Okay, this is a relatively long post, but I've done my best to think it through carefully and present it clearly. It's a brainstorm I just wanted to share as I was thinking of the upcoming 3.3 and the new mission/faction system that was going to be implemented. I'm not saying that I think this is the way it *should* be done, but I wonder if my brainstorm is anywhere close to what the devs have planned. Feel free to critique/pick apart/add to.

CIVILIANS

When a player begins a new game, they begin as a "Civilian" of a particular government. They are free to do whatever they wish, pursue whatever skills, missions, or endeavors they choose. Through their actions and missions they decide to accept, they could end up joining a particular faction within a government, becoming a pirate, or even defecting to another government altogether. Depending on their actions, a player from any nation would potentially have access to all ships and weapons. However, when a new player started the game, they would have *only* the five following ships available to them:

EC-88
Centurion
Wraith
Atlas
Centaur

And *only* the following three weapons:
Gov't Issue Plasma Cannon
Ion Blaster
Phased Blaster

All batteries/engine types would be avaliable. These would be standard "Civilian" equipment. In order to use more advanced weapons, players would need to complete a series of 3-4 missions in order to get a specific "certification." The missions could be picked up in virtually any sector, and would involve practicing safe usage of the weapon on a practice bot in several different situations. (e.g. CRC mission #2; you must score a hit on this practice bot with the Jackhammer rocket from a range of at least 300m, if you take any splash damage the mission fails and the weapon is confiscated). Also, players would have to have a certain government faction standing in order to attempt the certification missions in the first place. The following weapons would be available to Civilians provided they had sufficient standing with their government and successfully completed the certification missions:

Civilian Missile Certification (CMC); Yellowjacket, Gemini

Proximity Mine Certification (PMC); Proximity Mines

Civilian Rocket Certification (CRC); Jackhammer Rocket

Civilian Advanced Energy Weapons Certification (CAEWC); Charged Cannon, Rail Gun

Civilian Heavy Weapons Certification (CHWC); Gatling Cannon, Plasma Cannon

The certifications are listed in order from least difficult to obtain to most difficult. Faction points could be gained for a particular government by destroying bots and pirates within that government's territory, destroying enemies of that government, by completing missions for that government (courier missions, escort missions, etc.) and by trading in and out of that government's territory.

If a player completed enough trading missions, he would have the Neutral Marauder made available for him to buy in particular sectors.

MILITARY

If a Civilian gained enough faction points with a particular government (I'd imagine this would take weeks), he would have the option of joining that government's Military, by accepting a series of "Boot Camp" missions. The "Boot Camp" missions would cover Military Protocol, Basic Combat Maneuvers, and Tactics. After a player completed Boot Camp he could go on to become the pilot of a particular military spacecraft, or continue on to Command School. Either way, there would be another series of missions to complete that would prep that player for his/her particular role in the Military. After completing these missions the player would be placed on active duty as the pilot of one of the three Military spacecraft:

Vulture
Hornet
Ragnarok

The Vulture would be the workhorse of the military with a wide variety of missions. They would commonly fly patrols along national borders, escort bombers on bombing runs, preform fighter sweeps of enemy squadrons, fly interdiction missions to intercept enemy convoys or attack forces, or they could be scrambled to defend capital ships or military bases.

The Hornet would be a versatile assault craft, agile enough to defend itself yet with enough firepower to do some serious damage to enemy strongholds. It would also fly interdiction missions, anti-defense missions to take out enemy turrets or minefields to clear the way for a bombing run, or heavy assault missions to destroy/capture an enemy cap ship or base.

The Ragnarok would be the military's powerhouse bomber, with the most firepower of any ship of its class. It would always need to be escorted by Vultures or Hornets, however. The Ragnarok would fly bombing runs against enemy cap ships/bases, and would be responsible for setting up minefields along the front lines to deter enemy assaults.

All of these missions would be able to be designated by Commanders within the Military. If a player recieved an intelligence report of a resupply convoy on its way to an enemy stronghold, he could order an interdiction mission by Alpha Squadron against that convoy.

