Motherships and space - Part 2 - suggestions

[John Black Knight]

Dear David, Kim,

or whoever from Mindark team may read this.
With some more time and thought put on the needs of motherships and others spacecraft - i would like to ask you to forward the following suggestions to the dev team for consideration. Alot of players have shared their ideas with me and i hope this gives you a good feedback on our view and wishes
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Soc like guestlist management including:
- assignment rights for every station on board (pilot, co-pilot, gunners (please each chair individually))
- include a captain / commander rank - make them able to summon passengers / crew
- give officers the right to assign rights within their responsibility - e.g. Lead gunner can assign all gunner seats
- give captain / commander a crew terminal to see if every crew member is at the assigned station
- implement a 'ready' button for captain / commander to sent a ready question to all crewmembers which they have to click to show green on crewterminal (with timer)
- display crew job titles while on board of a mothership

other features:
- Onboard screens to display custom messages / onboard adscreen terminal (ship internal).
- Shipname in summon message / custom text in summon message
- Single person summon / summon list to assignwho gets a group summon
- transparent windows on board / more windows on board to allow repaircrew & passengers to view actual space
(a solution to 'transparent windows' could be to add an 'npc'-item on the outside part of the wall where the window is located, that has a static first person view and streams that view on the window(calculation for the view could still be clientsided))
- customizable mothership - let us texture/color them
- allow areas on board where items can be dropped by the ships owner (can only be picked by the owner)
- manual docking/undocking feature please - to be controlled by the pilot
- optional first person view with onscreen coords for mothership pilot please (currently they have to navigate spamming the 'position'-key)
- allow fighters to be assigned to motherships
- make assigned fighters join the forcechat
- tactical display for mothership co-pilots with the right to assign waypoints and escort positions
- increase viewable range of mothership they currently can be attacked from quadwings from out of sight while the large mothership guns should have a range advantage by nature
- disable dragging healthbars in space, its to easy for pirates to navigate by healthbar and staying out of sight, there should be no indication for the presence of other ships except what you can spot in viewable area or using some kind of short range radar still to be implemented
- The kill of a mothership currently leads to a disconnect of most of its crew, please make dying of a large number of avatars in one place a smoother process - maybe with delayed spacestation respawn timers to keep us all online.
- add maximum carried weight limitations to all kinds of spacecraft and have it impact speed when succeeded, that will give motherships the role of mass transport they were promoted with
- increase the size of space alot when implementing warp drives to give motherships an edge over current fighter transports

destroying one section of a mothership should not lead to destruction of the whole ship:
- destroying propulsion should only kill the ships maneuverability and boot the crew of that section into space
- destroying hangar should just kill the possibility to launch ships from it and boot the crew of that section into space
- destroying reactor should boot the crew of that section into space and trigger a timer for complete destruction of the ship - should still leave the crew the possibility to launch shuttles into space using hangar if intact
- destroying bridge should boot the crew of that section into space and disable all guns
- repairing all sections should still be possible except reactor
- please add selfdestruct button with 1 minute counter to ship to avoid the ship being 'trapped' by pirates

more ideas:
- add comlink terminal for future use of assigning and navigating fleets (should include, tactical screen of space including all ships of a fleet, and have an assignment function to promote one of them to command ship)
- remove the 1 minutes spawn timer while in space, this will allow crewmember of a mothership to spawn fighters for other crewmembers who may not own one
- allow a fixed maximum number of spawned fighters to stay online 24/7 when in hangar bay or close range to mothership, regardless of the owner being online - number to be defined in regards to balancing
- allow a motherships owner/commander/captain to clear the hangar deck with a despawn button
- tractor beam for corpses/wrecks to loot them from onboard
- onboard lights and sounds for red alert when in / approching battle - to be activated/deactivated from captain/commander
- allow battlespeed (120%-150% of normal speed) at the cost of damaging propulsion modified by speed increase and duration of speed increase to not be used extensivly for normal travel
- when reactor and shield upgrades are on their way, please allow them to be upgraded in a way like SI.
- please allow upgrade steps for motherships on lower amounts of minerals (maybe decrease step value by 10 and increase number of steps by 10)
- when drones are on their way for motherships, please think of a way that players can repair them like fighters ( there is already a room in the ship that might be used for drone launch and repair
- please allow mothership & privateer teleporters to interconnect with each other when ships are docked close by
- allow docking between motherships in deep space
- allow docking between motherships and privateers in deep space

Being able to target a team leader and summon the whole team would be a nice way for target summoning. Together with the possibility to charge people already with the summon message if they accept (second accept for payment) and get them automatically added to guest list.

