This is a good idea

[Fast-Trax]

Here is a thought - this is one improvement to Evochron I'd like to see, the ability to research and improve each and every component that you can install on your ship! Think of the customisation you could achieve then!! Each item should be assigned x amount of research points with the amount of research points increasing as the class level of that item increases i.e. class 1 shield = 25 research points and class 2 sheild 35 points. The way to use these points would be to either increase or decrease desired features within that component - so going back to my sheild example, you could increase its sheild capacity, decrease its cost, or decrease its assembly point cost.
The amount of research points available to a player increases with their rank, though whether they recieve x amount of research points to spend across the board, even on items currently outside their reach, or as their rank increases their ability to research a certain class of all items increases. I don't know? What does eveyone else think?

[Marvin]

You can already do that with weapons. I don't know if Vice can expand the option to other pieces of equipment.

[DaveK]

Fast-Trax - there's a thread on the forum that keeps all the suggestions in one place. You might like to add this post to it or ask Marvin to transfer it for you.

http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... #pid174107

[Fast-Trax]

I wasn't just thinking equipment, but rather everything - customise your frame, your engine, your wings, your shields, your cargo bay and anything and eveything else that is part of and makes up your ship. You could completely customise and tailor every aspect of your ship to extract every ounce of performance out of it in whatever area you desire.
Would add a whole 'nother level to the game - for me anyway

Sorry for posting in the wrong place! I will contact Marvin and ask that this be moved to the suggestions thread as soon as I have 5 posts so that I can U2U

[Marvin]

Almost all those items can be upgraded. Consequently, how would (for example) customizing a C3 wing be any better than upgrading to a C4 or C5 wing?

[Fast-Trax]

Easy, a pilot could "spend" research points on researching the assembly point cost of a C5 wing (from memory its 90). So if they had, say 50 research points, but the C5 wing had a maximum of ... say 40 research points to alter any feature, the pilot spends 40 of their resesrch points all on the C5's assembly point cost, lowering the wings assembly point cost (for that pilot alone) to 50 points. This frees up valuable resources for the reminder of every ship that pilot then decides to use the C5 wing pn. Furthermore, that pilot has another 10 research points to spend, though it can't be on the C5 wing as they have exhausted all of the 40 research points for that class of wing. Alternatively, that pilot coild have spent their resources researching the wings cost to buy (maybe lowering the cost to thrm to purchse the wing by 40%), or on incressing the C5 wings agility, or any combination on all 3 aspects mentioned here. So by spending research points, the pilot has developed a completely different wing not available to anyone else in the game and it would be tailored to exactly what they wanted. A pilot would have to choose carefully, as there are unevan step ups between the classes of some items. Imagine tweaking a Mammoth (or evan the highest civ frame) to just the way you like; increase its armour, agility, base speed and its capacity. Lower its assembly point and Credit cost ... then tweak everything else you equip on thst ship as well ... the possibilities are simply endless!

[Fast-Trax]

Oops, meant to say increase the assembly point quota for a frame so that it can handle more resources ... and yes you are right, in the long run, no matter how much you tweak a C1 frame it won' t be as good as the highest civ frame untweaked ... but you don' get access to higher classes at the start, so an interesting decision is reached - spend research points on the stuff you can get now or soon (for short-term gain), or invest in the future (but suffer short-term pain). Decisions, decisions ahh - I can smell the angst already

[DaveK]

How would you gain the 'Research Points'? How would they be better than spending that effort in gaining credits and experience to survive so you can go further afield from Sapphire where you can get the better frames. The only frames that you can't have at the start of the game are the higher military frames - you need to gain Commander rank first by doing military contracts in WZ's

[Fast-Trax]

