Make Starfighters transferable within Legacy

[JMullane]

I used to love playing GSF a couple months ago. It was a blast. But I haven't played a match in ages. Here's why:

 

I started playing GSF while leveling my Sith Inquisitor. My friend and I would work through our missions in a group, and we would queue for GSF as we went. When a battle popped up, great! It was an awesome way to break up the action. We'd get through a few class missions, do a starfighter battle or two, then back to class missions. It all had a very nice flow.

 

Eventually we had almost mastered our favorite ships. But then we finished our class missions and hit the endgame, and we decided we should pick two new classes and start working through a new storyline.

 

But faced with a blank slate of un-upgraded starfighters, we just didn't have the stomach to start from scratch. We decided to focus on PvE and let GSF fall by the wayside. Even when we had a craving for a GSF battle, it was too frustrating to switch characters just to queue for a battle that may or may not pop up when we could be getting things done on our new characters. No one wants to swap characters just to wait around.

 

And so here we are, not playing GSF anymore.

 

Multiple times we have wished that we could transfer our old upgraded starfighters to our new "main" characters. Heck, we'd even pay cartel coins for such a transfer. We'd gladly pay a cartel coin fee every time we wanted to move our starfighters to our next character. And I imagine others might like the same.

 

So I propose that exact addition to the Cartel Market. An item that lets you make a one-time transfer of one Starfighter, with all its component upgrades, to another character in your legacy... call it a "Starfighter Deed Transfer" I'd imagine, technically, it would have to overwrite the destination character's existing starfighter of that type (or you might be able to merge all upgraded components between the two starfighter profiles). It would then totally reset the original character's starfighter profile for that ship type to square one. No ship or fleet requisition would change hands. No cosmetic upgrades would be transferred. Companions would be totally separate from this transfer. Just Component Upgrades.

 

I think it would be perfect for casual GSFers who want to take their Starfighter with them as they play different alts. You'd still need to catch up with companion unlocks and cosmetics, but I think that's a fine compromise.

 

How about it!?

[Xavon_Wrentaile]

I was thinking something similar. But I was thinking just make the starfighters by Legacy and faction straight out. My Clarion is the same ship for all my pub characters, and ship reqs earned apply to that ship regardless of who takes it out.

[EnkiduNineEight]

I made this comment with the release of GSF.

 

Its a side game, not the end game. It has no effect on the rest of the game. It would be beneficial tothem to have earned ships/credits etc to be 'global' for the side you earned them on (so your republic comms, ships, etc are all available to all your republic characters, ditto empire)

 

This would likely increase significantly participation as I know _many_ people who liked GSF in theory but also like leveling alts and do not like having to re-earn sips etc that have absolutely zero relevance to their characters etc.

[Ratajack]

I made this comment with the release of GSF.

 

Its a side game, not the end game. It has no effect on the rest of the game. It would be beneficial tothem to have earned ships/credits etc to be 'global' for the side you earned them on (so your republic comms, ships, etc are all available to all your republic characters, ditto empire)

 

This would likely increase significantly participation as I know _many_ people who liked GSF in theory but also like leveling alts and do not like having to re-earn sips etc that have absolutely zero relevance to their characters etc.

 

I guess it depends on your viewpoint. IMO, in GSF, your ship is basically your character. It starts out weak and it must be upgraded, much like your character increases in power as it levels.

 

Then again, I'm not averse to a little effort or time spent.

[EnkiduNineEight]

I am not averse to a little effort either.

 

In this case though, it really is a missed opportunity for continued buy in from players. Unlike character based PVP which has three tiers _and_ bolster, GSF has a single tier and no bolster. The game comes down to the ship. all but the very best of the best will find they are not competitive at all with a starting ship and this means the vast majority of players will find that, unless they stick with a single character, GSF will be overly tedious to involve themselves in.

 

There is no harm to the best players, and in fact allowing your ships to be unlocked to your legacy instead of individual characters would likely increase the participation in the side game, making it more fun for those people who really like it.

 

Players still need to put forth the effort to get better and to earn the ships. Only the character they log in on no longer has to be the same character, allowing for people to do other things and see other parts of the game while still remaining involved in a 'side game' that is not at all affected by their characters stats, class choice, etc.

