X Online-Possibilities?

[(/\)arped]

After thinking over the prospect of an online universe for a while, I've thought of a few suggestions. Feel free to add or show your opinion. (Hopefully, someone who works on the online game will read this topic and grant some of our wishes.)

- A chat function. Perhaps using microphones to actually hear the person speak. Typing a message while flying I'm sure will be time consuming and reaalll difficult.
- The ability to comm with more than one person at a time. Imagine having to comm with loads of people, just to them the same thing.
- Many people have complained about the possibility of their ships/stations being destroyed. this problem could be eliminated by the strict rule of any human controlled station being attacked by another player. Stations could be registered, so only the stations that you register appear online. Also, only stations selling weapons could be ommited. (Otherwise the universe would be overun by SPPs.)
- Human transports would be non-existant. Human controlled stations could use the same engine (Or an improved one) that the NPC factories do.
- Only 'battle' ships could be used in-game. TSs, (Except for perhaps the pirate ship, 'cos it COULD be used as an agressive ship.) could not be used by Human players. (You aren't going to do much trading online-svae that for playing alone.
- Clans could finally become proper groups of fighters. The AMG in particular may have a new generation of opportunities open to it. (The option to have certain people 'dealt with.'
- Any ships destroyed online will not effect the one player game. Any credits made will. This way you can have massive deathmatches without having to worry too much about the consequences.

That's all of them for now, but I'll probably think of more. (Or add ones I've forgotten.) In the mean time, feel free to comment or add your ideas. Express yourselves, hoping that one of your ideas might be included in the final game.

P.S Please try not to be put off by the length!

[Constipated_Vigilante]

Why shouldn't people be allowed to pilot TSs? People will want to do their fair share of trading and low scale mobile mining.

[(/\)arped]

Hmm... hadn't thought of that. But like I say, if only 'military' stations are used for human cotrolled stations, then the places to trade will be almost exactly the smae as the one-player.

The only exception is perhaps groups forming to mine nividium. (Too dangerous if you're on your own and have a small/weak fleet.)

[(/\)arped]

One to add to the list. (I forgot it didn't I. Tsk. )

- Jump in points: Only at shipyards/wharfs that you have already visited.
Oh, and:
- Once you go offline, all your factories go with you. Actually, that night be a bad idea, might annoy someone who just travelled for miles to buy some hornets, only for the factory to disappear. And what happens if you are landed at the station? Bad Idea. Sorry guys.
- When landed, the possibility to link to the forums via the station screen. Means you could post messages about things happening, and amybe get people to join.
- If you die you respawn. (Obviously)

[Jethro Smiles]

Like the com idea but do you really want an 8 year old to call you a poo over and over while you are trying to tell the wife that its a game for grown ups

Everything should be able to be destroyed, so a well equipt space fuzz should also be evident

Consequences, if you die its your fault so you should pay, how much should be determined by your online rank that way n00bs will get off lite

All ships should be able to be used, the more you have the more proffesions can be enabled, high tech war ships should only be used by the fuzz, military and scurvy space pirate bands just for the "Pirate Ship off the port bow, man the guns" comedy line to be able to fullfill 1 of my dreams

If its only a DMatch online game then I might as well go back to Freelancer, gotta have trade and shady nvidium deals for cahoona's its a way of life for some people

[(/\)arped]

Like the com idea but do you really want an 8 year old to call you a poo over and over while you are trying to tell the wife that its a game for grown ups

Hmm... How about you get a message: You are being hailed in the corner of the screen. It's your choice whether to accept it or not. If some one does annoy you, delete the link (Press del) and then kill them. Simple.

BTW, an eight-year old shouldn't be much of a threat. And if he complains-he brought it on himself. You've got me ( ) to back you up.

[Jethro Smiles]

Hmm... How about you get a message: You are being hailed in the corner of the screen. It's your choice whether to accept it or not. If some one does annoy you, delete the link (Press del) and then kill them. Simple.

BTW, an eight-year old shouldn't be much of a threat. And if he complains-he brought it on himself. You've got me ( ) to back you up.

All right, bring em on

I think the facs should stay put but have defences on station and defence platforms near by, and shuld only really be able to be destroyed by either a large fleet or sabotage

[emissionx]

when you go offline, your stations are impervious to fire, they close custom and just dissapear, they are able to be destroyed.

obviously there would have to be a differant game for the online version as you would use all your money if you had to keep replacing stations etc.


chat would be great, and is a must, BUT i would expect there to be no more than one menu before you can chat .