Another easy one as I mentioned it in my original post - the amount of research points you recieve is directly related to your rank. You get "X" amount of civilian research points every time your civilian rank increases and "X" amount of military research points every time your military rank increases. Every time your rank in one of those respective areas goes up, you get access to research points to spend on gear within that field. Though am I thinking now (as opposed to my first post) that a pilot should be able to research whatever they want in the civilian area with their civilian research points, and whatever they want in military area with their military research points. (As opposed to limiting it C1 stuff for rank 2, C2 stuff for rank 3 ect) as this alllows a pilot to do as I mentioned earlier - either spend on the stuff available now for short-term gain, or invest in the higher/highest classes for long-term gain but suffer short-term pain in doing so.
Just how many research points a player recieves each time their rank goes up, I am not sure - is it fixed, or does it increase expotentially?? I am thinking fixed as there will come a time when a high ranking player has researched eveything. Keeping the amount fixed at a fair, but small amount (say 5 points per rank) should extend the ability to research things well into the game (hopefully). Finally, players should be able to "store" research points, spending them when they want to.
Another inadvertent potential spin-off from pilots customising ships could be the ablility to sell their customised ships to other pilots, meaning that although you haven't personally spent the research points to tweak a ship in a certain way, you still get access to it. Obviously, there is an area that needs protecting here in that a pilot can dump all their research points into the cost of frames, reducing the cost of frames to to them by a significant portion some times - so the addage that you can sell back to the game at the same price you bought for needs to hold otherwise unscrupulous individuals will spend all their time in the shipyard "Trade and Build"ing their ships to immediately sell back to the station at a higher price.
However, this shouldn't stop pilots from selling their customised ships to other piots at a fair market price (to facilitate this, an addvertising board could be added to a stations interface where a customised ship that a pilot wants to sell is currently in-hangar at that station and listed to sell). The trade facility should show all interest parties what features have been customised and in what areas, and all the current bids upon it. That way, when the pilot selling the ship logs in, they can sell to the highest bidder, or wait for a higher bid to come in. The interface should also allow the seller to let a bidder know if their bid isn't high enough. Obviously there is a time lag here, so a bidder must ensure that they haven't spent the necessary funds in the meantime, or if they do, the system automatically removes their bids (starting with the highest bid and working down) until the bidder has the funds to cover all his current bids. Either that or rather than introducing a system interface to handle a trade, players advertise using the games chat facility (though this could cause unnecessary chatter that clutters the messages at times, plus you would still need a way to trade the ship between the two parties). Or just scrap the idead to trade custom ships between pilots (though it does add another interesting feature to the game with an in-game, real-time solely player driven market). Of course the custom ship market wouldn't work in servers with only 1 player using that server.
Another interesting possibility is, say you don't want the custome ship listed, but want access to some of its customised parts/equipment - you could lodge a build request for "X" amount with the seller, so that he builds the ship using the customised parts you want to the design specifications you want. The build request would have to been in the form of a player style contract, adding yet another new feature to the game. (Though, again, the efeectiveness of this is dependant on how active a game server is!)

[Fast-Trax]

Umm ... the only frames you can't have acces to are the military ones. First of all, you won't, at the very start, have enough credits to buy the big civ frames - and strangely for me, I cant acess anything higher than the Pulsar or Saber at most of the Sappgire Stations, the only exception that I know of is the Errato II Construct Station where I have acccess up to the Raven and Mirage.
With the higher frames (Hunter, Sentinal, Mammoth, Guardin, Leviatian, Starmaster) I just get messages saying that the frame is not available at this station?????

[Fast-Trax]

Possible solution to the need for a server to be active for players to be able to buy researched custom ships - have the AI sell custom ships on the stations trade interface. Obviously, these AI ships should only be customised in a couple of areas, say 2 at most. That way players still have access to researched ships if the server is dead, but will have access to better researched ships if the server is active

[Fast-Trax]

One final thing - I am a noob with about 40 hours game time total, so some things I simply won't know ... please have patience

[DaveK]

You get the better frames (and equipment and weapons classes) the further from Sapphire you go. I agree about the shortage of early $$$ but what I'm not sure of is how research points differ from raw cash. You'd start with a shortage of research points as well. You improve civilian rank by doing contracts and combat, both of which give you the money and experience to leave the safety of Sapphire and go seek the better frames etc you want. Ditto for military rank - except you have to do the contracts/combat in warzones. You have to reach Commander (I think) before all the military frames are released but you can still get the first half and you rank up.

Sorry if I'm being slow (but it seems to be an interesting and complex system you're suggesting so I'd like to understand) but I still don't see what research points are doing that $$$ isn't - You start with little of either, both need contracts/combat/ to earn them and both are spent on improving your ship - frame and equipment.

