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I'd love to see a tractor beam as a new component. There have been a few times when I've been hit hard enough to take my engine or reactor down and I'm dead in space. I'd love to be able to call for assistance from a guildmate or friend I know who could come and tow me to the nearest starbase for repairs vs me have to eject and damage the chassis, etc...

A couple times I've been grouped and a few of us were in this situation. We were trying to figure out ways our other group members might be able to "push" us to the nearby base, vs. us having to eject.

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Omdip wrote:

I think turret locks would be problematic. The idea behind multiplayer ships is that they are Multiplayer ships. I have a Nova, and often I can't find enough people to man it so I have to leave it in the hanger. Sure, it can be annoying sometimes when I really want to fly it, but the entire idea of the ship is division of labor (pilot, Operations Officer, Gunners, repair peoples, etc). If the pilot could use the guns himself, it would somewhatdefeat the purpose of the ship.

Along those same lines, though, the Nova Courier is a light cargo transport (and so are the other MP ships really). It's pretty crazy to think that it can hold so little cargo (70-100 items or something?). I think it should be able to hold like 2500 or something ridiculous. If not expandeditem storage, then the whole idea of a cargo ship should come into play somehow. With only two turrets and a couple of missles, it's certainly not agunship,so what is it then if it doesn't hold a lot ofcargo?

A lot of people like to use their MP ships for Taxi's etc, maybe have a Taxi for rebel/imperial NPC troops? You pick up maybe 20 or sofactional NPC's (who actually board your ship and stand around) and then have to get them to another planet or ship through enemy patrols. This type of mission would only be able to be taken by master pilots with MP ships, and perhaps could tie into the GCW somehow (more troops you move, the stronger the faction prescence somewhere?) I've seen lambda shuttles fly down when I was on the ground and drop off troops. They had to come from somewhere, right?

I think my number 1 want for ships is to have the MP ships play their role more, as they are clearly not gunships.

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1. Create a whole new class of ships, "Multi-Passenger", rather than "Multi-Player".


2. Adapt the current ships in some way to cater for people who can't muster up several other people at a whim tocrew their ship.

If we're to go by option two then we need to do something that incurs some sort of cost, Hence introducing a new device (e.g. turrent control device)which would consume mass and (more importantly) power. From the power point of view, then we either have to sacrifice a current peice of equipment or induce reactor decay by using an overload program to compensate forthe energy deficit.

Starson suggested a droid-gunner. Well most MP ships will already have an astromech or flight-computer installed, so there's an issue. However, an alternative migth be to make an "AI Gunner" as a droid program, thus this would take up space in the flight computer's (or astromech's) memory core, hence leaving less space for other standard flight programs.

Also don't forget, that any of these measures only provide one advantage, they make lone-flight more viable in MP ships (which is what is needed if people want an inhabbitable ship). If you want to go for all out battle performane, then none of these measures could ever replace a full player crew, and nor should they.

Message Edited by DaveG on 02-09-2005 03:00 PM

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Salco wrote:

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psikobunny wrote:

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Salco wrote:
Electronic Countermeasures (ECM): When loaded on a ship, it will notify the pilot when they are being targeted. It will also have a function that will allow it to send a quick EMP out from the ship, disrupting enemy targeting computers and breaking target lock for a short time. This function requires a few minutes to charge back up before being used again.

Ok, the science behind it is probably wack, but I really want to see more electronic warfare in JTL.

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Haven't flown much have you? both of these are in the game. Countermeasures block missile fire quite well, and IFF scramble is a special for Rebel and Neutral pilots.

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I'm a 3/4/4/4 rebel pilot, actually. Yes, I know countermeasures attempt to lure missiles away, and I definitely know the IFF Scrambler ability causes enemy ships to briefly stop attacking. What I was suggesting, as opposed to the things, was a component that didn't require ammo, and wasn't a special ability for only one faction. Anyone could use it; and it wouldn't cause enemies to stop attacking you, or cause missiles already in flight to miss you. It would only cause other ships to be unable to target you for a brief amount of time. You know, those bracket things around the other ship, with the lead reticule in front? Surely you've flown a bit.

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In your first post you meantion an "EMP Burst". An EMP (Electro-Magnetic Pulse) would actually be more along the lines of the Freelance ability to damage ships in the area with an energy burst. An EMP burst on something without proper shielding i.e. a space ship would be more likely to kill the ship dead in space, since the burst would fry every electronic cicuit on the ship. Watch the 3rd Matrix movie and you'll se how devistating an EMP burst can be.

However since this could be a valid tactic if they made all ships have some kind of Anti-EMP technology. So when you launch the burst it would drain your capacitor and half your shields but disable their ship for 4-5 seconds, before their Anti-EMP technology fixed the ship. You just couldn't have the one hit kill aspect of an EMP. SInce everyone with half a brain would be out fighting Tier 5 ships just EMPing them to death. Like I said thou, if SOE made it correctly it could be a very good escape plan.

I think Countermeasures and IFF scramble are gonna be your only options thou.

I have an ECM idea however. I got this idea from playing hours of Core Combat: Nexus. Have an ECM part that can fire small lasers at on coming missiles. Have it a lvl 10 part and give it like 50/50 accuracy but also have it take capacitor energy for everytime it fires.

Another idea would be to have "ship repair droids". This would be for MP ships so they can stop saying how they can never get a full crew and would probably limit the requests for forward firing turrets. What the droid does is you can give him 1 tool for each type of problem. If your fighting and you break your reactor conduit instead of a person having to fix it the droid will go and fix it. However the droid can only carry 1 tool for each problem so if it runs out of repair tools someones gotta restock him and repairing requires alot of battery power. So your droid will probably run out of juice during long outings.

Message Edited by StealthTiger234 on 02-10-2005 02:35 AM