Best Of
Re: Quality of Life Wishlist
Consider things with 24-hour-interval cooldowns to have, instead, slightly less. Quests, arte powers, wildernesses, etc. For those of us who like to have routines, 24-hour things make this difficult. Also, consider mod shipments: 6 days and 12 hours, rather than 7 days, so I know I can reliably do them every Sunday.
[IMPLEMENTED for wilderness]
Dynasties! HUH! What are they good for?!
Absolutely everything, if we give them the chance!
Dynasties are both promising, and in their current state, depressing. Here are some suggestions, requests, thoughts, hopes, and dreams relating to the good old fashioned future of the Dynasty.
-Currently, Dynasties have very little in the way of proper channels to spend marks. In fact, the Dynasty account holds very little purpose, the Dynasty leader could take donations and dole them out just as easily. Easier in fact, as they'd have no daily limit to withdraws. How can we address this? Tons of ways! Yay!
--Dynasty Ships. Let us build and maintain group ships. This can be done by allowing a Dynasty to 'lease' a ship to a member. Thus allowing us to reclaim the ship should said member disappear into cyro. This lets you maintain the 'one ship, one pilot' setup you have. Or, we could start moving beyond that really stupid setup, and allow members of a rank imbued with a certain power, the right to pilot Dynasty ships. Maybe limit it to Destroyer or lower, although I don't see why that's necessary.
--Dynasty STATIONS. OMG PLS. Let us build stations. Have it be a right tied to larger groups. Limit one station per sector, with an active upkeep or else the station collapses and someone else can build there. Don't allow PVP to ruin these, this is the non-pvp side of building a community. (Think guildhalls. You can invade 'em, but not destroy/capture 'em). Let us spend vast swaths of Marks to improve our stations. Let us add shops, chop shops, manufacturing stations, and so on and so on. Have it cost marks AND materials to expand and build. Could even copy the ship build system, and just have station rooms to use.
-Let the Dynasty have Storage for commodities. Let them put up work orders that pay from the coffers. Let them sell materials from storage.
-Dynasty ranking! Install Dynasty ranks separate from positions. Let us promote/demote people to and from these ranks. This gives a better incentive to set up and keep people engaged with that sort of RP
-Dynasty Credits! Let us unlock getting a cut of membership sales similar to factions. It can be less, that doesn't matter. Just put it into a Dynasty coffer, giving us an even better incentive tool.
-Titling! Let us give and remove prefixes and suffixes at whatever milestone.
-Alliances! Let us set allegiance to factions. Let us build alliances between Dynasties. This doesn't have to be more than a line added into the INFO display.
-Logos! It could be a part of the Station chop shop actually, but if not, let us submit a log that any member can use at any chop shop for ships.
-Ship prefix options! Let us set a ship prefix that can be turned on/off by the shipowner. Possibly force apply it to any Dynasty owned ship (out on lease).
Yes, I do realize right now that you can wing it and manage several of these things. No, I don't see that as an excuse we shouldn't make it easier and better supported to do them. Right now, it seems like we have a real serious issue retaining new players. I, personally, feel like a big part of that is that we only have three real 'groups' and no supported sub-groups within that. Yes, you can join a Dynasty currently, but what does that MEAN? You can RP as much as you like, but it doesn't give people achievable goals with tangible returns. There's a reason guilds/houses in other IRE games are so important. They're smaller hubs of fairly intense RP when done correctly, and they have the tools to create and support that RP. I'd like to see that expanded to Starmourn, with a more player-driven and flexible approach to the mechanics behind it.
But it's possible that's just my singular opinion!
Dynasties are both promising, and in their current state, depressing. Here are some suggestions, requests, thoughts, hopes, and dreams relating to the good old fashioned future of the Dynasty.
-Currently, Dynasties have very little in the way of proper channels to spend marks. In fact, the Dynasty account holds very little purpose, the Dynasty leader could take donations and dole them out just as easily. Easier in fact, as they'd have no daily limit to withdraws. How can we address this? Tons of ways! Yay!