As Marvin said - fine tuning a given bit of equipment seems much the same as buying the next class up. Unless you mean having the equivalent to the Weapon Lab for every piece of equipment in the game! That could be a career option and a game in itself!

[Marvin]

You get the better frames (and equipment and weapons classes) the further from Sapphire you go.

Actually, you need to peruse the quadrant maps ... one of which shows tech level for each gated system. Hi tech means a better class of equipment.

[Fast-Trax]

Laugh - you are right, it is almost a game in itself. And maybe I am making something that works overly complex, but then imagine this;

You take an Arrow frame with its normal stats on the left and end up with a custom frame on the right;

Normal Stats Custom Stats
Cost 434 350 217 175
Capacity 8 12
Assembly 225 338
Agility 100 150
Armour 85 128
Max Cruise Speed 545 840

Engine C1 Illumine Mk I Quantum Mk II
Shield Class 2 Class 10
Wing C1 Starglider Night Hawk Mk III
F' Tank Capacity 400 1 200
Cargo Bay C3 3 x 25 C5 5 x 25

Equipment Slots 3 7
Fulcrum Drive Fulcrum Drive
Mining/Tractor Beam Mining/Tractor Beam
C2 Shield C10 Shield
Cannon Heatsink
Cannon Relay System
C5 Shield Boost
Shield Recharger

Crew 1 1
Cm's 1 x 25 1 x 25
Secondary Harpoints 3 3

Now I ask you, which of these ships would you rather? I might add that the custom ship has had its frame fully researched, but the engine, shield, wing, fuel tank and cargo bays have only been researched to lower their assembly point cost so that they will fit on the custom Arrow frame. If you further reseached each of these items, and those in the equipment slots, you could tweak a whole lot more performance out of this ship yet. Evan as it stands, you have an entry level civilian ship that should out perform a Ferret - the entry level military ship! In fact, it is more agile and faster than almost every military ship available and by the time you finish tweaking, it would be!! For example, the Quantum Mk II engine's thrust could still be increased to a whopping 2250, not to mention the C10 sheild capacity can be increased to to 2250 as well, and the C5 Sheild Boost increased to +375!!!

Looks great, sounds pretty, I know, but how the hell did I come up with that! Well, it might be unbalanced, but I just said that each and every aspect (frame, engine ect) can have its attributes increased/ decreased by no more +/- 50% but not more than a value of 750 (price excluded). Why 750, don't know, just after that fuel tank capacity starts getting overly warpped!

So using these rules, after increasing the Arrow Frame's assembly quota to 338 through research; here's the breakdown

Standard Customised
Assembly Cost Assembly Cost
C10 Quantum Mk II Engine 200 100
C10 Sheild 155 78
Night Hawk Mk III Wing 180 90
C5 Cargo Bay 75 38
C3 Fuel Tank 60 30
-----------
336 coming in under the 338 target and leaving 2 assembly points to spare.

All up, the Arrow Fram would have 296 research points with every point counting as a true reduction in each of the Arrows features except for Capacity, which in this model, I attributed 10 research points being required to increase the Arrow frames capacity by 1. All up, this example would require the player to invest 632 research points and would require a civilian rank 127 (at my suggested 5 research points per rank) to give the necesssary 635 research points. Given that I am a noob and have a civ rank 40 after 7 hours playing, this ship would be available to me after about 25 hours game time and would beat the pants offa anything else available to me at that time.

What's more, I've only decided to tweak an entry level ship!!!!

And I can tweak it EVEN MORE!!

What if I decided to invest and research something more substantial!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Fast-Trax]

Damn formatting didn't come through!!

[Fast-Trax]

Also, would need to display each items cost so that you can research that and make it cheaper to buy, plus Wings need to show their agility rating so that you can research that and improve it as well

[Fast-Trax]

Just because the above comparison is hard to read; I'll restate the stats of the custom Arrow here;

Cost - 217,175
Capacity - 12
Assembly - 338
Agility - 150
Armour - 128
Base Speed - 840

with;

Quantum MK II Engine
Night Hawk III Wings
Class 10 Shields
Class 5 5x25 Cargo Bays
Class 3 1,200 capacity Fuel Tank

with the following equipment;

Mining/Tractor Beam
Fulcrum Drive
C10 Shiled
Cannon Heatsink
Cannon Relay
C5 Shield Boost
Shield Relay

... an entry level ship that really puts it out!!!!

