posted on June 28th, 2010, 1:52 pm
I was wondering, what if instead of just seeing what is going on, what about this idea?
We can re-integrate the trade station, these stations would be in multi-player only. And is only enabled when you have one or more observers. Here is how the observers are involved.
The Observer gets control of some NPC ships, most likely ships of minor space faring factions. He would start with 3 scouts, and 2 trade ships. He has the ability to send his trade vessels to a player's trade station when finished, when the ship arrives and docks, the player gets a message that a cargo ship is awaiting cargo to transport. The player will select the trade station, he can choose whether to load it with tritanium, dilithium, supply, or deny giving cargo. If he loads the cargo, then the observer can bring it to any other trade station of choice. Here is the catch though, the player that loaded the cargo cannot track the ship. Thereby he cannot know whom it is going to unless he sees it go to an ally's base.
When a loaded ship docks, the removal of resource is automatic. However, the loading of resource is by choice of the player as always. But the resource that was unloaded cannot be reloaded. So if he got dilithium, he can only choose tritanium or supply. Or simply deny loading cargo.
Thus may sound imbalanced because a person who is sapped of a certain resource could be ressurected by the cargo the ship may be carrying. That is why I intend that the maximum capacities would be rather low:
Max Dilithium or Tritanium: 150
Max Supply: 30
There is however the possibility of some freighters being able to carry more or less resources. Variation helps keep things interesting.
Now, there is not much you can do with this little resource. However, one would think, "what about when someone destroys the freighter?" Well, you'll get a 20 minute period before a new freighter (not necessarily of the same minor race) will replace it. If it is of a different minor faction, there could be some variations of how much resource the new freighter could carry.
Overall the feature should not affect the game by much. There is however the chance of abuse or collaboration which I can imagine would happen from time to time. Though if you can really find an observer that doesn't play favorites then it might not be much of an issue. However due to overall idea that most people do play favorites or have grudges, it is possible that AI control might be a necessary option.
