I find the current community goal to be anything but community goals. So to start with, I think the proposed changes to Community goal to be called Open Community Goal, to indicate that these are to be done in Open, and by the very nature of these, PvP will be part of these... And yes, I do get that this will put of alot of players, but then you do not have participate, we can still keep the old community goals around that you can do in Solo or private groups.
I want there to be several sides to a Community Goal.
For example, Federation want to build a new research station.
So they require the delivery several types of cargo, and we need delivery all of the kind of cargo.
For example
1x Gold
2x Clothing
1x Fish
So you cannot just pick the highest profit cargo all the time... so to keep a balance, for every 1T fish you deliver, you should deliver 1T gold and 2T clothing.
So you have to pay attention.... lowest delivered cargo determines the level...and it should show what the relative turn in for each cargo is, ie it should be easy to see if the turn in rate is out of sync. so perhaps people simply do not like to deliver Fish, then it should be clearly visible that the bar of of fish is only 50% of the gold bar, and the clothing bar is 80% of the gold bar. The highest cargo is always 100% and the other is always shown in their relations to that cargo.
Of course, the Empire cannot sit idle at the side as Federation tries to do this prestige project. So of course they will most of the time launch their own competing project, asking for the same resources.... Not always to build their own research station, they can do whatever they want the gathered resources, build a capital ship, build a monument, etc, etc,
And from time to the Alliance will see a profit in both the Empire and Federation to fail their endeavours, so they launch their own project to grab all these resources.
Any one of these can launch this kind of projects, but Empire and Federation are more likely to do so, and also launch counter projects to each other.
Now players have to sign up for any of the goals. ie Pick a side!
Everything turned in while in group in the same instance, gives everyone in the group the same reward, ie, cargo ship delivers 50T, every member of the group gets credit for 50T... so it more profitable to wing up, after all it is a community goal. And now you can have escorts, that get rewarded for their work of protecting you. only requirement to get credited as a wingman, is to be located in the same system as where the cargo is delivered, so no need to be in same instance, or so.
Also your ship will be auto classified as any of these 3 classes, based purely on your cargo capacity. These numbers are just rough estimation.
Cargo, you must have cargo racks that covers atleast 80% (arbitrary selected number) of potential cargo racks/capacity, should no bet able to fit the biggest shield! Gives you 10x bonus on delivery, 1T delivered counts as 10T
Multi purpose, have cargo racks that covers atleast 30% of potential cargo racks/capacity, can fit biggest shield.
Gives 8x bonus on delivery, 1T delivered counts as 8T
Combat, can have max of 30% of potential cargo capacity, can obviously what ever shield they want..
Gives 4x bonus on delivery, 1T delivered counts as 4T
How would pirating work?
Stealing cargo from "Cargo" ships, will when turned in give you 20x, so 1T will count as 20T, BUT if cargo ship is destroyed, by you or other players, you will get 1x, so 1T turned in is just 1T (bad to kill Cargo ships)
Stealing from "Multi purpose", ships, will when turned in give you 16x, so 1T will count as 20T, BUT if multi purpose ship is destroyed, by you or other players on your side, you will get 4x, so 1T turned counts as 4T
Stealing cargo from "Combat" ships, will when turned in give you 32x, so 1T will count as 32T, and if combat ship is destroyed, by you or other players on your side, you will get 16x, so 1T turned counts as 16T (combat ship is hard to steal from, even if they die in the process)
Examples for when penalty applies
* Federation pirate cargo from Imperial ship, and another Federation signed up player kills the target, penalty apply
* Federation pirate cargo from Imperial ship, an Alliance signed up player kills the target, penalty apply (it is your duty to safe keep the player, at least until you leave the instance)
* Federation pirate cargo from Imperial ship, another random player (not signed up) kills the target, penalty does not apply (these player should by this be free to kill, so kill them!!!)
* Federation pirate cargo from Imperial ship, another Imperial player kills the target, penalty does not apply
I do see risks for players to gang up in two groups, one at each goal and then simply pirate from each others, to increase the payout, but they are still subject to being pirated of by the other side, so they still have to work for it.
