I think the idea was originally attributed to Spellcast.

But if there is to be such a mission tree as a requirement for flying a capship... who's got ideas?

What are the things you need to be a good captain?

1) Knowing when to issue a retreat.
2) Placing yourself for maximum battle effectivenes
3) Ability to manoeuvre a rather cumbersome object with some sense of purpose
4) Ability to be aware of your surroundings (Capships should have extra camera views... or we should get some camera controls...)

Anyone dispute these? or have ideas for possible missions based on these concepts? Or extra things a Captain should know?

-Zoras

I think everyone should have a cap ship!
All these silly restrictions are just silly!

I'd love to see some ideas along these lines.

Ou! Ou! I've got an EXCELLENT idea!
Fuck missions. Missions are a sure-fire way to get to the point where vendetta is little more than a bunch of rather boring single player games linked vaguely by a unified chat system.

No, what really needs to happen is a sort of event-driven system for advancement, XP gain and all sorts of other fun stuff.

Allow me to elaborate on my EXCELLENT idea:
Suppose you find a guide. Any guide will do, although I'd suggest one with vague role-playing experience. Like ctish or somming. Stick him in charge of the Itani Military. Now he/she/it has the fun job of setting up and carrying out small, large, and global events involving convoys, stations, bot hunts, roid hunts, spy jobs and kidnapped scientists*, by participating in which people will be able to gain xp, raise in rank of the organization they want to advance in and actually interact with actual live people! Amazing, innit?
Then get rid of missions. Now, when a newbie comes into the game, instead of being greeted by the impersonal and cold typing of a brainless computer offering him boring and context-lacking missions they'll be faced with an offer to join an itani collector hunt, or maybe get in on the action of a trade convoy heading off into gray space. On the other side of the spectrum, a pirate guide might be informed of this planned convoy by a naughty, naughty trader and send out a call to his buddy poirats to come camp out at a wormhole the convoy's likely to head through. Violence ensues, with lots of fun and excitement to this entirely new person. Hurrah! Of course, once he grows up a bit he's no longer interested in silly convoys or effortless popping of collectors, no, he wants to go into the military! Well, good news! There's an incursion party forming right now! We're off to rescue our kidnapped scientist* so hurry up and get your butt over here! You'll be the guy with the repair gun in an off sector, ready to help injured team-mates get back to fighting faster!
What's that? You've deviated from the task you've been assigned and went and got yourself killed? Well, no promotion for you! Now, Newbie Bob, he proved himself as a great healer and next time, he'll be a guy that swarm-spams the trident transporting the scientist. Who knows, maybe he'll work his way up to being one of the guys that engages the smaller fighters before the week is through!

Hey, maybe if he sticks to it and makes a name for himself he might end up a friggy pilot in major battles in a year or so! Good for him!

*The scientist idea is coming from the pretty obvious fact that the manufacturing robots of the vendetta universe run pretty much on their own, since the people that built them are long dead and no-one else thought it prudent to educate themselves in the inner workings of these mechanisms, since, hey, it all works, we're getting stuff! Obviously, this state don't last, but alas, there are only a handful of scientists in the whole universe that can fix the damn thing, but what's this? They're all on the other side?! Bullocks! Kidnapping time!

PS: MISSIONS MUST DIE. Almost as hard as the faction system and mining.

Wow... a constructive post from genka...

Will the wonders never cease?

Don't worry, oh lord of reposting crap ideas, I'll make it up with plenty of posts even more useless than the one that started this whole thread.
Don't worry about me, I can handle the pressure.

They should make you a guide.

OMG! Genka... A guide...

/me shudders, and then runs

perhaps the cap ship missions could be implemented this way:

first add a new lisence catagory representing command XP.

then there are a set of realy dull "driving school" missions that are designed to fermilirase the player with the UI of cap ships. Once the first mission thread is completed the player will be awarded enough XP to have a level 1 command lisence. Thus allowing him to purchas the smallest cap ships (i'mk thinking patrole boats barly bigger than a bohemoth). Then additional missions canbecome available only to players with a requesit command lisence level. these missions would include, convoy escort duty, attacks on the hive, freight missions where the cargo is smaller ships etc.

Also make the driving school mission tree only become available at capitle stations, and only if the player has a mimimum level 10 combat, and +800 faction.

