Space obstacle & race courses that grant captaincy experience.

gravithicc

Space obstacle courses & race courses that grant captaincy experience.

I read that someone wanted to raise captaincy without fighting. Proper maneuvering is as big a part of captaincy as combat and the resource economy, so I think we should get captaincy experience for skillful displays of maneuvering. Specifically, single-person timed obstacle courses where you race the clock to maneuver a tricky course randomly filled with obstacles you must avoid and some you can destroy OR race courses where you race other players in tournaments.

Benefits:

- A method of gaining captaincy experience without combat.

- Incentives for new players to practice their ship movement, indirectly encouraging them to set up ship reflexes.

- A new ship spec will emerge, the racing ship, along with mods geared for racing.

- Growth of the player economy due to racing ships and the racing tournaments.

Negatives:

- Reflexes will pretty much be required to participate realistically.

- Difficult to implement.

Lindhrive

A while ago - and by 'a while ago' I mean 'when the great mountains were but foothills and the moon's face was unmarred' - I played Battletech MUXes, which featured a very similar sort of thing as Starmourn's space system. Those absolutely did have such courses, ranging from basic practice to punishing difficulty, which newbies were expected to do in the desperate but vain hope that they wouldn't instantly drive one of their faction's expensive rides straight into or off of a cliff.

So it'd be neat to see here!

Orrin

This is a great idea! My captaincy is terrible and I'd love to improve it. But space combat stresses me out soooo much. And although in RP terms I'm not really a big fighter, I am a drifter and an explorer so it'd be good to see an alternative to combat that increases captaincy. 

Cubey

I'll just say, there are already multiple ways of getting captaincy experience without combat/incursions: refining, station missions, and I think completing npc market orders. They don't give a lot of experience once you are moderately high level (say, 15+), but getting captaincy exp without combat is still easier than getting normal exp without fighting mobs.

Races are still a neat idea to have - though they'd require a lot of effort to implement so probably low priority for now. But we should have them due to potential for fun, not just to have a source of non-combat captaincy exp. That source already exists.