Capital ships should guard all sectors, AI or MOD controlled, programmed to attack if stations are in danger, which wpuldnt make the game drab, as you would bring in your own M1 and kick the shite out of it, and then get the station befor e a new one respawns and pops from a gate... the possibilities are endless

[CHAZZ]

Re: Stations in X-online: i would really like to hear a word from someone that played EVE online. How is that problem solved in EVE? I never tried it, but i heard there you could have factories or even planets? or?
Thanks.
C.

[Scarecrow]

When I quit playing about 2 months ago.....player owned stations had not been implemented yet. So there was no problem

[(/\)arped]

Been thinking again, and thought of perhaps using a frequency based system for comms. Perhaps, like these forums, you register online and are given a frequency. Not sure about it though. Comments please.

EDIT:

Almost forgot...
Recently realised the potential for out right WAR! Many people have wanted it in a patch/expansion, but perhaps people could organise them online.

The topic Dragons V Ospreys just proves this theory. (Currently on pg. 2)

[Constipated_Vigilante]

Sorry if this was mentioned before, I couldn't really understand emission's post. I think when you go offline, all your stations should remain in the universe, but become invincible. When you come back, maybe you should be notified there was an attack, and by whom, so you can defend if it happens again.

[(/\)arped]

Sounds good. Now listed in my brain, and (More importantly) This forum.

Also thought clans a little more.

UNCC nay start picking off people who use novas.
NOVAEF may start picking off people from the UNCC.
AMG may start hunting down people or making hitlists.
Other clans may emerge and start attacking random people.
People may start picking off newbies.
This may cause major problems, so perhaps there should be moderators for the Online Universe. They could float around the universe in M2s helping people, but in case there is a massive rebellion the M2s should be invincible, in case anyone gets a sudden feeling to attack the mods.

However, helpful groups, like maybe nividium mining groups would probably be welcomed.

[Grox]

yea but if your station gets attacked and theres no hope of saving it, they could just log off and the invaders would be stuck shooting an invincible object. not a good idea unless they can put a twist on it.

[(/\)arped]

If you read the whole topic, you should find that I've stated that there should be strict rules about attacking non-NPC factories.

[Shanjaq]

everyone would have to give up their beloved SETA... Unless Egosoft gets into the business of manufacturing *real* SETA's for account holders to install under their chair?

[simonnance]

A couple points.

1. AMG is prob the easiest clan to transfer into X-OU, and will probably be the most potent. No offense to the other clans intended.

Is is not just a place for assassinations ect (though we do do those). If you need certain supplys, system defence, whatever, if you offer a mission with sufficient reward, Mercs will accept.

2. Stations, i want to see them much more expensive. Why should a heavy fighter cost more than a station? Aditionaly there will need to be an increase in the profitability of a station to counteract this. I DO want the top teir 3 fabs, and the more exotic ietem to be worth producing.

3. SPPs. I dont see this being a problem, the only reason why SPPs are so popular in X2 is that the AI is crap at distribution of ECells. if this is tightened up then there will be few loctions worh the cost (as they will cost more) of setting a SPP up.

4. Trading. This should be an integral part of the X-OU univese, i want player TPs and TSs searching for profitable goods and making the infrastructure work.

5. Development. I wnat a developed centre of race teritory, with pretty much complete economy and little space for extra stations, and good defence. Around this i want less defended but more open and profitable develompent sites. more 'roids, more sunlight, more missing links, and less high end fabs. This will encorage growth outwards, not inwards.

6. Combat. I want Xenon an pirate secotrs that are hazardous. If pirates "own" the sector, there should be a pirate base or two there. and LOTS of pirate ships. I want it possilbe for groups of ppl to take over these systems for themselves. Maybe clans will seize a wild sector for themselves. I want fighters to be tempted away from the safety of the core race sectors and inot the wilds of space. I want a Xenon threat, pleanty of Xenon sectors worth colonising.

7. Balance. First NO PSGs, or ones that have been "nerfed", i dont want someone deciding to take out the world in a bayamon or perseus, i want taking down a Xenon sector to be a chalange, not 40sec worth of work.

8. Cooperation. I want to see players building weapons fabs for others to buy at, and in turn other players constructing mines and food fabs to suppot the weapons fabs. I want ppl being encoraged to band together, especialy early on, and the benefits continuing untill mush later. I wnat clans given the option of a home base once they reach a certain level, where newbs can come and offer their sercices, and in turn be trained by the older players. I want combat points for assistance kills of larger ships, and subsystems to be targeted to help take them down.

