Capital Class Vessels -- Operation and Ownership.

1. Operation
a. Abandonabilty
b. Primary and Secondary Home Stations
c. Access Control

2. Ownership
a. Build to Order
b. Leasing
c. Joint Ownership

1. Operation
1.a. Abandonability

Abandonability, as I see it, is the ability to abandon. Namely, your capital ship in mid-operation. Ships with docking bays should be "abandonable", allowing the captain of the ship to undock in any ship that might fit inside the capital ship(Limits to this are expressed in 1.b). This would allow a capital-class vessel to server as a mobile, destroyable, operations base.

This is subject to a few rules:
1) The ship's velocity may not be changed without the captain's direct action.
1.1) The captain may not leave the ship when velocity is not zero

These two provide for a ship to effectively serve as a mobile docking bay, and also allow the captain to leave his/her ship so that they may take part in fighter-level action while still owning a capital-class vessel. That is, piloting a capital-class vessel should not be a burden.

2) While the captain is not onboard, a capital ship has full usage of its turrets, but -only- hired NPC's and players are able to fire them.

This means that the capital ship will not be completely defenseless without the captain, but on the other hand, will not have any sort of automated defense systems. Arguably, hired NPC's serve the same purpose, but for the sake of this thread, they are to be considered as players. Therefore, if one does not have NPC's hired to fire your turrets, or players to fire them, they won't fire unless the captain is onboard. However, this assumes that there is a sort of automated defense system, whereby the anti-fighter turrets of a capital ship are fired automatically.

3) Capital-class weapons may not be used without the captain onboard.

Not much to this one. Basically, capital to capital munitions are not to be activated without the captain docked and at the helm.

4) Only the owner or a person with high enough permissions on the access list may pilot the ship(1.c, access list activated only)

Allows other players to assume the role of captain, but keeps players from taking control of the helm without permission.

1.b. Primary and Secondary Home Stations

Capital-class vessels, once available, should be able to be loaded with supplies of all sorts, ships, munitions, repair drones, etc., that enable the ship to be used as a mobile station. Some ships would be more suited for this task than others(A HAC should have less extended fighter operations capabilities than a Carrier-class vessel), but if the capital ship has a docking bay they should be able to support fighters to at least a minimal extent. Therefore, ships with docking bays should be able to serve as a secondary home station.

A secondary home station is one which is given a higher priority than a primary home station(stations), but only if it exists. Secondary home stations should be toggleable, where you may only have one, but you also have the option to have zero, unlike primary home stations. If you have a capital ship set as your secondary home station, and that is destroyed, you should be moved to your primary home station.
Capital ships should only be able to sell what they stock(prices set by the owner) when a player is destroyed and returns to their secondary home station. If a capital ship runs out of ships, the player should be given the option to returning to their primary home station (I think it would be better to have the player given that option whenever they have a secondary home station set, though) or to their secondary home station.

1.c. Access Control

In order to prevent abuse of 1.a, capital-class vessels should be outfitted with an access control system. This is simply a list that specifies who can do what on a capital ship, set by the owner(s). This access list should make use of wildcards(such as the * and ? in windows), allow <> to specify factions, and permit something to serve as a NOT expression. Example:

[Helm]
Scuba Steve 9.0
silentsuicide

[Turrets]
PMCmember*
<Tunguska>
Helm

[Amenities]
PMCmember*
<TPG>
Helm

[Dock]
*
NOT <Corvus>

Helm -- This is where the captain's of the ship are. They can't necessarily modify the access list(They have to be owners to do that), but they can fly the ship.

Turrets -- These people can fire the turrets. In this example, anyone who's name starts with PMCmember, is of the faction Tunguska, and is in the Helm list can fire the turrets.

Amenities -- The ship's repair bays, reload and rearm facilities, and ship shop. In this list, PMCmember*, anyone from TPG, and the Helmsmen can purchase ships from the capital ship, repair ships, and reload and rearm.

Dock -- Basic docking rights. In this example, anyone who isn't of the faction Corvus can dock.

The default for the access list should be deny, whereby "NOT *" and just not listing something do the same thing. Also, once docked, there should be an area to view(or modify, if you own the ship) the access control list.

2. Ownership
2.a. Build to Order
This is the previously stated method of semi-crafting capital-class vessels, whereby you take a mission, pay some number of credits, and gather such and such materials. Then the station builds the ship for you. In this case, you are the single owner.