[DaveK]

The forum wasn't mean't for tables. You can't use tabs to line things up - you can't even use spaces!

OK. I think I get it. It's a way of having some design and researching fun, allowing you to kit out a ship (specs which you can create now with cash and travel to dangerous places) but early on without having to go out into the big bad areas of the Evoverse.

A point to consider though: Unless you are just going to end up making the upgrading process easier (rather than interestringly different), you might have to balance contract payoff and/or types - less cash for more research points or vice versa or else you just get more 'spendable' resources more easily (ie cash plus research points). That reduces the challenge and satisfaction of having to take risks/develop skills and work hard to get a better ship. At present you need cash plus skill or you risk not surviving long enough to spend your cash in the rougher parts of the game. So you have to balance cash/skill/risk. If you could eliminate the risk by staying in Sapphire you'd have to increase the challenge in a different way. Perhaps 'research focussed contracts' to generate the points and having upgrades that at present aren't available in Sapphire as research point costly. So pilots would have the choice of the traditional route (as now) or doing different contracts to generate the research points to access the better stuff - much like you have to invest in wz combat to access the better mil frames.

[Marvin]

The forum wasn't mean't for tables. You can't use tabs to line things up - you can't even use spaces!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_element

[Fast-Trax]

Well maybe you are right, but I just chose an entry level ship and max tweaked/customised it to show what research points and customisation could be used to do. Furthermore, I have spent 7 hours in Sapphire and I don't intend to spend that much longer there. Sure, maybe the really cautious will sit in Sapphire, slowly bumping their rank up and slowly earning research points to create a mega ship so that they can venture out of the safety net that Sapphire provides, but the average player would be bored outta their brains long before they achieve the research points required to design the custom civilian ship they really want (remember, I just used an Arrow frame, the higher civ frames will require much more research points). A possible solution though, if this really worries you, is creating a minimum research level in each components class before you can start researching the class above - say 10% of the available research points must be researched into a certain class before you can research the class above. Though this hampers those who want to forgo short-term gain (by tweaking the stuff they do have) and instead choose to only invest in the higher end stuff that they don't have???? I must say that I feel that this removes some of the angst that being able to freely choose what you invest in provides! i.e. Invest in what you have now or will have soon for short-term gain, but long-term disadvantage (as a lot of what you research will still be surpassed by the higher end upgrades) versus investing in only the higher end stuff for short-term disadvantage (because you are investing in stuff you won't have till much later on) but long-term gain!
I do have a question for you though - I had assumed that how quickly your rank improves, in a large part, reflects how quickly your skills are improving?? I know that if you grind long enough even if you are a poor pilot, your rank will increase, but slowly. A better pilot though will have their rank increase much more quickly, giving them access to research points at a much quicker rate.
The other interesting component that research points introduces is the short-term vs long-term gain trade-off. The above ship would take about 25 hours game time to develop, but at the cost of all bar 2 research points. Can the player resist the urge to spend research points outside the above components (unlikely).
Sure, the committed and disciplined will pick a desired custom ship and throw every research point at it, allowing them to create a 'super' civilian ship (and I'll bet that they won't use the Arrow frame), but you don't have to do that. Research points will allow you to tweak the ordinary, making it slighlty better in one or two areas right now - usually the one or two areas that you, the player, want to focus on. Players that spend their research points in this manner won't have access to the super civ ship untill much, much later on - because they will be busy using their points and making minor tweaks to the ships and gear that they are already using and enjoying the benefits from this right now ... as opposed to much, much later on. That's the trade-off I am aiming for with research points. Plus, if you introduce a market for custom ships, that adds something to the game, plus you could add private player-to-player build contracts where players that have researched a specific area can offer to build a ship with those custom features into a customer's (other player) spefic design. That way, even if you haven't reasearch an area, you could pay another player who has, to build a a ship with those features - but maybe that is taking it a bit too far??

