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New feature request: Orbiting Outposts
rsilverblood87
Member Posts: 12 Arc User
The current situation: Players have many ships they love and have customized
The problem: Players have no way to show off their ship collection while offline, and when online they have to hop into their ship one at a time to show them off and join the same map instance as whoever they're trying to show off their ship to
The solution: Orbiting Outposts (read below)
Orbiting Outposts would be similar to Fleet Starbases. But on a much smaller scale. In the Orbiting Outpost space instance, players ships would be docked similar to the memorial for the World 359 ships - but obviously not destroyed. Larger ships (like the Borg Assimilator) might have to be kept in a separate area. But players might have the option to assign some ships to be docked in their Outpost. For roleplaying reasons, the player character could facilitating their faction to administrate a new region of space and deal with new problems, which is why the player character and their ships might've been chosen for the assignment to that Orbiting Outpost. For roleplaying reasons, the player character might've been chosen as an interim Captain of the Orbiting Outpost and as the acting faction liason officer for that region of space until a long-term replacement could be chosen (which might take an indefinite amount of time because politics, bureaucracy, whatever) - so that in the mean time, the player character is not expected to take on the administration of the Orbiting Outpost as their only full-time assignment, but rather to help get things sorted in preparation for whatever long-term solution is decided upon. Maybe a cheeky line in there by the faction lead might inform the player that their contributions to their faction are just too valuable to keep them in one place, and this Orbiting Outpost assignment fell into the player's lap as it were due to their faction being stretched "too thin" in that area of space. Maybe something about they just need the job to be done "good enough" to achieve stability, steady progress and development - maybe a comment about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Or, alternatively, the faction could be testing the idea of creating long-term holographic officers based on some more prominent officers, and testing has reached the stage where administration of minor outlying outposts is the next step along that journey. (Similar to what happened with the EMH, then the LMH. Even the ECH. Basically, if the Federation had continued that line of research, eventually mostly-holographic crews would be created when man-power was limited. Same idea, but applied for all factions, for when the assignment of an experienced leader to a task was needed, but the task wasn't important enough given the scarcity of experienced leaders.) Might also be a way to boost the player's ego, similar to how Julian Bashir felt when he was selected for the LMH template - a chance for immortality. (Maybe that's also why the player isn't expected to run the Orbiting Outpost? Because the goal is to see if the holographic program can do it? And the player can correct/update any anomalous behaviors. But wouldn't need to do so often anyways. So it just works out.)
Inside of the Outpost, players would be able execute transactions in order to gain quality of life improvements. Dilithium could be spent, Duty Officer Assignments could be used to research new improvements, Zen could be used for some premium enhancements, regular missions could be used to encourage players to cooperate to unlock benefits together.
Improvements could be the number of holographic duplicates of your Active Bridge Officers you have assigned to your Orbiting Outpost. But there's only a limited number of slots available at first. More become available later. Perhaps a maximum limit of 10 might be sensible. It's a good way to show off the uniforms and designs you have for your bridge officers.
Other improvements might be Exchange, Mail, Bank, Ship Vendor, Manage Ships, Customize Ships, Repair Ship, Heal Crew Injuries, and similar.
This becomes a good solution to help drain excess R&D materials, dilithium, EC and other currencies from the market in order to stabilize the in-game economy, and add extra vitality to the game. It would also make player trophies and decoration items (like the golden ship models for Federation bridge interiors) actually more desirable, since they could be shown off more prominently.
Adding an option to allow friends to visit your Orbiting Outpost while you're offline is also an option. It might also be nice to allow players to publicly list their Orbiting Outposts to be visited by others on a bulletin board. Maybe also allowing players to favorite the ones they'd like to revisit, and allowing players to rate the ones they've visited, with the top 100 appearing on the leaderboard. Might also be a good way to add decorations that feel more substantive than the Interior Bridge for starships.
Also, allowing an option to transwarp to favorited Orbiting Outposts would be a welcome addition - especially if it had a separate cooldown from the normal transwarp mechanic. I'd also love to have the option to just transwarp to the interior of an Orbiting Outpost instead of just transwarping the ship and having to waste time navigating to it. Adding two buttons, one button for space transwarp and a second button for interior transwarp, that would be awesome.
This way it could become a player home. It's not like Star Trek didn't already have something similar with Captain Sisko in Deep Space Nine.
