... Of course, additional ideas and / or amendments are welcome. ...
Ok. IMHO below.
1. The whole idea is good and should be implemented, however only to battleship class vessels. Cruisers and gunboats should not be affected, and should remain the same as now (i.e. "freely" available as soon as current requirements to own one are all met).
2. Owning multiple battleships "per player" should be made impossible, if this can technically be done at any chance, that is. It is ridiculous from RP point of view to have many BSs, and from simple common sense PoV it is as well. Can anyone imagine some military officer -- or anyone else for that matter, -- as a commander of multiple warships IRL? I can't. I know some people have several battleships under their command as of now. This could be solved by downgrading all but one of these to cruiser-class vessels with additional monetary compensation covering player's expenses.
3. Battleships together with sufficient escorting should be considered a "Fleet", and thus must have additional freedoms to operate outside their ZoI. Logic is simple: such fleet is so powerful that it simply "takes a part of faction's ZoI" with itself no matter where it goes. In the same time, such a fleet should only move outside ZoI for established and serious RP reasons, and proper measures to avoid exploiting of fleets' powers must be put in place before this whole thing could properly work.
A little part of the background for above opinion are these thoughts of mine:
In general, i imagine that battleship class vessel is not only extremely powerful, but also extremely valuable (to the faction) ship, destruction of which must be prevented at all costs. If played "as intended", any battleship should never be alone, but always escorted by a couple of fighters, and some number of bombers and/or cruisers as well. Also, i think that battlships are not supposed to participate in any events but big, "factions-scale" battles, most likely ones with one of more battleship(s) on each side.
Now, that 1) and 2) may sound harsh, people, but think, if that will be done then everyone will have much more fun when it's about BS-class capships in Disco. Because if Battleship-class will become much harder to get, then it ALSO means that owning one will be so much better feeling, and it's good; also, fewer battleships around automatically raise importance of ALL other types of ships -- simply because it's less battleships around and thus less "oh well, another BS, i gotta run away" encounters; it also would increase raw amount of non-BS ships, which i think is good for everyone in general; also, not being able to own more than one, player owning a battleship will certainly have more time to do more RP and devote more time to the one battleship he owns, which is good (it's impossible to do that much RP for each of player's battleships if he owns as much as 6 battleships, eh?); and probably most important thing is that it will be impossible for same player (or even group of players) to establish most powerful ship in multiple areas, and just jump from one seat to another when they want something to be done in specific region (which is completely OORP and also 100% meta-gaming, and should be wiped away from the face of Discovery ASAP).
Cheers.
P.S.
' Wrote:...
Cause lets be honest, an official faction with only six active members being able to decided what type of ship several dozen (or even hundreds) of players (of the same NPC faction) may pilot is laughable... at best.
I agree. This could be extremely serious issue, if few players who are "official" faction establish rules and regulations so restrictive that most of indies of that faction would never enjoy to join player faction. Then, "old fathers" are not overwhelmed by large number of newcomers, and stagnation happens. Heck, i've seen some player-faction roster with one ensign-like member, one more at something like captain, but then almost a dozen of high-ranked men -- commanders, various admirals, etc. Baaaad thing...
Do you see the groundhog there? No? Me neither. But, it's there nonetheless.
