Ship XP

[Irredrache]

Sir Emi, have you ever given any thought to implementing something that would allow ships to accrue experience? Something like in Civilization V, where units gradually level up, and when they do, they can choose between promotions. You know, maybe every combat encounter, a ship gets 2 xp. At 20, they get the first promotion. 40 they get the next. Or, xp might even be based on the power of the encounter, so the big players don't miss out. Promotions wouldn't have to be anything excessive... you know, maybe a 5% bonus to shields or vipers, a 2% reduction in combat timer vs. pirate looters, a slight increase to the chance to find illegal modules in an encounter, a slight reduction in the number of QPs required to speed up an encounter. You could have different levels, too... like a promotion that increases armor effectiveness, and then after a few of those you could unlock one where the ship's armor self repairs over time (slowly, of course). I've got like a dozen more in my head that I think would be really cool. Nothing over-powering, but to give us a little more ship diversity, and to make player choice in ship design more significant (I occasionally feel like I have no choice but to make shields and MAUs for all my ships).

You could even have different xp trees. Like for every 100 m3s of a resource a ship collects, they get 1 mining xp, and they might be able to build MIFs faster or get a better price for sold minerals. Or for every 10 planets/moons a ship surveys, it gets 1 scouting xp, and can get faster nav times, reduced fuel costs, or maybe a better chance for a positive outcome at a crashed alien ship. You could do the same with SOS missions, manufacturing ships... there could even be one for science, where a ship gradually accrues science xp based on the amount of RPs it generates.

I'm sure others would have other ideas... I think this is something that would really enhance the game for players at all levels, and I'm sure plenty of others have ideas too. This could all be module-based, too, if you feel like it's too overpowered. Make it a training barracks module, or a training simulator module, and then it would take up a precious module slot, and could potentially be expensive to implement.

[Rostin]

 

[SirEmi]

It's a good idea, maybe crew can become more experienced too...

[raphael]

I think this is something that would really enhance the game for players at all levels

Yep. 

[Irredrache]

Yeah, Sir Emi! If crew becomes more experienced, that gives a lot more weight to PvP... players would be a lot more hesitant to take a hit and lose 10% of their personnel if new personnel came out green

Thanks, Rostin 

[Matamaure001]

I like this idea.

[Rostin]

And PvP battles could give more xp than pirate fights to kind of incentivise PvP

[Irredrache]

I guess PvP could use more to make it worthwhile, but I'm not sure that's the kind of game this is, really.... Also the thing I like most about the possibility of xp is it could give more legitimacy to all the different play styles. Maybe Sir Emi could even put in a way to track player and Corp experience alongside player and Corp power. So the miners amongst us could find out who mines the hardest (this is difficult right now, because mining doesn't require ship power).

[JamJulLison]

idk. I really don't like that. With games like Civilization it is possible to wipe out units. The crews on our ships here seem to just be numbers and you likely would need a big overhaul to fix that. Especially since you can transfer personnel from ship to ship, ship to station and so on. He has this in Space Odyssey but ships there are also able to be destroyed as well as crew lost.   I am just not so sure it would work well for this particular game.  There are so much else that needs to be done before we even think of something like this.  Such as the long battle timers.

[Irredrache]

Talk about an overhaul, you'd have to completely redo COM missions if you change battle timers. Can't have the huge payouts that they have if you big dogs only have a 2 hour battle timer, or 6 or 8 or whatever shorter timer you'd call for. But if you shrink the payouts then it would become useless to do them at smaller levels unless you played the game constantly.

Also with smaller timers it would become unfair to the defenders in smaller combats because they'd never stand a chance to get reinforcements or run away unless, again, they stayed online constantly.

XP on the other hand improves the game for fighters and peaceful players alike, at least in the context I'm talking about, and I really think Sir Emi could add it pretty seamlessly.

[JamJulLison]

Talk about an overhaul, you'd have to completely redo COM missions if you change battle timers. Can't have the huge payouts that they have if you big dogs only have a 2 hour battle timer, or 6 or 8 or whatever shorter timer you'd call for. But if you shrink the payouts then it would become useless to do them at smaller levels unless you played the game constantly.

Also with smaller timers it would become unfair to the defenders in smaller combats because they'd never stand a chance to get reinforcements or run away unless, again, they stayed online constantly.

XP on the other hand improves the game for fighters and peaceful players alike, at least in the context I'm talking about, and I really think Sir Emi could add it pretty seamlessly.

