Ideas for server population

[Blackheart-X-]

There used to be 5 jump gates in Alex and now there is only 2.

New York JG
New Berlin JG
New Tokyo JG
New London JG
Sparta JG

These gates made trading very quick but also very dangerous.  Pirates looking for easy targets could hide at the other side and wait for traders doing their runs.  Also rogues looking for easy kills could attack traders as well.  But it also made trading more exciting and daring and escorts were even used.  Police and Navy clans had a small zone to patrol and try and keep order in.  Bad points were that if no police or navy were online then the traders had a rough time of it (but i suppose thats the risk you take) , another bad point was that other parts of the Void werent being used because everything you needed was around these 5 gates. But it made travelling around a hell of a lot easier.

Savy? BH.

[[BLK_LGN][X]Zeus]

[quote="McViper";p="222400"]Well first off i think we need to do more events[/quote]

Ahem. Nobody is interested in them anymore.

[Blackheart-X-]

Zeus you might have a point but lets be creative here.
Events might not be as popular as they were but they might just not be the right events for the players here now.
PVP events are boring, waiting around ages to fight one guy.  Sounds like any other night in Sparta if you ask me.
How about more organised clan battles or faction battles.  I prefer the fights that start themselves, but if they aint happening then maybe we need to get them started.
Escort events or convoys might be an option too.

Just ideas, nothin more.

[Cursed_One]

^
lol, when we hosted regular pvp events, people seem to show up, but if we decide to host anything not-pvp event then people dont give a damn about it. We would love to host creative and big events but the fact is that people wont show up unless it is a standard-pvp event or if the money is like 1 bilion reward.

[anoyingnomad]

@ Shiver. Thats exactly what the Alex gates are. A jump to every house. And to Sparta. And it brought loads of fun and RP  :x

[Vansen]

One of the things ive found wierd since i started playing here was the amount a pirate is allowed to ask in tax. On my old server, may it rest in peace, we used to have a level based tax and it worked! Im going to throw some figures at you but before anyone moans at me, its just an idea and remember level 80+ have hundreds of millions on their char.


lvl 1-20 dont count
lvl 20-30 100k
lvl 30-40 200k
lvl 40-50 300k
lvl 50-60 400k
lvl 60-70 500k
lvl 70-80 1 mill
lvl 80-90 5 mill

We also used the [H] Hunter tag as we rarely see here but the Hunter could "Fine" a pirate the same amounts as above.

Your going to see more pirates after the big cash, more hunters after the pirates and more traders ready to RP a trader.

I would personaly love to see this come into play  :)

[Zsoca]

I am not a pirate here, I have allways only few millions and I was pirated maybe one but 200k is very low.

[geromix]

Relaxed RP is the way to go for Void. Not like Disco,with a hundred rules and directives. Atm,Void doesn't even have any kind of RP so we certainly need more.

It does seem that the Dev Team is working towards that goal.

the Nomads "exclusiv" is actually a test aiming for that goal Battor,we started with the Nomads becouse the Void mod is all about "The Nomads continue their eternal struggle against the newly aligned forces.
The Order, Robots, Monkeys and Europa all work together in the defense of
their systems against the Nomad onslaught. However, the Houses of Liberty,
Rheinland, Bretonia and the Kusari work to further their own aims and
provide little help to the others, concerned that this new alliance might
upset the balance of power in Sirius."
altho,i dont mean we going to follow that specific mod on that area,as we are The Void and not "Void Discovery" nevertheless if its the most popular or the most unpopular mod,we will never take anything from other mods,being that ideas,concepts or mod materials.

one step at the time

Many of the suggestions put here like  clans closely linked to NPC factions are being worked upon,i believe.

I am not sure ....about bringing the 5 gates back,as has been said it will make other systems of mod go unexplored and unused as everything will revolve around the 5 gates.
But then we have so few players nowadays(at the time of writing this there was only 1 player playing in the server-blame the time zone to an extent) that it won't make much of a difference. Even at peak times when European players are in-game there maybe only 20 guys playing in the server.
With such low player population the best that can be done is to make the players come together around a few systems so that opportunities to  interact with each other increases.

So i suppose, bring back the 5 gates and introduce the old lucrative trade routes like we had in Tohuku system earlier and then in Omicron Alpha. This may increase piracy.

