I think I might have a clue as to what Starships will be likFollow

You may think this is a lame post but a lot of people are asking what the starships are going to be like are they going to be like movable houses, are they going to be cut scene take offs and landings. Are they going to be multiple person transport devices, and so on and so on and on.

Well in my limited experience in programming very few times do you see a programmer of a massive aplication throw away part of that application. It doesn't make sense. My point is if you create something for the game it will probably stay in the game, that is not say that it won't be fine tuned, adapted, or changed. I think it probably has something to do with the expense and the number of man hours already spent and the continuity of a process.

Nobody wants to start something with good intentions and develop it for hundreds of man hours just to watch it be scrapped for trash.

All of this was said to make one very important point, I know what starships are going to look like and how they are going to work because SOE and SWG have shown us.

Have you ever run to catch a Starship in the starport and overshot your mark. Or when you first started the game and you wanted to take a starship to another world, saw the starship land, and tried to run up the gangway to enter the starship, because you didn't know about the ticket droid? The reason I am asking is because if you did one of those two things you might have noticed one very important fact. The interior of the Starship is completrly finished. You can see walls and seats and if you run through the cockpit you can even almost see the piloting seats and controls.

Considering we can't even board the ship does no one else find this odd. I ask (with sarcasm)why would they do all that work. It must be because they like to flesh out projects artisictly because they can't feel complete otherwise.

Because it is the basis for the Starship system. Just as the hoppers, speeders, droids, and pets tell us how we will store our new moving homes, (we will redeed them to ourselves, paying a maintnance cost for docking and takingoff when in a citys starport or in city districts).

The Speeders and general game play tell us exactly how flight controls will react. You will sit in the pilot or copilots seats and a blue target will arise in front of you, where you point the target and press the right mouse key the ship will go.

You will then use a nav computer(the ticket purchas map we use for starships now) or your personal skills(waypoints based on poi/nav skill(like surveying for samples) to determine a path for warpdrive/hyperspeed travel which will be blinking flash graphic of your ship being pulled into lightspeed. There will be the processing screen we already get when traveling by shuttle or starship, accept instead of a fun fact about the planets we are traveling to and a rotaing sphere we will se a window with stretched starlines passing by with funfacts about sapce underlying the window. Then after the arrival point is loaded, we will see a glaring blink and ship stretch back into existance.

You will be able to travel in space in and around planets and probably out and away from the planets though the further from the planet you travel the more likely vague space like darkness with pinpoint lights for stars will be all that you see. While not in hyperdrive you will be able to move about the ship and play chess or drink soycaffe or do what ever it is you do in space.

If your a gunner you will find a turret somwhere and man that during comabt scenes, if your the pilot you will probably only get fixed fire power if that wich will be one directional.

There will be ship salvaging, smuggling, transport, courier, piracy, rebel and emp attack's against larger starcruiser and smaller fighter ships.

Any Questions?

"G"

-The More the Mind Wonders, The Farther My Fingers Wander-

-Well done. . . . Anywho you think we might be able to place items or say Crafting Stations in the ship? That would be cool to live in your ship fighting off enemy ships and going from planet to planet landing in remote locations. . . . Well I better not get my hopes up!

If the inside wasn't skinned then people might complain when they walked around the back and saw a black hole - it doesn't look finished.
Most people think their are too many player cities, player space stations would be a bit of a nightmare.

I Think movement will be Hyperdrive cordinates, much like way points. You will Jump to it if not interdicted. I hope you can run around the ship, and when "piloting" you look out the front with variable views.
1) Through the cocpit
2) see the whole ship like Earth and beyond
3) FPS style view without showing the ship at all.

You would only get in system via the jump, and have to fly to your destination in system. This will require space maps where you fly into the whole system, a big over haul. Maybe you can micro jump, but it could cause collision/damage.

I TRULY hope they don't forget beign borded! Imagine Ion cannons knock out your electrical systems, and your borded, causing you and the boarders to fight in the ship. Now this brings up another point, if your boarded your cargo can be taken/impounded but the ship CAN'T be taken (who would want that) Smugglers will soon have a point, and maybe the hyperspace lanes come in charted, and uncharted. The common jump points could have interdictors for catching smugglers, causeing the smugglers/rebs to find alternative routes closely guarded! This is star Wars, but it can be done very poorly or very well.

-Sokol
sokol@eqinterface.com

You all have good points, but too sum it all up...

I think Space will be just like a planet, a huge zone, there might even be badges just in space. I definitely hope seeing the death star might be one, OR that you can even go in(if imp) or sneak in as a reb. Or in the expansion maybe rebs can disguise as stormies? who knows. But i beleive what i said about the space travel being like a huge zone is true, why would they go thru the trouble of u buying ur ship and maintaining it just so u can just go into space and hyper drive. no fun. I think smugglers will have no skills, and actually 'smuggle' items aboard ships, any sliced items, spices, etc. as far as being able to walk around your ship, Im positive this will be the case. there will be seats, you will need r2 droids there will be turrets, secret compartments, cockpit. If it wasnt like this the expansion wouldnt be worth it. As far as hyper drive goes, like Han said, you can hit a asteroid or collide with other ships and junk like that. Depending on your ship parts you will be able to make the hyper drive coordinates faster.

Also another problem might arrive. Loading time. If you're a passenger on ur friends ship, or u paid for a ride. then what if u load at different speeds? will this make a difference? anyone have input on this subject? thanks.

Have you watched the whole opening? WoW space could be cool!!!