I would like to take this opportunity to partner with you guys and collaborate on changes to space. In the past we had a good deal of backlash with making changes to Space. This lead to us loosing our dedicated space Dev and loosing a large portion of our space community.

We have this working concept of ship docking. Right now it works, but it is wide open. What I would like to gather from you guys are a set of parameters around docking.

Should docking with friendlies be restricted to members of the group?
Should enemy docking be restricted to a ship that is disabled or just a ship that is not moving/moving very slowly? What speed?
Think along these lines and let us know your ideas.

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Rezec, post: 2540, member: 1 wrote:

I would like to take this opportunity to partner with you guys and collaborate on changes to space. In the past we had a good deal of backlash with making changes to Space. This lead to us loosing our dedicated space Dev and loosing a large portion of our space community.

We have this working concept of ship docking. Right now it works, but it is wide open. What I would like to gather from you guys are a set of parameters around docking.

Should docking with friendlies be restricted to members of the group?
Should enemy docking be restricted to a ship that is disabled or just a ship that is not moving/moving very slowly? What speed?
Think along these lines and let us know your ideas.

I would say yes to the first question, friendlies being restricted to members of the group, perhaps with an alternative being that non group members can be invited similar to the pod launch terminal, that way ships could be used for events.

As far as enemies, I'd say the max speed of the yacht would be the cut off for what can be boarded, where the docking process activation interrupts the ability to hyper space out. When people with bounties indefinitely sit in their yacht, it would be great to be able to board it and then fight on said yacht.

For bounties in space both parties might need to be red to each other from the jump

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Straton, post: 2541, member: 1247 wrote:

I would say yes to the first question, friendlies being restricted to members of the group, perhaps with an alternative being that non group members can be invited similar to the pod launch terminal, that way ships could be used for events.

As far as enemies, I'd say the max speed of the yacht would be the cut off for what can be boarded, where the docking process activation interrupts the ability to hyper space out. When people with bounties indefinitely sit in their yacht, it would be great to be able to board it and then fight on said yacht.

For bounties in space both parties might need to be red to each other from the jump

These seem like reasonable parameters to begin with. I hadn't considered the yacht situation.

I'm razor focused and ecstatic at grouped docking possibly being permitted and beg for that at any decided earliest opportunity
with tangents like bounty docking or launching back out from POBs or dock raid attacking vettes like the existing instance - all being ongoing discussion deliberations for future updates?
Even if those other ideas weren't to come to fruition, grouped up players being able to meet up on a group member's POB would be fantabulous!
edited: to add yes, groups can launch together, but sometimes players run late or have to step out to turn in a mission, etc, and not having to land the POB to regroup would be wonderful.

Rezec, post: 2540, member: 1 wrote:

I would like to take this opportunity to partner with you guys and collaborate on changes to space. In the past we had a good deal of backlash with making changes to Space. This lead to us loosing our dedicated space Dev and loosing a large portion of our space community.

We have this working concept of ship docking. Right now it works, but it is wide open. What I would like to gather from you guys are a set of parameters around docking.

Should docking with friendlies be restricted to members of the group?
Should enemy docking be restricted to a ship that is disabled or just a ship that is not moving/moving very slowly? What speed?
Think along these lines and let us know your ideas.

docking should be limited to people on a friends list, guild, or group . allowing it to be too open could present issues with pvp , bounty hunts, or possible griefing. I would love to jump in a crew on a multi passenger ship to help gun and such.

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Rezec, post: 2540, member: 1 wrote:

I would like to take this opportunity to partner with you guys and collaborate on changes to space. In the past we had a good deal of backlash with making changes to Space. This lead to us loosing our dedicated space Dev and loosing a large portion of our space community.

We have this working concept of ship docking. Right now it works, but it is wide open. What I would like to gather from you guys are a set of parameters around docking.

Should docking with friendlies be restricted to members of the group?
Should enemy docking be restricted to a ship that is disabled or just a ship that is not moving/moving very slowly? What speed?
Think along these lines and let us know your ideas.