This will allow anyone who wants to own a cap ship and is willing to dedicate some effort to getting one to have one, while still preventing any idiot who got invited to a couple BP groups from being able to get one.

The fist mission should give the player the cap ship equivelent of a bus (perhaps an bohemoth with a single AGT turret). Then the player has to do some basic things with the cap ship UI (load and unload cargo, adjuct the AI firecontrole, invite a character (in this case an NPC bot) to joinjhis crew, etc.

The second mission should require the player to manuver through a coarse (posably something similar to the sedina racetracks, but alternatively a large 'roid field would do) within a time limit and without taking any damage.

the third mission would be a combat mission where the player has to kill x bots, or some similar objective.

after the third mission the player should have enough XP to buy the lowest of the cap ships (again, these ships are more like multi person fighters than actual cap ships)

And by runnind cap ship oriented missions he can raise his command level and thus gain acess to larger and more powerfull cap ships.

EDIT: apparently LordQ posted while i've been typing this monstrosity :P some of the ideas are similar

Here's a possibility for capital ships, split them into 2 groups.
the first group are military vessels, and can only be accessed if you are in a military. There would be 4 basic militaries (UIT, Serco, Itani, and Corvus) and there would be conditions where a guild could set up as a sub-military of one of the main 4.
the second group of capital ships are civillian vessels, these would have less armor and weapons ability, be more expensive, but have more cargo capacity and be easier(less steps) to get access to.

For the military vessels the progression to get them would work something like this. (i'll explain the guild conditions farther down)

-at combat level 7 if you have a high enough reputatation with that faction you could join the military by signing up at one of the capital stations of that faction. once in the military you would have access to the fighter level military missions and also recieve a discount on sone ships and weapons, but your standing with the opposite nation automatically becomes 0 with a MAX of 0 (nations are set up as opposing in the following way, Serco vs Itani and UIT vs Corvus). If your reputation falls below the cutoff point you loose access to your military carrer and all your military level badges are removed and all military XP levels take a 50% loss. If you ever drop below -599 your military XP levels are all reset to 0.

There would be several fighter level missions, and possibly some of those missions would include being based from a capital ship (NPC or player controlled, i'll get to that in a minute as well)
--once you join a military you get a new "faction" added to your character info for the military you joined. Completing "military missions" is the only way to increase this faction.
--Military fighter class missions would include things like the border patrol, CtC escort duties, Flying cover for a capital ship.

-When your ranking with your military faction is high enough you gain access to a series of capital ship training and testing misions, and give you temporary conrol of a series of capital ships (when you dock with the ship you are assigned to you are placed on its command deck, to complete the mission you have to exit it and redock with the station, taking a capital ship outside of a defined mission zone for the training would result in a -1000 rating with both the military faction and the nation faction in question, resulting in you being ejected from the capital ship in your fighter).
You would use these missions to gain XP and badges in capital ship command. Each of the following missions would be availible as either a test or a practice mission. the practice missions would not give any XP, but there would be no penalty for failure; the test missions would give Xp and a badge reward for success, but penalize you in terms of military reputation if you fail. loosing enough military reputation would make the missions no longer availible.
**- gunnery -use your main batteries to destroy X targets in Y time to pass; requires you to select targets based on what firing arcs your guns can hit, taking recharge times into account
**- maneuvering -plot a course to get your capital ship through these waypoints in asteroid field Q within Y minutes, how good are you at planning for inertia and acceleration
**- intercept planning -Capital Ship R is moving from <random station A> to <random station B> in 10 minutes [station A and B would both be within 2 systems of the capital station you are based at]. Leave this station and position yourself to intercept and destroy it before it reaches its destination. for this mission damaging it to 30% before it gets into its destination sector will be considered "destroying" it. Under no circumstances should your target actually be destroyed.
**- command & control - you are assigned a "wing" of fighters and a carrier. (these might be NPC's, or they could be other players working on thier military faction in fighters depending on who is availible) You are then given a series of objectives such as "destroy this drone" , "scout these sectors", "escort this ship" and a time limit to complete them in. To do so you use the capship GUI to assign these missions to your wing of fighters.
**- Final Exam <this mission may only be taken as practice or a test once you have completed all the above missions> You are assigned a capital ship with a wing of fighters and given a search and destroy objective for another capital ship. You know roughly where it was XX minutes ago, your job is to take everything you have learned and locate it, then destroy (or damage it to a certain %) within a specified time limit or before it reaches a certain destination.

