Piloting skill ideas.

Well put, all around.

Personally, I think the Empire is doing a damn good job. They ARE alien haters, which is fun, for me. To actually be arrested 40 different times just for walking and breathing. But that’s my opinion, I enjoy weird things. I enjoy the RP put into the Empire. And I agree that Piloting is dull and boring. But so is pretty much every other major class. That’s where the RP comes in, you can’t just make a pilot/combatant/engineer main and expect random people to come up and RP with you about random things. You have to make your own RP, make your own star wars life. That’s the point of LOTJ. Carving your own niche. This is a thread about piloting suggestions to make the class itself more appealing to RPers and PKers. Not to agrue about which clan is more active. I get mad at my own clan for not being active, but I blame the Holidays meself.

If you want more people active, invite your friends, have them invite theirs and so on. Bring back the average 70some people to this MUD. Start RP with other clans, start RP with other people. Don’t just sit around and bot until you fall asleep. We’re RP enforced, with PK in the middle. You can’t have RP without PK, or we should just trash every item, ship, and area code and call ourselves a MUSH. If you want conflict, MAKE IT. Kidnap people, demand ransom. Have a party, get drunk, goto the Marrazzo and do both. Do something. Do you think I spend all my time on the MUD complaining to the immortals about things that bug me? Hell no. They’d ban me faster then I could blink. I RP all the time, I plan things. There’s NO need to argue about active and non-active players. And there’s no need to go off topic — Which brings me to this, I’m done now. Back to the actual topic.

So, Piloting suggestions? Awesome, we could use some nifty new skills.

I’d like to see a Shipscan that shows the cargo list on a ship, so Imperials have something to do other than ask for their ID. Or better yet, just add the cargo list to the command, ‘status’. When you ‘status’ another ship, if you don’t have 50 sensors, it won’t let you see how many people are onboard. Do the same for cargo, if you don’t have 50 sensors (or something equally high), you can’t see the cargo list but if you do, it’ll give the same readout as if you were listcargo on the bridge.

I mean, sure they could tractor them aboard, but then that leads to the person being tractor-ed to the ship being pk happy and lets just admit it, pilot mains are shit in hand-to-hand pk. Shipscan that shows the cargo list would lead to the pilot tractoring them to a stop, and calling in backup to arrest them. imo, it would lead to more realistic cargo running. As it is, people can cargo run spice (which is supposed to be illegal) and there’s no risk. Give imperials a chance to catch these lawless cargo runners, and we’ll have some entertainment between the monotony of cargo running.

As to breaking tractor lock, I may not be a star wars expert, but from what Ive seen and read, you cant by yourself. Only two times i remember it being done, something got between the tractoring ship and the target. First time, a second ship flew perpendicular to beam going very fast and warned target to move away as soon as it flew through beam, beam was broken by second ship entering but too fast and wrong direction to tractor that one. Second time, the ship dumped its load of grain which got stuck in the beam, that was new target ship flew away.

Listcargo would be cool, nuff said.

As to the empire, the only time i have seen it happen, it is that they ask aliens and other citizens for their name, remove helmet for lookup and thus confirmation, that kind of thing. Only are really rude or agressive if the person refuses to comply which is asking for trouble anyways. So not sure what your complaining about

I haven’t complained about anything. I was stating why there was a lack of imperial player base, an opinion, based on what someone else posted. Could we keep to the forum topic though? Arguing about the Imperial shit is boring me to death.

Now, as to breaking tractor lock. I think it would give high end pilot skill list a very juicy skill. One worth having a pilot main around for. Transporting an important person from here to there? You’d best have a kick ass pilot at the controls, to be sure they get there in one piece, without any problems. And also remember, just because it was only done in the movies twice, doesn’t mean anything. LOTJ isn’t Canon. And it’s a game.

I agree. We should have a tractor breaking skill. As well as the imperials pulling over cargo runners who run spice from ryloth to Lorrd, or something of the sort, I like the shipscan idea. Although, it was a boarding party that discovered Han Solo’s spice. He freaked, and jettisoned it. Thus causing him to lose the cargo, and Jabba placing a bounty on his head.

I don’t think they discovered the spice, they were going to board him and he jettisoned the spice. Remember, he had it in scanner proof cargo holds. They hid in them, while on the first death star.

It could be set up this way:

Imperial Ship’s Sensor Array Extras
50 Can see Lifeforms
75 Above plus Cargo List
125+ Above, as well as piercing any ‘scanner-proof’ cargo holds

A setup like that, is what would be sweet to see. You don’t see many Imperial ships sporting 125+ sensors right now, but if this system was put in, you’d see a few scanner ships prowling known spice routes. It would also give people running spice something to think about, when they think they’re going to make another easy 60k from that supposedly illegal cargo run.

The Break tractor lock could even be a second feat.
Feat: Break Tractor lock (Syntax: Breakt)
Class: Pilot
Level: 145

This feat gives you a chance (50% [or something like it]) to break a tractor lock on your ship (must be piloting it).

