Development Cycle Archive

This concept is to provide more game driven content to players who aggressively participate in the GCW, and are interested in destroying enemy factional facilities.

The basic concept is to provide a mission to players who are interested in blowing up an opposing faction's bases, and rewarding them for their service to their faction, as opposed to the current system where there is no reward or motivation other then 1000 experience points for successfully slicing any of the 5 terminals invovled, and the idea that you've destroyed something that belongs to another player.

An assault / destroy mission will allow only a certain amount players to accept that mission (say only 10 people total could accept the same assault mission, and 15 people could accept the same defend mission)

A Factional Intelligence officer provides missions to players to attack or defend vulnerable player-owned factional bases.

If no base is vulnerable in SWG at that time, then no mission is available to accept.

To speak to the factional recruiter a factioned player must posess a minimum of Warrant Officer 1.

To speak to the factional recruiter a player must pay 200 faction points, to gain access to the information.

If an enemy faction base is vulnerable at that time, the mission is available to accept at a cost of 200 faction points.

A successfull assault mission pays 5% of that bases factional cost in faction points to the mission holder, and 2.5% of the amount of money in the maintenance pool of that base.

A failed assault results in no additional loss other then the faction points involved in accepting the mission.

The player must be present (and alive) at the base at the time of destruction to recieve the rewards.

A player holding a factional assault or destroy mission is automaticly overt for the entire duration of the mission or until they abort the mission.

If a player holding an assault mission takes part in the destruction sequence (slices a terminal) that player should recieve an additional 5% of factional pay out, and 2.5% of that base's maintenance for successfully completing their intricate role in the destruction of the base.

A faction base assault mission can not be accepted unless there is over 1.5 hours of vulnerability time left on a base.

Faction bases going vulnerable within 1 hour of that time of viewing the terminal should be visible and available to accept a mission on.

If an allied faction base is vulnerable at that time, the mission is available to accept at no cost to the player (although the player still has to pay 200 faction points to use the terminal).

If the defend mission is completed successfully the player should recieve the 200 faction he spent on viewing the mission, back, and be paid significantly for their service provided they spent atleast 1 hour within 100 meters of their mission's corresponding base.

**The payment has to be more then the amount of money they could have made from doing any other missions during that time frame.

The idea here is to provide players with a set of skills / abilities granted to them as reward for factional allignment and to further diversify combat roles, and how any one player may interact with the GCW. I think that by providing additional abilities to factionally alligned players fits the Star Wars story line well, as it depicts characters in a faction as having additional capabilities over a neutral player, as a result of their military training and experiences.

Faction Specific Abilities-

Ability to search for contraband (imperial only, some sort of base value, with bonuses available through progression) (imperial only)

Ability to conceal contraband (rebel only, some base value with bonuses available through progression) (rebel only)

Intelligence based-

Ability to view concentrations of the enemy factions on the world map (control + V) (progression could allow a player to see smaller sized concentrations on the map, so a player could get more and more precise as they progress)

Ability to view where battles are occurring on the world map (progression could allow a player to view more and more battles on that planet, and determine the amount of allied forces, and through more progression, even enemy forces)

Ability to create waypoints viewable by all allied factioned players on the same planet (on the world map)

Command based-

Ability to command random allied factionally alligned NPCs (such as NPCs at faction bases, or random spawns)

Ability to call on reinforcements from NPCs (staggered ability increasingly powerfull through progression)

Communication based-

Ability to communicate with the entire allied faction on that planet in a system message

Ability to allow other players to declare from one's self

Outline:

Inclusion of a contraband scanner which could be purchased and operated by imperial players to scan suspected rebels for contraband which has limited uses per unit.

If an imperial discovers contraband, the rebel is given a TEF from the imperial faction.

If the imperial fails to discover contraband, the a use is lost on the scanner, and the scanner can not be used again for 10 minutes, in addition to the imperial receiving a TEF from the rebel faction.

A scanner jammer could also be implemented giving rebels the ability to conceal themselves from imperial players scanning.

Storm Trooper armor should be revamped to reflect something along these lines-

70% resists to all forms of attacks

Unslicable

Medium encumbrance

SWG should have a certain amount of game driven factional content other then the currently existing theme parks. Regular game driven content would drive the players to participate more in the GCW through rewarding players for participation in this content. The current events and story arcs included are more setup to be content for an individual, as opposed to content for the masses to participate in against each other.

Something like this could be easily implemented through a variety of NPC troop movements, and system messages to factionally alligned players.

This sort of content should occur atleast once every 2 weeks, and basically have a mini story the players can interact with, and ultimately control the outcome of beyond whats currently implemented.

Each story doesn't have to be particularly detailed, just fairly simple to understand, and very rewarding to participate in.

Game driven GCW content like this could consist of the following events:

Defend / Assault missions - one faction defends a person, place, or thing, while the other faction attacks to take control over said person, place, or thing

CTF based - some sort of item which exists must be transported to a particular place, each faction battles for control over the object in an effort to return it to some place, basically a galactic kill-the-man-with-the-ball type event.

Here is an example of what I would consider an acceptable event for this sort of content-

Story line:

The empire has discovered the rebellion is currently hiding princess Leia in a secret location. Imperial agents are actively hunting for princess Leia and when her location is discovered, they will assault her hidden fortress and attempt to capture her along with her rebel allies. The rebellion has dispatched agents to intercept and kill the imperial rangers scouting out the princess. If the imperials discover her location, her capture is imminent.

So basically its just a big fat assault / defend mission. For a few days leading up to the event all factionally alligned players will get system messages, and have new options when talking to recruiters to get involved in this miniature story arc. There could be a few missions given out by recruiters to get players out there interacting with a bit of incidents leading up to the ultimate assault of a hidden rebel fortress. The day of the event, system messages go out to all factionally alligned players basically saying "your faction needs you, go to these coordinates to accept a special mission" and for everyone who goes there and accepts a special mission to participate in the final piece of the mini story will get a bunch of faction and money, and maybe some cool loot if they go and participate in a huge battle..

Then, when the time comes, everyone in a faction will get a system message telling them where to go to get in on the battle (wether they accepted the actually stories mission or not), and when everyone goes there, they'll find tons of NPCs from both factions and tons of players from both factions battling it out in a battle that lasts hours. In the end, the content can be static (a particular outcome regardless of who participates or what happens, which is obviously necessary to a certain capacity to keep the game in line with the time frame as depicted in movies) or swayed (all depends on the players' involvment).

This sort of content needs to be easy to get involved with, and happen fairly quickly, and be pushed out to players on a huge scale to get them all involved.