Travel Balancing?

[unreal]

Has there been any thought into encouraging people to travel through The Wastelands/Cities more often to their destination either by foot or on vehicle (lower vehicle prices a bit or increase their health/resists so vehicles can't be whooped so easily by the nearby ganking team?) rather than us all just running up to a GR and clicking the teleport button for almost every location we're going to visit? As that bit of encouragement, GR fees could be increased a fair bit perhaps?

On that note, how about reverting a couple of the Hacknet settings back to how they used to be (ie, good runspeed for the average non-pure hacknet character) so Hacknet can be used for travelling once more? I still remember the good old days of Neocron 2.0 before the Hacknet runspeed nerf was introduced. Hacknet was full of random people doing exactly what I'm about to describe, with the odd hacknet character waiting for victims:

We would all use Hacknet to return to our faction HQ for free, or enter Hacknet instead to travel to the MB HQ and logout with no SI, which was the safest way to get there, considering MB had no safe zones back then.

The only vehicles you really ever see are epic vehicles that respawn at the depot once "destroyed", and also repair for almost no cost to whoever is using them. As I mentioned a moment ago, it's always been too easy to destroy a vehicle, which means you're basically wasting your money by not using an epic vehicle.

I'm one of those people who doesn't want to spend hours levelling in order to just throw that hard earned money away, and clearly with the lack of seeing most of the other vehicles apart from a Rhino and some LE'd runner driving a hovertec or speedbike being used, noone else does either.

Have you thought about readjusting the prices and as just mentioned, the health/resist values? Pricing is particularly critical for flying vehicles when you take into account FRE's and the odd clipping of transparent (or just very tall) objects that cause you to go boom.

Just curious if anyone has taken a moment to think about the situation.

Edit: It's been mentioned so many times before, and I think it's worth while saying again. You should really make the Combat Quad (forgot the name of it) usable. Forcing people to hunt Hoverbots all day for parts in order to repair it is just rediculous when the vehicle goes boom almost instantly when shot upon (though I haven't checked to see if it's any different on the Test Server).

[Lifewaster]

Well I'd like to see more ppl using non-epic vehicles for travel. But they just arent affordable, since if you go anywhere, you have to park the vehicle there where they are likely to be blown up by random passers by.

Unfortunately also the main victims of this tend to be noobs who havent got an epic vehicle......the jones quad is a solution but it would be a lot nicer if the other low vehicles could be feasible to use instead.



Perhaps a solution is to allow vehicles to be dismissed from anywhere, so they could be used to travel to a destination, then the player can dismiss them, and use a nearby GR to travel home afterwards instead.

Another option is to give a very short countdown, (like 2 mins) after exiting a vehicle, after which it would no longer be damagable....... untill it was re-entered......so vehicles could effectively be "parked" safely after travel

[netster]

hmmmmmm. i're doing alot driver-service for newbies of the dome. most times i'll bring em to TH or MB. personally i dont let em choose which vehicle(most times i just can help em with reveler2.5 or rhino) i'm going for, i just pick the reveler, cause its faster. since the testserver is up and the observer glider is working very very fine for me, i'll let ppls choose for glider/reveler service. i dont have fear about loosing a glider. i was traveling the hole map with the glider allrdy and had not a single crash or loose of a glider that i didnt wanted to gun down.

basically i charge for my mood for the service. since it doesnt make any sense for a 0/2 char to get to MB, i most of the times take 50-100k for the travel from dome or TH to TH or MB. if the guy is friendly and i really enjoy the talking, i charge nothing.


edit: uh and when i can drive some doys to opfights and they let me shoot some rounds at the enemy, the delivery is free also :saint:

[Brammers]

As things stand, it's more expensive to buy vehicles. The prices have at least doubled.

Come 2.2 I dont think I'll be able to offer Hovertecs for 50k. To build a Rhino in 2.1 (With no Barter) will cost a player about 270k in parts. In 2.2 it's close to 480k (Assuming that a Rhino will still need 10 X parts to build.)

So IMHO these changes are not going to encourage a player to use vehicles, except the Epic ones.

[netster]

Come 2.2 I dont think I'll be able to offer Hovertecs for 50k. uh... thats real cheapo man O_o . hey bram, lets test this todays evening! i'll check with + without barter.....
To build a Rhino in 2.1 (With no Barter) will cost a player about 270k in parts. In 2.2 it's close to 480k (Assuming that a Rhino will still need 10 X parts to build.) hmmm i think the 10 items is a mechanical limitation, i think the Processor cannot take more items than 10 (ie tool, bp, lic, 10 x-parts), and the x'parts are the highest ones available. so i dont hope for more costs for rhinoing. but i'll check it this evening with a barter even.