Also, Military pilots would need to preform certification missions in order to be cleared to use the following weapons:

Military Energy Weapons Certification (MEWC); Tachyon Blaster, Graviton Blaster, Gauss Cannon, Advanced Gatling Turret

Military Missile Certification (MMC); Stingray, Locust Swarm

Military Rocket Certification (MRC); Sunflare, Screamer

Lightning Mine Certification (LMC); Lightning Mine

Avalon Torpedo Certification (ATC); Avalon Torpedo

After a pilot or commander had proven himself in the Military, gone above and beyond the call of duty etc... he *might* recieve an invitation to join that nation's "Special Forces." The Special Forces would be an elite paramilitary group. Think CIA in space. Special Forces would be responsible for peacekeeping missions, assassination missions, precision strikes, and intelligence missions. Special Forces officers would also have access to the Itani Valkyrie.

When a Military pilot was on leave, he/she would *not* be able to use any military craft or weapons for his or her personal buisiness, but would have to make do with whatever Civilian certifications he/she had.

PIRATES

Pirates would have the advantage of being outside the law, but would be very hard to join because 1) you would have to find their hideout and 2) you would have to get them to like you. If you achieved both of these objectives you could get started on a pirate mission thread; raiding convoys, pillaging far flung outposts, skirmishing with the Military etc. etc. After gaining a certain standing with the pirate faction, and completing a certain number of pirate missions, a player would have access to the black market, and would be able to purchase the following pirate ships:

Warthog
Prometheus

On the Black Market a pirate could buy virtually any weapon, military or civilian, regardless of of their certifications, but at a *much* higher cost, particularly for military weapons. A pirate would *not* have access to military spacecraft on the black market.


Well, that's it for now folks.... my longest post ever :P. let me know what you think.

Awesome idea! I also hope that the regular military vessels will be pilotable within all sectors at all times, once those requirements have been met of course. I'm assuming that since patroling is mentioned this will most certainly be the case. I think special ships should be the only (Valkyrie, Prometheus, Marauder) ones that are to be limited by location/time, since they have more specialized and direct missions.

I think you should also consider a merchant class. But I think that ties in with completing all civilian certification. Just slapping a label onto that status, like you did with the "special forces", might do. Anyway, I like the reasoning of the class system you've got going. It makes a lot of sense and has a lot of consistency. Kudos!

Oh and one other thing. It seems that this plan is dependent on the current line of ships which are available. With that in mind I hope that most of the current ships remain when they decide to revamp and remodel the long overdue non-special ships. Vendetta's current ships are for the most part very original and cool looking. They certainly could use a boost in detail, but I hope they don't change too much (unless of course there are way cooler designs in mind). You listenin', Vlad?!! Be gentle with the Hornet especially.

=)

Hey look at me, I can edit my posts too!

/me slaps Phaserlight for not noting the edit and for making him look crazy even though he's been online all night and it's 5 am now and he's starting to see things and stuff...

"Also, Military pilots would need to preform certification missions in order to be cleared to use the following weapons:

Military Energy Weapons Certification (MEWC); ***Tachyon Blaster, Graviton Blaster***, Gauss Cannon, Advanced Gatling Turret"

:P

Good idea, but isn't the civilien high energy license useless? Rail gun and charged cannon are the weapons i least see...

...they'd be better than the phased blaster and ion blaster though. ;) I bet you'd see them a lot more.

Chargers, if you just click instead of holding, are actually quite good. :-)

Great post, but you didn't mention anything about capital ships, stations or the valkerye/maurauder.

rogue he did mention the valk in the special forces under military.

...and the Marauder, as something you'd get once you complete all civilian certifications.

In a word, yes. I could probably quibble on details but as a design, that is the way it should be done.

Thanks for saving me the trouble of writing this sort of idea out, because it is going to make it much easier on me to start that thread on reputation I've been meaning to get around to.

OK,

I could be interested in that, but if you want to fly a prom, then you need to be a pirate, and I dont wanna be a pirate :(.

On another note, the special ships will be available for every Nation? Because you have divided the specials on 3 branches : "civilian, military, pirate". Or will every branch correspond with a certain nation. for instance : civilians = neutrals, military = valk , pirates = red "I make these assumptions based on the availability of the special ship."

And could you as well be a civilian as a military person? You need money to fund your military ships you know :D.

PS: If it is as I presume, then there wont be any nation specific ships anymore, only missionspecific ships. And I that doesnt seem as good, it could be interesting when every nation gets a special ship for all these branches that reflects the nations strong points. But that is a discussion for the future ;).

cheers

Each nation would have their own Civilian, Military, and Pirate factions (and sub-factions). However each nation would have a different "character" which would be reflected in the relative strengths of their branches. Itanis are the highly structured society of scientists with a well organized military and a low crime rate. Neutrals are excellent buisiniess people, traders, and mercenaries, slightly more corrupt than the Itani. The Secro are a fierce, warlike nation, placing high emphasis on combat skills and honor, but they also breed many pirates and have a less organized military.

