Pilot Archive
Thread: Ideas For Making A great Game Greater
Ive just returned to galaxies after a year and must say the game is amazingly better, I love the space game and thought Id post my thoughts on making it even better. I'm sure some of these Ideas have been metioned before on this board but Ive tried to be objective and realistic with them so maybe some of them could happen 
Player City Starports
Probaly not a new Idea but I think it would be cool if player cities could have there own starports so we dont have to slog all the way to the nearest npc city to launch, only metropolice lvl cities could have them but it might bring a much needed boost in income to the bigger cities. They could come complete with landing bays for player ships see below.
Space and Ground Based quests.
More Space and ground based quests starting from the ground that combine both areas. Say you bump into an old smuggler in Mos Eisly cantina that sends you to an abandoned Imperial base on Endor where you have to fight your way through monsters down to the lowest levels to gain access to a terminal that give you info about an imperial outpost in space that has been overrun by pirates.
Once at the bottom of the abandoned base you must hack a special terminal, needs a smuggler for this, to gain the location of the secret base in space. This would then give you access codes to the docking bay of the station and a way point that would appear on the hyperspace map. This is to stop players trading the waypoints if It was in a normal region of space. The waypoint stays on your hyper space map so you can keep trying the mission again with friends if you fail it the first time but you can't trade the Waypoint as it only appears to you or people who were in your group when you got it. The waypoint only appears on the hyperspace map of those in the group. Basically it appears like the planets do on the hyperspace map not as a waypoint in your data pad.
Once you have the waypoint anyone in the group can travel to that sector at any time to complete the mission, but lets say we all go together. We get into space and hyper to the new region and have to defeat waves of ships until we can get to and dock with the space station. Once all waves are defeated we can dock with the station.
Inside we run another dungeon like the corellian corvette to get to the end and defeat a big boss and get our reward. One per person who was in the original group who got the waypoint not the people who may have been helping them if they came back to do it later. This means to get the reward you have to do the whole quest.
With this type of missions there are numerous types of missions that could be crafted the major change to the game is being able to create sectors that spawn on the hyper space map. They only need to contain the target for the mission say corvettes, space stations or maybe even Star destroyer. Could be things like a wreck of a space ship that you have to have an environment suit to enter. Getting the parts for the suite could be another quest in itself that required different levels of armour smith to craft each part, thus giving lower spec players a chance to contribute.
Space Based Portal Quests
Some ships in space may be boarded. After you have disabled a ship any person in that group can board it, imagine the blockaded runner sequence from Episode IV. The interior of the ship will spawn when the first people dock and despawn when the last one leaves.
Along the same lines would be a high lvl quest where you can capture the ship and the person who has the mission gets to keep her. This would be a great quest for guilds and large groups. It must be very difficult and require a couple of large groups to do and only the person who has got the mission gets the ship. It appears as a deed in your data pad or even better a blue print that needs to be crafted to give by a master starship builder. Also There should be a long lead up to actually getting to the ship much like I describes above in the Space station quest.
Portal Landing Bays
Instead of now where you just click a button and your in space, have the option on the starship terminal at starports to go to landing bay. This would be a portal object that spawns for you and your group, it would contain your landed ship that you could then enter on the ground without having to load the space game, if its a multi player ship. Should be quick to load as it would be a very small portal but you could bring your friends along just as you do in space to show your ship off to your mates.
Also you can launch your ship from inside the ship by clicking on the control panels and you can also fit equipment from inside while it is on the ground again by clicking on a control panel. I'm thinking of this mainly for multi person ships. You cant do it in space just in the docking bay.
Doing it this way would mean that player cities could have star ports as with Orix's ideas above but you wouldn’t need to limit the number of ships or how often you can spawn them.
Again space stations could have this option.
Most of my ideas above need portal spawning to work but this is actually already in game with things like the Multi Player Ships so all SOE need to do is expand on it. Instead of spawning the inside of multi player ship you just spawn the outside in a docking bay or even better spawn the outside and inside as one portal. Now how cool would that be. :lol: You can walk around it outside then walk up the ramp and take off.
Just for laughs if you have contraband aboard your ship there is a small chance the docking bay will be raided by storm troopers and you will have do a quick getaway al la Han Solo in episode IV. :lol:
Speaking of cargo that brings me on to….
