- Joined
- Mar 7, 2022
- Messages
- 40
Last article, we talked about YOLOL and improvements that can be made to it. Today, I plan to review the work that Frozenbyte has already made on Ship Deeds and Blueprint Chips and highlight some possible changes and improvements that could be made to them. Ship Deeds are supposed to ease the process of transferring or acquiring ownership of a ship, and Blueprint Chips allow for transferring blueprints between players.
Ship Deeds currently are proposed in 4 varieties, with those being the Ownership, Salvage, Hacked, and Test Fly variants. I think that the Test Fly variant should be dissolved and integrated with the Ownership variant to reduce clutter and integrate a much-needed function. Ownership Deeds as currently proposed by Frozenbyte are for selling ships in storage at that station, and they can be sold through the auction house or through trading. I think that this should be changed slightly. Ships sold through the auction house should dispense with the deed function and should simply offer the option to test fly the ship and a list price. When the ship is purchased from the Auction House, it is simply bought immediately without having to interact with the deed. In the game world, the deed would remain, but would be encoded with a timer and price by the seller. Before the timer runs out, the buyer can interact with the deed to test fly the ship and view its price. The buyer can choose to pay the price, which will transfer credits from the buyer’s account to the seller account like the auction house. If the timer runs out, the Ownership Deed is simply deleted from the buyer’s inventory.
Salvage Deeds are for taking ownership of ships that are located anywhere through the world of Starbase. I think that the purchasing and testing process should be identical to Ownership variants, with the option for the ship owner to add a short description of the current state of the ship (buyers beware) to help establish whether there’s anything worth salvaging. Once the deed is bought and activated, the buyer can look at the map and will be able to see a new PoI for the salvageable ship. To make it a little more involved and prevent ship owners from creating 1 credit salvage deeds to find ships that they lost, I think that the PoI should show up as an area on the map instead of a point, and the Salvage Deed buyer has to fly a ship into this area to gradually narrow down where exactly the ship is.
The last type of Ship Deed is the Hacked Deed. This offers an interesting possible interaction with Territory Control. The concept I have is that Hacked Deeds essentially work like Ownership Deeds with a price of 0, but it’s possible for stations/territory to tell that a ship has been hacked. A pirate encountering a ship outside the safezone without a pilot can use the Hacked Deed to acquire ownership of the ship and can fly it inside some safezones, store it in a friendly station, etc. However, large stations or regions of territory under control (this will be discussed more in a future article) can mount a module like “Blueprint Checksum Verifier” that will interrogate all ships entering the safezone for ownership details.
If this module determines that the ship is using a Hacked Deed, it can check a permissions list to see if the owner is allowed to use hacked ships in that territory. If the owner is, then nothing happens and the ship can be operated like normal. If the owner is not, then the owner gets a warning popup to leave the territory within a set time or the ship will be impounded by the territory owner. If the ship is impounded, the territory owner gets the ship under a Hacked Deed and can return the ship to its original owner or decide to use it under the rule of Finders Keepers. To prevent station owners from sniping ships while the owners are offline, the rule change could institute a timer for ship owners to vacate the area. This could be 7 days or 24 hours after next login, whichever comes first.
I think that Blueprint Chips as currently proposed by Frozenbyte should remain largely untouched, but for completeness’ sake I’ll go over them briefly here. Locked chips should only allow you to test fly the ship, view it in the SSC, and manufacture it. Unlocked chips should allow you to do all of the above, but also edit the blueprint in the SSC to customize it for your purposes. Both should be saleable through the Auction House to ease distribution of blueprints.
Through the use of Ship Deeds and Blueprint Chips, it will be easier than ever for ship builders to get their designs out to the world and earn a profit for their hard work. Furthermore, by boosting the availability of salvage, it helps to ensure that the ship lifecycle is closed like in Article 5, and salvagers have opportunities to ply their trade in a diverse set of locations. Lastly, pirates gain easier opportunities to profit from capturing ships intact through things like boarding operations or careful marksmanship and territory owners gain the opportunity to support or regulate the trade in black market ships.
Ship Deeds currently are proposed in 4 varieties, with those being the Ownership, Salvage, Hacked, and Test Fly variants. I think that the Test Fly variant should be dissolved and integrated with the Ownership variant to reduce clutter and integrate a much-needed function. Ownership Deeds as currently proposed by Frozenbyte are for selling ships in storage at that station, and they can be sold through the auction house or through trading. I think that this should be changed slightly. Ships sold through the auction house should dispense with the deed function and should simply offer the option to test fly the ship and a list price. When the ship is purchased from the Auction House, it is simply bought immediately without having to interact with the deed. In the game world, the deed would remain, but would be encoded with a timer and price by the seller. Before the timer runs out, the buyer can interact with the deed to test fly the ship and view its price. The buyer can choose to pay the price, which will transfer credits from the buyer’s account to the seller account like the auction house. If the timer runs out, the Ownership Deed is simply deleted from the buyer’s inventory.
Salvage Deeds are for taking ownership of ships that are located anywhere through the world of Starbase. I think that the purchasing and testing process should be identical to Ownership variants, with the option for the ship owner to add a short description of the current state of the ship (buyers beware) to help establish whether there’s anything worth salvaging. Once the deed is bought and activated, the buyer can look at the map and will be able to see a new PoI for the salvageable ship. To make it a little more involved and prevent ship owners from creating 1 credit salvage deeds to find ships that they lost, I think that the PoI should show up as an area on the map instead of a point, and the Salvage Deed buyer has to fly a ship into this area to gradually narrow down where exactly the ship is.
The last type of Ship Deed is the Hacked Deed. This offers an interesting possible interaction with Territory Control. The concept I have is that Hacked Deeds essentially work like Ownership Deeds with a price of 0, but it’s possible for stations/territory to tell that a ship has been hacked. A pirate encountering a ship outside the safezone without a pilot can use the Hacked Deed to acquire ownership of the ship and can fly it inside some safezones, store it in a friendly station, etc. However, large stations or regions of territory under control (this will be discussed more in a future article) can mount a module like “Blueprint Checksum Verifier” that will interrogate all ships entering the safezone for ownership details.
If this module determines that the ship is using a Hacked Deed, it can check a permissions list to see if the owner is allowed to use hacked ships in that territory. If the owner is, then nothing happens and the ship can be operated like normal. If the owner is not, then the owner gets a warning popup to leave the territory within a set time or the ship will be impounded by the territory owner. If the ship is impounded, the territory owner gets the ship under a Hacked Deed and can return the ship to its original owner or decide to use it under the rule of Finders Keepers. To prevent station owners from sniping ships while the owners are offline, the rule change could institute a timer for ship owners to vacate the area. This could be 7 days or 24 hours after next login, whichever comes first.
I think that Blueprint Chips as currently proposed by Frozenbyte should remain largely untouched, but for completeness’ sake I’ll go over them briefly here. Locked chips should only allow you to test fly the ship, view it in the SSC, and manufacture it. Unlocked chips should allow you to do all of the above, but also edit the blueprint in the SSC to customize it for your purposes. Both should be saleable through the Auction House to ease distribution of blueprints.
Through the use of Ship Deeds and Blueprint Chips, it will be easier than ever for ship builders to get their designs out to the world and earn a profit for their hard work. Furthermore, by boosting the availability of salvage, it helps to ensure that the ship lifecycle is closed like in Article 5, and salvagers have opportunities to ply their trade in a diverse set of locations. Lastly, pirates gain easier opportunities to profit from capturing ships intact through things like boarding operations or careful marksmanship and territory owners gain the opportunity to support or regulate the trade in black market ships.