Proposed Change: Unlocking Cross-Faction Ship Access with "Aces of Aces" Badge
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Proposed Change: Unlocking Cross-Faction Ship Access with "Aces of Aces" Badge
In Star Wars Galaxies, the current system restricts players to flying faction-specific ships based on their allegiance and factional achievements. However, I propose a change that enhances player freedom and rewards high achievement within the game.
Change Details:
- Upon achieving the prestigious "Aces of Aces" badge, earned by attaining Ace pilot status in all factions and squadrons, players should gain access to fly any ship in the game, regardless of faction.
- This change would provide an additional layer of reward for dedicated pilots who have demonstrated mastery across all factions and squadrons.
- Allowing players to fly any ship they desire after reaching this pinnacle achievement would enhance gameplay diversity and encourage continued engagement and progression.
Benefits:
- Increased Player Freedom: Players would have the freedom to pilot any ship they choose, opening up new strategic possibilities and enhancing the overall gameplay experience.
- Rewarding High Achievement: The "Aces of Aces" badge becomes even more meaningful, serving as a symbol of mastery and granting tangible in-game benefits.
- Encouraging Exploration: With access to a wider array of ships, players may be incentivized to explore different playstyles and strategies, further enriching the game world.
Overall, implementing this change would align with the game's focus on player progression and customization, while providing a significant reward for dedicated pilots who have reached the pinnacle of achievement.
Historical reactions: Like × 2
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We are currently in the process of working this out, actually! The intention is to make Ace of Aces feel more like a gradual career path all the way to the title being earned, and that you progressively feel your character growing as a pilot as you master every faction.
There's a lot coming, but this is definitely one that will help flesh things out and give more of a reason to go for that title over just the name and the hangar.
Historical reactions: Like × 2
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Draskon, post: 1425, member: 808 wrote:
We are currently in the process of working this out, actually! The intention is to make Ace of Aces feel more like a gradual career path all the way to the title being earned, and that you progressively feel your character growing as a pilot as you master every faction.
There's a lot coming, but this is definitely one that will help flesh things out and give more of a reason to go for that title over just the name and the hangar.
That is awesome to hear, I cant wait!
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I want this to happen, I am horever skeptical at how this will affect the scope of how combat plays out in certain aspects. We already have certain metas that are objectively superior to most other options in the game. (EI: TIE Defender, Advanced X-wing ect.) my concern is this. How would it effect things if say you have a neutral pilot running a krayt with 3x RE 10 guns and the imperial pilot ability e-weapons?. food for thought. as i said at the beginning of my post. I want to see this happen. I am just concerned about how things will be balanced after it happens.
Historical reactions: Like × 4
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It's being considered, and will be handled with a great degree of care to ensure that it feels as balanced as it can be. One of the other goals is to make more ships desireable to use in PvE and PvP, as the meta is only reall the "meta" because the vast majority of off-meta options are so bad in PvE to justify using. Even two-gun ships are harder to justify if they don't have the mass to use W10's, so you can throw one-gun ships right out the window at higher levels. Unless you're a self-proclaimed server's best pilot, anyway.
E-Weapons is a strong ability, for sure. It's already received a tweak to make it a bit more consistent coming up, but if it becomes too much of an issue we can either re-evaluate the window of time that it's active, or lower the output modifier to do less damage, or take more energy.
We'll burn that bridge when we come to it.
Historical reactions: Like × 2
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Draskon, post: 1429, member: 808 wrote:
It's being considered, and will be handled with a great degree of care to ensure that it feels as balanced as it can be. One of the other goals is to make more ships desireable to use in PvE and PvP, as the meta is only reall the "meta" because the vast majority of off-meta options are so bad in PvE to justify using. Even two-gun ships are harder to justify if they don't have the mass to use W10's, so you can throw one-gun ships right out the window at higher levels. Unless you're a self-proclaimed server's best pilot, anyway.
E-Weapons is a strong ability, for sure. It's already received a tweak to make it a bit more consistent coming up, but if it becomes too much of an issue we can either re-evaluate the window of time that it's active, or lower the output modifier to do less damage, or take more energy.
We'll burn that bridge when we come to it.
Click Noice
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Vikingmando, post: 1428, member: 223 wrote:
I want this to happen, I am horever skeptical at how this will affect the scope of how combat plays out in certain aspects. We already have certain metas that are objectively superior to most other options in the game. (EI: TIE Defender, Advanced X-wing ect.) my concern is this. How would it effect things if say you have a neutral pilot running a krayt with 3x RE 10 guns and the imperial pilot ability e-weapons?. food for thought. as i said at the beginning of my post. I want to see this happen. I am just concerned about how things will be balanced after it happens.