A nice way to reduce the spam factor of summon messages would be to change them to appear like achievments 'The Mothership XXX is trying to summon you...' and with a message in the message box that you can open at will and approve to be summoned.

- add an 'inactive guest' list book that is client sided where you can copy the whole guest list over and back and manage them either ingame or in an external file

- inactive guest list should not be limited in the amount of names that can have an entry - when copying over the lists you could still implement a delay in name processing to keep serverload stable - e.g. 1 second per name

Crew benefits:
Traveling from orbit back planetside is getting quite expensive for a standard mothershipcrew or every regularly traveling passenger.
Please add an option to subscribe to a monthly teleporter flatrate to utilize spacestationTP->planet transport for those players who regularly travel space like mothership crewmates.
In case the orbit pvp zone over calypso is intented for balancing needs - the teleporter could have a mass limitation (eg. only useable without stackables).
Regular traders would then still need fighter pilots for landing.


allow mothership owners to buy more upgrades to their ship:
- onboard biodome
- onboard crafting terminal

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Its a long list i know and some of those listed requests are urgently needed improvements while others are just wishes for a 'once upon a time' scenario.

Thanks for taking your time to read all these suggestions

Kind regards
John

[narfi]

Originally Posted by John Black Knight

allow mothership owners to buy more upgrades to their ship:
- onboard biodome
- onboard crafting terminal

Kind regards
John

This would be huge in helping make space life viable!

With a biodome, you could cater to your crews sweating or hunting needs while the ship wasnt on a mission.

With an onboard crafting terminal you could do the same thing.

I really enjoy my times spent as crew on the Mothership, but I know from experience that time zones make it impossible for the ship to be active 24/7 with the current universe's population.

I can have fun running a mission w/ the mothership and log off, but when I log on the ship is silent, and no one is around. If I had the option to craft or hunt in the ships biodome while no one was around, then I would spend ALOT more time in space.

narfi

[John Black Knight]

On one of the trips of the Normandie i had it happen that someone who was not part of the operating team took place in the co-pilots chair.
I couldnt find out who it was and i couldnt enter my chair or remove that person as currently co-pilot chair is free to enter for everyone. At some point 1 or 2 hours later that person logged out and the chair got free again.

Please make it possible for the commander/captain to see who is on which seat and to boot a person from the ship or station using right click menue options.

Please add a board register, where the commander/captain can see for every person on the guest list if that person is on board (logged in or not) and when that person entered/left the ship.

Please add an onboard counter to meassure the time a registered person was onboard online/offline since that person was added.

[John Black Knight]

One more addition in regards to the traktorbeam suggestion that was made to help looting mobs that were to far out.
It doesnt need to be an automated tractorbeam and it doenst need to be useable from gunner seat - instead it would be great if there were 1-2 seats just for tractorbeams.
and it would be even better if those traktorbeams could not only be used on dead creatures / wrecks but on moving targets as well.
On moving targets they should reduce speed instead of pulling the target and they should be clearly visible in space.

This would be a great tool to mark targets for gunners and keep it in range of the guns for some time.

[John Black Knight]

Please add the option to owner/commander/captain to stop/start broadcasting the H (home) location of the mothership/privateer (only the owner should know at all times where his/her ship is) which is shown on the spacemap.
The reason for this is that with a growing amount of registered people on the guest list it becomes very likely to have one person beyond the guest who could pass on the location to pirates. This person doesnt even need to be on board.


Please extend guest list for motherships to at least 1000 (see suggestions above for a summoning list/active/incactive guest lists).


