[Idea/Poll] Profit from combat in X Rebirth

[bantol]

This is my idea for X rebirth to try to give the player more freedom in how they play the game. In the X3 games, the money making methods I saw were these:

1. Selling ships acquired through boarding (frustratingly uncooperative) or by scaring the pilot into ejecting.
2. Setting up universe/sector traders, trading goods yourself, and/or setting up factories to produce goods to sell to equipment docks and trading posts to be sinked into the invisible NPC economy.
3. Completing missions.
4. Looting bits of missiles and cargo from wrecks.
5. A few other misc. methods like manual mining (mining laser + ore collector for Nvidium and selling the ship with the full cargo), spacefly collecting, and selling slaves.

The addition of combat missions added a huge gameplay improvement for those seeking action in X3:TC, but for a game played from the helm of a ship, there needs to be more combat potential.

What I would like to recommend is to add a wreckage looting system where an attachment could be installed into a ship (any ship) that would let you acquire money and perhaps useful materials from wrecked ships (assuming such materials exist, as per the announcement regarding the ore refining complexes(http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/201107_1_44News.html)) to allow players to profit from attacking ships, as a pirate would be likely to do in fringe space. This would need to be reasonably profitable and not just another pointless game feature. Combat mission rewards would need to be scaled down in comparison to TC but this would make things like pirate hunting or fighting invaders profitable and fun, if done right. Salvaging should be easy and the cargo consumption should be reasonable for a combat ship, as the real effort is getting the kills. It should be in a program that you can have on unmanned ships and doing it should be nearly automatic, as long as you're close to the wreck.

On another note, in TC, the combat rating system worked to keep missions difficult but as a player I felt pressured into constantly moving into a bigger ship until I was running missions with 3x M2 and running over unsuspecting merchants everywhere I went, thus adding another reason as to why the combat shouldn't be so restricted to missions.

[drkpendragon]

Well, if we are looking at the current game as a example, they added all the missions because back in X3 it was a pain in the ass to make money, unless you were a trader. You'd spend hours jumping around next to Xenon sectors hoping to find a Xenon Invasion on the BBS.

As far as boarding, with a M7M, it is okay. I'd hope they'd make it better though. In smaller ships, it's awful. Training also takes forever. They should learn all skills by boarding. That would help move the training along. Maybe training until 3 stars, but then they need real world experience.

However, with them adding targets on the ships, like engines, weapons and so forth, they could make boarding much better. Picture you disabling a capital ship by taking out the engines, weapons and shields. Then, when it's safe, send the boarding pods in. They battle, and eventually, take control of the bridge. Then, you must send over a engineering team to get the engines, shields and weapons back online. All the while, you need to defend the ship from the assuming upset locals.

Another thing that I don't like is ejecting pilots. I'd think that all pilots would or none would. There should be a ejection system like modern day fighters. It should auto deploy at a low hull %, depending on the race. AI ships shouldn't be captured in the current way either, but instead hacked. This way, instead of maybe getting 84% hull or 2%, you'd always get something like 20%. This way you are guaranteed a certain amount of money in a realistic way. You could then send it to a carrier and have your engineers, like above, repair it or sell it if it's early game. Of course, weapons or other systems may be damaged.

Wreaks would also make sense. Thinking about the PHQ, each ship needs certain parts. Much of this will likely be around in some form after the ship is destroyed. There may be some weapons or shields that survived as well. This makes a whole lot more sense than randomly finding a box of something after the battle. The ship itself could be salvaged. It would be interesting to see large salvage ships that would farm wreaks and sell off the results.

[ConCorDian]

the only concern i would have about "wrecks" lying about would be debris feild that could be left after a big engagement, but yes the idea is good, not only could you collect launchers, or weapons (even if you had to spend a couple of hundred credits to repair) why not have the ability to "mine" the wreck itself, put in a reclamation TL or station where you can take wreckage and melt it down into useable ship components that you can sell again or as suggested use at your PHQ for ship construction

[EmperorJon]

What with, I believe, subsystems targetting and similar in X:R, I think having bits of ship flying around after blowing up could be very cool.

[Jokkocze]

Attacking specific parts of a ship would've been great. I really miss that part from.. well, most old space games where you fly a ship.

Disable the engines, weaken the shields and maybe knock out a turret or two so your marines can get there.
Then you'd have to repair the turret slots if you wanted to put weapons in them and the engine if you wanted to fly away with the ship. Or if the engines are too badly damaged, you'd have to tow it.
Either to a shipyard and pay that to repair it or to either your PHQ or possibly an engineering ship, that docks with the ship and lets your engineers (That are bought kinda like marines and then trained in different skills. They need to repair alot of ships to get experience to always do a quick and effective job tho) repair it.

That'd add a bit more simulation to the whole game.