--Dynasty Ships. Let us build and maintain group ships. This can be done by allowing a Dynasty to 'lease' a ship to a member. Thus allowing us to reclaim the ship should said member disappear into cyro. This lets you maintain the 'one ship, one pilot' setup you have. Or, we could start moving beyond that really stupid setup, and allow members of a rank imbued with a certain power, the right to pilot Dynasty ships. Maybe limit it to Destroyer or lower, although I don't see why that's necessary.
--Dynasty STATIONS. OMG PLS. Let us build stations. Have it be a right tied to larger groups. Limit one station per sector, with an active upkeep or else the station collapses and someone else can build there. Don't allow PVP to ruin these, this is the non-pvp side of building a community. (Think guildhalls. You can invade 'em, but not destroy/capture 'em). Let us spend vast swaths of Marks to improve our stations. Let us add shops, chop shops, manufacturing stations, and so on and so on. Have it cost marks AND materials to expand and build. Could even copy the ship build system, and just have station rooms to use.
-Let the Dynasty have Storage for commodities. Let them put up work orders that pay from the coffers. Let them sell materials from storage.
-Dynasty ranking! Install Dynasty ranks separate from positions. Let us promote/demote people to and from these ranks. This gives a better incentive to set up and keep people engaged with that sort of RP
-Dynasty Credits! Let us unlock getting a cut of membership sales similar to factions. It can be less, that doesn't matter. Just put it into a Dynasty coffer, giving us an even better incentive tool.
-Titling! Let us give and remove prefixes and suffixes at whatever milestone.
-Alliances! Let us set allegiance to factions. Let us build alliances between Dynasties. This doesn't have to be more than a line added into the INFO display.
-Logos! It could be a part of the Station chop shop actually, but if not, let us submit a log that any member can use at any chop shop for ships.
-Ship prefix options! Let us set a ship prefix that can be turned on/off by the shipowner. Possibly force apply it to any Dynasty owned ship (out on lease).
Yes, I do realize right now that you can wing it and manage several of these things. No, I don't see that as an excuse we shouldn't make it easier and better supported to do them. Right now, it seems like we have a real serious issue retaining new players. I, personally, feel like a big part of that is that we only have three real 'groups' and no supported sub-groups within that. Yes, you can join a Dynasty currently, but what does that MEAN? You can RP as much as you like, but it doesn't give people achievable goals with tangible returns. There's a reason guilds/houses in other IRE games are so important. They're smaller hubs of fairly intense RP when done correctly, and they have the tools to create and support that RP. I'd like to see that expanded to Starmourn, with a more player-driven and flexible approach to the mechanics behind it.
But it's possible that's just my singular opinion!
Rylek
8
Re: Dynasties! HUH! What are they good for?!
What I like:
-Commodity storage. Really good idea that allows a group of players to cooperate and create commodities together. Right now it's only practical on a faction level, but giving dynasties similar functionality will really enliven the game's economy, I think.
-Quality of life/RP fluff things: titles, alliances, logos, etc.
Like but with stipulation:
-Ships and stations. The former is easier to implement than the latter (especially if it works by lending the ship to a specific person for a time), but both should be introduced no earlier than shared ships and stations for factions.
Don't like:
-Dynasty credits. Too much of an incentive to recruit people en masse and then benefit from their credit purchases, and also a pressure to make folks join a dynasty because otherwise their credit purchases will be "wasted".
Cubey
2
Re: Recommended Playing Time 10/3 at 6pm EST
It's an RP game though and events are ultimately an RP experience where a story unfolds. So during an RP event, a group of mobs with RP and story connections were killed off. Sentimental value is actually pretty relevant.Flipilaria said:Regarding the "Veteran Guards." Sentimental value is irrelevant. This is a game. The guards are just made up NPCs. That's not a real loss. React in-game accordingly - It's a loss in game. Don't bring RP emotions to the forums and expect it to have the same meaning.
"Guards are just made up NPCs" is a view more in-line with non-rp games, especially when, as it appears, those guards were involved in past story lines.
The fact that people care about these guards beyond being just npcs means that the admin who gave them that meaning obviously did their jobs right.
Sairys
1
Suggesting a change to gas scooping
Visually impaired (VI) players really can't scoop gas, and some players don't enjoy scooping gas. Other simply won't bother in its current state because it's perceived as tedious. Although I've learned to do it well, I wouldn't miss gas scooping in its current form if it were changed to accommodate VI players and to make it less tedious.
