POB's like armaments factories, smelteries, shipyards, research labs, all semi relying on other player factions to produce goods and services that add to a greater, dynamic Economy instead of silently taking x to y and not encouraged to interact.
- Add more risk to fielding capital ships to make it more inline with realism/immersion.
It's funny that most of these rules would make GMG OP. So since we are on the theme, let me input these right away:
-There should be rules against faction laws or house laws from deterring role play in their space. If you do not want to play with other groups, why are you even here?
-Official factions should be held accountable for unprofessional or unrealistic role play. If an official faction, especially a corporation, behaves irrationally (which includes the killing of innocent civilians), there should be a way for others who hear about the atrocities to penalize that faction.
-There should be a system in place for factions that are active by time only, unable to role play/behave respectfully, or are otherwise viewed as a threat to the integrity of the game, to be voted out of power and a new official faction leader implemented. This reduces the chances of a faction becoming unable to role play with.
-Rules governing POB attacks prior to siege declaration must be enforced. If not, exceptions should be clearly defined in the rules. At what point is a CD launched against a POB to purposefully raise the shields different from spamming CDs to drain the shield prior to a siege? 1? 2? 3? People who do this also dip into exploitation.
But let me go ahead and nit pick your "ideas":
(04-11-2022, 03:23 AM)Mephistoles Wrote: [ -> ]Let's imagine you are the one administrator and developer for Discovery, the sole person in charge of all aspects of the game, from ID lines and server rules to system layouts and ship stats. What would you do, add, or change? For example, my initial thoughts would be:
-Remove Outworlders, restore all to Zoner
-Make the Zoner ID generic (otherwise unchanged, can still use 5k, caps etc) That would imply that the Zoners faction is dead. Unless the community wants this, that is a terrible idea.
-Make Zoner caps civilian That would mean, within role play, ANYBODY can fly a battleship. Are you on drugs?
-Make it so GMG can fly them
-Add a rule that pobs may not be placed closer than 5k to any other dockable object, including other pobs You mad bro??? But also this will limit owners from stacking POBs to create economic centers. What about current POBs in this configuration?
-Give police IDs exclusive utility equipment, such as a CD with longer range and cheap cloak disruptor, also with longer range, bought from NPC vendor Is actually not a bad idea. Lawful police factions are either very inactive or dead with limited equipment. This has drug wars/smuggler balancing implications
-Ditch the wonky canonisation system, handle ingame mod additions for original official player factions on a case by case perk request basis This should include a faction, such as a mining corporation, from being retconned into a militarized clan or, should I say... guild? Also case by case perk request... isn't that a thing already, to include SRPs?
-Rework ore by reducing number of fields, balancing them all to be equal to mine/trade, increasing competing faction overlap in mining fields (very easier said than done) Yes, and while we're at it, create a rule or system that deters other groups or factions from accessing those mine fields
-Buffing the base price of ore to perhaps 3,000 credits on any base outside the system they are mined in so you can sell any you "happen" across anywhere, while maintaining system of primary sellpoints and fencesI'll let the econ dev answer to that one
-Revamp economy putting ore at 1200csu, adding a singular(ish) round trip smuggling route with multiple stops throughout Sirius at 800csu, regular commodities to 400csu (maybe even higher numbers) Again, have you tried reaching out to the econ dev?
Everything is hypothetical. Be nice. <):¬) We all know you lack integrity so, no surprise... <):¬)
hot take, outworlders were actually good because of the differing zoner politics compared to omicron ones and other ones. (omicron ones are more extreme, a bit unhinged from being in the middle of nowhere and wars. )
random bollocks inbound
speaking of differing politics, imo each region of zoners should have a different rep
probably add more rewards for sci data, etc.
allow factions to 'adapt' stuff without high srp costs and weird years/months of rp requirements stuff eg liberty changing the engine on one of their dreads. or insurg changing lib engines to red ones. this is mostly cosmetic based.
let wild be able to slam tendrils onto stuff
let player stuff be higher priority. RP takes precedent. although it is hard to determine malicious activity under a false pretence of 'roleplay'. just let players interact with the environment more, but not allow everything to happen at once.
have a daily event every 2 weekends. raid tokens? let ofls rent a titan ship for raids or whatever with a really long cooldown and if it dies, it's dead. add some incentives for ofls. also let ofls request their own cosmetics (engine, light, one unique gun. whatever.) without more rhetorical BS writing and bureaucracy. gives some identity.
include forum presence as activity/contribution to server
aoe destructive weapons to manufacture at stations. one time super weapons? add more special buildable equipment. jump drive inhibitors, prevents JDs from charging within radius.
GMs controlling higher faction entities, give out jobs or quests? rewards too? bursary for good stuff? encourage RP, and encouragement for ofls to assign jobs for indies if they want it.
add more light fighter types; interceptor, faster - glass cannon, more for speed, has less guns. probably like 2 guns and 1 aux slot? maybe add mass for cruise - so it can be used for racing. uses energy. adds explosive resistance. whatever. suicide bomber - light fighter that exists to do nothing but blow itself up. light craft - sort of like older LFs, thruster lasts a bit longer, but has less explosive resistance, more firepower, squisher.
lf thruster types? burst speed, super fast but super brief. sustained thruster, lasts longer, up to speed with med
pob types, eg battle stations, research bases, manufactoring. also pobs easier to make, easier to squash. would be rad to have NPC defenders as a defence type. spawn npc titan armor 50 cruisers onto people :)))
hire npcs for backup that you can sorta control. but sadly, engine limitations.
let OFLs have a banking system on their npc base. or banking in general on stations. so you can have infinite money storage. maybe even item. deposit money into an account you log into, or items. etc.
anonymity is key for interaction, but also having players is too. add some npcs for piracy interdiction for cargo. not everyone likes mining or trading. ore transports that can spawn. maybe a super rare barge somewhere with whack-ass escorts like cruisers
rp actions having consequences is also a major thing. rules cant always hold your hands for doing silly stuff.
adding genuinely dangerous systems where people can freely shoot each other for a wild west experience. tho can be very circlejerky enabling.