However, in the long run if player population increases then we should have long  trade routes and decrease the importance of 5 gates and short trade routes.

Also i believe that there should be more avenues for spending all the money one has like through increased prices of equipment,ships and also by making clans pay a monthly 'rent' for the clan bases they have in the mod. This will also solve the problem in knowing which clan is inactive or not,the clans which pay the 'rent' regularly would be the active ones.
Lots of clans of have billions in their banks,that is a lot of money and all that has to spent one way or the other.
When the money is spent, many will have to start trading more.Thus giving pirates more opportunities.
The number of Level 90 players will also hopefully reduce.

We need to send something like a newsletter to the all the registered members in the forum. 8000+ members,out of which even 1% return then the player population will rise immediately. Strail used to send a newsletter once every year.
Its not to difficult making a newsletter,we can have a Newsletter Team- a few writers,editors,gfx designer. The newsletter will tell about all the new developments of the mod,players,clans etc.
Send it once a month or every 6 weeks,it should make old members to return or at least perk up their curiosity!!


-Geromix

[Shiverblade]

[quote="Shiverblade";p="222402"]Maybe sounds harsh, but eliminating the abandoned city and making sparta the go-through system would be perhaps a good one? Lets put the 5 gates thing in Sparta. 1 gate to rheinland, to liberty, to kusari, to bretonia, to dyson sphere, to osiris and a gate to EFZ. And get rid of the abandoned city. Sounds harsh but maybe it helps, makes people go to other places instead. Also make navy-factions solid-red in the clan reps who are evil. Then they wont dock there, they will dock on the outcast base in alexandria to hunt for navys there.[/quote]
^^^opinions please?

@atm subject
Newsletter team...sounds fine to me I wanna join! xD

But as someone said, i think the devs are indeed working on the soft RP thing. But we need to do it abit faster, and we need something interesting now to make people come.

[Cursed_One]

I dont mind getting rid of the abandoned city.

As for the nomad exlusive stuff, I think its great but what about taking it a step futher, for example limiting liberty equipment to liberty ships, outcast to outcast and so on. obviously this means that all factions must have to some degree equal ship and weapon quality.

never played on disco, so dunno if thats how it is there :p

[zyraxes]

[quote="Cursed_One";p="222418"]^
lol, when we hosted regular pvp events, people seem to show up, but if we decide to host anything not-pvp event then people dont give a darn about it. We would love to host creative and big events but the fact is that people wont show up unless it is a standard-pvp event or if the money is like 1 bilion reward.[/quote]

Thats because voidians are used to have a "mechanical" "pvp life" on server.There are a few players remained and all that they want is to be the best in pvp and that is all for them.When we tried to make some roleplay on Void with OA blockade,they started to moan,accuse that they dont want to participate in rp.When we insisted to make our rp job as police,one of our members was baned for harasssement. People will not join this kind of servers.They want rp,the time that we spent on server must be like a second real life.If i am a police,i will act as a police all the time that i spent on server.And pirates or evils will be attacked always by me,not only when they want to.PVP servers are just boring,we enter,make 1 or 2 pvp's and then we connect to rp servers where we spend hours playing a role.I am talking from experience,and the proove is reality.Rp servers are full,pvp's servers are empty.We need big clan wars,factions wars,specific rules,all must be a "life" in a big world called Void.It's a shame that the server which have the most beautiful freelancer mod it's not a rp server.
Players on Void are too rich.Everybody made money in time,there was some ways to become rich quickly.(personaly, i made huge profits in about 2 weeks with weapons smmugling,and i mean huge profit)I will not need money 100 years from now on.That kind of trades are a mistake.Players must work hard for money.And making money must be dangerous.Players must be interested in trade route,players must trade or make misions to make money,players must pirating,players must escort.On other servers that i played,players are afraid to trade without escort.Profits are moderate,pirates are everywhere,and they can tax traders how they want(no tax limit).So,traders are hiring escorts or pay taxes.And rolpe play is not negociable,admins are not baning ppl that are roleplaying lol.If a police ask to a trade to drop cardamine,that player must drop it or fight.That police will shot down that smmugler.On Void,the trader will say"i am not part of your stupid roleplay,i will report you" )). And some admin,will bann the police as it happened before.
If you want to remain a PvP only server,you need only one system.EFZ.Some players will make a 2-3 pvp's and then will quit.You dont need JG,planets,npc's,you dont need a sofisticated and a beautiful mod like Void.

