I think this idea is ok for RP, more logical for RP-ing destruction of a ship, but it will reduce the fun and can introduce some exploits. I'm thinking at traders, for ex., maybe will have a lot of abuses in server becose the pirates can ask insane amounts of money (like most of them already do now) and the trader must pay or will be for half day "in docks".
That would probably need some insane buffing of caps to balance this. I'm familiar with many cap hunters and have flown with them. While I, myself, don't fly as often anymore I can easily recall a long history since 2008 of being in bomber squadrons. Which reminds me, the domino effect of this will also lead to a large shout to further nerf bombers even if caps get a massive buff from this. Even after some extreme adjustments to favour caps, I'm pretty sure many groups will have no difficulties in forcing all caps to remain hidden and gathering dust in their garages. People don't whip out their Titan class ships in Eve on a whim for a reason.
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(12-24-2013, 03:32 PM)ProwlerPC Wrote: People don't whip out their Titan class ships in Eve on a whim for a reason.
And it'd be great if the same could be said of Battleships in Discovery Freelancer.
If they were powerful but really rare, that'd be a lot more fun to bring down. It'd be a sort of mini-event every time someone whipped one out and bombers logged in to try and down it.
Right now caps are a sort of chore for bomber pilots. You log in a few bombers, dance around the cap(s) and lob your SNACs / Novas until its giant number of hitpoints finally runs out. Hurray. Then it logs back in 2 hours later. Nothing fun about it.
Edit:
Although, to be honest, a 24-hour downtime will reduce capspam but not by a giant margin. After all, you can have multiple caps if you really want to and being able to, say, use seven different caps every 24 hours would be pretty.. spammy.
(12-24-2013, 04:02 PM)Haste Wrote: Although, to be honest, a 24-hour downtime will reduce capspam but not by a giant margin. After all, you can have multiple caps if you really want to and being able to, say, use seven different caps every 24 hours would be pretty.. spammy.
Something that would be very, very easy for people like me, when 80-90% of your ships on 5.5 accounts are capitals, + 2 miners, trader and 1-2 miscellaneous ships.
I'd go with severe on-death repair penalties, instead. Talking about 30-60 millions per death, here, depending battleship types and their combat efficiency. It'd also force people to grind some cash and will improve server's economy, which will lead to more activity in the lawful >> pirate >> trader food chains, in theory. (//originally proposed by JinX for all ship types a 1.5 or few years ago, if I'm not mistaken).
But, then again - we only have several real hotspots in Sirius, so to be spammy you'd need to have multiple capital ships of same faction. Something not many people have and would go for.
P.S. Also, to OP - your idea is not "wacky". Something like that, in different forms, was being proposed by various players for a loooooooong time.
It's a good sign that this time it finally drew some attention, though
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On-death repair costs are pretty simple to do (without flhook magic).
Make Nanobots & Shield Batteries cost somewhere along the lines of 10,000 credits each.
Snubs would have a ~1,000,000 - 2,000,000 credit death penalty (which is, to be fair, negligible).
Big capitals would have to pay up to 44,000,000 credits in repair costs (Marduk).
That does leave Cruisers as fairly cheap, though, and might cause some issues with NPC nanobot farming (although they could just be removed from NPCs entirely).
We need more money sinks in Disco so that players have initiative to trade. Right now, I don't trade (much) as I don't have any pressing need for a ship, and keeping ships stocked costs almost nothing.
(12-25-2013, 12:12 AM)Haste Wrote: On-death repair costs are pretty simple to do (without flhook magic).
Make Nanobots & Shield Batteries cost somewhere along the lines of 10,000 credits each.
Snubs would have a ~1,000,000 - 2,000,000 credit death penalty (which is, to be fair, negligible).
Big capitals would have to pay up to 44,000,000 credits in repair costs (Marduk).
That does leave Cruisers as fairly cheap, though, and might cause some issues with NPC nanobot farming (although they could just be removed from NPCs entirely).
We need more money sinks in Disco so that players have initiative to trade. Right now, I don't trade (much) as I don't have any pressing need for a ship, and keeping ships stocked costs almost nothing.
Well, with this, you'll be paying ~6-8 millions for a gunboat, 13-16 millions for a dead cruiser, or 8-13 for a dead transport/liner, in addition to the cargo you've just lost to piracy. (well, there's always an option to fly without bots, but still).
Although, aside from transport problems (fixable by moving their hull points from nanobots to the hull itself. Drawback - no/very limited bot trading in Convoys) and the fact that it kills RepShip... yes, it actually has some chances to work, but only if above mentioned things, as well as battleships flying without useless shield batteries (and overall difference in cost-efficiency between nanobots and batteries) would be addressed.
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The numbers were a mere example. There are indeed a few issues with those crude ones.
Giving Transports a decent death penalty would be good, however. Might make pirating a tad more profitable in the end. Of course, that might require some profit buffs for trading.
..And I'm getting off topic.
But death penalties would be amazing if they're "fair but important to keep in mind". Their effect on the economy's the best part, if you ask me.
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