The owner/commander/captain should have a display showing how many people are currently online in the ship. This is very important to keep a security buffer for escorts in case one gets shot or for crewmates logged on the ship who want to log back in. Utilizing such a counter would give the captain the possibility to keep ~5 slots reserved for variation in crewmates/passengers.
Eg. a mothership could have 45 people on board crew and 20 fighters on escort.

[aia]

Originally Posted by John Black Knight

- disable dragging healthbars in space, its to easy for pirates to navigate by healthbar and staying out of sight, there should be no indication for the presence of other ships except what you can spot in viewable area or using some kind of short range radar still to be implemented

A problem (a general one) is that the distance you see other objects such as ships depends on quality settings. The healthbars can be used the other way around also - to see if you're stalked by a pirate. Though, one solution could be that the healthbars of ships gets removed once the ship is outside radar range.

Another problem I think you noticed us about was that, generally, pirates can see motherships way before motherships can see pirate ships. So here the graphic settings should be so that in space, the distance you are technically possible to see a ship is the same regardless of size of ship - so when a pk:er can see a mothership, the crew on the mothership can see the pk:er.
Not so that a pk:er with watercooled graphic card can see another ship on a looong distance, while the other player struggling with a more normal graphic card won't see the pk:ers ship until it's 50m away.

Originally Posted by John Black Knight

- The kill of a mothership currently leads to a disconnect of most of its crew, please make dying of a large number of avatars in one place a smoother process

I think the disconnects is related to CTD-after-teleporting. In other words, MA should try to debug why some people often get a CTD right after having teleported. (Those of you who have teleported to ancient greece from Next Island probably know what I'm talking about...)

Originally Posted by John Black Knight

- allow docking between motherships in deep space
- allow docking between motherships and privateers in deep space

Curious: Can hangar ships go into deep space? (the area outside the "box"/space map)

[John Black Knight]

Originally Posted by aia

I think the disconnects is related to CTD-after-teleporting. In other words, MA should try to debug why some people often get a CTD right after having teleported. (Those of you who have teleported to ancient greece from Next Island probably know what I'm talking about...)

Curious: Can hangar ships go into deep space? (the area outside the "box"/space map)

You might be right that CTD after TP or death might have to do with 'idle' time on client responce to server after the relocation. And if there are to many clients to be relocated at the same time the system will disconnect them.

No hangar ships cant enter 'deep space' as it is defined within entropia, in my suggestion i was referring to deep space as somewhere out of the bluezones on the map.

[John Black Knight]

Since alot of my crewmates (in gunner seats) have been killed by spacemobs directly hitting through the glass i wish motherships will get security glass upgrade

Next to the suggested onboard voice system an onboard streaming/radio option would be a great thing to have - either as integrated solution or possible 'upgrade'.

There should be a customizable onboard message like on land areas where mothership owners could list their flight schedules, crew and customeroffers and onboard rules of conduct.

A change to motherships to be counted as eventzones and adding them to the eventterminals would be great. Change the name of event terminals to registration terminals and make them avaiable for broader usage.
Registering for a mothership should be customerspecific in regards to duration/number of flights. The conditions should be managed by the mothership owner.

[John Black Knight]

An easy solution for the outofsight attacks from quads would be to reduce the shooting range beyond the visibilty range or treating an attacking ship in general as a larger object making it visible more early on long range.

When out with an upgraded mothership and in the mid of battle its really hard to tell the difference between incomming mob and player damage when the attackers can stay out of sight. Splitting up the incomming messages even more, would help alot on this case as well.
Suggestion: 2 filters for incomming damage 1 for mobs and 1 for players

Other filters that might be needed:
Separate filter for healing/repairing messages
separate filter for system messages, time, pos, log on/off info

We need more chatwindows and the option to assign incomming messages to them and apply the avaiable filters.
With 20-30+ players from different socs onboard of a mothership, each with their own soc chat it gets sometimes really hard to keep track, exspecially since the history of the chatbox is very short. Please move the history to client side and leave it up to the player how long its needed.
Please allow different colors in forcechat for crew, officers, captain/commander.

[soderd]

Make the ships go FASTER!