Multiple professions

[eNeRGy]

Since we aren't sure how multiple characters will be working are you planning to have multiple ships for many specific purposes? In most, more traditional MMOs, you can start multiple characters. So I'll have a healer, tank, and dps or 2 for when I feel like swithing things up. Sure, one will be my main, but the others are always there.

In SC it seems that wont be an option. Perhaps you'll need multiple accounts if you want to be a pirate on one, and a Citizen on another. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but think I'll be ok just staying mostly on the side of the law with my character. But I'll still get bored if I'm only flying missions in one ship.

My current ship plan is:

Constellation - exploration missions, shipping a lot of cargo, and flying in groups when my friends might want to join on my ship. I also hope that this ship will allow me to solo a bit more out in the open galaxy to find new things.

Hornet - straight up dog fighting. I probably wont be a huge dog fighter, but I'm sure there will be times when I'll want to just go shoot things. This ship will also be for me to help escort my friends when they are doing their own shipping missions.

M50 - still not 100% sure how will work, but I'm really hoping that this ship will be able to be my spy / scout. I'd like to use it to follow other ships and gain information on their mining / shipping / etc. routes either to sell to competitors, or for my guild to use.

So what's your plan? Include ships you do have, or plan on getting once the game comes out. How will you have 'alts' when you have only one character to play?

[Pnuts]

I'm sitting on 2 accounts at the moment for the reasons you listed above. If everything works out great, I'll give the account to a friend, otherwise I'll just have to run 2 accounts for evil deeds. I am also banking on the M50 for stealth purposes with a 300i fallback if it doesn't work out.

[Bloodzee]

New United Dispatch

New United NewsOrg

“Does Crime Really Pay?”

By. Terrence Morrow

The UEE released its annual Crime Report this past week. With more and more people rejecting Citizenship and embracing the darker side of civilization, it raises the age-old question: does crime really pay? When examined as a purely economic business venture, I would have to say, no.

There will always be exceptions, of course. The public eye has seen its share of infamous smugglers and pirates who have made a killing by defying the law. In my research, I learned that the true entrepreneurs of illegality are the ones who aren’t notorious, who don’t get stories and Vids fictionalizing their adventures. They are the ones who you’ve never heard of and, if they get their way, you never will.

This series of articles will ignore the exceptions and focus on what comprises almost ninety-eight percent of the research findings: the every-day working criminal.

While it’s true that the average criminal gets to avoid things like ever-increasing taxes and landing tariffs, guild dues and insurance that burden the legitimate community, you have to keep in mind that they are burdened with persistent expenses of their own:

Ship Repairs

Most haulers, shippers, and average Citizens don’t take kindly to having their livelihood stolen. Latest statistics estimate that eighty percent of bandit attacks lead to a battle of some kind. Since your livelihood depends on attacking others, odds are you aren’t going to get out unscathed. Therefore, you can expect fairly regular trips to your mechanic. Which leads us to the illegal chop shops and patch-up joints around the systems that cater to the criminal element, clientele that won’t want the usual paper trail or will require illegal modifications/repairs. One can expect a significant mark-up price-wise to do business with these types, if they don’t find more profit in shooting you and taking your ship for themselves.

Legal Fees

If you get caught, the amount of Creds needed to mount an average legal defense is pretty staggering. Since most people don’t dream of being dumped on a PrisonWorld, you’ll want to keep a defense fund handy.

Low Offload Prices

One could view theft as the ultimate risk/reward. If pulled off without a hitch, it’s all profit, right? Sadly, the reality is much different. With cargo-tagging on the rise, it’s getting harder to move stolen merchandise so you either need to find a Buyer who’s willing to purchase stolen goods or a Fence who has the tech to re-tag the merch. Bottom line is that you will be getting well under market value for the goods, sometimes as much as 60% less than it is worth in legitimate sale. It’s a buyer’s market out there. You’re the one in possession of stolen goods, not them.

Medical Costs/Dangers

Like your ship, the criminal lifestyle will put you in all sorts of life-threatening predicaments anything from injury sustained during a heist to the ‘deal goes bad’ scenario. Whatever the reason, the odds are high that you will need to be patched up or have body parts replaced. Unfortunately, you can’t just waltz into your local MedStation or CyberDoc without risking suspicious doctors and surveillance feeds to the Advocacy so you are left dealing with underground doctors who will cut you to the bone with medical costs and hush money.