Friendly should have a toggle (like private/public on houses) where I can set my POB to either allow anyone, or restrict to group only.

Enemy should only work if disabled (engine/reactor, at which point hyperspace should not function either).

There should be a self destruct that can be done if an enemy boards (to keep people from just hiding in the turrets) that if unchallenged the invader can use to destroy the ship. This will motivate those on board to defend their ship.

Also, the ability to launch again from the ship you've docked with, needs to be considered (and allowed), but not while disabled (except for the enemy who docked, while it was disabled).

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Other than missing some static spawns, especially blacksun lower tier gunboat static spawns... the content I remember seems to be there.
I'm at a loss as to what may've inspired a space exodus previously

puppster, post: 2551, member: 2033 wrote:

Other than missing some static spawns, especially blacksun lower tier gunboat static spawns... the content I remember seems to be there.
I'm at a loss as to what may've inspired a space exodus previously

We had a dedicated space dev. At first he was highly recommended by the space community, made several QoL updates for them around space loot and space collections and allowing some of them to reset. Then there was a change to space PvP to prevent component targeting and all hell broke loose. We reverted that change and had to let that dev go and the space community still wasn't happy. They started picking out things they didnt like about ground pvp and class changes that didn't have anything to do with space and some of them started calling for me to step down. Pretty much after that one space change, they started looking for problems everywhere.

Rezec, post: 2552, member: 1 wrote:

We had a dedicated space dev. At first he was highly recommended by the space community, made several QoL updates for them around space loot and space collections and allowing some of them to reset. Then there was a change to space PvP to prevent component targeting and all hell broke loose. We reverted that change and had to let that dev go and the space community still wasn't happy. They started picking out things they didnt like about ground pvp and class changes that didn't have anything to do with space and some of them started calling for me to step down. Pretty much after that one space change, they started looking for problems everywhere.

It's always amazed me how polarized and political things can get on SWG and her EMUs even since live. I know I am among the newest of the new here, but I'd say so far I've had nothing but a positive experience in space. I'm hoping keeping things active and fresh both on the forum and in game can generate a bit more interest and help revive the space community in Evolve.

We are definitely approaching things very different this time around.

Expect TC to be reloaded this week with the initial grouped player boarding.

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Grouped Friendly Docking is now on TC for testing.

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This'll be awesome! Thank you.
Docked pob, hellzyeah!!

I don't suppose allowing jukebox on pob is a possibility? (Storyteller jukebox/ jukebox addon)?

Great for parties, and background for fightin'

To chime in on the point about a part grading system, there's one main issue with creating a system like it with the way loot in JTL is handled:

Determining the thresholds for "grades" of parts is tricky because the loot generation system uses an uncapped bell-curve distribution model to generate all the stats for every part. All components are given a base float value (a number with a decimal point), and a modifier value (another float/decimal that determines the "range" of distribution using the base value as its anchor.) This creates a system where, as I'm sure you may have experienced over time, parts that are considered to be unicorns far exceed what is a reasonable statistic (as there is literally no maximum or minimum cap aside from 0), and this poses a couple of problems:

1. Should you ever get a very high stat part, those parts are hard to make complete balanced builds for, thus becoming largely useless unless you have the necessary components to complete a build. On the more extreme end, this can take literally years to build a single component depending on the RE level, or it causes everyone who witnesses it being put into a bad project to cry out collectively and wish the Death Star destroyed their current location to end their suffering immediately.

2. Those parts are one of a kind and are either hoarded or purchased by people who are absolutely loaded with credits, or by successful scammers. Some parts can be so good that they skew the balance a bit unfairly in PvP environments; Extremely good engines with very low mass on interceptors, Armour RE10's with barely any mass but extremely high HP/Armour values, that kind of thing.

3. A grading system that relies on thresholds would need to be set definitively and never changed unless new parts and stat ranges are added. From my experience on other servers that had this grading system, they would change the grades dynamically depending on whatever the currently known server's best of that particular stat was. I don't think anyone would appreciate spending a lot of time and credits investing in a high statted W10 only to log on one day and find out that it's been downgraded a threshold all because someone looted a higher server's best VsS for example.