I would say:
Flying any ship is a nice concept. But this does not necessarily mean, u are able to use all the specific factional capabilities..... So, i am so skeptical like you cause the same thoughts. This concept may be analyzed in deep, far away than allowing players to fly any available ship which it is probably possible without touching factional abilitiesHistorical reactions: Like × 2
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loganskenove, post: 1431, member: 617 wrote:
I would say:
Flying any ship is a nice concept. But this does not necessarily mean, u are able to use all the specific factional capabilities..... So, i am so skeptical like you cause the same thoughts. This concept may be analyzed in deep, far away than allowing players to fly any available ship which it is probably possible without touching factional abilitiesI think that is spot on. You may know how to fly all the ships after Ace of Aces but you can only use the commands of your current faction. Which makes sense, how would a rebel/freelance pilot be able to call in a Imp Bomber run
Historical reactions: Like × 1
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Juice4z0, post: 1453, member: 1302 wrote:
I think that is spot on. You may know how to fly all the ships after Ace of Aces but you can only use the commands of your current faction. Which makes sense, how would a rebel/freelance pilot be able to call in a Imp Bomber run
Easy, you still have access to their comm channels and encryption codes.
However, calling them probably isn't in your best interests if you're a Rebel.
It could be repurposed to be faction-sensitive so that it'll only ever call a squadron of your current alignment. Or it's one of those abilities that isn't carried over, we'll see.
There is a bit of flexibility to be had with pilot skills. But a rough plan of how it all gels together first is important to establish.
Historical reactions: Like × 1
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It is too early to have any opinion, but i can not imagine a pilot flying a xwing while is imperial aligned and having access to all the factional commands... This would mean a great distortion in Da Force!!!
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loganskenove, post: 1455, member: 617 wrote:
It is too early to have any opinion, but i can not imagine a pilot flying a xwing while is imperial aligned and having access to all the factional commands... This would mean a great distortion in Da Force!!!
Yeah that was Viking's concern too. I've never felt the pilot commands were especially fight changing, and some of them felt like they unfairly favored one side in common scenarios. But if it was a big concern, we could tie available the pilot commands to the factional ship potentially, right? I'd think of them as factional "operating system" enabled abilities. Empire tech has the right software to enable E-Weapons, but Alliance tech doesn't. One possibility anyways.
Historical reactions: Like × 1
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Right, post: 1460, member: 909 wrote:
Yeah that was Viking's concern too. I've never felt the pilot commands were especially fight changing, and some of them felt like they unfairly favored one side in common scenarios. But if it was a big concern, we could tie available the pilot commands to the factional ship potentially, right? I'd think of them as factional "operating system" enabled abilities. Empire tech has the right software to enable E-Weapons, but Alliance tech doesn't. One possibility anyways.
That's a great way to keep the abilities honest, however, I'd be thrilled just being able to fly a Defender without the Imperial perks as a Rebel. Or the Devastator... God how I hate the offset cockpits...
Historical reactions: Like × 1
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Pilot abilities, outside of a very select few, have never been useful enough to justify outside of a handful of situations. The benefits are so slim and take so long to get from them that they are effectively gone by the time the ability ends.
Take Emergency Weapons' original function: 5x damage and EPS reduction for anywhere between 10 to 90 seconds. With a huge window like that, it was extremely inconsistent and could leave you with your pants down if you were mid-engagement and the ability ended. Let's also not forget that Imperial ships only ever had 2 weapon slots maximum until the TIE Defender came along. (Excluding ordnance, obviously.)
Now take Emergency Shields. It disables your weapons and increases your shield's recharge rate by 10x for anywhere between 30 to 60 seconds. This skill could also end early, and you were basically defenseless while this ability was active.
Emergency thrust increases engine output by 30% for the same window as Emergency Weapons. This, arguably would be more busted than E-Weapons and Shields put together.
Additionally, IFF Scramble is a necessity for convoy content unless you want to run the risk of taking too long and failing, and yet Imperials don't have access to that skill. Pilot abilities gradually became far, far less useful by the game's end of service than they likely were in the earlier years pre-Adv. X-Wing and TIE Defenders.
Given what's being worked on, these windows and their bonuses are being re-evaluated, along with certain droid commands as they are literally useless.
EDIT: Not to mention the Bomber Strikes, Pirate Trap, Jumpstart/Vrepair, etc. It's all being considered carefully.
Historical reactions: Like × 2
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Draskon, post: 1481, member: 808 wrote:
Pilot abilities, outside of a very select few, have never been useful enough to justify outside of a handful of situations. The benefits are so slim and take so long to get from them that they are effectively gone by the time the ability ends.