The Price of Identity

The criminal life is like quicksand; the more you ‘work’ the easier it will be to catch you. For every ship you hit, your reputation will grow which means that more local cops will be looking for you. Eventually, the Advocacy will get involved. To stay ahead of them, you have to minimize your identity impression. That means building up a cache of fake ID tags. As you move from system to system, you need to know what identities have been used and when, if there’s a possibility that the tag has “gotten dirty” by being linked to one of your attacks.

Bribes

There will be times where you will need to ‘grease some palms’ for information on shipping routes, cargo manifests, or for unscrupulous political and law enforcement to look the other way. As the UEE statutes on corruption and bribery carry stiff penal and financial penalties, the average criminal should be very careful when attempting to bribe someone regardless of whether it’s their first or fiftieth transaction.

Closing Statement

To me, it seems obviously that the financial strain of criminal endeavors feels vastly inferior to the potential rewards. Not to mention there is also the physical and psychological strain that existing in this world must have on your psyche.

Over the next few weeks, we will delve deeper into the world of the average criminal. Exploring each and every facet of what makes this world work, what draws in more and more men and women every year, and finally how one can hope to escape the whirlpool of the criminal lifestyle.

[Bloodzee]

hopefully one can do shady things like pirating but the reputation part is based on your ship id when recovering dumped cargo, so maybe 2 reputation , one player reputation (if a smuggler got caught) and one based on your ship only(ship id/name) as a pirate wont broadcast his real name when hailing the other ship,

[Pnuts]

CR stated that the info you copypasted above was basically a preview of what he plans to implement in the game, so here's hoping it all makes it into the game.

[eNeRGy]

This raises some really good points. It might be pretty easy to stay unknown to the law so you can do what you want with just one character. Either way, I'll have different ships for different purposes.

[elfindreams]

They have strongly indicated that you will be able to illicitly forge markings and shipIDs, even possibly on the fly. [there is a Kid Crimson where he does so] Given that I don't think you will /need/ multiple characters as long as you are willing to accept the risk of eventual discovery. As for me, I will be maintaining different ships for different roles: A cutlass for less legitimate activities A constellation for exploration/trading and possibly mining A M50 for scouting A 300i or Hornet for dogfighting (depending on how they turn out, I have both). I might trick out my freelancer as a dedicated trading vessel and keep the stella for exploration/etc only... not sure depends on how the ships pan out.

[T-rex]

with the cost of making 2 account and the time have to spent in it to get good upgrade would take too much. unless you can tranfer ship from account to the other then back. I for 1 will not have the time to use 2 account. Dead mean tell no tail. If ou out in lawless space and happen to hmmm press the wrong button and blow someone up. then who to say you what you doing are illegal?

[Puls0nic]

@waynesloman Uhm, perhaps the guy you just blew up? ha ha. I do not see the need for two accounts in this game. Eve yes, not Star Citizen. Obviously I could be wrong, but I'm not planning to play the system, just the game. What I do seem happning though is that, for example, you tell your NPC partner/crewman/wingman whatever to fly your ship, while you go out mining, or exploring, etc etc (aslong as the ship has space for crewmembers). Kind of makes multiple accounts redundant in my eyes.

[Reavern]

This might be a dumb question, but this professions section has me wondering, will there be actual "professions" in Star Citizen? I know that the Squadron 42 part of the game is kinda like a singleplayer campaign, and then you muster out and get to do whatever you want. At that point, does the player choose a profession, like continuing in the military, or becoming a trader, or explorer, or pirate? Will there be RPG elements, like "profession trees", and as you complete missions you gain experience and level up and gain new skills or something. I enjoy space combat, so I think the Military profession would be the right fit for me. But I don't know how good my Constellation pledge ship will be at combat. I assume it won't be as good of a dogfighter as the Hornet or Vanduul. Maybe I can compensate by arming my ship with plenty of missiles.

[T-rex]

@Reavern there will not be a level up.. (Your level will be your pilot skill and your ship upgrade) You can be fighter 1 minute then a trader or whatever you want the next minute. If you like more of a combat pilot then pick combat mission or hunt down other ships. It all up to you

[Puls0nic]

Yeah, there's no "pop-up" asking you to select Military, trader, miner. You take your ship and do with it what u want. If you like mining, you will upgrade your ship to be better at mining, or if you like military, you would select contracts that offer you fighting or escort duties, and you would upgrade your ship to have better shields and or weapons. As they have stated on their website, there is no "trees" or "talents" that you need to select. This game is twitch based. Which means you will only ever be as good as you can fly your ship with your own hands. A player will be able to out-manuveor a stronger/better equipped opponent if he's better at flying/avoiding/reacting/thinking ahead. So no Lvl55 vs Lvl42.

[buzby x]

oh man, talk like this makes me happy.

