Barges need total change for 2 main reasons right now - the first one is that they are OP traders and second one because they are limited to only few players.
Current barges must be made to starflies with the barge dealer price as credits and new 4.87 barge concept could be created.
I would purge the barges first now on spot then think about the concept, however it wont happen because many people that are supposed to make this change are dependable on barges to supply their bases or they powertrade with them( OSI ID?) right now.
Before someone says that it is not possible-it is possible to do 40 ship changes as admin and it should not take more then 20 min. After this first step all players would be at the same level so then more proper and unbiased discussion about the barge future could be made.
It is possible to keep the barges jumping without killing the economy like now- I know it is a lot harder then simply remove their ability to jump, however it would make more sense.
There are 2 ways to make it as I said in my other post-
1) make the barge price insane so only a few could afford it- the drawback is that it would continue to be limited for new player and that the ones that can easy give 8-10 b would be able to enjoy really good RoI.
2) make the barge group tool- make not possible to be used only one man- you need 2 ships- barge storage and barge jumper(no cargo) to move it-2 people, you would need fueler for the jumper because the barge should use 10k fuel per jump- 3 people, you would need possible 1-2 escorts to protect you because you got no guns and 1-2 more to unload the barge storage because the storage should not be able to dock. I guess if the barge got 10-20k more space for the fuel that it should use per jump, you add in the 2 operators 1-2 fuelers&unloaders, 1-2 escorts the barge pure profit per person should be 20-30% higher then one person trading with 5ker- I would take this as concept and start with numbers based on that.
This is the concept that we should go- just refine it to make it balanced with less dev input/Cannon coding.
In general totally different approach of synchronising the new base features with barge should be make because now everything is weird and not balanced.
My visions you can skip this part if you does not like the concept above:
1) Barge made in 2 parts:
Base barge engines ship and cargo storage part:
1.1) Jump ship
cut the ship behind the first section- make the head section of the barge jumpship- 10 m battleship core, GB shield, Cruiser hull/bots, no guns, no cd, no cm. Handling like 5k train- enough space to mount Mk4 Drive and note the only one that should be able to use it due to the core restrictions.
Price of the ship:
the maximum possible price that does not corrupt the char, buyable only on player-base.
1.2)Barge-cargo storage- the second part of the current barge:
Double hull 5xbots, 10 cruiser lvl 8 guns good spots, good arcs, small cruiser core, Cruiser shield, 60 000 cargospace, same movement as current barge, disable cruise, disable the usage of gates/holes for this ship, disable the docking on anything then on player base with this ship, make sure it does not spin due to NPCs.
The concept of hard to kill without capship not easy to move storage with good anti-fighter options so the riders would go for the jump ship first
Price of the ship:
the maximum possible price that does not corrupt the char, buyable only on player-base.
3)Jumpdrives:
Mk4 Jump Drive- double the charge time make the fuel usage around 10 000. Balancing of the jumpdrives towards barge is must- I would like to see dedicated barge jumper able to preform group jumps with bigger ships only , and mk3 able to take snubs only, fueller needed,short charge.
Mk1 that allows cruisers to jump alone after long charge and MK2 that allows Bs to jump alone after long charge.
4)It is quite possible to make the barges not only names in the list but to make them detectable with little level playing- reducing the worth of all equip at NPC dealers would cause all ships to have max 89 LvL while you keep the barges at 90-you force the barge users to use escort because they would be attacked more often.
Second more easy way but more stupid way to make it is to make barge register with the 2 parts of the barge- you must register your ship or it gets deleted, you cannot rename it or it gets deleted.
(10-09-2013, 10:51 AM)Knjaz Wrote: Official faction players that are often accused of elitism, never deploy them and have those weird, immersion killing "fair fight/dueling" suicidal hobbies. (yes, i've seen enough of those lolduels, where house military with overwhelming force on the field willingly loses a pilot in a duel. ffs.)