2.b. Leasing
Leasing a capital ship would work similar to leasing a car*[1] -- you enter a contract for a certain period of time with a regular payment. When your contract is up, you would have the option of turning in your capital ship, buying it, or re-leasing. Debt is payed at the station you leased your capital ship from, and if not payed in a timely manner, the interest rate on your lease will inflate your debt.

Unpaid debt would affect a player's credit score -- just a number indicating how quickly and completely you pay back your lease debt (Opening up for loans and the introduction of credit). The longer you allow your debt to increase, the less the station your are in debt to likes you(faction hit). Refuse to pay too long and the station will begin to place bounties on the player's head, refuse to allow them to dock, and generally be mean towards them -- laughing as the player's credit score is trashed and other stations begin to not allow them to purchase stuff without cash on hand. But! If you pay off your humongarious debt in cash to one of the station guards, 80% of your previous faction will return(They're still a bit upset, but happy you paid. Adjustable for balance issues), your credit score will receive a slight recovery, and bounties on your head will be removed.

Back to capital ships: Once leased, a capital ship is mostly yours. If at any time you drop into horrible standing with a station(may vary from station to station), your capital ship will eject you and all passengers from its insides, and fly back to the station it was leased from, leaving you with a hefty payment for violating the contract. Also, if the ship is destroyed, you must pay out the rest of the lease, as well as a fee to cover the remainder of the cost of the ship.

2.c. Joint Ownership
Joint ownership is only possible with Build to Order. The joint owners should be specified by being grouped at the time the Build mission is taken. Joint owners allows both(or more) owners to control the access list, as well as always having docking priveleges. The monetary cost is split evenly, and they materials needed are given as objectives to the whole group. It's up to the group who gathers the materials.

*[1] I've never actually taken a car lease in my life, so if I'm a bit inaccurate here, excuse me.

{EDIT} Darn notepad wordwrap.

i like the general idea of this sugestion, but i'm not too keen on the credit ratting idea. i'd rather see leased cap ships just deduct a set amount of credits from your account every x time units, and if you can't pay, you loose standing with that faction. then once your faction drops too low, your ship mutanies (in the maner you previously described).

also rather than have cap ships become completely stationary when their captains depart, i'd rather they continue to operate normaly. that way you can leave your ship in the hands of your trusted first officer, while you take care of some personal buisness witout committing the ship to doing nothing but wate for you to return. This would be especialy usefull for guild affiliated cap. ships.

also there should be a way to set some basic AI rules for abandoned cap ships in case trusted personell are not curently available (hold position, follow this coarse, defend that 'roid, etc) this could probably best be done with a simple scripting language (i think that has been previously sugested in some form)

You don't necessarily *need* to have the capship stationary without the owner in it. Just add a trusted player/hired NPC into the Helm access and allow them to control it. The issue is when there is no Helm-listed personell onboard the ship, all needed there is to add extra personell to helm, or let the ship sit there. M'pologies if I wasn't clear enough on that.

I agree with steve's post in its entirety.

A question for clarification: What exactly do you mean by
"The ship's velocity may not be changed without the captain's
direct action."? Is it the ship's velocity along its current
flight path, or is it the ship's entire velocity vector?

Well done Steve, seems very thorough.

The only thing I'd like to comment is the access lists. Guilds definitely would like to have a way to give access to the guild as a whole (they could be treated like factions). The other thing that you don't really cover is faction standings. A Serco ship that refuses to let Itani dock, should still allow a Serco-admired/Itani-hated player in. You could solve that by defining "faction" as "600+ standing with faction", or you could make faction an extra option like this:

[Turrets]
<Serco 800+>
Helm

By current velocity, I mean the entire velocity vector. So, for argument's sake, say that the captain leaves the ship while it's traveling at 50m/s towards the wormhole. Unless someone else takes command of the ship, or the captain returns to the helm, the ship will continue to go 50m/s towards the wormhole, and then onward ad infinitum.

Excellent idea with the factions, Cygnus. That method would be a lot more flexible than just "only Xang-Xi" and "only Aeolus". If one wanted everyone of a faction to dock, just put in <Faction -1000>.

Wow, Steve. Nice.
I just want to be able to customize the bar's name - no more "ready room." How about the "Really Really Ready Room" or "LeberMac's Lounge Control Deck" - as well as naming the ship itself.