[Marvin]

Unless your aim is to build a super ship, invulnerable to all forms of attack, I can't see the necessity. And, after building that super ship, what next? Unless you challenge another player (somebody with his own super ship), you've pretty much aced the Evoverse ... bemoaning, like Alexander the Great, that there are no more worlds to conquer.


P.S. Actually, Alex knew he hadn't conquered the whole world ... he only regretted that he wouldn't live long enough to finish the job.

[PaulB]

Personally, I'm not very hip on the idea of it beng based on Rank or Wealth. That slants the game too much in what I'll call 'old timers' favor - or call it ' people who are able to spend the time it take to amass great Rank and Wealth.
True it does also slant it towards people who just have a lot of 'get up and go' in them.

But I'd rather most such things be based more on chance + ability where most any player who puts in a decent effort can 'Discover (a LOT of New in a future update) things that will allow one of the following:
(1) 'One use Item' that would allow the player to perform a decent percentage of permanent upgrade to a specific ship or weapon function.
(2) Sell the item to a Trade Station (or my desire a NEW RESEARCH TRADE station - of which there may only be one such station per SYSTEM) where that item would then become available 'on the market' for anyone to purchase it's effect.

To cut it short, a whole new list of 'easily expandable (by Vice as time progresses) things' to find, and use, and sell, and buy, that are not part of the current Trade Station inventory, but would be part of a new Research Trade Station database that would (perhaps) initally be empty or small) until people started 'finding' these new things and selling them to the RTS to become inventory Evoverse wide in all RTSs by default.

I think that woujld allow for an easily expanding array of things to see and do and search for in EM and there could even be some new series of 'hints' and 'rumors' of information the player could acquire ingame - perhaps in the Research Trade Station docking - or from other ships - 'I heared this strange story about xyz way out abc system'.

A potential for a lot of new things to do perhaps in a database expandable format to make expansion easier.
Potential things that even relative newbies would have a chance of finding and adding to the Evoverse RT stations inventories.
I think if it was implemented that there should be a way that RT Stations in SP and MP could have their inventory Sync'ed when someone logged on MP so that everyone could benefit since there must be a lot who tend to play more SP than MP and vice versa
Just part of a wish list.

[Marvin]

I think that woujld allow for an easily expanding array of things to see and do and search for in EM and there could even be some new series of 'hints' and 'rumors' of information the player could acquire ingame - perhaps in the Research Trade Station docking - or from other ships - 'I heared this strange story about xyz way out abc system'.

As I'm sure you already know, you can currently query AI pilots for information about uncharted star systems. Sometimes they give you the information, sometimes they give you other things ... pirated equipment for example. Perhaps they sometimes supply information about lost or hidden cargo pods ... but that's pure conjecture on my part.

[PaulB]

I think that woujld allow for an easily expanding array of things to see and do and search for in EM and there could even be some new series of 'hints' and 'rumors' of information the player could acquire ingame - perhaps in the Research Trade Station docking - or from other ships - 'I heared this strange story about xyz way out abc system'.

As I'm sure you already know, you can currently query AI pilots for information about uncharted star systems. Sometimes they give you the information, sometimes they give you other things ... pirated equipment for example. Perhaps they sometimes supply information about lost or hidden cargo pods ... but that's pure conjecture on my part.

Certainly, my point was wishing Vice would add a whole new subsystem (database driven) of new things I'll call New Dicoverable items that would be related to New Research Trade Stations and seperate from Trade Stations/Inventories.
They would not be as plentiful as regular TS items but they would not be "rare" or "Scarce" either and they would only show up in RTS when and as players discovered and sold them to RTS's (at which time the item(s) wold propagate to ALL RTS - not just the one you sold it to - although it might not be the same price at all RTS's.
And the further point of creating a whole new rather massive list of things to do in EM. And Research Trade Stations could have their own set of totally different contracts to offer player - I won't even speculate on what they might be - but not cleaning solar panels, or mining diamonds, platimum, metal, etc. - but that probably would never-the-less require the Tractor beam, etc.
Expansion, easier and better, and more later, easier and better as ideas arrive just pop them into the database and issue an update with perhaps a lot less in have to do game recoding - just database expansion as much as possible to make it easier.
Just an idea.......