My suggestion: change the fly-around scooping method to function like a vacuum. Here's how it works. Park your ship in the cloud; no movement required. Activate your scoops. The scoops automatically vacuum up the cloud around the ship. The cloud visibly shrinks as units of gas are gathered (this would be ideal). When done, a message informs the player how many units have been gathered, and whether the scoop ended because the scoops are full or because the cloud was depleted. This is in addition to the per-unit-collected messages we receive now.
In case it isn't clear why this would help VI players,
this change would permit a player to SHIP BEACON to discover a cloud at
X, Y, then to autopilot to X, Y. No fancy autopilot functions required to fly around to scoop the gas. However, the behavior of despawning the cloud could be a tricky to implement because, if a cloud dissipates right next to the ship, then that might cause the scoop to end, if implemented in such a fashion. Then, what would happen would be that the VI player would not be able to see where to get the rest of the cloud; perhaps SHIP BEACON could still help. I don't have a great suggestion for remedying this.
Corollary changes:
Widescoops (the improved scoop we gain from captaincy) can be changed to accelerate the process.
Mining spec can also accelerate the process. I suggest this because one of the mining spec perks is that the deployed scoops do not impede maneuverability, which, in practice, speeds up scooping right now.
Thoughts? This was brought up on the unofficial Discord earlier today.
Steve
8
Re: Announcements post #79: Rogue refineries and autofactories.
Having gotten another direct comparison finally, I think it's time to scrutinize the values for resources gained from blowing up refineries vs. hacking them.
small vandium refinery, NPC discovered, hacked - 78 vandium
small vandium refinery, NPC discovered, blown - 63 vandium
This difference is okay, since it's certainly less, although I feel it's still a lot considering the substantially lower risk involved.
medium processors autofactory, NPC discovered, hacked - 19 arrays
medium processors autofactory, NPC discovered, blown - 19 arrays
There is no difference here. I realize there's some rng involved here and I probably just got lucky/unlucky on one, but the range must be awfully close, and I definitely think there should be more disparity. I honestly expected there to be a flat-out 50% reduction in yield, and I don't think that should be out of the question here.
The entire point of making activate pirate zones Open PK is to encourage ship combat, but right now it's so easy to just snipe a facility and move on. This is exacerbated by a few things:
The tl;dr here is that there is inherently a lot of risk in hacking and very little in blowing up refineries, but the rewards appear to be very similar. Widening the disparity between the two would, at the very least, make people think a little more carefully about how they'll approach a situation, and may even lead to more ship combat (which we need more of to highlight what's fun and what isn't).
small vandium refinery, NPC discovered, hacked - 78 vandium
small vandium refinery, NPC discovered, blown - 63 vandium
This difference is okay, since it's certainly less, although I feel it's still a lot considering the substantially lower risk involved.
medium processors autofactory, NPC discovered, hacked - 19 arrays
medium processors autofactory, NPC discovered, blown - 19 arrays
There is no difference here. I realize there's some rng involved here and I probably just got lucky/unlucky on one, but the range must be awfully close, and I definitely think there should be more disparity. I honestly expected there to be a flat-out 50% reduction in yield, and I don't think that should be out of the question here.
The entire point of making activate pirate zones Open PK is to encourage ship combat, but right now it's so easy to just snipe a facility and move on. This is exacerbated by a few things:
- You don't currently have to destroy all platforms before you destroy the refinery. Solution: Give the refinery some sort of barrier that comes up after the initial attack that doesn't go down until all platforms are destroyed.
- There's a weird bug where the platforms won't change their aggro right away (or at all?) unless fired upon, which means it's even easier to swoop in and kill the refinery while other people are tanking, scoop up the cargo, and make off without a fight. Solution: I don't know mechanically what the fix is, but ideally they'd behave the same as regular generators in terms of changing their aggro.
- You're able to destroy refineries while people are on board hacking, instantly killing the person and gaining access to the cargo. This is fine in theory, except that a) the person hacking gets 0 notification that their facility is under attack, b) even if they were given some notice, the refineries go down in just a few rounds, in as little as 5 seconds, and c) since there is very little to no disparity, you're absolutely going to want to blow up the thing because you're not missing out on much and you're eliminating whatever competition you might have had. Solution: Instead of instantly destroying a refinery once it's been 'defeated', maybe trigger a countdown to detonation, similar to the one made by hacking (probably shorter). Alternatively, just alter the rewards as mentioned and make sure hackers have some kind of notice that they're under attack, though it's obviously always going to be safer to hack if you just bring a friend or know no one will oppose you.