There is no limit on how many times you can be pirated from each other, you will not stack the bonuses! cargo can either be clean (no bonuses), or pirated (bonuses applies). And pirated cargo is always dropped from an enemy ship either freely or by hatch breaking limpets. Also pirated cargo that has the death penalty applied, will not retain that if pirated again.
So Federation pirate Imperial ship, ship get destroyed during the fight, penalty applies, on their way back to turn in pirated cargo, imperial pirates steals back the cargo, and get the pirate bonus, and have no penalty as the target survived the pirate effort.
So if you want to be a murdering hobo to just kill anybody you can still do that, but you will not get any rewards for it, and we have now incentive for players to actually team up with the cargo runners to escort these, so now only lone cargo runners are running the biggest risk for these murdering hobos.... and if a friendly combat vessels detects that you are interdicted, and drops in and saves the day, you have basically nothing to loose to wing up with this player and share you delivery with that player! You still get the same amount of credited you! And did not loose your ship! and hopefully you made a new friend.
Ships destroyed will not drop cargo to pickup, so you have to use hatch breaking limpets or rely on the the other CMDR to actually drop the cargo for you. Also if a CMDR tries to game the system by doing self destruct, this should not affect the pirates, as that is not counted as a kill by the pirates. Spontaneous power plant explosions is bad luck for the pirate and they have to pay for that gambling.
And of course, for players signed up for the community goal, they will also have NPC ships to intercept and steal cargo from, and also NPC pirates will be hunting players.... following the same rules as the players have, but they will ofcourse not count towards the goal, only indirect, as loosing cargo to NPC pirate is cargo not turned in!
This is the rough ideas behind my proposal, not to replace the current system, but to complement them, and encourage player interaction and help each other out and allow "combat" player a reward system as well (as we have wing reward). And the focus here is that best rewards is earned by stealing cargo and leaving the target alive!!! So you can be a lone pirate in a multi purpose ship going after cargo yourself, or you can team up, it is your choice. and you can only participate in the community goal by doing it in Open.
By this I mean, you collect cargo in Open, now you have to only play in open until you turn in the cargo, starting up in solo, or private group will lower you turn in bonus to 1x. So buying in Open, switch mode to solo/private group, go to target, switch to open, turn in, will NOT be worth it.
I want there to be several sides to a Community Goal.
For example, Federation want to build a new research station.
So they require the delivery several types of cargo, and we need delivery all of the kind of cargo.
For example
1x Gold
2x Clothing
1x Fish
So you cannot just pick the highest profit cargo all the time... so to keep a balance, for every 1T fish you deliver, you should deliver 1T gold and 2T clothing.
So you have to pay attention.... lowest delivered cargo determines the level...and it should show what the relative turn in for each cargo is, ie it should be easy to see if the turn in rate is out of sync. so perhaps people simply do not like to deliver Fish, then it should be clearly visible that the bar of of fish is only 50% of the gold bar, and the clothing bar is 80% of the gold bar. The highest cargo is always 100% and the other is always shown in their relations to that cargo.
Of course, the Empire cannot sit idle at the side as Federation tries to do this prestige project. So of course they will most of the time launch their own competing project, asking for the same resources.... Not always to build their own research station, they can do whatever they want the gathered resources, build a capital ship, build a monument, etc, etc,
And from time to the Alliance will see a profit in both the Empire and Federation to fail their endeavours, so they launch their own project to grab all these resources.
Any one of these can launch this kind of projects, but Empire and Federation are more likely to do so, and also launch counter projects to each other.
Now players have to sign up for any of the goals. ie Pick a side!
Everything turned in while in group in the same instance, gives everyone in the group the same reward, ie, cargo ship delivers 50T, every member of the group gets credit for 50T... so it more profitable to wing up, after all it is a community goal. And now you can have escorts, that get rewarded for their work of protecting you. only requirement to get credited as a wingman, is to be located in the same system as where the cargo is delivered, so no need to be in same instance, or so.
Also your ship will be auto classified as any of these 3 classes, based purely on your cargo capacity. These numbers are just rough estimation.