 

I agree with you on many points, but I disagree with you here. It is less beneficial to lock off this side game to a per character experience.

[Ryuku-sama]

I am not averse to a little effort either.

 

In this case though, it really is a missed opportunity for continued buy in from players. Unlike character based PVP which has three tiers _and_ bolster, GSF has a single tier and no bolster. The game comes down to the ship. all but the very best of the best will find they are not competitive at all with a starting ship and this means the vast majority of players will find that, unless they stick with a single character, GSF will be overly tedious to involve themselves in.

 

There is no harm to the best players, and in fact allowing your ships to be unlocked to your legacy instead of individual characters would likely increase the participation in the side game, making it more fun for those people who really like it.

 

Players still need to put forth the effort to get better and to earn the ships. Only the character they log in on no longer has to be the same character, allowing for people to do other things and see other parts of the game while still remaining involved in a 'side game' that is not at all affected by their characters stats, class choice, etc.

 

I agree with you on many points, but I disagree with you here. It is less beneficial to lock off this side game to a per character experience.

 

Then I'm sure you will be able to tell me how I can competitive despite almost never flying mastered ship.

[EnkiduNineEight]

Then I'm sure you will be able to tell me how I can competitive despite almost never flying mastered ship.

 

The answer was in the text you quoted.

 

But in your rush to try to be an internet forum warrior you missed it.

[JMullane]

The only downside I can see to having the GSF Hangar be Legacy-wide as a whole (rather than have individual ships transferable) is I know sometimes multiple people use a single account, and have their own characters. In that case, you force two characters to share all their ships with each other. It also means requisition is a legacy-wide currency, so one character is making requisition spending decisions for the whole legacy.

 

Also, you have the problem of what to do now that people have multiple ships already spread across their alts. If you change the hangar to legacy-wide at this point, do you overwrite all their work? I'm sure many people have worked hard to get mastered ships on multiple characters. To change how it's handled now risks devaluing their time spent.

 

I think opting for a cartel coin transfer of single ships between two characters is a good compromise that lets people play GSF with the ship they want on the character they want, but doesn't devalue people's previous work and doesn't prevent characters on one legacy from making their own unique GSF choices.

[Muljo_Stpho]

The approach that I've tried to suggest in other topics about this would be something like this...

 

First, make a fundamental change to the system separating ship gearing from pilot (character) skill. Ships can equip and upgrade different components but the stat gains will be scaled down to create a smaller gap between "stock" and upgraded. But then the character will train piloting skills to improve their performance in specific areas, and a fully trained pilot in a mastered ship will reach similar stats to what we can currently see in mastered ships. This maintains the sense of each character having to make their own individual progress while also allowing upgraded ships to be shared. This would probably require the addition of a third "currency" pool to the system, a "pilot requisition" for use on these skill upgrades. Pilot requisition would NOT have a conversion option to or from ship or fleet requisition.

 

So we'd have a Republic legacy hangar and an Empire legacy hangar shared across the legacy. The system would allow for multiple ships of the same type to be owned in each hangar, meaning that current ships do not need to be merged or deleted with the conversion to the new hangars. (Ship requisition stays as it is. Only fleet requisition merges into one unified pool.) However, the system would introduce a "scrap" feature that allows you to tear one ship down to enhance a ship of the same type (unlocks and upgrades will merge where possible, and a small amount of requisition will be refunded for overlaps and for the scrapped ship's remaining requisition).

 

Customizations (weapon color and paint job) on each ship would be shared across the legacy, but crew assignments on each pilot's 5 readied ships would be unique to each pilot (restricting them to their own class's companions unless they unlock other options for themselves, which will change to being done with pilot req instead of fleet req).

[Pietrastor]

I guess it depends on your viewpoint. IMO, in GSF, your ship is basically your character. It starts out weak and it must be upgraded, much like your character increases in power as it levels.

 

Then again, I'm not averse to a little effort or time spent.

Lore is not an argument here, esp when you can use companions from other classes. GSF hangar should've been faction-wide and it's probably one of the biggest mistakes they made when designing the system