Finally, I'd like there to be an Orbiting Outpost Holodeck (single player instance) where players could preview the ships of the Orbiting Outpost. And, perhaps the Risa floaters could be enabled inside the Holodeck, to allow players to view the ships from any angle. Or, alternatively, perhaps some kind of console could show off the ships similar to the customize ship view that players have - except I'd love to be able to not just rotate the ship, but also strafe left and right, or move vertically, or even change the direction of the light (and maybe even select the skybox being used). This would be perfect to take screenshots as well. Adding a "greenscreen", "bluescreen" or fuchsia background might also be a nice addition, as well as the ability to directly take super high-definition PNG screenshots with transparent backgrounds. (That might also be a nice addition for the game in general.)
Lastly, a similar idea for the Holodeck could be used to preview the Orbiting Outpost owner's player character and their Active Bridge Officers assigned to the Orbiting Outpost.
The problem: Players have no way to show off their ship collection while offline, and when online they have to hop into their ship one at a time to show them off and join the same map instance as whoever they're trying to show off their ship to
The solution: Orbiting Outposts (read below)
Orbiting Outposts would be similar to Fleet Starbases. But on a much smaller scale. In the Orbiting Outpost space instance, players ships would be docked similar to the memorial for the World 359 ships - but obviously not destroyed. Larger ships (like the Borg Assimilator) might have to be kept in a separate area. But players might have the option to assign some ships to be docked in their Outpost. For roleplaying reasons, the player character could facilitating their faction to administrate a new region of space and deal with new problems, which is why the player character and their ships might've been chosen for the assignment to that Orbiting Outpost. For roleplaying reasons, the player character might've been chosen as an interim Captain of the Orbiting Outpost and as the acting faction liason officer for that region of space until a long-term replacement could be chosen (which might take an indefinite amount of time because politics, bureaucracy, whatever) - so that in the mean time, the player character is not expected to take on the administration of the Orbiting Outpost as their only full-time assignment, but rather to help get things sorted in preparation for whatever long-term solution is decided upon. Maybe a cheeky line in there by the faction lead might inform the player that their contributions to their faction are just too valuable to keep them in one place, and this Orbiting Outpost assignment fell into the player's lap as it were due to their faction being stretched "too thin" in that area of space. Maybe something about they just need the job to be done "good enough" to achieve stability, steady progress and development - maybe a comment about not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Or, alternatively, the faction could be testing the idea of creating long-term holographic officers based on some more prominent officers, and testing has reached the stage where administration of minor outlying outposts is the next step along that journey. (Similar to what happened with the EMH, then the LMH. Even the ECH. Basically, if the Federation had continued that line of research, eventually mostly-holographic crews would be created when man-power was limited. Same idea, but applied for all factions, for when the assignment of an experienced leader to a task was needed, but the task wasn't important enough given the scarcity of experienced leaders.) Might also be a way to boost the player's ego, similar to how Julian Bashir felt when he was selected for the LMH template - a chance for immortality. (Maybe that's also why the player isn't expected to run the Orbiting Outpost? Because the goal is to see if the holographic program can do it? And the player can correct/update any anomalous behaviors. But wouldn't need to do so often anyways. So it just works out.)
Inside of the Outpost, players would be able execute transactions in order to gain quality of life improvements. Dilithium could be spent, Duty Officer Assignments could be used to research new improvements, Zen could be used for some premium enhancements, regular missions could be used to encourage players to cooperate to unlock benefits together.
Improvements could be the number of holographic duplicates of your Active Bridge Officers you have assigned to your Orbiting Outpost. But there's only a limited number of slots available at first. More become available later. Perhaps a maximum limit of 10 might be sensible. It's a good way to show off the uniforms and designs you have for your bridge officers.
Other improvements might be Exchange, Mail, Bank, Ship Vendor, Manage Ships, Customize Ships, Repair Ship, Heal Crew Injuries, and similar.
This becomes a good solution to help drain excess R&D materials, dilithium, EC and other currencies from the market in order to stabilize the in-game economy, and add extra vitality to the game. It would also make player trophies and decoration items (like the golden ship models for Federation bridge interiors) actually more desirable, since they could be shown off more prominently.
Adding an option to allow friends to visit your Orbiting Outpost while you're offline is also an option. It might also be nice to allow players to publicly list their Orbiting Outposts to be visited by others on a bulletin board. Maybe also allowing players to favorite the ones they'd like to revisit, and allowing players to rate the ones they've visited, with the top 100 appearing on the leaderboard. Might also be a good way to add decorations that feel more substantive than the Interior Bridge for starships.
Also, allowing an option to transwarp to favorited Orbiting Outposts would be a welcome addition - especially if it had a separate cooldown from the normal transwarp mechanic. I'd also love to have the option to just transwarp to the interior of an Orbiting Outpost instead of just transwarping the ship and having to waste time navigating to it. Adding two buttons, one button for space transwarp and a second button for interior transwarp, that would be awesome.