9. Policing. I want mods to be around in the developed sectors in M2s and M1s keeping the peace. I want a police force that can track down and destroy ppl that abuse the game and go out to piss of others in the worst way. I want protection of stations while players are ofline, and a safe place to dock player ships.

10. Respawn. I want "salvage insurance" of a kind, saw you pay 2000cr a live day to insure a M5, if the M5 is killed, you get the monetary value back to buy a new ship (respawn at shipyard). Cost goes up for larger ships, and extra "hazard insurance" is required to insure out of race teritory.

Just a few ideas.

[Graaf]

2 and 8 wont mix.

building stations early to cooperate, but making statons much expensive.

[(/\)arped]

Priblem with having all the fabs online is that 'cos there's so many, there won't be much room to manouvere!!

However, if a registration is used (Or something similar) then maybe only ten fabs per person or somehting, just to keep the factory level below overflowing.

[Wild_Rho]

Ok heres my input (also still an active EVE player so what the hell)

- Redraw the map
Make the map much bigger and spread out the empires with hostile sectors in between as well as large areas of unclaimed space for the players. Also mark on the maps what races own what systems (i.e. different coloured brackets). Have the core systems well setup with NPC stations so new players have somewhere to trade. Players cant build in the very core empire systems so they cant get a monoply there.
Make players have to purchase contracts or licenses (call it what you will) to build stations in empire space. These contracts require a constant regular "rent" to be paid to the empire. This ensures players only setup stations in areas where they are likely to make a decent profit. It also increases competition for building stations in certain areas within empire space that may prove profitable as well as encourage people to venture out and develop the lawless areas.

- Create player races
When players start let them choose what race they wish to be. This can have a wide range of possible effects on what they can do intially and helps develop a greater sense of diversity within the community.
Also a vital thing to do is only let a player have one character per account they are paying or registering etc. One of the biggest banes of EVE is that players will use their alternate characters (each player has 3 characters they can use per account) to simply greif and harrass other players while their main character does not get affected.

- Ships
First of all only let players fly ships from their own race intially. However, if the player really wishes to fly the ship of another race they must either capture one or build up their ratings with that race before they can purchase one from a shipyard. The better the ship class the higher the rating needs to be. Infact to get the higher level ships of your own race you need to really boost your standings to the highest levels.
Make ships cost a little more. This shouldnt be increased to the point that a player is always in the scout ships but it should be much tougher and require more effort to reach the better ships alone.

- Drone ships
By this I basically mean the ships you own that you have flying escorts or doing odjobs for you all over the X universe. In a large scale multiplayer game we are talking about having potentially tens of thousands of these ships given that over time a player can amass quite a collection (with these sorts of games you gotta think long term). This for me is one of the most attractive aspects to X2 over EVE. In EVE if you want a fleet you gotta find the ppl and get them to join you (not easy to do for any length of time beleive me).
One way to stop a single player from amassing an unbeatable army is to include maintenance costs on all drone ships the player owns menaing you have to be making a regular profit to maintain a large fleet or remove the drone ships altogether and just have players. I would prefer the drone ships with the maintenance costs becuase a player who has amassed a small army and is maintaining it has done so through alot of effort and earned it.

- Stations
Stations can always be active unless the player tells them not to be. They can always be destroyed regardless of the player being online or not. If they want to own stations in disputed territories they are going to need to make friends, deals, alliances or just get a serious amount of firepower to baby sit the station. However also make the stations shields much much tougher so it will take the firepower of several well equipped captial ships to destroy them. This means that a player can remove a rivals station without having to sit and hope the player logs back on long enough to oblige the attacker bt it also means you arent going to lose your shiny new stations to a small handeful of players in fighters who feel like ruining somones day (it would require removing and fighter scale weapons that can damage a stations - I dont know if there are any in X2 cos im still pretty new to the game but loving it so far).

- Corporations and clans
This is another idea borrowed from eve. Allow players to create and register coporations or clans that provide a wide range of tools that allows them to function as such an entity such as corporate logos on their ships, a corporate wallet to store funds in. The ability to form internal sections and divsions within the corp, a whole range of info reports on the corp so that senior management members can get whatever info they need on their corp quickly and easily etc.

- Bulletin boards
Allow players to pay a fee to post messages up there or offer contracts to other players with certain ratings etc. Such as a kill contract that combat players can take to go and hunt down another player. Recruitment ads, ads for wares for sale etc. This would need some form of spam guard though and probably need moderating to some extent (there are always some who would abuse it).

Well thats all I can think of atm. Hope some of it is any good.