You're still thinking about it wrong...from the perspective of someone that's had it too easy all along. As a comparison, to someone who always uses cheat codes, actually playing the game is ludicrously difficult, but plenty of people do it anyway because it's fun.

I believe it will be a good thing. Rather than "Oh, i guess i can go get 5 levels of piloting now", it will be "Sweet! I can finally get a level in piloting and upgrade my ship, there are so many sweet ships at tech 7 i cant wait to get my hotrod mega!"

...y'know?

But theres only one decent, and two crap ships at T7, for T7-level ships.

Oh, I can finally get Piloting20, because theres so many ships of being!
(In example, the only T20 ship IS an Izer)

This exactly sums up the issue, Cyg. All we need is more midgame content and there will be no need for this radical change to SP use.

Still need something to slow down people. It's not JUST that theres a lack of content...it's that theres a lack of content AND people can level up really fast to bypass any potential content.

Tech 20 should be a major achievement. Now, it's not even much of one. It's, just another level.

I dont even think theres a lack of content, and yeah you can lvl up fast, but lets face it there is some midgame stuff that si worth it (prom crytals, mf bots RoPs etc..)
The real issue is that the other midtech items worhtless for any endgame purpose.
Ofcourse to a certain extent you can stills warm slaves, but thats really timeconsuming and worthless for any real endgame content, but hey there you really need the midtech stuff.
The droning was once the same way, i remember comming along to a Izer run with 11 pyro drones under my ass. that was fun!, i suggest to reimplement that part,
I've no idea about the other classes though but maybe SD/seer wise thats not that necessary .. most has to do with ships, and we have BSS MzFluids and such but meh im not into those classes.

First-time players do not speed their way to T20 skills and gear. Jeff has already established this is not about keeping people from twinking.

This idea is bad.

As said many times in this suggestion, this idea is bad until we get more midgame content to make it less of a grind.

I don't think increased SP cost is good idea. I remember when I was leveling my 1st character in Didus until like 600lvl (with a swarm of outlaw volcom's). Now I'm simply skipping mid game gear becouse I have access to better equipment. Increased SP cost will make life harder for new players only.

I agree there is not enough variety of ships and I have a solution for that: Modular ships.

Imagine building ship from modules like: shield bay, cargo bay, weapons interface, energy bay, drone bay, fighter bay, engine bay etc. Each of those modules would require certain tech lvl and would allow installation equipment of the same level or lower while ship hull as it is now would be something as matrix used to bind those modules together (also granting special abilities).

I would be cool with what Yarra is suggesting as an addition to current mechanics. Not as a requirement.

This suggestion would be fine if more early/mid game content were to be created.

But noone wants to make that kind of content!
It's more than 2 lines of code!

Just replying to this, because its not just whining...its actually an awesome post.


Honestly, there is a lot of really cool content out there, just that most of it doesn't get used. You don't even realize this usually because you're too busy leveling or making money to get the best possible gear, but i tried it out once, as an engineer; i went from pax mini to rosfire to OS rosfire to Kikale Frigate, and this was after the drone code had changed, meaning i had to find myself really cool drones to use at below tech 20. In the process i found perpetual motion and seige drones, as well as trying out a lot of other drones, which actually led me to a lot of really cool suggestions about new lower tech drones that i think a lot of people liked.

Of course, they weren't added, because whats the point of adding new content that nobody will use, right?

The trouble is that making new content at this level is pointless if you do it before you change the code; by the time everyone agrees that enough content has been made, and the code is changed, it will have completely lost its novelty factor, making it essentially no different from the content we already have that isn't done.

Simply put, this change is necessary to ensure the life of the game, regardless of what people think of it. Its similar to the block on real life trading done in Runescape; everyone hated it, but for the game to survive(and thrive), it simply had to be done.

Sorry guys, but i've thought it through time and time again, and i'm 97% sure that this plan, in one form or another, is going to go in. The only real question is when...which is something you should debate.

My personal preference is for the C2 beta when everyone gets to start a new character. It will make the game far more interesting that it otherwise would have been.