[Reavern]

I'm indifferent to there not being profession trees or levelling up. I think lite RPG elements could be interesting, as long as they don't effect certain aspects of flight and combat. I don't think your character's "attack points" or rate of fire or accuracy should improve with exp levels, because that's your ship and weapons, not pilot skill. However, there could be skills like "navigation" or "repair" that could be developed through experience, similar to RPGs like Skyrim. There probably wouldn't be abilities to unlock like "special attacks". The developed skills would just make using those skills easier/faster. So you could navigate jump points or repair your ship faster. Unless there's some kind of mini-game for navigating a jump point or repairing something (similar to the lockpicking mini-game in Skyrim), performing said action will only require a button press or mouse click, it will always take the same amount of time, and it'll always be successful. A skill development system would at least allow the player's character to improve with experience. But if there's none of that, it won't bother me too much.

[PandaCitizen]

i for one cannot wait to hunt down pirates for fun, and setting traps will be fun as well with the supposed stealth ability of certain ships, i do love a good trap. aurora lx ftw

[Decsus]

Love what I have read so far, seems very interesting, also seems that proper pirates will need to be organized, have multiple channels of distribution and some serious contacts.

 

It just gets better and better

[Lozenger]

Indeed, I think structured and organised pirates should prove very worthy allies adversaries!

[PandaCitizen]

dont u mean target practice

[PandaCitizen]

a wing of imperium fighters with the fleet training should decimate even an organized group of pirates sry just thats how i see it. pirates are pirates, i dont think they will stand up to imperium fleet training

[Reavern]

a wing of imperium fighters with the fleet training should decimate even an organized group of pirates sry just thats how i see it. pirates are pirates, i dont think they will stand up to imperium fleet training

You do understand that this is a GAME, right? And the Imperium Fleet "training" isn't a real thing. Probably the closest thing to training that players will receive will be the Squadron 42 singleplayer campaign. A pirate clan will presumably operate in groups, practice together, have voice comm, coordinate their attacks, and become adept at what they do -- no different than your Imperium Fleet, I expect. In fact, a clan dedicated to piracy will likely be more skilled and have greater experience at space combat than your Imperium in general, which from my observation and understanding has numerous non-combat divisions -- in the same way that the ancient Spartans were the greatest warriors of their age because they dedicated themselves to war. More than likely it will come down to sheer numbers than non-existent "training" or actual skill.

[LightMonk]

a wing of imperium fighters with the fleet training should decimate even an organized group of pirates sry just thats how i see it. pirates are pirates, i dont think they will stand up to imperium fleet training

 

Please not so much Fleet Pro Posting here in the Public Section

 

You do understand that this is a GAME, right? And the Imperium Fleet "training" isn't a real thing. Probably the closest thing to training that players will receive will be the Squadron 42 singleplayer campaign. A pirate clan will presumably operate in groups, practice together, have voice comm, coordinate their attacks, and become adept at what they do -- no different than your Imperium Fleet, I expect. In fact, a clan dedicated to piracy will likely be more skilled and have greater experience at space combat than your Imperium in general, which from my observation and understanding has numerous non-combat divisions -- in the same way that the ancient Spartans were the greatest warriors of their age because they dedicated themselves to war. More than likely it will come down to sheer numbers than non-existent "training" or actual skill.

 

You sound butthurt.... I infact will have respect for Pirates, they excel in SmallScale Groups to Solo PvP which makes it very fun to visit them to train PvP

[Lozenger]

Exactly, there's no reason why a pirate clan can't be just as co-ordinated as an Imperium Fleet. I'm sure there's plenty of groups out there doing exactly the same as us, but operating closer to the black market- pirates can easily be just as skilled, if not more, than any one of us, it's just all down to the player. Being a pirate doesn't automatically make them inferior in combat

 

And I think I like that to be honest, I don't want pirate players to be an easy-kill with extra loot and no risk, I want to have to weigh up the risks of attacking beforehand as if there's everything to lose!

[PandaCitizen]

Sry didnt mean to step on toes or offend

[Lozenger]

Haha not at all, it's all open discussions  everyone's allowed their own opinions!

[Reavern]

Please not so much Fleet Pro Posting here in the Public Section

 

 

You sound butthurt.... I infact will have respect for Pirates, they excel in SmallScale Groups to Solo PvP which makes it very fun to visit them to train PvP

Just pointing out the logical flaw in Cherubin's baseless assumption that Imperium pilots will be superior at space combat than a ragtag band of pirates, because the only "training" that any and all players will have will be playing and practicing the game. Everything else being equal, the player and/or clan that plays SC more will probably win.