Cheers

Cheers

[cmdrsaman]

About shorter trade routes: the current rule of the thumb is that no in-system trade route should allow more than 1000 profit / cargo. With that in mind, there won't be any easy milk runs as there were in NB and Alpha. (I wasn't here when the Tohoku one was in effect, so I can't comment on that :)) Besides, there are new routes, it's just that traders don't really fly them yet. (And there're also some unintended new routes :P Sorry peeps, no spoilers.)


About the five gates: so far, the majority of the dev team supports bringing them back together, and Rim has okayed it: if Vector gives the go-ahead as well, they will be brought back together. If not, then they won't.


About money problems: sorry, but the only good way to restore economic balance to the server would be a money wipe. If we were to jack prices up real high, it would be very unfair to new players. There's been a vote about the money wipe before, and the majority of players was unfortunately against it. And I don't think we're going to see people who say there's too much money and they also have too much money going to delete their money :P
Anyway, most of that money was made by using bugs (ammo bug, weapon bug, and so on - I'm fairly certain none of those were intended to be there), and by overprized events. (One billion pvp event, ring a bell? :)) But since there must've been some people who made it by farming too easy trade routes (NB, Baby), which is still completely legal, many would complain about a money wipe again.


About RP: relaxed RP rules are the key, in my opinion. Not making RP mandatory for everyone, but having some rules about RP for the people who choose to do it. (For example, the different tags, or RP clans.) There should be some, otherwise we're going to see lawful clans running around with Nomad ships, and other such examples of bad RP - and what constitutes overkill should be defined as well. @ Zyraxes: based on what I read on the forums, it looks like your clan member was banned for overkilling a trader, not for playing RP. Cardamine trading in Omicron Alpha was and is completely legal anyway, so it's not like you had a sound RP basis for that. It's not lawful space, and the Outcasts actually need it to live :P If you want to play RP as well, police traders who are carrying illegal goods in House systems. I don't think anyone will fault you for that. Or would you prefer to stay on the forums and bring up old grievances? :P

If somebody finally started policing, or heaven forbid, protecting traders, you can bet that Reavers will be there as well >) (Hint: Bretonia might be a good place to start.) Of course, a good start would be to make the [T] tag mandatory for all freighters, so police could find and protect traders easier. (Heh, of course, pirates could find them easier as well.) Either that, or remove the need for the need for the [X] tag, and only keep the pirate license as a requirement: that way, the playing field would be level too.


About limiting equipment: we're working on that. The problem is that if we limited faction equipment to one faction only, players would have a lot less choice. Besides, why shouldn't an Outcast ship use Liberty Rogue weapons, and vice versa? :) They are allies, after all. It would be better if RP clans kept their reputations true to their RP, and wouldn't purchase weapons that are only available at places where they shouldn't land in the first place.


About Sparta: there's no need to remove the abandoned city, and/or make it more of a transit system than it already is. Remember that Alex is a lot richer system, so it's better that it's the transit hub. However, Europa and Nomad patrols are curiously missing from the place... Oh, and about the Event System: unless Rim or Vector objects against it, I'll add a jumphole from NY to there as well. I don't see the harm in it, and it is a good idea to make that place more accessible.

[Shiverblade]

Ok, allot of things have been said: Now lets go straight to the point, im making a list here and now what contains some certaint changes what would be nice, everyone can add/say that its bad and also say its good.

But from now on, if u reply: Reply with a clear list what things would be GOOD to add, and things what WOULDNT be good to add! Then in the end we have 1 big list with things, it can be send to rimshot and then he can send it to the other devs and like that they have a list of things to do!

My list:
About equipment: The equipment restrictions we have now are good, dont change furthur things.

--Clans--

Reps:
Clans should have solid reputations for example: Dacia clan is a navy clan, they should be friendly with the house of where they are navy of, hostile to those who are their enemy and enemy of their allieds an all other factions are neutral and can be changed. But the factions where your friendly with and hostile with are SOLID, unchangable.