Using the bell-curve system, any ranges we came up with would need to be regarded as (because they are, really) estimates in most cases. We could run a simulated generation script of thousands at a time and come up with a different average each time, and some people may not even feel the number the simulation gives out to be reasonable.

A system that makes loot a bit more predictable and confined would make a grading system a lot better in the long run, but I definitely do agree that some kind of a system should exist even with the loot system's flaws. I understand as well that people like the "chase" of unicorn parts and "big number activate neuron" and worry that any kind of cap would ruin the loot or make things worse in some way, but I personally like to think of it in a more practical way, especially long term. I'm of the opinion that while you shouldn't get handouts, it shouldn't take 3 lifetimes to get the parts to build a toy just to barely use it. I also think that for the interest of preserving the game's balance, there should be a limit to stats in some capacity, but with the same weighting or more "generous" weighting than the game currently has.

That, and overall component balancing between tiers never really made much sense to me. It's not exactly intuitive to have the odd-level components being better crafted (with some exceptions) and the even-level components always being better looted. There should be elements that crafted components can achieve that looted cannot, and vice versa to give them their staying power. One system I was experimenting with was changing the overall profiles of RE level tiers.

Tiers 1-5 would be "low-rank" (if you're familiar with Monster Hunter) archetypes of weapons, shields, engines, etc. Tiers 6-10 would be higher statistic versions of the same archetypes.

For example, a Tier 1 weapon would do minimal damage, but would have a very high refire rate to compensate for this. Tier 2 would begin to sway more toward higher damage and lower refire rate so that you can find and fit something more to your personal play style and not be quite so restricted in part choice. Engines could have the lower tiers focusing more on maneuverability, whereas higher tiers focus more on top speed/acceleration. Middle tiers are more well-rounded, if that makes sense.

Some kind of system to supplement shipwrights with regard to looted gear beyond RE'ing would also be a huge boon, I think. Some reduction in shipwright costs would probably be helpful as well, but these are just spitballing ideas at this point. Would love to hear more thoughts and suggestions, and especially if you disagree with what I've written here. Glad to see some revival in the space side of things here.

TL;DR:

A visual system for filtering parts is an absolute must, regardless of the system currently in place, I agree wholeheartedly. The only concern I have is how to actually formulate the ranges for each grade/tier when you consider that loot generated has no theoretical maximum or minimum (excluding 0) cap to statistics, so no matter how unlikely it is, you could always loot something with a stat that is beyond reasonable, and that part would be... completely impractical to use, and a bargaining chip for the people with enough credits to afford to buy something that statistically rare.

The JTL loot system is a bloody mess, don't ya love it?

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orton, post: 2605, member: 2006 wrote:

This w

This was a ton of great info and incite.

I think a simple grading system would be the most beneficial. Sticking a letter grade to the part based upon an estimated average.
F-Way below average
D-Below average
C-Average
B-Above average
A-Exceptionally rare.

We can even break that down further to F+ or - D+ or - C + or - and so on.

A color change of the text when the part is a B or an A to be a better visual queue as well would be beneficial.

While I have a basic understand of this bell curve loot generation system it has to have theoretical limits based upon probability. This is what could be done to generate the grading scale.

This would also prevent a change of the grading system thus preventing a person from buying a part with an A class stat only to have it downgrade to a B class stat a few days later thus likely reducing the value and investment of the part.

The nice thing about space parts and the economy is it is self-correcting. You can list a cherry part for an insane amount of money but if no one is willing to buy it then it never gets sold. Additionally, a grading system would also prevent unknowing players from selling a part to the junk dealer that could have fetched them a pretty penny. Then we start moving into supply and demand theories, as more grade A parts hit the market prices will come down, simple supply and demand, self-correcting market.

That’s a good Idea but what would be better is each stat get a color when it. Good to keep that part you will see the color. That they can just pin what you want higher or lower. In the channel for new players that do know.

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