Take Emergency Weapons' original function: 5x damage and EPS reduction for anywhere between 10 to 90 seconds. With a huge window like that, it was extremely inconsistent and could leave you with your pants down if you were mid-engagement and the ability ended. Let's also not forget that Imperial ships only ever had 2 weapon slots maximum until the TIE Defender came along. (Excluding ordnance, obviously.)
Now take Emergency Shields. It disables your weapons and increases your shield's recharge rate by 10x for anywhere between 30 to 60 seconds. This skill could also end early, and you were basically defenseless while this ability was active.
Emergency thrust increases engine output by 30% for the same window as Emergency Weapons. This, arguably would be more busted than E-Weapons and Shields put together.
Additionally, IFF Scramble is a necessity for convoy content unless you want to run the risk of taking too long and failing, and yet Imperials don't have access to that skill. Pilot abilities gradually became far, far less useful by the game's end of service than they likely were in the earlier years pre-Adv. X-Wing and TIE Defenders.
Given what's being worked on, these windows and their bonuses are being re-evaluated, along with certain droid commands as they are literally useless.
EDIT: Not to mention the Bomber Strikes, Pirate Trap, Jumpstart/Vrepair, etc. It's all being considered carefully.
Absolutely agreed on the Emergency-skills lines... They are worse than useless, and very niche use in the most Pollyanna-optimistic point of view. Same with Nebula Blast.
In Flight Repair/Rearm/both are so quirky and difficult to get to fire that they are virtually in the same category. And let's not talk about the garbage that rearming is when you do get it to fire.
Pirate Trap could be useful, if it grew with you. It's only useful as extra mobs to distract. They're too-low of a level for the skill to be useful later in life.
Vampiric Repair/Other is still very niche, but not without its uses. It's just super-rare for someone/yourself to survive that level of damage and find enough of a lull to use the skills. Jump Start is in the same class, IMO. Generally speaking, the stars rarely align in such a way that allows for Jump Start to be utilized - but when they do, it's ridiculously useful. For reference, I've not been in such circumstances on Evolve yet...
Technically speaking, Imperial Pilots are more independent agents than regular Navy, and IFF Jamming is something they should have in that context. That's something I think everyone should have - as pilots, we're all more smuggler/militia than actual military. I do disagree about its necessity for Convoys, but that's a method/preference matter, so I'll concede that point on that basis.
Bomber Strike is the place where I think we need to be careful in the extreme... I've made my opinion clear as far as how the Imps get the short end of... well... everything prior to Tier 4. Bomber Strike is pretty much the only equalizer they get until then. Even then, It takes skill (or lots of help from your shipwright friends) and knowledge to rebound at 4-2. Negative changes for the Imperials with Bomber Strike could do a great deal of damage from my point of view.
When it comes to droid programming, I already know that I'm an oddity here compared to everyone else based on the regularly available chips on the market. While I rarely use the Rebel Shield Adjustment chips, I avidly use the reinforcement chips (for those that don't know, with one side of your shields heavily damaged, if you use a reinforcement to transfer energy to the more-damaged side before a shunt, you have a better chance of restoring your shield back to full. Reinforcements resolve almost immediately). With some of the droid-chips, I think this is mostly a matter of ignorance of what you can do with them. That said, the skills that reduce weapon power, reduce engine power... Why??? There's no good or reasonable need for these that I'm aware of. I do agree that there are aspect of this that need love badly, but I will also caution that some of this is not bad - rather a matter of a lack of awareness.
I'm thrilled to see the attention this is getting, and I'm also pleased to see the apparent caution, diligence, and thoroughness that it's been approached from. Just please be careful that the threads you tug and trim don't unravel other things.
Historical reactions: Like × 1
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Right, post: 1484, member: 909 wrote:
Same! Shield reinforce moderate was a game changer for me in PvE.
For PvP, I do still enjoy using E-Weps if things are desperate and Jump Start Other 3 in certain situations. But still pretty niche yeah.
I use light shield reinforcements, primarily, but I also run capacitors with larger energy capacity than seems to be the norm. That makes my cap shunts go further than typical.
I think the thing that would fix the Shield Adjust skills is to have it transfer both the capacity *and * the energy. Right now, doing an adjustment only moves the capacity and you lose all of that energy that you had on the side that you adjusted from with a big hole on the side you adjusted to. Using this skill only weakens your shields in the short/medium term, defeating much of the purpose of using it. For longer-term engagement, it's of limited use to start with because you lose the ability to react to the tactical situation.
