A fundamental change

Purify · Post by **Purify** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 5:50 pm

Alright, Sterling's post got me thinking.... I totally agree with him that the game needs to change to grow somehow..... I also know that the hardest part to adding changes to the game is the bugs/imbalances that they create....

So here is my slowly progressing change idea:

Right now, there are two ways to be personally wealthy.... having Experience or having money.... I would like to add a third.... the third would be something like the maneuverability rating.... a rating that makes peoples ships stronger.... this is not important though, because the first phase in this proposed change is not the change itself.... its the method in which you would receive this 'maneuverability rating'...

Stealing an idea from Jester i believe.... I think we should have trading missions... there would be 5 levels of trading missions... they work like this:

At the HQ there would be a new button called "Receive (race) Trading Mission".... once it is clicked you would receive a Personal Message which would describe your trading mission... Now, since this is a totally new idea we would need to keep things simple, so, all trading missions would basically be for example: "Sell 10,000 Luxury Items to Port #69".... (20,000 goods for level 2.... 30,000 goods for level 3 etc)

The computer would randomly pick a port of your race (so all missions are not the same)... but here is the kicker... when trading the goods at the port of your mission (e.g. luxury items at 69) You would not receive any XP...... you would gain the normal money..... but instead of the XP info..... You would see a message telling you how many total goods you have traded at that port... (making it tougher for hunters to find you... and balancing accomplishing the mission vs. gaining XP)

As reward for these missions (for the time being) you would receive money..... 10 million for mission 1... 25 million for mission 2..... and so on.. up to 100 mill for mission 5...

I think these missions will accomplish three things:

1) They will help noobs by not making their trade route so obvious to hunters and... it will give them motivation to keep playing after they die.
2) It will give traders something else to play for..... if they die once and lose their big top ten XP... instead of quitting (which some do) they can try and complete all the missions..
3) It will be a starting point, so that in the future we can create another way to become 'wealthy'...

The only issue i see.... (you may see others) is an expiry time for the mission.... I don't wnat people to keep being able to receive a different port for their mission.... but i also want someway for the mission to expire, for example, if the computer picks a port in a mined enemy planet galaxy....

N.ator · Post by **N.ator** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 6:29 pm

this is a good idea but i have some questions..

so pretend you chose to do a mission and it said the mission would be at port 69 and lux. to buy the lux at the other port would you gain any exp?

also i think that you should have the option to abandon your mission..but when doing so you shouldnt beable to get a new mission for a week. this will make it so people cant just keep on claiming and and then abandoning a mission untill they actually like it.

also you said you would get no exp. what i think should happen is after you finish the mission you s houdl just jump in exp. so pretend the first mission is worth 5k exp(example)..after you finially finished it bam you would just jump in 5k exp. and then for the next mission would equal more exp.

i think you should still gain exp ..even if it is a small gain.

Harry Krishna · Post by **Harry Krishna** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 6:34 pm

Other mission suggestions from the past...

http://smrcnn.smrealms.de/viewtopic.php?t=7651

Purify · Post by **Purify** » Sat Jun 16, 2007 6:48 pm

I do recall other mission ideas..... just this one....i wanted to make it as simple as possible... to be coded that is....

This initial mission step.. would simply be "sell some number of this good at this port"....... (it can obviously be expanded later)

Also, I like Poca's idea of waiting a week before getting a new mission... maybe missions are just automatically given out to begin with?
And... if you wanna do a big XP boost i'm for that..... if some sort of loophole develops because of it... we can then change it to just a money reward for now....

The key to this is to be a little step.... into something that we can later expand on without running into all sorts of bugs...

Post by **Baalzamon** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 2:58 pm

i really like it...nothing i can really see wrong with it, but I do like the idea of getting an XP boost rather then a cash boost, and to answer poca's question without knowing the answer myself, what if when you accept a mission like this, you receive no experience from trading whatsoever until the mission is complete, when you get a boost of experience from doing it?

Purify · Post by **Purify** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 3:46 pm

I think the cash boost is the best way to help out those in less fortunate alliances.... XP means little to the guys getting killed by the hunters cause they keep losing it... but cash, they can bank and then... get a warbird and fight, once they complete a mission... now, a nominal increase of say 5 or 10K xp... i'm not opposed to... since the turns used completing the mission could have made significantly more XP...

As to not gaining any XP while you have a mission..... i don't like that idea at all... since it forces you to trade the mission, and the thing that's cool about this game is choice... you always have choice... being forced to do something is not very cool (its also unfair to hunters)...

Post by **Baalzamon** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 4:48 pm

alright

N.ator · Post by **N.ator** » Sun Jun 17, 2007 10:11 pm

well you guys..well how about having 2 types of missions. one for experience and one for cash the only thing is that you shouldnt bebale to get more experience from these missions because then everyone will just do theses missions then just regular trading.

Post by **Astax** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 6:12 am

Is this a Fudnemantal Change thread, or are we discussing the idea in orginal post? I don't want to get spanked for getting offtopic. On the mission front however, I do like it. I think missions shoudl yeild stuf flike alignment and relatiosn aswell. Maybe make it so you can do missions for otehr goverments too and earn some benefit liek extra relations, ability to trade with them even when there is a war between your races, or even ability to fly osme of their ships. All would be great incentives.

Harry Krishna · Post by **Harry Krishna** » Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:02 pm

In concept, missions are geared toward two things: getting new players to do and try and understand different aspects of the game AND give them a little boost in money and/or experience. Follow that and see where it leads.