And wrecks would be awesome too. A bit more intresting than the random boxes that you get now.
You can get some stuff when you start off, but you have to get yourself a salvage ship with some decent engineers if you want to get the most out of the wrecks.
(The stuff you can salvage from the wrecks degrades over time, until the wrecks dissapear completely. Or until either you or some npc-salvager does something about it.)


Doubt that we'll get any of the stuff tho :/

[X2-Illuminatus]

Doubt that we'll get any of the stuff tho :/

Subsystem targeting was already confirmed for X Rebirth: What we know about X-Rebirth

[Jokkocze]

Doubt that we'll get any of the stuff tho :/

Subsystem targeting was already confirmed for X Rebirth: What we know about X-Rebirth

Right, any of the other stuff, then.

[bantol]

Bump. This needs more votes to be taken seriously.

[Ketraar]

Bumping will only get it locked, dont do it please.

MFG

Ketraar

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

I think the poll results show what most of the forum users would want. I know it wouldnt be everyone and not everyone who buys X games are on the forum, but seems like the majority have show what they want.

Now its up to Ego to decide what to do with the results, ignore it for whatever reason or act upon it.

Really, I see this as a bit too late in the development for them to think about adding new things. But i'm hopeful.

[perkint]

I think the poll results show what most of the forum users would want. I know it wouldnt be everyone and not everyone who buys X games are on the forum, but seems like the majority have show what they want.

Really, I see this as a bit too late in the development for them to think about adding new things. But i'm hopeful.

The majority??? There are 18 responses that actually pick something. And 6 that just say be creative. Don't really think that's a majority of the forum users!!

And it's not "a bit too late". It's way (way!) too late to be adding new features!!

Tim

[Stars_InTheirEyes]

I think the poll results show what most of the forum users would want. I know it wouldnt be everyone and not everyone who buys X games are on the forum, but seems like the majority have show what they want.

Really, I see this as a bit too late in the development for them to think about adding new things. But i'm hopeful.

The majority??? There are 18 responses that actually pick something. And 6 that just say be creative. Don't really think that's a majority of the forum users!!

And it's not "a bit too late". It's way (way!) too late to be adding new features!!

Tim

Majority of the votes.

Maybe these ideas could be implemented in a bonus package then. Gives Ego plenty of time to consider it.

[X2-Illuminatus]

The bonus package is (or should be) made by the community, not by Egosoft.

[Gazz]

I think the poll results show what most of the forum users would want.

Yes. Most want no wreckage looting as described.


The OP describes "wreckage looting" as a means to generate additional cargo / loot after a fight.

In either case this means that the player has to sit around while this is happening or saunter from one wreck to the next to start the process again.
For a "combat" player this is the antithesis of fun.

It gets worse if this salvaging generates additional cargo.
Then you force the combat oriented player to become a trader and find stations for selling the salvage.
Again, missing the target audience.


The answer definitely is "Be more creative!".

The missions in TC are nice but anything but creative.
Please press button to spawn enemies. Yay.

A player roleplaying cop / pirate / bounty hunter should instead be given the tools to play that role.
A pirate network that apprises the player of juicy pickings.
A cop radio channel (legal only with a police license) where he can find out about piracy in progress, fugitives, being chased and the likes.

If you want to make "combat play" more rewarding and a "useful" career, you need to create a situation where it makes sense to give the player additional rewards for his actions outside of requested missions.

Simply shooting a pirate would give a small reward. Shooting a pirate while he is attacking a ship or station could automatically generate a reward from that entity.

[(/\)arped]

The answer definitely is "Be more creative!".

The missions in TC are nice but anything but creative.
Please press button to spawn enemies. Yay.

A player roleplaying cop / pirate / bounty hunter should instead be given the tools to play that role.
A pirate network that apprises the player of juicy pickings.
A cop radio channel (legal only with a police license) where he can find out about piracy in progress, fugitives, being chased and the likes.

If you want to make "combat play" more rewarding and a "useful" career, you need to create a situation where it makes sense to give the player additional rewards for his actions outside of requested missions.

Simply shooting a pirate would give a small reward. Shooting a pirate while he is attacking a ship or station could automatically generate a reward from that entity.

I think this perfectly sums up what I think should have been in the game already, let alone the next iteration. Especially that last part, it's bugged me for so long that we don't even get so much as a thankyou 99.9999% of the time for saving someone's cahoona...

They kind of had the former points in Reunion with the BBS system mentioning new stations / attacked sectors in pre-written articles with the sector names written in. It wasn't perfect, but it was something

[Sandalpocalypse]

well, you can clearly earn enough money from combat in TC, from the mission structure. But it kind of devalued fighting random-spawned enemies except for special purposes (like boarding).

right now in TC there's a system where sometimes ships randomly eject and sometimes when ships die they drop valuable weapons crates. This is somewhat inconsistent but averages out over time. I think the worst part is that capital ship kills are entirely inconsistent; you have to get several kills to have a good chance of getting a valuable PPC crate or the like. WHich is a little weird considering capital ships are pretty rare outside missions.