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Joined: Fri Jan 14, 2011 4:13 am
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So I've been reading up on the guild hall/keep/ship threads and the similar topics of claimable real estate upon contested worlds and thought it would be better to codify my thoughts in a separate thread rather than derailing the conversations of others. (Lookin' at you Gosh and Lelo, hehe.)
The Guild Ship
First and foremost, the guild ship would be a perk for guilds that had reached some advancement plateau such as max level or accumulated achievements. It would be the mechanism through which its members would receive the benefits of being guilded, outside of chat channels. Given my choice, it would include guild specific merchants, articifers, trophy rooms, etc. There could even be pve elements added such as npc's with guild based quest storylines, possibly even chained together to offer more to do for guild activities outside of the normal pve/pvp activities we can assume will be plentiful.
It could be the hanger for all of our cool toys such as rhinos and land raiders and the launch point for our drop ships and pods and boarding torpedoes. Since we have no idea if there will be any form of free space travel, meaning real time ship flying from A to B, it would be easy enough to just make the guild ship an instanced place that members teleport to and from. They could even have shuttles that you hop into and direct to the guild ship and *poof* cutscene of the Thunderhawk blasting into the heavens/load screen/cutscene of it sliding into its berth in the hanger.
As with all guild halls, there would be themes and decorations people could collect/craft/decorate, everyone loves "painting their minis". Things like drop pods/torpedoes/support missile barrages/etc. could all be things that guildies could grind for. I'm not saying that I'm in favor of space marines wandering the country side picking flowers and whacking rocks with picks, far from it, but players LIKE to contribute to their guilds for the most part and having SOMETHING that they collect as a resource for jazzing up the guild ship would be a good thing, give people a sense of increasing the value of the guild outside of just being more fodder for the grinder.
While my preference would be some form of free spaceflight from planet to planet, for simplicities sake we'll assume that there would just be a "chart" that guild leaders and select officers could choose a destination from and the ship would berth in "counter orbit" above said destination planet. While at the destination planet guildies could teleport or shuttle to and from the ship. Guildies on other planets would have to either secure transport to the destination planet or contact the guild and request pick-up to take advantage of its benefits. I like this idea as it would make the guild ship, and the running of the guild, a bit more interactive and interesting. Having run numerous MMO guilds in the past, they tend to be more chore than fun and anything that adds activity to guild leadership play would be welcome.
Battlezones
I mentioned "counter orbit" this would represent the ship being in full support of the combat theater on the destination planet. This orbit would represent the ship changing altitude and orbital trajectory to avoid combat and would in essence represent the ship being unflagged in a pvp sense. Counter orbit would be where the ship could launch shuttles, drop pods, etc. in support of the forces fighting below and offer teleports and whatever resources Vigil can come up with.
The other orbital dynamics would be a guild ship pvp instance. If a guild had on the peeps and wanted to do something outside of the normal conventions of pvp and raiding, the guild leader or select officers could queue the ship for a ship on ship battleground. My vision, assuming the worst and there is no freeform space battles, would be a battleground instance representing the final confrontation between the massive and ponderous ships of the dark millennium. These would NOT be dog fights, but would put the guildies into a representative space withing the ship that would include things like gun decks, observation decks, tactical/command spaces, void shield projectors, emergency response and engineering spaces. When the queue popped, everyone on the guild ship while it was in counter orbit would get a notification asking if they wanted to participate and they would instantly enter the battlezone. From the portholes, they would see the looming flank of their opponent, another guild ship, and the fight would begin. Here is where things get interesting, because all that hard work building guild resources would get spent here. Support missiles could be fired from torpedo bays, plasma cannons and defense lasers targeted to the enemies ship, and assault squads readying for launch in boarding torpedoes. The sole objective of this battleground would be to make your opponents guild ship unable to continue fighting. This could be achieved by overwhelming firepower (doing enough surface damage to the enemy ship via ship based munitions) or by tactical destruction of key components (boarding and destroying the command space or main engineering of your enemies ship). Loadouts for the guild ship would be purchased prior to battle and based upon the guilds prefered playstyle. One guild might choose boarding torpedoes and lots of void shields and rely on assaulting the enemie ship through force of arms while another guild might go for lots of guns and missiles and be all about bursting down the enemy ship from afar. Another guild might concentrate on defense lasers and teleports to snipe the enemies void shields so they can deep strike in and wipe out key locations. The main point being, there would be many ways that this could be an interesting departure from traditional battlegrounds/scenarios. Their could even be more non-combat roles that players could take such as fire suppression and damage control, essentially healing roles for the guild ship. Were I developing this kind of gameplay, I would strive for a mid-length time investment, say 30 minutes to 2 hours with the victory conditions being the first to do X number of points of damage to the enemy vessel and/or the first to take out vital locations, say, command, engineering, etc.
Aftermath
So what does all this culminate in? Well, if you win your engagement, it could be pvp currency, guild specific perks, trophies to decorate the hall, and of course a pretty hefty bill to the techpriests to refit the guild ship. Now the guildies have a goal, get whatever currency is used to upgrade the guild to spend it on new missiles/void shield generators/main guns/etc. Rinse repeat for glory! If you lose, well, you have a guild ship with a MUCH bigger refit bill and a burning desire to get those upgrades and rebuild the GLORY and HONOR of your guild, damnit! GET TO WORK! 
Comments? Critiques? (NOW you can chime in Gosh and Lelo, lol.  )
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Gaze into the eye of the Warp and despair!
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