Politician Archive
Thread: Ship *management* terminals for player cities
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Laeren
Sat Nov 06, 2004 3:19 pm
#1
No, I'm not asking to launch my ship from a player city. I am asking tobe able to manage my ship's components from it, though. Many shipwrights house in player cities, and it'd be very cool if you could manage your ship components from a terminal in a player city so that you can check to see if that brand new blaster you just bought for your ship will "fit" with your mass/reactor limits. This way, you can just install it at the city, but would still need to go to an NPC city to launch.
This might be a nice compromise to the already-been-tried ship terminal request.
Scoooter
Mon Nov 08, 2004 9:20 am
#3
Tier 5 cities seem too small for me to contain a starport. It would be really hard to have a hugee starport and maintain a metro in a 450m radius city.
Deepcore
Mon Nov 08, 2004 10:17 am
#4
A good idea, but isn't this the same as doing CTRL D and view components on your starship ?
bdwsrkob
Mon Nov 08, 2004 10:29 am
#5
Deepcore wrote:
A good idea, but isn't this the same as doing CTRL D and view components on your starship ?
kinda what i thought...
Mayor JoseCuervo - Kashyyykur, Rori - Corbantis
Laeren
Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:29 am
#6
bdwsrkob wrote:
Deepcore wrote:
A good idea, but isn't this the same as doing CTRL D and view components on your starship ?
kinda what i thought...
Mayor JoseCuervo - Kashyyykur, Rori - Corbantis
Cept you can't actually install the components, only view them. The starship installation terminal would allow you to install the components, just wouldn't allow you to launch from it.
Jaspor
Mon Nov 08, 2004 12:31 pm
#7
Yes, this would be great.
More than once already I found myself wanting to have a Shipwright reverse engineer some parts for me.. Then I realized one of the components was still loaded in my ship and I had to go to the Starport where it was parked to unload it. Suxx0rz.
PsychoticChipmunk
Mon Nov 08, 2004 5:36 pm
#8
Only problem isthat thiswould break logic and established code. If I can alter my ship in player cities when it is actually docked over at Doaba how come I can't do it in Coronet? Shouldnt this idea be universal? Sorry guys but for the forseeable future and most likely beyond we won't get anything to do with spaceships in player cities. The datapad is a good way to make sure you'll be able to equip what you need but you won't be able to yank pieces and rearrange 'em unless you're standing "next" to your ship.
SW trainers are the only realistic add on that we should get and I wouldn't be surprised if we do now that the big grind is over and there are master pilots floating around and just about everybody that wanted it has shipwright and a playerbase to train 'em.
Fidgiter
Tue Nov 09, 2004 8:22 am
#9
I posted on the Shipwright Forum and here with a suggestion. Didn't see this thread at the time of that posting so I guess it kinda duplicates it. Oops. My suggestion is as follows:
If you are at a starship terminal in a major city, select a starship and select Travel all the player cities on the planet you are on are available for travel. Once you arrive that Player City will have a starship terminal where you can manage the ship and travel to the city you arrived from (but no option to launch into space or go to any other starport, shuttle port or player city). ie: Your in Espa, Travel to Dune Retreat, Shop and Configure, Travel back to Espa, launch into space.
Issues I've heard:
Shuttle Ports are too small to serve this purpose. Even the MPS, the biggest ships in the game, are no bigger than the shuttle that arrives every time. And those are the biggest ships! How about Z95, Tie Fighters and Dune Lizards?
Griefer Mayor. Well, maybe Mayors shouldn't be able to place decorations either since they can block the door of a house? The ship object resides in memory and if the pointerrefers to astarship terminal that doesn't existmake the ship available from anywhere on the planet. Not difficult to fix and a CSR can whip the Mayor into shape in no time.
City ban. If you buy a round trip ticket you work around it (which is stinky IMO). If you have a ship at a player city shuttle port you can access it whether banned or not.
PsychoticChipmunk
Tue Nov 09, 2004 10:19 am
#10
Fidgiter wrote:
Issues I've heard:
Shuttle Ports are too small to serve this purpose. Even the MPS, the biggest ships in the game, are no bigger than the shuttle that arrives every time. And those are the biggest ships! How about Z95, Tie Fighters and Dune Lizards?
Actually thanks to the scavenger hunt you can see the size of a ship relative to a shuttleport. A TIE fighter would need grease in order to get into a shuttle's launch zone (check out MASC city Naboo, Bloodfin they have it parked right next to the shuttle)
Griefer Mayor. Well, maybe Mayors shouldn't be able to place decorations either since they can block the door of a house? The ship object resides in memory and if the pointerrefers to astarship terminal that doesn't existmake the ship available from anywhere on the planet. Not difficult to fix and a CSR can whip the Mayor into shape in no time.
