Jump To Lightspeed Archive
Thread: Spaceports in player cities
I think it would be incredible if Spaceports could be added to player cities. Not only would it allow greater player movement between planets and cities but it would also increase commerce in those cities. If player cities are more accessible and have more traffic, we would find more doctors and patients in player hospitals as well as entertainers in player cantinas. The economic impact would be great.
As a pilot, I find it necessary to stay in game delivered cities because those are the only places I can fight in a space battle and return to get healed in a hospital/cantina. It would be wonderful to be able to allow player cities to grow and be as successful as system ones.
Unuca Cose Message Edited by Omdip on 02-08-2005 06:48 PM
Laozlilozl_Rufflz wrote:
I'd like to add. There should be a limit to these. Maybe two per planet, so only two player cities get them on each planet.
As long as it is my city and not yours
......bad idea.
Omdip wrote:
I had the same idea when I started to play JTL, but I realized that if player cities had Spaceports, people would hardly ever at all need to return to the Major NPC cities. While this may seem nice, I think it would really hurt the sense of community in the game. The few big NPC cities like Coronet, Theed, the Mining Outpost etcare some of the few areas where players actually get together in large numbers. If everyone could simply fly into their own cities, then I think it would become much more difficult to find a good cantina or med center anywhere that's staffed, because the high concentration of people in the few big NPC cities would be stretched out accross many small player made cities. Furthermore, relying on the NPC starports makes everyone go though the cities, and brings everyone together, which you would lose if people could simply fly right to their own cities.
I think usefulness and community that comes from player made cities needs to be looked at a little more by the devs though. Most cities rarely have people in them, and the med centers/ cantinas are almost never staffed. I'd really like to see a way for cities to grow and expand to the size where at least a dozen people were always in them, but it's tough to see how this could work.
Message Edited by Omdip on 02-08-2005 06:48 PM
Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as you think. Especially if space ports were limited, to say, rank 5 (metropolis) player cities.
I think someone landing at a player city, who may have to search the surrounding smaller player cities could be good for the 'community' because it's pressing players to go and look around the player cities which they might otherwise never bother with. Then eventually you'd get a few player cities that'd become good for medical healing, and/or their cantina(s).
The thing is with the NPC cities the more busy they get the less attractive they get for people to visit because of the lag. I don't know anybody who looks forward to having to go to Coronet. I personally hate it, it's SWG-slo-mo. Therefore if players were spread over a few player cities, then good, it will reduce the load on the (software) clients.
As NPC cities are, the only reason you do have for visiting them is for the star ports, which makes the experience of being there artificial. You're not interested in the place, you don't feel a part of the place, it's just a big laggy zone that you're trying to get out of. If SOE don't want the NPC cities to be "left in the dust", then they need to make them more functional, more useful. One great idea I've heard of is that of player "apartments" where you can actually choose to live in an NPC city, and pay rent on a house or apartment.
Unless it were added to something like a Strategic Base and the owners/administrators/commanders (and only them) has the right to grant takeoff and landing rights.
It would probably just be easier for the Devs to analyze the locations of all player cities on the habitable planetary maps of each server, see which are farthest from any sort of starport facility, and plop down one-two more "outpost starports" like you see on Yavin, Dant, Endor, and Dath. Small footprint, same end result, lower overhead.
EDIT: Two more starports on Dath wouldn't be a bad thing, either. One North, one South, one East, one West - why have non-combatant crafters ride across nearly 6k of ultra-hilly terrain dodging NPCs that have some of the most fickle ranged attacks in the game?
Message Edited by KaylBreinhar on 02-09-2005 02:56 AM