Bases:
The bases should have stronger guns, and 1 patrol of 4 fighters with their clan ships(and if they arent there yet, the patrols are diff ships what fit their RP) Also maybe a second clan base? A dockable BS whats placed somewhere else. With same equipment and stuff. And this BS has even heavier guns then the base and also it has 2/3 clan patrols of 3 ships!! Why? Because this BS is destroyable And has a respawn timer of 2 hours.

Clan IDs:
Lets make clan IDs what u cannot trade or beam! If someone just joined the -|Nomads|- for example they can get of a void a teleport to the clan base, there he can buy the clan ID and a ship of the clan(syntax, phantom, anubis, whatever the clans rep is. What fits the RP) This thing can only be bought once, and cant be unmounted anymore only by a void/admin. The ID gives you solid reps of certaint allieds/hostiles. Like this clans also want to make alliances to be able to use new ships and stuff

Base tax:
Your clan base(the main base, not BS) now requires a certaint amount of money. Lets say 10 mill a week? That money goes to the personal, ships parts, etc. Supports RP and trading.

--Trading--
The commodities shouldnt be that proffitable in the same system or a radius of 2 system jumps. Make more trade ships, with more cargo and armor and weapon power. Let them be able to use armor upgrades. And decrease the commodition prices much since there are bigger cargo spaces

--Systems--
Make the hell systems attractive to enter, for example strong weapons or strong wrecks! Maybe "Codename Ships" is a nice idea? These are wrecks where u can get a "Exodar Plans" from. U show it on a planet in the Hell system, there they can make the ship for you. It isnt a OP ship, just a balanced ship what looks great and is still pretty good

Also sparta: Delete all jumpgates jumphols and bases exept the abandoned city. Then add these jumpgates around the abandoned city:
-Jumpgate to New London
-Jumpgate to New Tokio
-Jumpgate to New London
-Jumpgate to New York
-Jumpgate to Alexandria
-Jumpgate to Osiris
-Jumpgate to Dyson Sphere
-Jumpgate to EFZ

Make the abandoned city perhaps a nomad defenders home base? A base where monkeys/robots/order all come together, the centre of all defence against the nomads. This system was used by the nomads in the first war to infiltrate into the houses.
Make all jumpgates alien-like and if they jumped they are in a nebula and in those systems u got no jumpgate, but jump hole! You enter the jumpgate, u leave the jumphole. Also place ALLOT of order/monkey/robot individual npcs and also patrols. Also let Osiris-Battleships spawn from time to time, flying around

Nomad hive: remove all jumpholes/gates there too as first: Then place the following nomadic gates around the nomad lair:
-Jumpgate to EFZ
-Jumpgate to Osiris
-Jumpgate to Sparta, in sparta is a jumpHOLE what leads to the nomad hive. Its secret for the order/monkey/robots though.
-Jumpgate to Dyson Sphere
-Jumpgate to Tohoku(the tegakis outpost has become nomad, they re-conquered it with forces they gathers in that nomad hideout)

Also make the nomad hive dockable once again since the nomads are busy for a counter attack!(the one in the nomad hive system), a few nomad patrols aruond the entire system. Remove ALL order/monkey/robot npcs/patrols from:
-Nomad 1
-UK1(all furthur defences are placed at the jumphole to Omicron Alpha, a osiris BS is there with serveral patrolls around it.)
-Dyson Sphere
-Tempest
-Nomad Hive

Why delete those patrols? Because ince the new ships(stingray and highbred) the order/monkey/robots are pushed VERY hard, they are now defending the borders to the borderworlds/house systems with all their power. (like this we also support the RP story, you dont got this on disco!)
*I know those things support the nomads, but the game is all about the nomads in fact. This support RP, the nomad bases in freedom and also freelance nomads who wanna chill/pvp with us you know*

--Some global things--

Ships with missles:
I think EVERY HF/VHF should have 1 CD slot, 1 CD/Torp slot, 2 gun/missle slots and all other slots just guns. Like this we wont have a spam of missles, and still have the people who like missles satisfied

RolePlay team:
Maybe a idea to have a RolePlay team, a team who discuss in a hidden forum about the RP of void. Devs have hard time making stuff, then they have to figure out how it fits in RP. Maybe this is a nice idea to have a RP-Team who are talking about how the RP story in the void is developing, growing, changing etc! This team also send the newsletter to all people of the void forums once every 6 months with clan updates, some RP news, server news out of RP and about mod info. Keeps people interested
**This team will also send the first newsletter to all people atm who arent playing but are registered on forums! We MUST send the mail to all those people, if just 1% of all those people would come back it would be GREAT **

