05-22-2009, 04:26 PM | #11 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [Spaceships] GURPS EVE, and related ideas . . .
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This is even more important if the setting doesn't have mind-transfer clones. And it's even more interesting when most pirates consider themselves honorable enough to avoid podkilling - and aren't podkilled in exchange. |
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05-22-2009, 10:12 PM | #12 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: [Spaceships] GURPS EVE, and related ideas . . .
Whether EVE Online's ships are crewed or not is hotly debated on CCP's forums. I personally don't care, except for thinking that it would expand the scope and complexity of the game, if ships were given Crew Slots that had to be filled with special Crew Modules, such as Regular Crew, Elite Crew, Enslaved Crew, Robotic Crew or Pirate Crew, each giving its own advantages and disadvantages, such as mutiny risk, bonuses, and how much pay they require.
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05-22-2009, 10:20 PM | #13 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: [Spaceships] GURPS EVE, and related ideas . . .
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Also note that the insurance system is criticized, because griefer players abuse it. The root cause of the problem is that ship insurance values are based on fictional raw material costs, which real raw material costs are no longer at all "in tune" with. |
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05-23-2009, 02:01 AM | #14 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [Spaceships] GURPS EVE, and related ideas . . .
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05-23-2009, 02:34 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Denver, Colorado
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Re: [Spaceships] GURPS EVE, and related ideas . . .
Quote:
They do that because, while mineral values can and do fluctuate (which is why miners can make a go of it, in Eve), they don't change much, in the general sense. For instance, if the price of tritanium goes from 3.25 isk to 4.00 isk, that's a large percentage per unit. But, you're still talking only 0.75 isk, in a game where millions of isk get made and lost every day by people who take very few risks, and tens of millions by people who risk a bit more. However, the costs of finished goods can fluctuate a lot, especially if they significantly improve offensive or defensive capabilities, and there's nobody around who can supply them regularly. Ships are ships are ships. But a Sansha's Dark Blood Defensive Wotzit that gives you an extra two percent shield strength per level of your shield skill is a Big Deal. Especially if the only way to get it is to run through pirate-infested low-sec space, evade patrols for PC warlords who control a section of null-sec space, penetrate the Level 5 Sansha's Dark Blood Complex that spawns the Wotzit, successfully complete the complex without getting blown to hell, and then make it back to a neutral station with the loot in your cargo hold, so you can use the shipyard to fit the bloody thing. Finally, of course, should you decide to remove the SDBDW from your ship, you can do it easily, and replace it with an item that uses nearly the same materials and provides less defensive bonuses, but is readily available on the market because three carebear industrialists have the blueprints to make them, locally. All of which is to say, the insurance system can easily assess a "reasonable" rate for the most commonly available active vessels, based on known material costs, because those vessels don't fluctuate a great deal in price. The system would require a lot of tweaking to allow it to take into consideration such factors as rarity and desireability, and even more to constantly reassess the value of the ship based on its current configuration. That said, even some rare shiptypes don't offer a fair, "market-price" payout, for the same reason. If the regional market situation is such that certain ships just aren't around, and the market price is therefore much higher than the material costs, the insurance system can't really deal with it. Part of that is also meant to act as a brake on abuse. For instance, should someone come up with a blueprint for an item which is useful, rare, and extraordinarily valuable due to that scarcity, what's to stop him from whipping up a batch of them, insuring them, fitting them on a cheap ship flown by a neutral alt character, and then blowing them all up to collect the payout? What stops insurance fraud in the Really Real World is the possibility of investigation, apprehension, trial, conviction and incarceration (or, at least, heavy fines). Unfortunately, a computer model has no way to determine the existence of that type of fraud. Think of it this way -- given the wide-open nature of New Genesis space, and its dramatically hostile nature, fitting modules just flat aren't insurable. So, no insurance company covers them, under any circumstances, ever. You take that risk, yourself. You jump through a 0.0 system in your Raven-class battleship, fitted with your nifty new SDBDW. You see that, according to local chat, the system has one neutral you don't know. A quick look at directional scan in 360-degree mode shows that it's another Raven-class ship and, even though you could outlast it with your new widget, you decide not to linger. You're here to make some easy isk, not PvP, so you jump to the next system. There, you see that local chat is empty, scan shows bunches of PvE targets, and you run to the first asteroid belt so you can kill some for bounties and loot. Suddenly, two other neutral ships pop into local, and you decide you don't like the possibilities. You start to maneuver to warp to a previously defined safespot (or just a planet or vacant moon), until those guys leave. However, before you can move, two pukin'-fast interceptor-class frigates warp to your belt, kick on the afterburners, close to within 20 km, and scramble your ability to form a warp-tunnel. As they do so, three more neutrals appear in local chat. Within another 20 seconds, three megathron-class Gallentean battleships fitted with close-range, high-damage blasters arrive within 20 km of you (they jumped to their buddies), and they proceed to lock your Raven-class battleship with its nifty SDBDW. As they start to fire, a short message appears in local chat: "Pay or die." The PvP pirate griefers won't stop shooting until you quickly type, "Pay." Then, based on their scan of your ship, they'll assess the level of coercion. Then, once you pay, they may decide to kill you, anyway. (Please assume the use of the word "you" follows the impersonal sense, in the following example. I don't think anybody, here, is really an idiot. :) ) (By the way, just so you know: 1, you're an idiot for flying solo into 0.0 space with an incredibly expensive fitting, just to shoot belt-rats, even if said fitting makes you all-but-immune to anything they can do to you; 2, the first neutral was a scout for the kill-squad; 3, you're an idiot for flying solo into 0.0 space with an incredibly expensive fitting, just to shoot belt-rats, even if said fitting makes you all-but-immune to anything they can do to you; 4, the presence of the scout and the two interceptor-class frigates demonstrates two truisms in Eve -- it's a team game, and all ships are useful in some circumstances; 5, bet you can guess this one; 6, the presence of the three megathron-class battleships demonstrates another Eve truism -- there are no uber-ships, and even the biggest vessel can go down to enough smaller ones. Besides, megathrons are pretty tough, even without fancy fittings. Points four and six demonstrate exactly why points one, three and five shouldn't need to be said, much less repeated.)
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-- MXLP:9 [JD=1, DK=1, DM-M=1, M(FAW)=1, SS=2, Nym=1 (nose coffee), sj=1 (nose cocoa), Maz=1] "Some days, I just don't know what to think." -Daryl Dixon. Last edited by tshiggins; 05-24-2009 at 10:36 AM. |
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Tags |
eve, eve online, space, spaceships |
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