Forums » Suggestions
How much does Guild SW expect the players to do on their own?
I've been thinking a little along these lines, and perhaps the developers of this game are waiting for us to come up with more events that are successful, and then they'll take them and run with them. They may already be planning to do things like this, and I just don't know about it.
Anyway:
Racing has been popular. The Deneb Run, the Corporate Sector Run, tube racing, etc. is something that is essentially player content. Racing is great except for the times when certain a-holes show up just to be spoilsports.
Nation wars and last-man-standing competitions are rather fun and get a good crowd.
Buswars are fun, except when people show up in swarm rags to pick off the players.
Mining events are great, where two or more teams are tasked with heading out to "Go get X amount of Y, you have 30 minutes."
Non-combat-related content: Like Broma-Ba Slick's "Broma Transport - We Buy Ore™" venture. He was able to create a kind-of-business within VO that would purchase ores of varying types for miners, and then hold them for eventual sale at a profit. I hope I'm not giving something away by saying that he had a portion of the TGFT website which would handle some of the coordination, which tied in nicely.
So, on to my suggestion:
Make part of the PCC be able to structure events like this. Give players the tools to create things like the following for specific missions:
"Starting gates"/"Ending gates" for races, with timers on how long the gates stay active, possibly the ability to exclude certain ship types & equipment. Automated prizes/rewards. Can't do this in station sectors. Perhaps the gates are widgets that are placed in the mission-taker's hold, and when they are dropped (jettisoned), they create a gate that is oriented around the player, with the player in the center of the gate. Possibly have options for "checkpoints" as well, so that you can ensure that people go through checkpoints 1,2,3 and 4 on their way from "start point A" to "finish point B."
"Arena Bowls" for war-events, where the FF rules go out the window and you can't enter until the "mission" is over. (But of course you can exit) The "bowl" is made out of the same material as the "exit" blue forcefields in stations. Can be a sphere-shaped enclosed area, or it could be different shapes and/or sizes. Can't do this in station sectors or wormhole sectors. Automated prizes/rewards again. To create the game, the mission-taker gets a widget that, when dropped, creates the sphere. Everyone inside the sphere's radius is considered part of the nation war mission (even bots!) and the FF rules are overridden.
"BusWar" Missions, must be taken as a group, you become invulnerable to anyone outside the group, and you can't damage anyone who's not in your group, but FF rules within the group go out the window. Mission should enforce a specific ship selection until the mission is aborted or ended. Must be in station sector, strike force reactions to this group are disabled. Group must be created before event, no joining group after event has started. Perhaps be able to set victory conditions, like first to 10 kills or whatnot.
(This one will be hard) "Mining Combat" missions, where two groups are formed and they compete to gather ore. FF can be enabled or disabled for this, to make it a peaceful mining event or a warlike mining event. In order to automate this, there would need to be a way to keep track of the ore, so perhaps there is a kind of collector bot that gathers up the "target" ore and keeps track of teams. Perhaps it relies on a "Host" player who takes the mission, divides the teams, gathers the ore and calculates the score.
Would these be feasible? I know that there was some work being done on a "racecourse construction set" or something of the sort on the test server at one time, even if it WAS a dev-only thing.
Anyway:
Racing has been popular. The Deneb Run, the Corporate Sector Run, tube racing, etc. is something that is essentially player content. Racing is great except for the times when certain a-holes show up just to be spoilsports.
Nation wars and last-man-standing competitions are rather fun and get a good crowd.
Buswars are fun, except when people show up in swarm rags to pick off the players.
Mining events are great, where two or more teams are tasked with heading out to "Go get X amount of Y, you have 30 minutes."
Non-combat-related content: Like Broma-Ba Slick's "Broma Transport - We Buy Ore™" venture. He was able to create a kind-of-business within VO that would purchase ores of varying types for miners, and then hold them for eventual sale at a profit. I hope I'm not giving something away by saying that he had a portion of the TGFT website which would handle some of the coordination, which tied in nicely.
So, on to my suggestion:
Make part of the PCC be able to structure events like this. Give players the tools to create things like the following for specific missions:
"Starting gates"/"Ending gates" for races, with timers on how long the gates stay active, possibly the ability to exclude certain ship types & equipment. Automated prizes/rewards. Can't do this in station sectors. Perhaps the gates are widgets that are placed in the mission-taker's hold, and when they are dropped (jettisoned), they create a gate that is oriented around the player, with the player in the center of the gate. Possibly have options for "checkpoints" as well, so that you can ensure that people go through checkpoints 1,2,3 and 4 on their way from "start point A" to "finish point B."
"Arena Bowls" for war-events, where the FF rules go out the window and you can't enter until the "mission" is over. (But of course you can exit) The "bowl" is made out of the same material as the "exit" blue forcefields in stations. Can be a sphere-shaped enclosed area, or it could be different shapes and/or sizes. Can't do this in station sectors or wormhole sectors. Automated prizes/rewards again. To create the game, the mission-taker gets a widget that, when dropped, creates the sphere. Everyone inside the sphere's radius is considered part of the nation war mission (even bots!) and the FF rules are overridden.
"BusWar" Missions, must be taken as a group, you become invulnerable to anyone outside the group, and you can't damage anyone who's not in your group, but FF rules within the group go out the window. Mission should enforce a specific ship selection until the mission is aborted or ended. Must be in station sector, strike force reactions to this group are disabled. Group must be created before event, no joining group after event has started. Perhaps be able to set victory conditions, like first to 10 kills or whatnot.