Cloaking devices:
Whatabout cloaking devices? Ive been wondering about that and i think i came up with a idea to make nice, special, balanced cloaking devices!
Make a certaint spawn of VERY hard npcs, with VERY hard i realy mean: VERY hard! Its agroup of 4 npcs, theres a 40% chance that a npc has: A cloaking device he doesnt use. If u kill him u can beam up the cloaking device and the cloaking device must still be repaired! Reparation costs are HUGE, like 50mill for the full 100% repairation. So it would be like 1% dmg=500k repair costs. Afcourse cause the repairation costs are so high: The cloaking device NEVER gets dmged once u got it mounted and the cloaking device only works when its fully repaired! The cloaking device lasts 1 minute, and it has to recharge what takes 2 minutes! U can only use it when your OUT of combat, and when your cloaked you CANT shoot. Just like your in cruise. Also the cloaking device takes away ALL your energy, so when u uncloak it takes 2 secs for your energy to start recovering again!

And nomad ships, can just buy a cloaking device for 100mill from any nomad store(this cloakign device also NEVER gets dmged). This cloaking device is nomad exlusive and the duration is for allways until cancled. Further the cloaking device can only be used out of combat, cant shoot while cloaked, drains all your energy and when your uncloaked again u also need 2 seconds for your energy to start recharging again.

The 2 seconds start immiedietly when u pressed the uncloak button! What will be F12!

Pirates, Bounty Hunters and Escorters:
Lets make 3 official tags u can get by having full green rep of the faction and then buying a ID for 5 mill! (the 5 mill is conpensation for the house u get within that faction, solicitation, and support to the faction)

Pirates: ID bought at Cutlass, rep gained by doing pirate missions or killing any house faction.
Bounty Hunters: Hired by the society to kill pirates
Escorters: People you can hire to protect you from pirates

Pirate: [X]
Bounty hunters: [H]
Escorters: [E](maybe change the event management tag to [Event] ? It sounds logicer to new people)

Polices of the house systems should be played by clans like dacia etc. Clans should take the role of house polices/militaries who take the responsibility for those houses. But they are PvP, they fight PvP but their ways are RP

--Final word--
With these changes, for freelancers the game is interesting to play once again! They are free to do and go whre ever they want. Clans wont give spawn wars anymoer, there is now organisation in fights! We have a soft RP line. A nice continue in the Freelancer story itself also! With these changes Void will be still PvP, but the organisation is just RP. But we all talk and do in PvP/Normal style


This is my list, people please comment the things ive said comment GOOD things(so devs know what we like) Comment BAD(so people can agree/disagree with you and the devs know what we dont like )

Also it would be helpfull to make your OWN list too, then in the end i will make a new list, with allot of things what we all together think will help the server! The list will get agreed by everyone, i will place a poll then with that list. Then it can be send to Rimshot who can send it to the Dev team and they got something nice to do for V8.5? Because change must come soon before there will be no one to enjoy it! Before peopel get addicted to disco! ^^

Thanks for reading this text-wall

[Cursed_One]

Ignoring numbers, the concept is good. But one thing, I am not changing my [E] to [Event]...just saying. No reason for the escort not to use [N] (if any) anyway cause they are navy.

[X] is already an offical tag(staff created), the rest is player-made which is why there isn't really any rules for them. The change of where NPC patrols sounds logical as I dont really expect to see somebody patrol in a system they dont have a base in.

I like the clan ID and the reps . Im all for nomad having more bases (more specificly the hives, and a base in UK1) as they dont really have many bases atm.

rest i guess i have more or less no comment on.

[Shiverblade]

Well the thing is not more bases, but a stronger community inside the nomad sector. Dyson Sphere, Tempest, Nomad Hive, Nomad 1..All our bases there are atm suppressed by the order/monkey/robots/europe navy. The news said that they have hard time defending, so maybe its good to go 1 step furthur: The order/monkey/robots pushing back to the borders of UK1 and 2 and Sparta Make the real nomad systems clean of humans.

Btw i havent seen your list up ^^ But if u agree with most i suggested i guess thats fine enough then hehe