Yay it's all about the personalization in 4434 as in the 2000-ies. Better learn the right trade buzzword for it right away: P13N ;-)

I agree completely minus the credit rating and interest payments stuff. I'm with Lord Q on that point.

Bump for great justice.

For great justice!

Leber;

Since a bar makes you drunk, and drunks make poor pilots, shouldn't it be the UNready room?

"Nigel's Unready Room - Clothing Optional"

I like the sound of that.

~D.
"Nigel"

I like the idea too, except that if getting a capship is so complicated then no one would take it into a battle where it really counted. If you need to spend 2 hours to get a teradon would you really take it to get slaughtered in a BS? because no matter how good you are a BS will eventually get you killed.
What I think is that they should simply have very high prices, and maybe you could have special ones that would reuire some ressources. The prices while subject to change should be (in my honest opinion).
1 million range for the Trident (~50x the price of a moth)
4 millions for a Teradon
5 for a Connie
7 for the Cruisers (though a Teradon seems to be stronger than a cruiser, these guys need one BIG GUN, personally I would buy a Teradon over the Cruiser)

Not sure if any of you think those prices are too low... sure a lot of player can buy a frigate at these prices, but remember how many ships you loose in pvp fight everyday, and think could you afford to loose even 1/5 as many frigates?

As for the special ones, say if you want a lighter version of your frigate you can bring in Xith, to make the lighter alloy. Also once the properties of different ores are defined we can apply those properties to the ships.

The teradon is stronger, but the HAC is able to carry fighters. The two ships have different roles. Much like how an aircraft carrier functions with destroyers/battleships, a HAC needs teradons for protection.

yeah I understand that, and while a faction leader might prefer a HAC, me lowly member that I am I would prefer a Teradon

My current beef with the cappies is that they're near unkillable when not engaged in battle. I could just devote my Connie to trade and make millions off one run at no risk.

And there aren't too many fixes for the problem.

Vastly reduce armor: Would take away from the epic feeling of a capship

Make it obscenly expesive: Just gives all the power to the uber-rich, which I don't think is healthy for an MMORPG. And I want a cappy too.

*Disclaimer: Poster has not read the entire article*

Just to respond to Fooz'z post: Actually, the Tridents are ridiculously easy to take down. I've been taking down probably 15-20 a week (might be a bit high on the top end.... but at least 15).

Not sure about the Connie's cuz I never see 'em in grey.

edit; ok read a couple posts as re: BP... why wouldn't one send a cap for repairs in BP? Cycling your forces and whatnot? In warfare, unless completely neccesary, no-one leaves a single unit in place until it gets wiped out (unless you're running some peripheral strategy). You move pieces in and out as is needed, and replace the broken ones with healthy ones if you can.

I agree with the Border Skirmish/Border Patrol bit:

It doesn't make sense to stay in-sector with a capital class ship that is at critical shield level. In fact, as soon as a significant portion of your turrets is gone, you'd be very lightehaded about them if you didn't high-tail it out of the hot zone.

Besides, capital class ships should be more expensive than what Zed suggested, since you can make the money for a Constellation in less than half a day (that's 12 hours) if you put your mind to it.

I think that the Constellation needs to have its standard armor reduced. It may be a capital ship, but it is also a commercial vessel. Sure there may be military transport models with current or better armor, but the run-of-the-mill Constellation should need protection from pirate Teradons. Also, remember people that you are still all flying fighter-craft. I see pirates as having their own little, mostly militaristic convoys, including Teradons to take down things like Constellations. 1 Teradon in 1 sector should be a serious threat to the average Constellation if neither has fighter support...

I don't think that the prices I suggested are too low, if you put them too high you will give the chance to won one only to the rich, as it stands 1 milions is pretty hard to get. For example I traded in 1200 luxury goods for 600k benefit. it took 10 trips in a moth, in a trident it woud have taken 4. And the trident is slower so it would have taken at least 7 trips with just to reimburse its own cost. Somethin that the moth did in 1/3 of its first trip. Each trip of the connie would be worth 500k, so again you would have to do 10 trips. Sure there are more profitable routes an' all but I think the prices were pretty reasonnable

As for the combat capships maybe the prices could be higher I am not that used to the pvp dynamic yet.

And yeah I agree with you LC, the connie is way too strong