Your still too new to really understand the problem with timers. Those lesser players your speaking of with not having no time to escape, they still suffer from that. Lower powered people can easily hit one another quick enough and a large player can easily power down to their power levels and get quicker timers.  The thing is though you won't have any serious pvp at lower rankings anyways. That comes when you have true combat ships. Which unfortunately give you longer timers. Especially when your looking at ships with power level in the millions.  In combat vs some of the top players we see timers around a week along sometimes. As ships become stronger it will just get longer.  The timer system seems great at the lower power but you begin to see the flaw in it the stronger you become. That is why so many of us have been against it to begin with.  Combat itself does need an overhaul. But you gotta look at what actually needs the most work.  PVP right not is practically not really very feasible simply because of the timers.  I have suggested in the past SirEmi actually create modules that can effect these timers.   For example a module that decreases the attack timer when on offense. Perhaps another one that increases it on defense.  Perhaps the timer could also be effected by the combat drive tech levels.  Officers could be created doing such things as well.  One that decreases it on offense but another that increases it on defense.  The modules though really is the best way to go. Also give us tractor beams that allow us to be able to hold a ship in place for a set amount of time. The time depending on the combat drives on the enemy ship and on the strength of the actual tractor beams.  These are all things also that wouldn't have a huge effect on COM missions. It could even be programmed in to where they don't actually work on COMs.  Or at the very least if they did the officer idea that it doesn't work on COMs but the modules do.   Experience for crews is another matter because you then need some data on each of the crew members. It has to keep track of them and their experience. Also consider if POWs captured from enemy ships retain the combat experience of the other ship. But then we gotta split what kinda POWs we get cause we got separate regular crew members and marines with experience. One being stronger then the others. So when captured, they would have to be of a certain type rather then being trained for one or the other like it is now. Civilians wouldn't have experience enough in marine procedures to just become experienced marines and marines wouldn't know what to do in the civilian life so their experience wouldn't exactly transfer over well either. It would make zero since for POWs to not have had any experience at all on enemy ships.  Also then would the experience from captured POWS on COM missions be randomized?   When you consider one factor you need to consider everything that is going to come with it. It is doable of course. But for a project like this I would much rather see him focus on things that are bigger priority such as the stuff I suggested for the combat drives. This experience thing would like take up a lot of his time to program in and figure it all out. Which means less time for other important projects.

[Irredrache]

My age in the game has nothing to do with my comprehension of the numbers involved. A module that reduces combat times would be overpowered, because Raph would just spend a billion solars to get it to MK D and have instant combat wherever he went. He would make billions of solars an hour on COMs, and would instantly annihilate any players he came across at 0 cost to himself. I mean, I'm all for my god-like leader becoming even more god-like, but it seems like a bad idea from a game balance perspective. If they were PVP only that would be less OP, but also pointless. PVP is a luxury in this game. There's negligible incentive to it (except for pirating static modules, which is fast and doesn't require a combat timer fix), so what's the point in Sir Emi wasting his time on PVP only stuff? If you want PVP modules, you should first ask for more incentive to PVP (which is one thing Rostin was suggesting, a boost in xp for PVP which would allow PVPers to get stronger ships faster).

[JamJulLison]

My age in the game has nothing to do with my comprehension of the numbers involved. A module that reduces combat times would be overpowered, because Raph would just spend a billion solars to get it to MK D and have instant combat wherever he went. He would make billions of solars an hour on COMs, and would instantly annihilate any players he came across at 0 cost to himself. I mean, I'm all for my god-like leader becoming even more god-like, but it seems like a bad idea from a game balance perspective. If they were PVP only that would be less OP, but also pointless. PVP is a luxury in this game. There's negligible incentive to it (except for pirating static modules, which is fast and doesn't require a combat timer fix), so what's the point in Sir Emi wasting his time on PVP only stuff? If you want PVP modules, you should first ask for more incentive to PVP (which is one thing Rostin was suggesting, a boost in xp for PVP which would allow PVPers to get stronger ships faster).

His idea wouldn't do any good when PVP battles rarely occur as it is.  The reason they rarely occur is even when we find say Dadds, or he finds one of us, 1 person usually ends up jumping away.  The timer is so large anyone can get away.  There have been times when Dadds has tried to hit my people and all i would have to do is bring in a few large corp ships to drive up the timer, they finish their COM, jump away and then I jump away.  No battle occurs at all.  This sort of thing wouldn't change even with rostin's idea.  This is a good idea for later on down the road but first we need to do something about timers.  I said before the modules could be made to not effect COM mission timers.  I would have no issue with that at all.  Also with their being a counter module or modules to it, it is possible to increase the timer from the defense side of a fight. Yes he could research and make himself a MK D.  But you think other top players aren't going to be researching their stuff as well. Not just the increasing ones but the defense ones as well.  Timers themselves likely will still be long but at least there is something we can do to as least try to shorten it besides use QP to speed up the attacks.

[Irredrache]

Well, I think the idea is good in theory, but I just can't see a way to implement it that would make it useful, without being over-powered. I'm sure Sir Emi could figure something out, but I guess I'd just rather see him spend his time on something that could make the game better for everyone (even and especially new players, to give them more incentive to stick with the game), not just the top 10 who really want to blow each other up...

[JamJulLison]

Well, I think the idea is good in theory, but I just can't see a way to implement it that would make it useful, without being over-powered. I'm sure Sir Emi could figure something out, but I guess I'd just rather see him spend his time on something that could make the game better for everyone (even and especially new players, to give them more incentive to stick with the game), not just the top 10 who really want to blow each other up...

The thing everyone is going to run into that long timer issue eventually. Once you get with the ships the size of some of ours, you will likely have some of the same frustrations. You went from long jump timers to long build and long battle timers.  The XP idea is a good one. But one better suited for after something is done to make combat more viable. Otherwise an xp update would be pretty much useless cause hardly anyone is going to get real use out of it.  Also keep in mind during our corps first war with IMG, we were fed up with long timers as it was then and now our timers are even longer then they were back then. Also as for the top 10 wanting to blow each other up.  Dadds actually wants to take all of us out.  Your his enemy just as much as I am. A way to shorten your own timers besides powering down would help you with going after some of IMG's smaller targets that you could hit.  Also if PVP becomes more viable the game will become more interesting and less boring.  The game's basis is suppose to be on realism but there is no realism on the timers in combat right now.  I am sure when SirEmi started the game he never imagined some of us would be as strong as we are now.  He even has low power on himself so he was only able to see things from a smaller players standpoint. From that standpoint the timers for battles aren't too bad. The problem gets to when you get to our higher powers. His idea to speed up battles with QP was no real solution.