So IMHO these changes are not going to encourage a player to use vehicles, except the Epic ones.
true, since the prices are too high if u loose any vehicle on retail. for example, i got 3 rhinos on my pe. i think i paid about 850k for all 3 as a round offer... hey i was even lucky someone selling em and i gave 50k tipp. once i was very close to loose a rhino at DRT, but i was fast enough to get it quick enough into the vehicle depot....

[Sylow]

My personal preference is, prices on TS would basically even be fine. If a destroyed vehicle is not a permanent loss. With keeping prices high, a vehicle still will be something special and owning a bomber is a feat you have to work for.

The problem right now is, on TS now people dared to bring vehicles into the OP-fight. Since you get money thrown at you as if there's no tomorrow, so you can easliy have like 20 bombers stored at your ASG. One lost doesn't matter at all.

When the moneyman of TS is gone, vehicles in combat also are gone again, i suspect. The simply reason is cost efficiency.

Loosing a bomber at retail prices is more expencive than dying and genreping a 100 times. On TS, change it to 200 deaths. So why should anybody take the risk of bringing a bomber into battle? The decission would only make sense if he would actually be able to have a good chance of succcess when fighting against the totally insane number of 200 enemies. Not balanced at all, sorry.

The simple solution really is, vehicles when shot down are not a permanent loss. If a destroyed Rhino then costs 15k at the ASG to repair and a downed bomber costs 25k, a death in a vehicle is still 5 times more expencive than by foot, but it's affordable.

Additionally i would allow to also respawn a "destroyed" vehicle at the ASG without repairs at 99% damage. Thus a good repper can spend some time on it to patch it up again. (Advantage: saving a bit of money. Disadvantage: takes much longer than having it instant-repaired at the ASG. )

This would still not fix issues like:
- vehicles have more health than an infantryman but actually less firepower than him. (Vehicle TLs are similar to those of regular weapons. But vehicles are not rated as rare weapons so their damage is actually lower than a handheld rare weapon of the same TL. )
- vehicles turn too slow and can't strafe, so a person on foot can outrun their attack area.
- vehicles are restricted in movement way more than an person on foot, an infantryman can strafe behind a corner and still have the gun aimed towards the following enemy, a vehicle without turret first has to follow around the corner, then turn towards the enemy, then lock on him, the enemy can take several shots and then retreat before the vehicle is ready to attack at all.
- vehicles need place to operate, they are no more than target dummies inside an OP.
- vehicles can only be used outdoors, anybody skilling into using VHC is an easier target anywhere else.

Not all of these issues actually can be taken care for, many of the mentioned problems are logical inherent flaws of vehicles. (Like already lerned in wars half a century or more ago: don't take tanks into an enemy city, it's infantry area. ) Still, faster aiming and a bonus on firepower would help them a lot.

[Dribble Joy]

GRs are too cheap. It is too easy just to warp everywhere, especially with so many GRs in safe zones.

I'd say make GR cost dependant on:

Distance between entry and exit points.
Faction symp with faction controlling entry and exit GRs.
Type of zone the exit GR is, Highest for safe zone, then city, then outskirt, then wasteland/battle zone.

[ashley watts]

Only reason i Gr everywhere is because my machine is rather shit so i would fatel every 3-4 zones, and im sure this is the issue with a good % of the people who play really.

[silent000]

People in this game are just too plain lazy and no1 will ever change that :P Like me i will GR from p1 to pp1 or via 3 because im too lazy to run lol

[Zerion]

GRs are too cheap. It is too easy just to warp everywhere, especially with so many GRs in safe zones.

I'd say make GR cost dependant on:

Distance between entry and exit points.
Faction symp with faction controlling entry and exit GRs.
Type of zone the exit GR is, Highest for safe zone, then city, then outskirt, then wasteland/battle zone.
Agreed, if it was a 50k GR fee for me to shoot from MB to DRT, or my apt (BD sector) in DoY) to PP3 - driving would suddenly seem a fair bit more useful.

[tarasm]

Then again,whatll happen to the noobs who got like 15k??

[netster]

i just checked with a fresh char, what the plain prices are to cst a hovertec.
full brt 177 (incl buffage, i didnt found ANY brt chip, even the jones one is missing)
gel + cube + vhc 8 + 5+ 3 + 1 : 185183
where the expensivest part is (0 brt) : vhc8 157709
with full barter (177brt) : vhc8 104923

[jini]

Then again,whatll happen to the noobs who got like 15k??
you think, I got more? :p

edit: i didnt like the dissie zoro :(

[Dribble Joy]

GR cost could also be based on level.

Getting more people driving could be done with req-less (though shite) vehicles.
Bikes or a barbie-car could be cheaper than an average high level GR move.

[zii]

I think it would be more useful for the GR not to send you back to the HQ. Instead, if you hack into Grants GR you enter hacknet in Grants OP. This would make it more useful instead of having to hack from your HQ to everyone each time. I got bored by this and stopped using hacknet. City apartments and streets could default to the Main Frame. (cannot remember the names it been so long), or something similar.