Rare Ships

CMDR Jaysan Cort

CMDR Jaysan Cort
Just think that what may be a good thing is to have a rare ship class, only 200 available, for sale at just one starport and available on a first come first served. Once sold however they are gone forever, you cannot mothball them, use em or loose em.

Dev Team, you listening?
 

Snakebite

Banned
Snakebite
CMDR Jaysan Cort said:
Just think that what may be a good thing is to have a rare ship class, only 200 available, for sale at just one starport and available on a first come first served. Once sold however they are gone forever, you cannot mothball them, use em or loose em.

Dev Team, you listening?
Click to expand...

Thats seems like a good idea, not sure why you think they should not be stored like any regular ship though, surely that would be upto the owner.
 

Weps

Weps
I don't think it makes sense financially to spend a lot of resources for something only a fraction of your player base will enjoy. The reason the devs continue to produce ships is that they need to keep the game interesting and attract future sales. Mind you, modeling and texturing a ship involves a certain amount of dev work, which is why we only have 15 atm.

This does not mean I don't mind the idea of special renowned ships, which can exchange owners and remain in the game forever, with a story of their own attached to it. The Millennium Falcon of ED if you will. However there are no mechanics in the game yet to even support ship ownership transfer, so maybe in the future.
 
Last edited:

SpySat1

SpySat1
They would only do this if they put in a microtransaction model with intent of selling the content as premium.

This would be the business model:

1. The developers, artists, sound guy, etc would have to spend a few weeks just to make the ship model, interior cockpit model, textures, dev hookup of hardpoint, engine glowy bits and all the important details, gameplay balance and handling, sound effects, lighting, collision models, and hopefully lots of testing, etc. (Because this takes several weeks to build from scratch (and maybe even months) it will cost a bit of resources (to pay the people working on this new ship.)

2. To gain back the costs plus profit, this ship would idealy be sold for some new type of "premium currency" (which would also have to be implemented.) But for this proposal/example, I will assume that Frontier would go old school and sell this rare ship for regular credits (which unfortunately eats into your profits because the players who do not buy your currency (again, through the premise of microtransactions as proposed above) are not paying you, the developer, any money. And it costs real world money to build new content and features.

3. Set up a limited production run. I would not advise the "only 400 made" route (unless you are prepared to lie to the customer and fudge the numbers during the rare release period. What I *would* recommend is a limited time sale. This rare ship only available this week only. When the time is up, discontinue the sale.

4. Watch your metrics closely. The financial wizards of smart will crunch their numbers, count their beans, and see if the developer made their money back yet from the investment of building the rare ship to begin with. Whether in the black or the red, time marches on, and then you plan for the next inevitable phase:

5. Rare ship re-release, for a limited time only! (This is why we have seasonal candy, eggnog, mcribs... I think I'm making myself hungry.) (Is the mcrib an America only thing? I bet it is.) Why would you re-release a ship that was rare? Wouldnt it make it less rare? The answer: it doesn't matter, it makes money, and making money is all that matters. (Again, assuming there are microtransactions to buy currency.) If you don't make money, you can't pay your developers. If you don't have developers, you can't make new content for the game.

Again, this would only work with a business model attached to it. Making "exclusive" and "rare" ships is great fun for the end user, sure, but because so much money and work and time is dumped intk creating said ship, not having a method to offset the costs and turn it into profit is just financial foolishness.

tl;dr - Sure, I think rare ships would be fun. But let the ones with fat wallets pay for it because as we all know, "Time is money, friend."
 

fyonn

F
from a selfish point of view, I don't think this is a good idea. I don't play enough to have hundreds of millions to drop on a super-rare ship even assuming that I happened to be in the right place at the right time. eventually I'll get there and I'd not want content fenced off from me that I can't get access to.
 

Faerie

Faerie
There's an ugly looking mob heading this way brandishing pitchforks & scythes, & chanting "pay to win". ;)

Unless, of course, these rare ships were complete dogs, but who'd pay for that ?
 

Udayana

U
CMDR Jaysan Cort said:
Just think that what may be a good thing is to have a rare ship class, only 200 available, for sale at just one starport and available on a first come first served. Once sold however they are gone forever, you cannot mothball them, use em or loose em.

Dev Team, you listening?
Click to expand...
Right... and it's only available in Hutton Orbital so people would race over there :p
 

prophet1

P
CMDR Jaysan Cort said:
Just think that what may be a good thing is to have a rare ship class, only 200 available, for sale at just one starport and available on a first come first served. Once sold however they are gone forever, you cannot mothball them, use em or loose em.

Dev Team, you listening?
Click to expand...

Um, no, sorry, but that does not sound like a good idea at all. Why waste precious development time and resources on something only a few select people could benefit from when there are hundreds of possible improvements for everyone they could make?

And how would that suggestion be fair to people who bought the game a bit later on and missed out on an opportunity to get these wonderful "rare" ships.
 

cwstad

C
CMDR Jaysan Cort said:
Just think that what may be a good thing is to have a rare ship class, only 200 available, for sale at just one starport and available on a first come first served. Once sold however they are gone forever, you cannot mothball them, use em or loose em.

Dev Team, you listening?
Click to expand...

Nice idea, would be nice to see a unique ship flying around
 

Spy227X

S
$100,000,000 giant sidewinder that has the stats of the Sidewinder and is a larger Sidewinder. Have fun with your useless junk.
Anything better and 200 people will have an advantage that puts them ahead of others.
 

Snakebite

Banned
Snakebite
Faerie said:
There's an ugly looking mob heading this way brandishing pitchforks & scythes, & chanting "pay to win". ;)

Unless, of course, these rare ships were complete dogs, but who'd pay for that ?
Click to expand...

Don't need to be pay to win, they could be a part of a mission like the Argents Quest in FFE
 

GJ51

GJ51
Lanatir said:
They already have 2 rare ships that noone uses. Orca and Federal Dropship. Guaranteed less than 200.
Click to expand...

While trading is the name of the game and rares are a big part, it's all about jump range and cargo capacity. I made the mistake of looking at the Drop Ship, couldn't get back into my ASP fast enough...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom