What if (Just like Agent Smith in the Matrix) the guides and devs could "jump into" a specific bot or station guard or Hive Queen or NPC trader and control them? This would not be apparently obvious, the guide/dev control would not be visible to the player(s).

Think of this:
a) You're hanging around in Sedina B-8 and a hive queen (followed by her entourage) jumps in and starts attacking! Obsidian cackles madly at the controls of the Hive Queen...
b) You're headed for the CtC cargo ship and all of a sudden it jumps to a different sector, instead of the straight-thru route.
c) You're pirating NPC cargo ships when suddenly one of the passive Atlases whirls around and opens up on you with AGT and flares.

I think that would not only add some interesting content but would spice things up a bit. Plus make things more fun for the guides while they are "working."

> b) You're headed for the CtC cargo ship and all of a sudden it jumps to a different sector, instead of the straight-thru route.

That one smells too much like favoritism. Guide interference in CtC would have to be completely balanced, and I doubt anyone would ever agree that it was balanced.

Currently, I don't think Guides can take over existing NPCs, but I believe they can create a new ship of just about any type for them to pilot.

guides already have too much control and not enough rules, Nay on suggestion.

We can't jump into NPCs, that's correct. I agree that it could be interesting, but I also see that it could be open at least to the suspicion of abuse.

We can make nearly any ship, with some restrictions, but can't make NPC names (with the asterisk)and so forth.

johnhawl218: If you have specific complaints, please email the devs directly so that they can investigate via the logs. It is important that *everyone* follows the rules.

..umm, not too sure on NPCs in general, but guide-piloted cappies would of course be VERY COOL!! *hint* *hint*

=:O

We actually can pilot the cap ships, but they behave as single-player ships and cannot accept passengers/gunners as yet. Otherwise this would have been a workaround to the whole Sedina cap ship battle issue. We'll get there.

I think the advantages of a guide adding unique reactions like this far outweighs the possibility of abuse. If there ARE reports of a guide being overly assistive to one side, those can be dealt with.

..oh, and another point: the whole fact that these people are "Guides" obviously implies some level of implicit trust in them... hopefully we can expect any player who attains such a position of trust to respect their powers, and use them only for Good

I have no idea how hard this would be to code. Potentially very hard, depending on the basic structure of the NPC's.