The tl;dr here is that there is inherently a lot of risk in hacking and very little in blowing up refineries, but the rewards appear to be very similar. Widening the disparity between the two would, at the very least, make people think a little more carefully about how they'll approach a situation, and may even lead to more ship combat (which we need more of to highlight what's fun and what isn't).
Rhindara
4
Re: Sorean Mean :(
Sorren gib sugar daddy plz
(in all seriousness though, it'd be interesting to see an puppeted npc client for a players role played job)
(in all seriousness though, it'd be interesting to see an puppeted npc client for a players role played job)
Sammy
1
Re: Events
My intent is to help. I, again, apologize for my snark - I was running on about 4 hours of sleep when I wrote my original post.
As for events and what the faction system represents, you and I disagree entirely. Most of my mudding experience has been in heavily conflict-driven IREs. I spent probably 5-6 years as an Eleusian in Achaea, another 3-4 years in various orgs in Lusternia, and I played Midkemia (arguably a mud that was entirely driven by conflict) from day one to close.
This conflict RP worked because, in all of the above, each org represented a specific spot on a morality chart. They were manufactured that way. Starmourn is less so. Scatterhome loosely stands for freedom and anarchy, Song is heavily militaristic, and Celestine is late-stage capitalism. That's a basic fact. But none of these aspects necessitate or even imply a hard "we should go to war" response.
This, compared to Achaea (as an example) where a conflict between Shallam (The late city of light) and Mhaldor (the city of evil) made a lot of sense. Forcing conflict between the Starmourn factions is a bit like saying "Okay, lets put the USA, France, and Russia all to war because why not?" It's possible (especially in today's geopolitical politics) that a war could unfold between these countries, but if we placed them in a fantasy game and send them to war just because, it wouldn't make much sense, and justifying it because "these countries are kinda different from each other" is a flimsy excuse at best.
As I've stated above, roleplay that naturally leads to conflict is fine. But I strongly object to the Storytelling Team railroading the factions into conflict, especially coming from MKO, where railroaded conflict was a driving force behind the inter-org out-of-game hostility, which in turn was a driving force behind MKO's shutting down.
Big world events are cool though. Let's see an invasion or something. We have lots of bad guys for it. I don't think events need to be limited to world-shattering blockbuster events, but I'm happy to have them.
As for events and what the faction system represents, you and I disagree entirely. Most of my mudding experience has been in heavily conflict-driven IREs. I spent probably 5-6 years as an Eleusian in Achaea, another 3-4 years in various orgs in Lusternia, and I played Midkemia (arguably a mud that was entirely driven by conflict) from day one to close.
This conflict RP worked because, in all of the above, each org represented a specific spot on a morality chart. They were manufactured that way. Starmourn is less so. Scatterhome loosely stands for freedom and anarchy, Song is heavily militaristic, and Celestine is late-stage capitalism. That's a basic fact. But none of these aspects necessitate or even imply a hard "we should go to war" response.
This, compared to Achaea (as an example) where a conflict between Shallam (The late city of light) and Mhaldor (the city of evil) made a lot of sense. Forcing conflict between the Starmourn factions is a bit like saying "Okay, lets put the USA, France, and Russia all to war because why not?" It's possible (especially in today's geopolitical politics) that a war could unfold between these countries, but if we placed them in a fantasy game and send them to war just because, it wouldn't make much sense, and justifying it because "these countries are kinda different from each other" is a flimsy excuse at best.
As I've stated above, roleplay that naturally leads to conflict is fine. But I strongly object to the Storytelling Team railroading the factions into conflict, especially coming from MKO, where railroaded conflict was a driving force behind the inter-org out-of-game hostility, which in turn was a driving force behind MKO's shutting down.
Big world events are cool though. Let's see an invasion or something. We have lots of bad guys for it. I don't think events need to be limited to world-shattering blockbuster events, but I'm happy to have them.
