Transport Convoy suggestion

This suggestion is fairly wordy I suppose, so I’ll hop right to it.

 

Transports should be easily identifiable by their escorts
-This would allow aggressive players to identify and evaluate if a target is worth attacking or not just by seeing what ships are defending the transport.     

-Transports with common cargo should have the traditional 3 fighters (2 ion emitter and 1 railgun)

 

-Transports with fuel should have varying escorts, ranging from a composition of interceptors and fighters to frigates and  destroyers since corporations that transport the fuel would be hiring mercenaries for help rather than employ escort ships.

 

-Transports with resources should always have a frigate in the escort composition with a mixture of other ships. This way it would be easy for aggressing players to confuse the fuel and resource transports (I know, this goes against the point of this part of the suggestion, but some confusion needs to be there).

 

-Transports with ship components should be guarded by heavily armed destroyers and should always to be a risk to aggress, although a victory should not be unrewarded.

 

Defending a transport should not be worthless
-As mentioned briefly in Lord_Xenon’s suggestion ( Call for support )there should be a be a benefit to defending a transport against attacking ships, including aggressing players. I suggest that a moderate reward that varies with transport type be implemented.
-If a transport is successfully defended a small amount of credits or an item similar to what would have dropped from the transport should it have been destroyed should be awarded to the player, although once defended they can no longer attack the transport or the remaining escort ships but instead receive rewards whenever the transport is successfully defended against attacks, potentially yielding more rewards than if the player were to aggress the transport.

Ships on hire for forward fleet missions should be encounterable in OS
-Ships that players have hired out to corporations for forward fleet missions that involve escorting a transport should be able to be met in OS although they should only be able to be destroyed if the mission has a high fail chance (>30%). This suggestion is simple so that forward fleet missions have more of a presence than a simple timer on the ships.

 

Faction transports (such as Federation merchants and Mendes transports) should be escorted by police units
-The only reason I’m mentioning this is simply because I personally find it aggravating that quest transports are usually poorly defended to begin with despite being of such a high status. The police or other corporate police really should be defending the transport alongside you if it is going through dangerous sectors. The transports themselves however should yield rare loot if a player is able to successfully defend/destroy the ship.

 

Any thoughts?

Sounds nice :stuck_out_tongue:

I have a few questions to this:

>>be able to be destroyed if the mission has a high fail chance (>30%)<<

The fleet missions don’t have a fail chance as far as I can tell. Just a % based outpay.

Do you invert this to determine the ‘fail chance’? So 65% fleet points = 35% fail chance for this calculation?

Second:

  1. How big is the impact of those player send ships?

Just type + weaponmodel?

Or the full packet with equipped items(active modules, passive slots, weapon + ammo + missiles)?

  1. Is it then random determined which transport get those player ships and is it one time thing or every time possible within the send timeframe of the fleet mission?

To give examples:

Transport with 2 fighter, 1 frigate and 1 interceptor.

Player a have send out 4 ships(no frigate but 4 fighter).

Player b have send out 4 ships(2 frigates 2 fighter).

Who’s fighter will be used? And is it possible to be cross used(one fighter from player a and one fighter from player b)? Or must be ALL ships for the transport come from one player?

After three hours player a’s ship returned and only player b’s ships are on the mission yet.

Will the now spawned transport use player b’s ships or will it ignore him(as he has already give escort support for the first transport)?

+1 for the suggestion.

I have a few questions to this:

>>be able to be destroyed if the mission has a high fail chance (>30%)<<

The fleet missions don’t have a fail chance as far as I can tell. Just a % based outpay.

Do you invert this to determine the ‘fail chance’? So 65% fleet points = 35% fail chance for this calculation?

Second:

  1. How big is the impact of those player send ships?

Just type + weaponmodel?

Or the full packet with equipped items(active modules, passive slots, weapon + ammo + missiles)?

  1. Is it then random determined which transport get those player ships and is it one time thing or every time possible within the send timeframe of the fleet mission?

To give examples:

Transport with 2 fighter, 1 frigate and 1 interceptor.

Player a have send out 4 ships(no frigate but 4 fighter).

Player b have send out 4 ships(2 frigates 2 fighter).

Who’s fighter will be used? And is it possible to be cross used(one fighter from player a and one fighter from player b)? Or must be ALL ships for the transport come from one player?

After three hours player a’s ship returned and only player b’s ships are on the mission yet.

Will the now spawned transport use player b’s ships or will it ignore him(as he has already give escort support for the first transport)?

+1 for the suggestion.

1. When I said the fail chance it was simply as you then stated the inverse chance for success (60% success, 40% fail). Generally when you get an FF mission you can get 80-90% with the autopick, so having over 30% for a fail rate seems to be a fair amount of room. 

 

2.1.  That one I didn’t say because fixing that part is a pain. Since generally I strip down a ship on FF missions and then send it. So I suppose that if a ship was sent out built up (weapons, modules, etc.) then if it were to spawn alongside a FF transport then it would use that build. If a ship is sent out stripped down then it should use the stock setup (from when you initially purchase the ship) which in a way would be a disadvantage since most stock builds aren’t exactly great.

 

2.2.  Yet another thing I actually didn’t quite think of, although I originally intended to state that the spawn for a FF transport to be random and just omitted it because I assumed it would be implied (as per everything in this game right now).

 

I suppose one way to do that would be to stagger the spawns of players ships I guess, so with each each transport having one ship from a random selection of players to escort the transport, which given that invasion is instanced right now would allow all 6 ships to spawn across separate instances within the 10 hours. So if a ship weren’t to spawn within the 10 hours the mission would just complete and it would not have to spawn alongside an FF transport.

 

Hope I explained a bit  :012j: