Story/plot thread (updated with proposal)

We will NOT be following the ‘minor clan for each planet’ mold we do in era 3 but there may be temporary event-oriented clans to guide these proceedings.

I just want to re-iterate that there will not be a bunch of individual minor clans governments run by players because I have absolutely no desire to go down the dumb, dense levels of meta-gamery we saw this era

I just want to say that I think there should always be more than one engineering clan – more than two even, all the time… it really makes a big difference.

@Snefru – The problem with that comment is that Engineering clans distract from conflict participation. People tend to flock to engineering clans to avoid getting killed/otherwise involved.

I realize that people need to and want to play those roles, but it’s frustrating to see an engineering count with a higher active character tally than both major clans combined.

I like the idea of a public shipyard space station somewhere. Either in a sector of it’s own or near an existing planet (depends on setting I guess). Also, garages on a planet for a clan should be restricted to the clan in control of that planet, of course normal ways of breaking in are still in effect. This way if said clan looses it to another clan they can take over whats on the construction pad. Now, problem with this is any ships owned by the previous clan would still be owned by said clan. . .makes for some interesting possibilities.

This would defiantly spread things out. @Andvari This would stem the flow of people to the Engi Clans during war. . .they could stay with their current major clan and keep their fleet built.

I have to agree as well that just one Major Engi Clan should be in Era 1 then as the TL progresses the possibilities of another Engi Clan popping up to provide reasonable competition. Without competition being in an Engi clan tends to get a bit dull.

RE: one engineering clan…

What if one of the space stations in the galaxy was a public shipyard? What if there were more public blueprints available? What if the two major clans had ship-building garages on a planet that wasn’t their capital? This would incentivize them not just turtling on their capital world and force them to spread out a bit.

Giving engineering clans something to do other than sooner or later being a major clan’s bitch is mostly what I was hoping for.

More decent-stat publicly available blueprints is a fantastic idea in general, though, because it does set up the game for private engineers to at least get in a good hand there at the beginning. In general, if you want an engineering clan which has greater goals than “serving everyone everything for as cheap as possible” (or some variant of it) this might be a good way to experiment with that concept.

I think that a public shipyard-station would be interesting, just as much as the garages on other planets. One would require a ‘new’ aspect, but the other would just be more or less leaving things the way they are and encouraging the engineering clan to pursue other avenues first and foremost. Between the public garages on Alderaan and Naboo, those are roughly the each-end-of-the-galaxy sort of space you’d be looking for.

Having only one engineering clan to start with would encourage a different scene to sprout up for engineering if the right people were heading it, and had larger goals in mind, I think. It would be an interesting route to take, even for just the beginning of the era.

Just call me emperor and give me 150 forcer and let the chips fall where they may.

if engy clans focused on the ‘big stuff’ and left the public ‘small stuff’ market to the solo engineers until they had something special to add to the small stuff market that would be nice. little WORTHWHILE travel ships that solo engineers could make would be a good start.

I’d enjoy seeing special quest parts scattered around the galaxy that can be added to the ships in the game (only small and medium ships). For example, say there’s a quest on Naboo that gives you an upgraded engine, which can be installed on any existing ship. To make it clear, there can be something added under “stat” like an “Upgraded Parts” section.

Anyways, for the sake of making it fair we’ll just make it like the flexweave quest (you can only get one upgraded part of each type). I’d suggest making a quest for each different part, and having an upgrade for all the systems (speed, maneuver, hyper, charge, sensor). I’d say we limit upgrades to two or three parts per ship, depending on how many there are.

The idea being that ships can be bought, but they can be modified further by other engineers in the game who can be hired by pretty much anyone who owns a ship and quests to get these upgraded parts. It’d add a bit more flavor to ships rather than having a bunch of generic ones floating around.

I’d suggest having the ship string change if it’s modified as well. For example it would change from “N-1 Starfighter ‘Redux'” to “Modified N-1 Starfighter ‘Redux'”.

What do you think?

Oh, and the parts would be straightforward. They would add 10 speed, 10 hyperspeed, etc. This would cause the ship to go over quota, so if your special ship is stolen and dismantled you’ll lose the upgrade. I suppose there could be a way to have the parts removed and reinstalled, if that is an issue for anyone, though I think it adds a bit more excitement to it and the need to have your ships properly secured and safe.

I have to agree with @Andvari in regards to engineering clans I would love to see only one this upcoming era 1 of the new timeline. If they branched out from the norm that would be awesome. @Walldo, better public prints as well as major clan affiliated garages outside the capital would be great.

I don’t know if the shadow ports will be back but it might be nifty if one of them had a garage as well instead of just a regular easy to find station.

@Paco, I really like the idea of more customizable ships. Han had one why can’t we?!? I think if it was implemented you shouldn’t be able to dismantle and stockpile the quest parts… Maybe that would be cool though especially if @Baxtalo’s smugglers network idea happened. Buying and selling illicit goods from them could be fun.

Rework Nal Hutta, so that people can actually develop spice, instead of one area having all of them.

I haven’t really thought about that. It does seem like Nal Hutta has all the spice you could want or need available from NPCs. I agree with Rakun. It would probably make things a little more interesting to make spice a player made item only again. Maybe make it available for purchase from a few NPCs, but only in an unrefined form.

I’ll crawl out of the abyss just long enough to make this suggestion: LOTJ ignores canon and does its own thing. Given that, my suggestion for you is to begin the new timeline with two apped things in existance only. 1 Jedi, 1 Sith. Zero clans, nothing, nadda. Turn on formclan after a couple of weeks, for a couple of days/a week or so, and let what clans will form, form. Then allow for the RP to dictate the direction of the mud more than an enforced starting point. Simply watch how the shit rolls downhill so to speak. No real need for a mud that doesn’t give a shit about canon to follow canon’s starting/finishing points.

I used to be all about ideas like that Ocerion but after the mostly “player generated” storyline the MUD has had for the last two TLs I don’t think we have enough content generating players for that to work. All it takes is the one Jedi and the one Sith to die to someone with grenades or in space and we end up stagnating almost immediately. It’s a nice idea on paper but so far it’s been absolutely awful in execution.