Blocking an entrance to a structure via streetlamps is griefing them, moving a mission terminal is moving a mission terminal. What you're saying is I have to choose 1 spot for ships to land and can't touch it again until doomsday for one. And for two, it is a simple solution to remove a streetlamp and allow entrance to a home that still has a month of decay before it gets destroyed. Much harder to restore the home, all the items, etc. Same would go for starships on terminals, only now you have the possibility for multiple ships all having 75 items on them to restore thanks to 2 mouse clicks. It is simply inviting trouble and an increased CSR load in order to remove a 5 minute or less wait.
City ban. If you buy a round trip ticket you work around it (which is stinky IMO). If you have a ship at a player city shuttle port you can access it whether banned or not.
Then what is the point of cityban? It already is a piss poor excuse for an attempt at controlling our borders now you're garunteeing it's uselessness. The roundtrip ticket thing is unintentional and will be fixed as soon as we are given some attention; in truth them being able to shuttle into the town itself is'nt supposed to happenand needs to be fixed. Nowyou're ensuring that someone has a free in to the city via their starship, regardless of who or what they are. Itis circumventing /ban intentionally and leaving it as completely useless instead of just broken down.
Fidgiter
Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:07 am
#11
While there are some coding issues they are easy to identify and resolve. The end result will be convenience to customers, merchants and city residents.
PsychoticChipmunk wrote:
Blocking an entrance to a structure via streetlamps is griefing them, moving a mission terminal is moving a mission terminal. What you're saying is I have to choose 1 spot for ships to land and can't touch it again until doomsday for one. And for two, it is a simple solution to remove a streetlamp and allow entrance to a home that still has a month of decay before it gets destroyed. Much harder to restore the home, all the items, etc. Same would go for starships on terminals, only now you have the possibility for multiple ships all having 75 items on them to restore thanks to 2 mouse clicks. It is simply inviting trouble and an increased CSR load in order to remove a 5 minute or less wait.
Good point about the Griefer Mayor. It could happen innocently.
However it is important to note that the ship is not destroyed, just the reference to finding it. In logical terms this becomes a NULL pointer to where the ship is located. Thus the solution is rather simple: NULL pointer ships can be accessed from any starport or shuttleport and once accessed the pointer is assigned properly again.
In English: The data isn't erased with the removal of the shuttleport, just the reference to where the ship is located. It is easy to know this reference is invalid thus it is easy to recover from.
Then what is the point of cityban?... Nowyou're ensuring that someone has a free in to the city via their starship, regardless of who or what they are.
Right now someone can a roundtrip ticket to a city they are banned in so I'm not ensuring anything. I would like to see it so you can't buy a ticket to a city you are banned in and also prevent a banned person from moving their ship to said city. The same code can be applied to both scenarios.
The point of my reference is a potential grief issue where someone flys into a city they are not banned in, get banned, and loose the ability to recover their ship.
PsychoticChipmunk
Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:33 am
#12
Yes but only a marginal convenience for a hell of a lot of code to be written and things to be tweaked. Sorry I just seriously doubt they'll consider this when there is so much on the plate for the developers now and so many other things that are much more interesting to be added in. I'd prefer more content, live events, decorations for citiesetc. to be added in over starship terminals myself. Especially if they don't launch directly into space so I still have to load into a main NPC city.
furrycat
Tue Nov 09, 2004 11:50 am
#13
As PsychoticChipmunk suggests, the same game mechanics and continuity reasons preventing ships being manageable from a remote location are the very same ones preventing us from being able to launch into space from a player city[1].
Yes I would love to see ships taking off and landing at city shuttleports. But asking for this "compromise" is like asking the devs to do all the hard work required to let us have what we really want ... and then not give it to us.
So unfortunately I can't see it happening.
Not that this changes the fact that Shipwright trainers should be available in player cities. Other trainers are; so should Shipwrights be.
[1] Problem of binding the ship to a city that could vanish at any time; illogical behaviour of being able to load components (or pilots) on to a remote ship many kilometres away.
Yes I would love to see ships taking off and landing at city shuttleports. But asking for this "compromise" is like asking the devs to do all the hard work required to let us have what we really want ... and then not give it to us.
So unfortunately I can't see it happening.
Not that this changes the fact that Shipwright trainers should be available in player cities. Other trainers are; so should Shipwrights be.
[1] Problem of binding the ship to a city that could vanish at any time; illogical behaviour of being able to load components (or pilots) on to a remote ship many kilometres away.
Message Edited by furrycat on 11-09-2004 06:51 PM
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