-Create series of artistic/screenshot bait systems that either dead end or provide a longer/out of the way route. The entire purpose of these systems would be beauty and novelty, for the artist to express themselves.
-Rework story to be based on actions and consequences. Story (team) would be in charge of keeping track of what resources factions have at their disposal, deciding outcomes, and speaking for factions without official factions. Leaders of official factions and governments would have to make choices and accept consequences for their faction. (Example: Liberty wishes to invade Kusari, then Story will be in charge of what Kusari's spies know, the strengths and weaknesses of the fleets, and relaying what those factions know inRP to them. Liberty will take the action and outline what it does, and story will rationalize an outcome for battles and other effects.
-Base economy off of reasonable stock market ideas. A warring nation will buy less luxury goods and more military supplies. Economy will work closely with story to make sure economy reflects the happenings in story.
-Balance faction ships off of story and the character of the ship first, the most common opponents for the ship second, then the current meta third. This heirarchy should (I'd hope) maintain personality for the faction and balance in the roleplay environment at the cost of a bit of the balance in Conn. (Example: a Corsair is rarely going to fight a Gallic or Kusari force simply because of limited points of contact, therefore the Titan won't be balanced against the Lynx or the Wyvern as much as it will be the Wraith and whatever the outcast one is called)
-Make more gimmick/super-specialized weapons because they're fun.
-Ban Mep. Big cheater known long time.
-Change Military, Intelligence and Police IDs based on the houses. Make houses extend their laws to have a roleplay accordance with these IDs. (Example: the more aggressive LSF will employ capitol ships outside of Liberty more commonly. Kusari's exploratory past will lead to fleets being able to spend much more time away from a fueling point, letting them leave capital ship solars in hostile territory for longer. Rheinland's NPC military assets will greatly retain the cloaking devices from vanilla and those will be sold on NPC bases to Intelligence and Military ID's)
-Change all NPCs to more closely represent their factions. (Example: Xenos will have lots of fighters but low AI skill. Kusari will have low hp fighters but high AI skill. Liberty will be best of most worlds. Nomads will have whatever moves most in sync.)
-Engage in a bit more atmospheric storytelling. Use wrecks more liberally, and make more unique wreck models.
-Start a bi-weekly Dev Doings post for community transparency, and a monthly mandatory patch to make sure all things progress, bugs get fixed.
-Make light mode forums inaccessible.
-Make certain codenames available on NPC stations. (Melees available on High security Bretonia stations because they're a bretonian made weapon, and add infocarda and buy locations for some others)
-Do your mom.
-Enforce economic situations in story more heavily. A shortage of repair materials will make losses in wars more disasterous, and factions will have to consider their positions and resources carefully before taking an action.
-Incorporate more PoB killing weapons into the codename system.
-Crrate a series of frontier systems that provide extensive resources for factions in the sigmas, taus, Omicrons, Kusari-Liberty independent worlds, and Rheinland-Liberty independent worlds.
Ez question, ask another!
(04-11-2022, 04:23 AM)Racerdude Wrote: [ -> ]Can't keep personal issues off the forums.
(04-11-2022, 04:13 AM)Hemlocke Wrote: [ -> ]I'd delete the forums.
(04-11-2022, 04:29 AM)The_Godslayer Wrote: [ -> ]-Ban Mep. Big cheater known long time.
Would bring back many players!
(04-11-2022, 04:29 AM)The_Godslayer Wrote: [ -> ]-Do your mom.
My mother's dead. (5 million zeni to anyone who gets that reference)
(04-11-2022, 04:29 AM)The_Godslayer Wrote: [ -> ]-Start a bi-weekly Dev Doings post for community transparency, and a monthly mandatory patch to make sure all things progress, bugs get fixed.
All jokes aside, yes, this, 100% this!
*find FW:TOW's code and break the engine with some of their magic
*increase cruise speed across the board by 100 minimum
*turn on NPC cargo scans again
*restore cutscene animations when docked
*utterly and entirely remove POBs as a game mechanic, siege, defense, whathave you. find something better, or find a way to magic FLHook to manufacture pob equipment on faction shipyards
*use the forums ability to send messages to all registered members for the next big update
*overseer role over admins and devs, no power over regular players, whole purpose exists to bring transparent discussion to controversial things staff refuses to elaborate on
*upgrade to a modern single-thread powerhouse CPU so server doesnt take a massive dump when 6 people start shooting
*find alternative to quarterly activity checks, maybe a revival of message dumps to prove player activity instead of a timer that can be cheated in an infinite number of ways
*fire haste the second he screws up gunboats extremely fragile balance
*credit cost for the death of ships (YALL WANT MONEY SINKS?)
alternatively
*time limit on respawns for ships based on cost estimated from equipment (try to undock >"SHIP IS STILL UNDERGOING REPAIRS")
*automatic payouts for BHG
*upped income across the board to pay for ship respawn costs
im sure ill come up with more