One-time only rank ship

[martyparty]

How about a special "super" ship with stats to die for, that you get for reaching the highest possible rank in a faction, with the caveat that you can only ever buy one of them per faction per game?

[Cory Trese]

Saved game database doesn't have anywhere to save it.

Interesting suggestion, sounds like one that would generate a lot of e-mail questions for us.

We're working on adding more special top end bonuses for ST, so stay tuned!

[martyparty]

If you modify the requirement slightly to say the user can only own one of that type of ship at a time, then you don't need to store a flag in the db, instead you can make it not purchase-able if the player currently has one.

[Cory Trese]

Thanks!

[slayernz]

And make it a gajillion credits, so that will make those people who say "I've got more money than I'd ever need" have something to aim for.

Also talking of rank ships - it would be spectacular if there were high-rank ship upgrades available - you only get these upgrades if you are of, say, rank 15+ (eg a WF tank that holds 50 units) ...

[martyparty]

It would also add a little extra flavor if each superpower upgrade was only available from certain faction(s) - for example, the best torpedo upgrades only available from Cadar planets.

A new way to use up cash would be TEMPORARY ship upgrades - you get a very nice boost, but it only lasts for a while and you have to get another boost.

[slayernz]

oooooh ... Cadar Industries proudly presents the ARIES-128 ... an engineering marvel that allows you to carry 128 torpedoes on a flight. Want to complete those search and destroy missions and be home in time for tea? The Aries-128 allows you to launch up to 8 torpedoes per turn. Tired of having to switch to guns at close range? The Aries-128 disables the minimum-safe-distance failsafes so you can successfully use torpedoes right up to boarding distance!

[Deleted]

Any "super" ships would have to a) be every difficult to obtain(very hard to find, have to high rank, rep, LV, credits etc), b) be "super" in one area but be very bad in another area to make it balanced and c) would have to be occasionally used by enemies. Kind of like alien ships but at a lower level. Just look at some of the ships:

Narvadian hive - 40 hull 70 armor 80 sails 100 crew 1000 hold 20 torps 20 guns 25 (as you can see its got very high crew and is fast/agile but only has 20 hold!!!)

Heela alien - hull 100 armor 50 engines 50 sails 50 crew 500 hold 10 torps 0 guns 10 (as you can see it has 100 hull and 500 crew but 1:2 ratio in sails to hull and engine to hull, 10 hold and 0 torps)

Narvadian Carrer - hull 50 armor 60 engines 50 sails 100 crew 50 hold 50 torps 100 guns 25 (as you can see its fast and has 100 torps, but its low-agile and only has 50 crew and hold)

Zendu Space Hive - hull 30 armor 15 engines 50 sails 50 crew 13 cargo 1000 torps 0 guns 0 (as you can see its got 1000 hold but no crew, torps nor guns, so the only options when flying this ship would be to escape or ram!)

[martyparty]

If it was easy to find but extremely difficult to obtain (costing $10 million, say) then it will have a tantalising factor.

And a *really* super ship that costs even more ($50 mil ?) would give the die-hards something to save up for.

[Deleted]

Jan 21, 2013 22:29:05 GMT -5 martyparty said:

If it was easy to find but extremely difficult to obtain (costing $10 million, say) then it will have a tantalising factor.

And a *really* super ship that costs even more ($50 mil ?) would give the die-hards something to save up for.

No it has to be balanced. It sounds cool now, but extreamly strong in all areas would make the game boring.

[Deleted]

I agree with slayernz, they would have to have weaknesses - but I love these ideas, STUPIDLY expensive ships (so you can use your stockpiles of excess money) and temporary upgrades that add big bonuses. Give players something to aim for in the long term. Especially love martyparty's idea of making it really easy to find, just to add incentive.

[Deleted]

Idea: Alien ship availability
- would appear at stardocks very rarely (1 in 2000 ships or so)
- would need a certain very high reputation and/or rank
- would need the veteran officer and high pilot skill (100, 200) as wihou such measures you will be unable to fly the ship in ths case the dismiss button would be grayed out for veteran while flying an alien ship)
- prices of these alien ships much higher than it says in the ship list
- in addition to the actual ship statistics, these ships woud have hidden abilites (like a special board resist bonus, special torp evade bonus etc) which would further increase the ship price
- upgrades may not be available or be extreamly expensive

Idea: Equipment
- special equipment that can be purchased and stored in cargo hold
- this equipment can be sold at any time, making it teporary
- depnding on equipment, cost could range from 10k to 10 mil
- would provide bonuses for things like explore, deep-space travel, patrol etc
- equipment can be more than 1 cargo unit depending on the equipment
- depending on equipment, could increase encounters, water fuel-consumption, provide pilot penalies for deep-space and be taken

Idea: Super Upgrades
- upgrades that would be more powerful and therfor count as 2, 3 or even 4 upgrades
- depending on upgrade and ship, can be very expensive and require a minimum rank, reputation and/or skill in order to be available (so for a certain bording upgrade for example, you may need rank 18 and have a warrior skill of 150)
- upgrades would include things like giant bonuses to exploration, giant bonuses to deep-space travel, or giant increases in hold, crew, armor etc

Idea: Upgrade your own ship
- ability to manually upgrade your ship chosng what you want added
- will be very expensive and require a certain rank, reputation and/or others
- you will be able to choose what you want added to your ship
- you can choose what ship components you want increased/decreased and by how muce (eg +80 crew and +10 cargo)
- you can choose what bonuses you want added to the ship and how major from a scale of 1 to 10 (eg a "10" torpedo accuracy bonus and a "3" pilot bonus)
- based on how major your ship improvements are, there will be automatic penalties. If you choose to raise your crew too much, there may be an enounter penalty, a watr penalty or if its a super increase in crew, even a pilot/stealth penalty for deep-space and combat. If you choose to give your a ship a 10 point boardisg bonus, ramming bonus, gun bonus and torp bonus, repairs may significantly reduce in availability and increase in cost. If you add a 10 point pilot bonus to that, you may get a decrease in speed and agility as the ship has to carry all tha extra stuff to give the ship all those bonuses
- there would be some cap, or limit, based on ship (eg you couldn't add 800 crew to a ship that has 40)

[fallen]

@starfixer - the sale of aliens ships simply does not fit into the Star Traders universe. Thanks for the suggestion though!

[martyparty]

Jan 22, 2013 17:05:06 GMT -5 fallen said:

@starfixer - the sale of aliens ships simply does not fit into the Star Traders universe. Thanks for the suggestion though!

How about the idea of finding a derelict alien ship through advanced exploration, and then fixing it up to make it fly again?

[slayernz]

As an aside - trawled through the archives and found this thread on taking Alien ships
startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wish&action=display&thread=542

This one ... less so, although it may give you some insight into what "alien artifacts" may mean ...
startradersrpg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=wish&action=display&thread=728