This way it could become a player home. It's not like Star Trek didn't already have something similar with Captain Sisko in Deep Space Nine.
Finally, I'd like there to be an Orbiting Outpost Holodeck (single player instance) where players could preview the ships of the Orbiting Outpost. And, perhaps the Risa floaters could be enabled inside the Holodeck, to allow players to view the ships from any angle. Or, alternatively, perhaps some kind of console could show off the ships similar to the customize ship view that players have - except I'd love to be able to not just rotate the ship, but also strafe left and right, or move vertically, or even change the direction of the light (and maybe even select the skybox being used). This would be perfect to take screenshots as well. Adding a "greenscreen", "bluescreen" or fuchsia background might also be a nice addition, as well as the ability to directly take super high-definition PNG screenshots with transparent backgrounds. (That might also be a nice addition for the game in general.)
Lastly, a similar idea for the Holodeck could be used to preview the Orbiting Outpost owner's player character and their Active Bridge Officers assigned to the Orbiting Outpost.
Post edited by baddmoonrizin on
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This discussion has been closed.
Comments
When was the last time you visited your ready room and customised your shelves?
When were you last customising your shelves and floor trophy in your Mess Hall?
Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea, but given how much of this is doable at a Starbase already, I don't see it being added to the game. Which is disappointing, really - some of this would be great to see!
When I want to go to the Exchange, I usually just visit a Starbase - same for opening my Bank.
My point is that the social areas like Starbases tend to continue to draw in people, but not because of the social aspect (usually). Rather, social areas like Starbases tend to draw in people because of the convenience.
This is my attempt to fix that. Make it so player homes can become social hubs. And allow players to show off their kitbashed ships and their customized uniforms for their player character and bridge officers.
Like, I feel that the players should have quality-of-life practical, convenient enhancements (like Exchange, Bank, Starship Vendor, Starship Customization, Manage Starship, Ship Repair, Sickbay, and Tailor) all within a a very short walking distance, to waste less player time. The reason a player should want to visit one social hub over another one should be the decoration, the general mood, the way it makes the player feel.
That, and giving a proper way to reward the space barbie aspects of the game. Make it so that unlocking ship skins and uniform pieces are able to be shown off more than just in the map instance you're currently in.
The issue is that the Starship interior/bridge is limited by the form factor of a ship. So you have hallways and normal sized rooms, rather than cavernous expanses (like Spacedock for the Federation).
And the issue with the Starbase is that it's customizable at a Fleet level. But if you're looking to customize it to yourself, you either have to make it your own to the detriment of everyone else in the Fleet if you're the Fleet owner (or have those permissions), or you have to live with the customizations that the Fleet has set for you. Also, the amount of customization at the Starbase is fairly limited.
Lastly, there's also a lack of the ability to show off the ships you've customized. At the moment, if you want to show your 5 favorite ships to a friend, you have to show each of them one at a time. Manually swapping out each ship every time. This idea of a Personal Starbase (rather than Fleet Starbase) would allow players to assign some of their ships in Dry Dock OR that are Active to be docked externally to the Personal Starbase, similar to the "Wolf 359" memorial. Basically, same idea, but just all your favorite ships are there. And if you want to visit a friend's Personal Starbase, perhaps players could even set permissions to allow some players to join even without an invite. Or maybe allow some players to request to join your Personal Starbase.
It wouldn't have to be a full-on epic Starbase like Spacedock, nor a large space station like Deep Space Nine. Even an orbiting Research station would do. Having a 15 ship customized docked starship limit for the owner player, plus a maximum limit of 15 visiting players (both in the station itself, or flying around it) could limit the lag on console and less powerful computers. It wouldn't be pushing anything that hard, considering how it would be similar in processing power demand to Spacedock #1 instance or Sol System #1 instance.
Also, the Defiant starship interior/bridge has a lot of customization options for adding trophies and decorations. Basically, this would be the same system, but instead of ONLY the starship interior/bridge, you'd now have another location that doesn't depend on which starship you're commanding. But essentially it would be the same idea. Use a console, select from a bunch of options using the menu.
On the Manage Starship screen, you'd have a new button to "Dock at Personal Starbase" from both Active starships and Drydocked starships or to "Undock from Personal Starbase".
On the Sector Space screen, you'd have a new Transwarp destination (to "Personal Starbase").
With holoemitters in the lore, players might even be able to leave holographic duplicates of themselves behind as NPCs in their Personal Starbase. It's a great way to showcase what players have done with the whole Space Barbie thing. Same with kitbashing ships.
That's all this idea is for. Players showcasing the customizations they've done in-game. Or, for those who prefer the cynical take, then it's just vanity and pride.
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