Every ship would be available to every nation, but for example perhaps it would be easier to start down the path to becoming a pirate if you were Serco than if you were Itani. Therefore each nation would have certain strengths and weaknesses, but just because you chose Serco as your nation by no means gives you no option but to become a pirate. I would hope that within each nation a diversity of career paths is readily available to all Civilians.

"And could you as well be a civilian as a military person? You need money to fund your military ships you know."

I don't know what the developer answer to that would be, but here is how I see it. Probably there wouldn't be a way for the military to stop you having a civilian career, but the higher you wanted to rise along a 'military path' the tougher it would become. This is because military missions are unlike other missions in that for the most part they aren't voluntary.

If you go into a station as a civilian, a variaty of missions could present themselves to you. There might be people offering to contract you to ship goods from X to Y. There might be passangers offering to contract you to take them somewhere else. There might be a list of 'bad guys' that you could collect bounties on. There might be a rumor of a space monster terrorizing a specific sector. There might be a wealthy merchant offering to hire guards to protect him on a profitable trade route. A government minister might offer you a job collecting scientific data in a particular system. Or you could develop your own plans, for instance buying goods and looking around for a profitable place to sell them, or obtaining a mining license and going prospecting. But there would be no particular consequences of not accepting a job in most cases.

Along the military path, failure to accept a mission when its offered potentially hurts your reputation with that faction, and could result geting your rank reduced or even kicked out of the military. So if the military liason offers you a mission to destroy a certain number of enemy vessels in a particular sector within a certain time frame and report back to an officer within a certain time frame (at which point you probably will recieve another mission), if you don't at least attempt the mission your career in the military suffers. The reason for this is that the military career path offers the easiest and most direct path to the 'goodies' (Valks, advanced gatlings, cloaking devices or whatever), and as such needs a drawback or three.

Which isn't to say that there wouldn't be some volunteer missions on the military path, just that those would likely be the more dangerous and difficult ones (and the ones you'd need to attempt to increase your rank the fastest).

So, you could carry out civilian missions as a military officer, and the government is probably going to be none the wiser as long as you can fit them in between what they want you to be doing.

I just want my own station/sector to control. Possibly as a clan HQ. And my own special clan ship. ie Cent with 4L weapons. :)

Little ship that shoots backwords when all weapons are fired.

Another training module idea, to gain these certifications:

1. Dock at a station specifically designated for training purposes only, perhaps within the station city of your nation capital sector.

2. There will be a training interface that has a huge list of training modules, some greyed out because the ones before have not been completed. The player should select the next available module.

3. Upon selecting the module, the player will be given a training ship and training weapon of the weapon they are being certified for. The rules of the training mission will be displayed afterwards.

4. The player will then undock and enter a training zone of bots. The bots will have the same tier system in that the higher the skill they are, the higher the bounty they have. In order to complete the certification, you need to take down a certain number of bots to achieve a passing score. The more you kill the harder bots, the quicker the training exercise will be complete. So if you think you'll get away with killing 75 bounty bots to pass easily, you may find yourself training much longer than you had originally planned.

There's also one catch--you can't dock or repair. Your score will not be affected with these training sessions, and you won't be able to steal a training ship (leave the home sector with it) and use the training weapons against human players (they'll only harm the bots).

5. Once the temporary score is achieved, a mission will prompt you to return to the training center. Upon docking, your certification results will be displayed, unlocking further certifications.

Arolte: That design seems more geared toward a single player universe. Why would you want to isolate players from each other and from interacting with each other like that? Why would you want to isolate players from the universe you've created for them to interact in? Why would you want to turn a non-linear open ended game environment into a linear one? Moreover, it depends on the creation of some additional structure - weapons that can't harm foes, ships that can't be taken out of sector, temporary spawning of training ships, ships that are forbidden to dock except at certain places, etc.

/me agrees with celebrim

Didn't we have this discussion before? Although, interestingly enough, I was reading a post in the Archives where Celebrim actually advocated having a "game within the game". I'll go dig it up later...

I seem to remember endorcing having 'racing games' or 'gladiatorial combat' but for the life of you I can't think what else you might be thinking of.