(This one will be hard) "Mining Combat" missions, where two groups are formed and they compete to gather ore. FF can be enabled or disabled for this, to make it a peaceful mining event or a warlike mining event. In order to automate this, there would need to be a way to keep track of the ore, so perhaps there is a kind of collector bot that gathers up the "target" ore and keeps track of teams. Perhaps it relies on a "Host" player who takes the mission, divides the teams, gathers the ore and calculates the score.
Would these be feasible? I know that there was some work being done on a "racecourse construction set" or something of the sort on the test server at one time, even if it WAS a dev-only thing.
I tried to make a version of every single one of these missions. The only thing remotely successful was the Deneb Run and Corporate RUn automated rounds, for practice and money. The others got halted by lack of features or a bug. The Buswar event had no way of guaranteeing bus only participants.
Biggest problem is: Is there even a way to make PCC mission group missions?
Biggest problem is: Is there even a way to make PCC mission group missions?
Well, that was kind of my point. Let's build this kind of functionality into the system sooner rather than later.
Oh, I know. I was just giving my own reasons :)
Yes.
I don't think Guild SW EXPECTS players to do anything on their own. We begged for the ability to create content and they're trying to make it happen for us. I think that's pretty amazing, considering how much they have on their plate right now.
It's not perfect, but it's not finished yet either. There are lots of features to be added to the PCC, but it was given to us because it is capable of some basic functionality already.
It's not perfect, but it's not finished yet either. There are lots of features to be added to the PCC, but it was given to us because it is capable of some basic functionality already.
That's kinda what I was saying, a list of feature suggestions for PCC Capabilities.
The PCC forum is already amassing feature suggestions. Many excellent ideas there.
There are two game features that would help a lot in organizing various events:
1: Pre/post event stat collector. For stuff like races, this will make trivial the logistics of finding if someone died during a race, how many kills you got during a roid war, etc. I have started writing code for SkyCommand to do this, but it would be much better to have in-game (and I don't currently have a machine to run a VO-bot on).
2: A way of temporarily changing standings. Taken to its logical extreme (for combat events), anyone in the same group/team as you should be friendly, and anyone in another team in the same event should be hostile. Friendlyt fire messing up events will become less of an issue when VO gets 10+x more players if teams become more nationalistic, but right now it's a real party pooper!
CX
1: Pre/post event stat collector. For stuff like races, this will make trivial the logistics of finding if someone died during a race, how many kills you got during a roid war, etc. I have started writing code for SkyCommand to do this, but it would be much better to have in-game (and I don't currently have a machine to run a VO-bot on).
2: A way of temporarily changing standings. Taken to its logical extreme (for combat events), anyone in the same group/team as you should be friendly, and anyone in another team in the same event should be hostile. Friendlyt fire messing up events will become less of an issue when VO gets 10+x more players if teams become more nationalistic, but right now it's a real party pooper!
CX
I like Lexicon's ideas better, Cygnus.
The guides have requested a command to temporarily alter faction standings for the reasons mentioned. It's a good idea, just not a priority at the moment.
Just to clarify, the title of this thread isn't meant to sound petulant and snippy, but I guess it does. Ahh well.
I will have to checkout the PCC forum area. Perhaps that is a better place for this, anyway.
I will have to checkout the PCC forum area. Perhaps that is a better place for this, anyway.
It did sound that way to me. The opening paragraph supported that perception, but to a lesser degree by far.
I probably would have passed over it, but they were tearing the roof off the building where I work (on the top floor) today in order to replace it. I thought I'd lose my mind from the noise.
Anyway, please do go to the PCC forum where ideas for features are needed and welcome.
I probably would have passed over it, but they were tearing the roof off the building where I work (on the top floor) today in order to replace it. I thought I'd lose my mind from the noise.
Anyway, please do go to the PCC forum where ideas for features are needed and welcome.
I always thought an arena would be nice of some sort. A complex that can hold nation wars, bus wars, last man standing competitions, etc. Maybe even have a place for "stands" where you can watch without having to engage. Sort of like the Roman Colosseum. You can pay to enter and to get a spot to seat (like after you've been eliminated). It would have a dynamic link to the news section and would automatically add news of winners and such to the news. Once a week a mission would show up for Deneb Run, Corporate Sector Run, Last Man standing, etc etc. Not really sure how it would be funded whether there can be a donation system or whether it would be funded by the station there.
It might make the game more interesting if it could spawn cap ships for the nation wars but you had to supply the materials in time before the event or you don't get a cap ship. Just a thought.
It might make the game more interesting if it could spawn cap ships for the nation wars but you had to supply the materials in time before the event or you don't get a cap ship. Just a thought.
mom has a Deneb Run mission. :)
Sweet, really? How does it work? Is it running on the test server?
no. It's Deliverator-based, so it needs momerath to be sitting at a computer to babysit Deliverator; it is also not "publicly available", so one cannot start the mission on their own, they need momerath or someone versed in Deliverator-speak to make it available.
It's a start though. And there is this hopefully. Eventually. Maybe. Only PCC members can see this
I actually made a guide command to start it, miharu. It worked well the last time I played with it (didn't require babysitting), but it needed more testing and polishing, which is what really takes the time. After I've dealt with the more urgent problems on my plate, I'll take a look at dusting it off. I've also been meaning to make a guide mission (maybe we could make it available to pcc too) that presents a menu in the mission log for stuff like spawning bots and adjusting factions.
Heh, niiiiice. /me likes that mission idea.