ShadowHawk
Gallente
Foundation
R0ADKILL
   |
Posted - 2006.10.28 12:55:00 -
[1]
ok... this is a suggestion on how to make ship customization more interesting.
In the current system, you have ships with fixed stats, module with stats that vary slightly, and the BPO system that produces always identical items. This leads to a system that produces very predictable outcomes. Often, when you see a ship, you kinda know what to expect and what the ship fittings might be...
I had great hopes for the new rigs that are coming with Kali, but it looks like it's just going to be another type of slot that again takes modules derived from a fixed system.
So here is my suggestion... create a research system that allows you to create rigs that can have any combination of properties... they can have one, two maybe even three properties and each of those has a chance to be positive or negative... if you have played the Diablo II expansion, the best comparison would be to socketed items fitted with magical jewels. Rigs that you add to your ship are added permanently and are lost if the ship gets destroyed. That means you have to think for a bit before you put a rig into your ship if that is really where you want your ship setup to go. I would even go to the point that you can't repackage a rigged ship anymore.
Now for the way on how to create those rigs... next to the materials harvested from ship wrecks, you can add other items to the process to skew your chances on what kind of item you get. Say you're adding an afterburner to the process, your chances of getting a speed related rig are a tad larger. The quality of the items used as well as the skill of the character creating the rig affects the quality of the properties the created rig receives. To the most part it is a random process though... every rig you create has at least one property, and most of the time that property is positive. It can have to or even three properties, with each drastically diminishing chances of being present. Also, the more properties a rig has, the higher is the chance that one or even two of them are negative.
The properties a rig can receive should be a very wide spectrum... even with the tiny tiny chance of creating a rig that adds an additional slot to the ship. More common properties would be speed, armor, shield, energy, electronics or drone related... the possibilities are endless... it could even include properties that boost a certain skill of the pilot by one level...
Now before people come jumping at me with 'adding a slot to a ship will create overpowered ship setups', first of all, a rig with such a property would be vary rare, hence expensive, and if the ship gets destroyed, the rig will disapear again. Also, it won't be possible to boost a ship past the 8 slots per low/med/high that the UI has as it's limit and the number of rigs you can fit on a ship is very limited... the current system in Kali shows 2-3 rig slots, and I believe that would be more than adequate...
The benefit of such a system is that we are now able to create ships that are much more diverse than what we currently have. It would also give those among us who like research, finally something that could be called that.
If balanced right, this will add a lot of depth to the game and to ship setups. Combat pilots will have more fun because each ship they encounter can bring some unexpected surprised, research characters finally have something to research on, and trading characters have items that now have a unique property and the demand for that property can drive the price compared to the current system where price is the only distinction you can have from your competitors when you sell an item.
Well, I hope you guys like my idea (specially if you're working for CCP)... and I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it... now if you don't like it... let me know why, and try not to flame too hard :)
Happy researching everyone...
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