Cargo, you must have cargo racks that covers atleast 80% (arbitrary selected number) of potential cargo racks/capacity, should no bet able to fit the biggest shield! Gives you 10x bonus on delivery, 1T delivered counts as 10T
Multi purpose, have cargo racks that covers atleast 30% of potential cargo racks/capacity, can fit biggest shield.
Gives 8x bonus on delivery, 1T delivered counts as 8T
Combat, can have max of 30% of potential cargo capacity, can obviously what ever shield they want..
Gives 4x bonus on delivery, 1T delivered counts as 4T
How would pirating work?
Stealing cargo from "Cargo" ships, will when turned in give you 20x, so 1T will count as 20T, BUT if cargo ship is destroyed, by you or other players, you will get 1x, so 1T turned in is just 1T (bad to kill Cargo ships)
Stealing from "Multi purpose", ships, will when turned in give you 16x, so 1T will count as 20T, BUT if multi purpose ship is destroyed, by you or other players on your side, you will get 4x, so 1T turned counts as 4T
Stealing cargo from "Combat" ships, will when turned in give you 32x, so 1T will count as 32T, and if combat ship is destroyed, by you or other players on your side, you will get 16x, so 1T turned counts as 16T (combat ship is hard to steal from, even if they die in the process)
Examples for when penalty applies
* Federation pirate cargo from Imperial ship, and another Federation signed up player kills the target, penalty apply
* Federation pirate cargo from Imperial ship, an Alliance signed up player kills the target, penalty apply (it is your duty to safe keep the player, at least until you leave the instance)
* Federation pirate cargo from Imperial ship, another random player (not signed up) kills the target, penalty does not apply (these player should by this be free to kill, so kill them!!!)
* Federation pirate cargo from Imperial ship, another Imperial player kills the target, penalty does not apply
I do see risks for players to gang up in two groups, one at each goal and then simply pirate from each others, to increase the payout, but they are still subject to being pirated of by the other side, so they still have to work for it.
There is no limit on how many times you can be pirated from each other, you will not stack the bonuses! cargo can either be clean (no bonuses), or pirated (bonuses applies). And pirated cargo is always dropped from an enemy ship either freely or by hatch breaking limpets. Also pirated cargo that has the death penalty applied, will not retain that if pirated again.
So Federation pirate Imperial ship, ship get destroyed during the fight, penalty applies, on their way back to turn in pirated cargo, imperial pirates steals back the cargo, and get the pirate bonus, and have no penalty as the target survived the pirate effort.
So if you want to be a murdering hobo to just kill anybody you can still do that, but you will not get any rewards for it, and we have now incentive for players to actually team up with the cargo runners to escort these, so now only lone cargo runners are running the biggest risk for these murdering hobos.... and if a friendly combat vessels detects that you are interdicted, and drops in and saves the day, you have basically nothing to loose to wing up with this player and share you delivery with that player! You still get the same amount of credited you! And did not loose your ship! and hopefully you made a new friend.
Ships destroyed will not drop cargo to pickup, so you have to use hatch breaking limpets or rely on the the other CMDR to actually drop the cargo for you. Also if a CMDR tries to game the system by doing self destruct, this should not affect the pirates, as that is not counted as a kill by the pirates. Spontaneous power plant explosions is bad luck for the pirate and they have to pay for that gambling.
And of course, for players signed up for the community goal, they will also have NPC ships to intercept and steal cargo from, and also NPC pirates will be hunting players.... following the same rules as the players have, but they will ofcourse not count towards the goal, only indirect, as loosing cargo to NPC pirate is cargo not turned in!
This is the rough ideas behind my proposal, not to replace the current system, but to complement them, and encourage player interaction and help each other out and allow "combat" player a reward system as well (as we have wing reward). And the focus here is that best rewards is earned by stealing cargo and leaving the target alive!!! So you can be a lone pirate in a multi purpose ship going after cargo yourself, or you can team up, it is your choice. and you can only participate in the community goal by doing it in Open.
By this I mean, you collect cargo in Open, now you have to only play in open until you turn in the cargo, starting up in solo, or private group will lower you turn in bonus to 1x. So buying in Open, switch mode to solo/private group, go to target, switch to open, turn in, will NOT be worth it.