Uhmm... it's a training module. You're only ever going to use each one once. When you're done with it you won't have to deal with it ever again. It's not going to ruin the dynamics of the game, and it's not going to kill the interaction between the players. It's not something that'll be forced on the player either. If you read Phaserlight's original post you'll see that all those certifications are optional. If you don't want to be in the military, then fine, just don't apply for training. It's as simple as that.

Ff certifications are ever going to be part of the game, you'll have to test the skills of INDIVIDUAL players one way or another. It wouldn't be feasible to have co-op based certification where one person does all the work and two or three newbies just slack off and drift away from the battle, and somehow still end up winning certification. The whole point is to test each player to see if they're capable of handling the weapons and ships.

The modules will be neither too easy nor too hard. Because if you read closely you'll see that I mentioned a system similar to 75 bounty bots and 250 bounty bots etc. A newbie can win any certification, but it'll simply take a longer time for them too. If you choose the more challenging way, you'll be finished the module a lot quicker. It works for people of all skill levels, without having the frustration of never being able to complete any of these certifications.

And I think you may have misunderstood. While under these training modules, you'll still have the ability to fly around your home sector, talk to other players, train newbies alongside with you, give money, etc. It'll only limit you to that sector because it wouldn't make sense to have a defenseless training ship wandering into enemy territory. Would you want newbies to stray off into enemy territory too? By all means you can explore the entire Vendetta universe all you want. The whole certification thing is completely optional, but if you take the time to train you'll be rewarded with a new arsenal of ships and weaponry.

Arolte and Celebrim bring up an interesting point. Should people "in training" be in an isolated, safe environment? I would definitely have to agree with Celebrim and Roguelazer. If a pirate happened to enter the sector when a training mission was in progress, the trainee would have to be on the alert for this sort of problem. Hopefully the pirate would be dealt with quickly by the station defenses or the military, but having this sort of possible interaction makes the game more interesting. Otherwise people would spend all their time working towards certifications in an artificial "game within a game" rather than interacting with each other.

Also, I think training missions should be geared more directly towards building skills with the particular weapon rather than "see how many bots you can kill with this."

Otherwise I think Arolte has the right idea;

Take the following hypothetical situation: a Civilian wants to become certified for a particular weapon.

1. You would dock at a station and access a mission computer, selecting "certification missions." Each certification would have a sub-list of three or four missions that would have to be completed in order, but the certifications themselves could be attained in any order, with a few exceptions. Some certifications could be greyed out because you don't have enough money (that's right, you would have to pay for certification missions) or you don't have enough experience/faction points (the government isn't going to trust you with a Civilian Rocket Certification if you have a history of pirating).

2. You would exit the station with an "instructor" escort ship (NPC or another player who had chosen to be an instructor as a career), that would periodically send you tells to guide you through the mission, and to protect you from any potential threats.

3. Each mission would be designed to teach a different aspect/use of the weapon(s). The first mission would probably involve a single "practice" bot that would continually fly in a straight line or a slow circle. The object would be to "safely" kill the bot (if you take any splash damage, the mission would fail). In the next mission, the bot could have a slightly more erratic flight course, and the object could be to score a single clean hit from a longer range. In the next mission the bot could actually engage you... destroy it without taking any splash damage.

4. After completing the certification sub-mission the *instructor* would tell you to return to the station where you would be scored and have the option for continuing on to the next mission in the certification. If the mission fails (e.g. the trainee breaks a mission parameter, flies off into the distance/leaves the sector, fires on a non-valid target) then the "training weapon" would be immediately deactivated and made worthless, and the trainee would have to re-attempt the mission.

5. Of course depending on the certification different twists would be thrown in. With prox mines there would probably be a mission in which the bot was chasing you and you had to make it eat a mine... or another mission to lay a prox mine at each waypoint before the timer runs out. If more than one weapon was granted with a certification, there would probably be a few duplicate missions using the different weapons.

All this would take place in the "real" vendetta world... traders might wave to a certification class in progress as they pass by, a class might have to be aborted if a significant threat entered the sector. In the latter case, it would be the instructor's job to protect the trainee while the appropriate forces dealt with the threat.

edit: After reading Arolte's latest post, I realize I may have misunderstood him. My apologies. I still stand by everything I said above though, I think certification missions should be one on one with an NPC/player instructor in the real vendetta universe and with a variety of objectives beyond just "killing bots." Use your imagination, there are hundreds of possibilities.