Currently our game design relies heavily on items to do tasks. For example, if you want to scan a planet, you get a planet scanner and use it on the planet. What I propose is that we take some of these items, remove them as items and reimplement them as skills that require skill points to train. In Client 2, skills, like items, would be placed in the hotkey slots and activated.

Examples: remove planet scanners, ship scanners, credit scanners. Replace them with Planet Scanning, Ship Scanning, and Credit Scanning skills, with subskills to improve range, etc. of the scans. This lets us remove a lot of extraneous items from the loot tables, and gives higher levels more places to spend their skill points.

Potentially having an item on board would improve your base skills, so for example we can get rid of basic planet scanners, but leave the ENIAC scanners in the game to boost your scanning power to find high level rare commodities.

Basically I'm looking for some player feedback on both the general concept of this system, and what specific item types players would want to see converted.

Note the two biggest points here:
1. Clear the loot tables of endless items that you don't need and can't sell
2. Add a small skill sink for higher level players

Also would make it so you don't have to remember to transfer/equip a ton of items from ship to ship as they would be skill associated with your character instead.

I like it.

For credit scanning and ship scanning, it sounds brilliant...Nobody actually carries these things around atm anyway, so having them not take any hull space would be an excellent addition. Im uncertain about planet scanners, though, because I seem to miss so many uni resets i rarely need to use them.

It seems to me, however, that most people dont bother scanning a planet with medium scanning power scanners. If they're scanning for basic materials and suitability, they dont need a medium powered scanner. And if they're scanning for High teir commods, they're going to scan it with an ENIAC...there's no use atm for medium teir planetscanners.

Just a thought.

Sounds to me like you're saying that we should indeed remove planetscanners as an item since the medium ones (the ones that currently drop) aren't even used. This way you just get the skill and then carry the Eniac when you need deeper scanning.

That sounds spectacular, I would like to see it for fighter and missle bays too... Its near impossible to find the ones you need when you need them unless you get super lucky. Maybe even with solar panels, I see alot of applications Thumbs up to HAL cuz he is the man with the plan.

EDIT: maybe not solar panels, Would hate to lose my little bonuses from them its just annoying having to transfer half, then half of the other half, then the rest to my zerker.

I think that micro warpers should be converted to skills

I dont like this idea at all, its make ss more like other mmo rpgs where all u can do is launch skills.
Its S-F game after all, not fantasy
I say no to all non cybernetic/mechanic devices and scanning planets with power of ur will.

I really like it old, cumbersome way to go.

Removing fighter and missile bays would be dumb...how are you going to get them outside of your ship?

"Battle Station! Battle Station!"

"Man your Fighters, men!"

"Uhh....how are we supposed to get out to the fight!?"

"It's ok! Cygnus is going to send outside with the power of his MIND!"

-_^

PWI's should likewise be MOSTLY item based. EXCEPT for seers, when they reach level 20 in their skill, they should be able to do the equivalent of their seer only PWI without actually having it on their ship.

Yeah ok fighter and missle bays might have been a dumb idea, but this idea as a whole is not so unsci-fyee... you think in the future when we master space exploration we wouldnt have these scanners inbuilt on all ships if not in our brains? You cant get anything more sci-fi-ish.

inbuilt in ships may be but I dont like the skill idea, so copycating of all other mmorpgs ;/

Personally, I dont like it. Imo it would remove part of what makes SS feel unique.

I don't like it myself.

I love skills that improve it, but I prefer the way it is now.

Kanga

If you do this, please don't just suddenly take out all the items. Give the playerbase a grace period of a uni, or something, so people can train these skills BEFORE the items are all removed. As to whether or not it should be done, I think that it could be nice in the future, but for now it would be a bad idea.

It would be nice to not have to carry all that crap around with you, but bad DG drops exist for a reason. If you got something nice everytime you went DGing, the SS economy would sink still further, if that's even possible at this point. It also seems somewhat pointless, as it is pretty easy to just carry a scanner with you, and there are a ton of far more important things for admins to be doing than making more unneeded changes.

/me stares at his mountain of SP and PScanner Z's...

Go ahead, I like the concept, particularly the notion of essentially having "customisable" scanners.