Very nicely put.

We really do need something like this, although I don’t think Capitals can go higher then 50 sensors..

That was the part where someone corrected me on implimenting a larger sensor base, thus adding onto the idea. Not the call for sarcastic remarks.

One minor comment: I believe breaktractor should require jettison’ing a cargo pod, if you’re a medium ship, or "losing" a projectile (torp, missile, rocket) of any kind each attempt at the command. Cappies shouldn’t be able to do it, short of another ship running in the way–which is something that the current space combat code can’t support (along with interdictors being used to pull ships out of hyperspace, et al). Why? The only examples did such. Luke Skywalker was able to fire a torpedo, and break the lock when the tractor beam transfered to the torpedo–albeit with some damage to his ship (however, I think the specific damage would be too hard to code, but I’m not a coder). The grain example was a freighter.

By saying, "The only examples did such" your disregarding the fact that it’s a game, and we’re trying to spice up pilot mains with these ideas.

I mean, if we were to stick to that line of thinking, well … only Emperor Palpatine was the Emperor during the Galactic Civil War, so only he should be in the game. Only CEC created YT-1300’s so only that company should build them. Han Solo and Lando Calrissian were the most prominent smugglers in the movies, only they should smuggle. Boba Fett was the most prominent Bounty Hunter, only he should be Bounty Hunting. Now with that said, I do agree that perhaps something should be used when doing the maneuver. Maybe a chaff clogs up the tractor beam for a set period of time. If you use an explosive though, then the tractor beam should be affected, and then that ship has to have an engineer on board to repair it. It works for me, but I don’t think it’s fair to those Cap Ship pilots.

The idea of a game based on Star Wars but not being strictly Canon, is to allow the players to go outside the realm of what’s possible, from the movies. If you’re going to adhere to a strict policy in one area but not others, it doesn’t seem very fair to that area you’re giving the proverbial shaft. Does it?

Also, I’d like to know why only Starfighters can barrel roll. I’ve seen more than a fair amount of freighters pull a barrel roll. The Outrider, the Millenium Falcon, Slave I. The list goes on, but I think I’ve proved my point.

For the record, Slave I wasn’t a freighter. It was a starfighter, much like the YT in accordance to being able to hold a small amount of cargo, if you want to be a nerd about it.

Anyway, back on subject. I like that idea about the barrel rolling, but we have barrel rolls. The Roll Command. Unless you’re saying we should be able to use that to break tractor locks, if so then I’m behind you all the way.

Adding on to the piloting suggestions, I think instead of just randomly "target Devastator" and "Fire laser X500000" we should have ways to target certain peices of the ship. Like the engine, bridge, shield generator, commsystem, etc etc. Like in Battlefront/Empire at War. That way it’s alot more fun then just straight fire laser fire ion fire rocket boom kabloosh KABOOM! It actually takes time and strategy to take down a capital. While a starfighter, that’s just one room pretty much. Fire turbolaser. KABOOM! U R DED!

Adding on that, I think instead of needing like 5 squadrons of 6 ships. Which’d be a total of 30 players, which is about half our pbase at the moment. You should be able to send out fighters with like, NPC pilots or ships strictly following orders given by the head ship. Giving a bit more use to battlegroup. Maybe have 5 squadrons of 6 ships with 1 squadron leader. Unless we can somehow magically obtain over 100 players in the Empire as pilots. That’d mean, about 5 people working the stations in the capitols, 25 people working the 6 squadrons, and about 10 capitols. Ok, that’d be a little more then 100. But you guys still get my point.

Dragging on my post, I think capitols should NEED more then one person to control them. Sure I know they’re sort of meant to be run by more then one character. That’s obvious. But you can easily make triggers/aliases/etc etc, and pretty much bot your way through a space battle. Which shouldn’t be. Like it has been said, piloting should be more stragetic, less boring. More interesting and hard to master.

Which brings me to my next point, Atmostphere. I’ve posted this idea before, I admit. But I thought I might sneak this, very loudly, into my post. Planets, when landing should have some sort of atmostpheric rating or another. That way it takes more time to land then triggering it. Such as giving imperials on the planet a chance to ID ships before they land, if they don’t get a chance to do it before they enter the atmosphere. Giving more use to the launch hover command, or something. Letting you fly through the atmosphere and land where ever your little heart desires.

Those are my ideas, for now. I apologize if I left the topic within the midsts of it.

Nice to see your knowledge when you talk about movies and non movies. I dont think they ever broke tractor in the movies, the two examples I listed were both from the novels and just from the one or two series i am knowledgeable about.

And as much as I might agree or not, go read the quote about scrambling in the quotes forumn. When they had essentially npc fighter squadrons, you could take down a cappy with just starfighters and a rare few shots from the cappy. If any of those fighters use lasers instead of ion, it woulda been half the time. Need to balance it better if you have it again