(Another) Mission Suggestion

[Giorgio]

Remember when cap codes could be dropped from mission loot? That was a hell of a lot of activity. Why not just bring THAT back, with even bigger odds?

Because according to the people responsible for that at the time, "they drop way too often". That feature was introduced a while ago but the codenames never really dropped, it was broken for months. The devs pulled it completely the very same day they finally managed to make the codenames drop.

[Sand_Spider]

Why not just introduce new, mission-only cap codes? That way, the current Sci-Data cap code holders won't go into a frenzy that their weapons they paid billions for are suddenly worth less due to increased drops. Make mission-only drops slight variations of currently purchasable weaponry so that having a drop rate of 2-3% won't entirely break balance, and that not having them won't be too detrimental to PvP. Examples: A Cruiser Mortar variant that deals 10% more damage for 15% more energy, or a gunboat pulse that has a 1.00 re-fire rate in exchange for 10% less DPS.

Here's a fresh idea for you: Instead of new mission-only codes dropping at a low percentage rate, write some code that generates X amount of a commodity named "Spoils of War" within the player's cargo hold upon completing missions above a certain difficulty level. These Spoils of War, much like Sci-Data, could be used as a currency for these Mission-Only obtainable codes. Even if credits aren't rewarded in their full amount to each group member, if FLHook can be coded to spawn say, 5 Spoils of War in a player's hold per mission (above a certain difficulty), then it would encourage multiple people logging in to farm for Spoils of War, since every group member would receive 5 Spoils of War regardless of group size. And since they would generate consistently from each mission, people would be far less salty over say, an opposing faction swooping in and crashing the farming party.

Taking this a step further: Make Spoils of War an Ammunition type instead of consuming cargo space. This way, they can be brought into Connecticut for easier transfers. Speaking of Conn, it would be neat to see a Neutral Faction, Admin spawned invincible POB in Connecticut which offers all Mission-Only codes for sale, requiring the Spoils of War as a currency rather than credits (Assuming that's even code-able). Barring code issues, I suppose weapon requests would have to be processed much like current Sci-Data weapon requests (I'd be willing to volunteer to assist with processing!).

It would be nice to have missions giving their full credit reward to each group member, though. I feel it would definitely encourage logging in together more often!

Edit: Spoils of War would also allow for new fighter codes and perhaps even non-codes, as well. Example: A Tachyon Flashpoint that consumes more energy for no hull damage increase, or a 700m/s Debilitator, or even a new 6.67 codename of some nature.

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[Kazinsal]

I'm really interested in the idea of variant weapons in general. Star Trek Online has a system where weapons randomly have mild (like, a percent or two) differences in stats. Certain ones are considered more valuable for different purposes in different metas, eg. sustained DPS favours [Dmg]x3 despite the general increase in damage being fairly low per [Dmg], burst damage favours a crit-heavy build using [CrtD]x3 weapons and crit chance increasing abilities, et cetera. Despite PvP not being very popular in the game, it's a really neat system that we could benefit from in some cases.

I would love to have "low end codenames" drop from missions and stuff, both for sub-capitals and capitals. I feel like it's going to be something that needs a lot of time to draft out, balance on paper, implement, and balance in testing, though.

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Retired, permanently.

[Thyrzul]

Thinking about missions more generally here, would it be possible to either increase the base credit reward or make it so that it isn't divided between players and instead each player gets the full initial/stated mission reward? A problem with trying to make missions a faction activity, or a thing to do with several people, is that the reward starts to decline as you get more players involved, thus discouraging additional activity.

Have you considered that with each additional player not only the reward but the difficulty decreases as well? Instead of increasing only the payouts, I'd rather increase both required effort and reward proportionally in order to keep the effort/reward ratio the same. That can be done with changing the current mission setups in existence, or setting up and implementing new ones.

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