Cargo Missions
Ok so we have these nice ships with cargo bays but not a lot to put in em. I propose a system of cargo hauling missions. Now to do player based cargo hauling would be a pain. It could be done like in EVE with bonds being placed to get your cargo from one planet to another but to be honest its probably more trouble than its worth especially as Sony’s policy of consensual pvp will not allow for player bounties.
What I suggest is NPC cargo missions. There are two ways to do this the easy way or the hard way.
The hard way first, have a commodities market in SWG. each planet has needs and things it produces. Take Theed It is an agrarian world so it produces food cheep but needs high tec imports. You have a commodities terminal in each space port where you can buy and sell the commodities. You buy say as much water in Naboo as will fit in your cargo bay. It is place in your cargo bay automatically and then you have to hyperspace to tatooine to deliver it. When the cargo bay contains cargo you cannot use the travel option to get there, you have to fly.
Now the clever part, the more valuable your cargo the more and the harder pirates will to disable your ship and steal your cargo. If you are disabled they board you and steal it. Then you can limp back to a space station. They don’t destroy your ship but allow you to fight another day.
With this in mind there should be some noob cargo ships that are slow but can carry a lot.
This would enable lower end pilots to make money early on in the space game.
Now the easy way to do it.
Instead of the commodities market which will take a long time to do Have NPC's through out the game that allow you to take out cargo missions. You go to them get the mission and the cargo is placed in your hold. Again you cant travel to your destination you have to fly, if this is to difficult to do make it that you have to deliver it to the space station above the planet and that you hyper into the system at a reasonable distance to allow the pirates to spawn. Say 10000m
Now for the biggie
Smuggling Missions
Same as the cargo missions either with the commodities market or with NPC giving you the missions but if you are a smuggler as well as pirates you have to deal with Imperials scanning your ship and confiscating your cargo. Also the higher lvl smuggler you can use jamming equipment to block the imps and pirates scans of your ship say up to 75% chance of not being attacked and possibly boarded.
One last thing rather than getting into a fight you can dump your cargo and run.
Imagine the scenario You get a mission from Jabba to smuggle some spice to Naboo. You take off and hyper there but as you jump into the system an imperial patrol spots you and does a scan. They detect spice onboard and then call for a star destroyer that spawns. You can either try to fight it out and run the blockade dump your cargo and run or be disabled and boarded and loose the shipment and get a healthy fine. If you make it through you land at Naboo and go see another NPC to complete the mission.
If you dump your cargo Jabba will not be please so you either have to pay him off or he will send a bounty hunter after you. NPC bounty hunter would be cool but way better would be…
Bounty Hunter Missions In Space
Not sure if this is in game yet as I'm not a Bounty hunter but if its not how about bounty hunter missions in space.
Have a bounty terminal at the starport that you can use if you have JTL that bounty hunter can use. This would be an NPC bounty mission that works the same way as the ones on the ground but would require new tec for the ships in the way of space seeker droids.
Also and I know its a long shot but player bounties could be offered too.
Which brings me too
Be A Space Pirate
There are lots of cargo ships flying around the galaxy but we cant attack any of them. I suggest a form of consensual PVP that works like this.
You can shoot and destroy NPC ships for there cargo which you could either sell on the commodities market if there is one, see above, or sell to an NPC fence if not. Much the same way as the chassis dealer works now.
If you do become a space pirate and destroy an NPC ship you become huntable by player bounty hunters. You will be given a warning the first time you kill an NPC ship but after that you become overt to player bounty hunters.
If its too difficult to give us the ability to attack just any target in space make them space pirate missions given out by a terminal at the starport.
Also I would put a system of police in the game. if you attack NPC cargo ships you will get police ships spawning that you must destroy. They will protect the cargo ship.
The cargo of the ship will depend on the system or the mission if given by a mission terminal so the higher the system risk the better the cargo and the more money you will get from selling the it.
This would allow people who wish to, to become space pirates.
Imagine the scenario, you have been praying upon NPC civilian traffic for weeks when a player Bounty Hunter catches up with you. He jams your hyper drive with a scrambler, stopping you jumping and you fight it out, either you win and he kills you and gets his bounty. Your ship gets trashed and you have to pay for repairs. Or you beat him and the bounty continues.
The penalty for loosing isn’t that bad, but it will add to the fun of the game.
Ok sorry for the long post but I think that these things would add tremendously to an already fun game.