Once you have completed your "final exam" you can purchase a few smallish capital ships through your military at a significant discount and take capital ship missions.

If you have purchased a capital ship that can hold multiple fighters you will be able to create a fighter wing that you can add/remove players from (similar to a group, invites must be accepted by player in the fighter etc etc) and use the capital ship GUI to assign members of your fighter wing missions. (I forsee having a fighter wing to be neccesary for some of the capital ship missions.

completing capital ship missions will give you more capital command XP, and as your levels in it rise you gain access to bigger and better capital ships.(I havent got a clue what these might actually be at this point, things like a larger version of the border patrol maybe? The only one i can say for certain would be the "training ship" mission where you give control of your ships fighter wing to the server and go to sectors it specifies so that it can use your ship as a base for fighter level military missions)

Guilds can become sub-militaries by having the commander, his Lt's and a majority (minimum 6) of the council have a specified level of reputation in the military of the nation they want to join with. (the required number of council members and the officers in question would have to vote/somehow specify that they were in favor of becoming a submilitary) Once a guild has become a sub-military all members of the guild would gain the military faction and be reset to at least a +200 with the nation in question. Regardless of the guildmembers level he/she would have access to the military fighter class missions, (tho the capital control missions would still require the regular levels), and recieve a military discount on ships and equipment. On the other hand anyone in the guild who got thier faction reputation below 0 reputation with the nation in question would be removed from the guild automatically. Additionally for new members to join the guild they would have to have a 0 or higher reputation with the nation in question.

NoN-military capital ships would be further split into 2 additional sub-groups. armed ships and trade ships, and would become availible once you passed a higher level (i'm thinking 10 or 11) in either combat piloting or trade (you figure out which one is required for what :P) even the armed non-military ships would have fewer and smaller turrets, lower thrust, and less hull than the corresponding military grade ships. (i'm thinking use the same hull model and have a few different versions) on the other hand your reputation doesn't come into play as much for getting them, and you dont have to go through the military missions to access them.
Trade capital ships would have no weapons other than a few L-ports.

There would be no missions for the non-military ships except maybe the maneuvering and gunnery practice missions. Additional larger ships would become availible at higher and higher trade or combat levels. Additionally capital ships not purchased through the military would be more expensive because the military isnt subsidizing the costs. (just another little balancer for the fact that you dont have to go through the grind of the missions and the reputation levels)

In response to Genka(NOTE THIS IS A LITTLE OFF TOPIC)

I played an MMORPG from around 1997-2004ish which had something called the VOLUNTEER SYSTEM.

Basically, your most experienced players who knew every single of the one million and three details of how to best play the game applied to be a volunteer.

The volunteers job was to help people. Whenever someone needed help(got stuck and unable to return to town through ANY means, experienced a bug, someone called them the N word seven too many times) they could use the options menu to request assistance, and if the volunteer would listen to their questions and answer them or use special volunteer-only tools to fix something that was definitely wrong. Basically they were of the same class as VO's guides.

They were sometimes monitored by officials of the game and fired if they did a bad job or complimented on a good job, and sometimes "promoted" to have more powers.

In VO terms a similar system would be like this: a guide starts off in july answering questions newbies ask and doing stuff you'd normally try to get mentor points for. In august after putting in time helping people out, Guild Software decides to bump him up to Guide 2.0, letting him have the ability to add/remove bots from a sector and a couple of other things that would help him fix problems such as CTC bots being lost in B8. Another few months go by and he's done a great job, so he gets the ability to set up and execute a few spontaneous RP-oriented missions every week.

Volunteers did not get any bonuses other than respect from the community, the great amount of fun in "writing" the storyline of the game by providing interactive goals and challenges for the players, and the satisfaction of knowing they played an important part of making that 100,000+ players worldwide game such a success. The volunteer system was later suspended by morons who bought out the original company who designed that MMO and the game turned to crap. It made me realize that it wasn't the GAME that was great, it was the PLAYERS AND THOSE WHO RAN THE GAME ON THE INSIDE WHO MADE IT GREAT

I would fully support such a system here or simply hiring more guides and giving them more powers and more flexibility in using those powers to strengthen the community and let us all have a more fun experience when inside the Vendetta Universe.