Historical reactions: Like × 1
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There's nothing inherently wrong with Shield Adjust vs. Reinforce; they're for different use cases and can be used together.
Shield Adjust is primarily for altering the ratio of your front to rear shield capacity for your engagement style. A very common practice in PvP is to adjust the shields to the front, and have a beefy armour plate in the rear. For doing higher tiered convoys, Shield adjust will be extremely helpful depending on whether you pull the convoy along (adjust to the rear), or if you push through it (adjust front.)
Reinforcement is just shifting where the current energy sits back and forth, and acts as a mini-shunt that doesn't take the full length of time to refresh the droid as a traditional Cap to Shield Shunt would do, nor does it actually use any of your capacitor energy to use. For general use cases you'll want Moderate Reinforce Front and Rear, with a moderate shield adjust of your preference.
Choosing a lighter reinforce becomes more imperative when running heavier shield adjust commands, because if you reinforce to the smaller shield and overcap it, you effectively waste shield energy.
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Draskon, post: 1491, member: 808 wrote:
There's nothing inherently wrong with Shield Adjust vs. Reinforce; they're for different use cases and can be used together.
I disagree on this. Adjusts do waste shield capacity. When you adjust, it should transfer the energy as well as the capacity. Perhaps this is a discussion that we should split off, but I'll try to illustrate my point on this first.
To start, assume 1000 shields front and rear and shields are at full. So they should look like this:
Capacity
1000 Front1000 Rear
Energy
1000 Front1000 Rear
You execute a moderate-Adjust Front, moving 30% capacity forward. This is what happens now:
Capacity
1300 Front700 Rear
Energy
1000 Front700 Rear
That 300 points of shield energy that was on the Rear shield gets lopped off and lost. Why is this not transferred with the capacity? The loss of this energy renders Adjustment totally ineffective as a tactic, making it purely strategic.
And this is the way it has always worked, but it flies in the face of canon and all the Star Wars flight games that came before and after it. By both standards, we should be able to put full shields to one side or even them out with a keypress. We should be able to put shields full front for the inbound-approach to a target, then full-rear when we've got our backs to it - and it should only be a key press. Tactically speaking the Adjustment chips, as they are, hobble us. Making a change to this to be in line with both canon and pre- and post-SWG game experiences would give our flight gameplay a novel new dimension and make these worthwhile to carry.
Yep, reading back on this, it needs to be its own suggestion...
Edit: punctuation correction, corrected adjustment values, added some clarification, reworked the data to be more clear & easier to read
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SOE's implementation of space was always lacking, and honestly if you kept the basic concept of ships that shoot at other ships and scrapped the rest to redesign the whole thing you are already moving in the right direction. Keep multiplayer ships obviously. Arguably the best thing SOE ever did. I mean besides the crafting system of course. I think it is the crafting system that makes the space experience so impelling.
I would go a bit further than the original posters idea though; I think it makes sense to be able to retain a license you earn. It works like that in real life for good reason. It's logical and thematical. Do you see a captured rebel get a chance to escape in Tie Fighter and just say well I can't escape in that ship because I don't have that license? Cannon say's you can fly whatever you get your hands on. And it solves the POB problem where you need another Freelance pilot to copilot your ship. Luke flew the Millennium Falcon and I am pretty sure he did not get A Free Lance Pilot License. But that did not stop him. Luke is probably the most Rebel aligned character you are gonna see.
A multi license system also solves the ship balance issue too. You could then just fly what you want.
I would say it would be fine to switch back and forth lvling them all together if you want.
Work out a different ability skill system because the old one was uninspired and most of the time I forget that anything other than overloads exists.
You can make a better system easily. There is a lot of room for improvement in the SOE implementation of space; for example after I lvled to max pilot lvl for the first time I thought to my self, "That was amazing! Now what?" There is a lack of instance progression IMO. They should have built more content. The last mission in the pilot training quests was great. They should have built more experiences like that IMO.
So yeah, it just makes sense to unlock all the faction ships on one character. +1 from me.
How are you going to do it? IDK, but you can easily trip and fall and make it better than it is IMO.
Historical reactions: Like × 1
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Nexacon, post: 1547, member: 1362 wrote:
SOE's implementation of space was always lacking, and honestly if you kept the basic concept of ships that shoot at other ships and scrapped the rest to redesign the whole thing you are already moving in the right direction. Keep multiplayer ships obviously. Arguably the best thing SOE ever did. I mean besides the crafting system of course. I think it is the crafting system that makes the space experience so impelling.
Believe me, space is going to reach some incredible heights (pun unintended) as we go; we're not gonna stop there.
Historical reactions: Like × 2
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