Well first off I don't see how hiring a space tanker to refuel from or being able to radio a repair ship whenever you want is better then having spare parts in your hold. Of course maybe they didn't have advanced repair droids back in that time and you'd have to land somewhere first, in which case you could still get stuck.
Well, first off, hiring a cargo ship to haul goods for you is an essential part of Privateer 2. Allowing you to do the same with fuel is a natural extension of this. I think I explained that there is currently no plan to add any sort of interstellar tow-truck service. It's just something we may toy with - if there's a need for it, and if it can be made to seem logical and not ridiculous. At this point, the more likely solution is to have a sort of "emergency repair kit" that consists of some spare parts. If you get stranded, or disabled, this will give you a chance to continue on. One more jump outta the jump-drive. Even so - this is just an idea - one that admittedly has no basis that I know of in the WC universe. The only way we can put it in is if it fits into what we know, and doesn't give the player a advantage noone else has. Maybe one way to guarantee this is to make them fantastically expensive. Maybe you'll have a choice of buying two new FF missiles or an emergency repair kit. You go for the missiles, right? You may end up regretting that later.
Anyhow, I'm just trying to demonstrate that the idea is reasonable. Sometimes, even unreasonable ideas can have some merit when they're tweaked about enough. Let me give you an example: Cloaking devices.
Originally Cloaks are something a great many people wanted to see in this game. Unforunately, given the timeline in which the game takes place, these devices are simply not available to be added to the players repertoire. So we thought about it a bit, and came up with an idea that could allow the basic functionality, and be completely reasonable in the process.
You can power down your ship.
In doing so, you become invisible to radar at anything but the closest range. You're still completely visible to the naked eye, but if you are trying to set up an ambush, you'll likely be doing it where there's some natural cover (asteroid belt, nebula, small moon...whatever you can find, really) The trade-off for this vaunted invisiblity is that when you want to come back on line, it takes a few seconds to get your powerplant back up. In this process, the radars of the other ships will begin see you, thus giving them some time - if they're alert - to come about.
The other big issue is if you get caught before you have a chance to power up, you're pretty much out of luck. You'll have no shields, not a single weapon available to you.
So - as you can see - even the most ridiculous idea can have merit.
While we're on the subject, one thing that always bugged me about privateer was your cargo never took any damage, if you can lose your jumpdrive, shields, thrusters and armor etc, why doesn't the cargo get damaged in the process?
While the idea of cargo taking damage may sound like a good one, I don't see how it could be of benefit to the gameplay. Being responsible for the ship's damage seems to be a big enough drain on the players resources. How do you handle damaged goods? A failed mission? Naw, this is something that adds an uneeded level of complexity and frustration. Straight cargo runs are bad enough right now - no need to make them worse.
But if you don't want to hear ideas like oh "landing on carriers" or "having an apartment", or have new gameplay like having hiring a co-pilot, then I'll just leave you to it.
Okay. this is kind of what I was talking about earlier. Why would you land on a carrier? You think the Tiger's Claw was going to just let anyone land on the flight deck? I seriously doubt it. There would need to be a very, very good reason for this to happen, and unless you're directly working for the military - and Confed at that - I don't see how this would come about.
Same thing with the Apartment idea. Why? Your home is your ship. That's where you sleep. It's your place of residence. There's no need to have an apartment - when would you ever visit? There's nothing particuarly intriguing about this idea...it seems like a lot of work so the player can come back once every 20-30 missions and do what? Check his e-mail?
Finally - we do allow you to hire a co-pilot. It's pretty self-explainitory why we'd do this. Every ship save one had a second seat in Privateer. That's gotta tell you something.
The other cool part about this is that the co-pilot allows us to have a narrator for information that the player needs to hear. This is a powerful, powerful thing.
Come to think of it I don't see why Privateer 2 even had any new ships or weapons, they should have just made a copy of the first privateer in another sector...
I dunno. I had a lot of fun with Privateer 2. Nothing wrong with it. At least nothing that nostalgia hasn't neatly glossed over with time.
About the spare parts taking up space in your hold--that's a good point. A full set of parts should probably take up like half of your cargo space if you are flying a Phalanx or Hydra, which means less space for cargo.
The emergency kit would probably take up some room. Keep in mind that we're not talking about a complete replacement part set here - just enough spare parts to get you one more jump outta the drive. It wouldn't take up much space at all.
As for cargo taking damage, I always thought the cargo hold was pressurized (in other words, inside your ship). That would mean that you would have to have a hull breach before the cargo would be damaged. On the other hand, what we have seen of Pioneer ships seems to indicate that they also use cargo canisters that fit into external mounts on your spacecraft.
Well, the pirate Bandits have external cargo mounts. That's just because they're so small - it doesn't have room for more than an engine, pilot, and a couple of guns. All the other ships I can think of carry the cargo inside the hull.
Anyhow - thanks for all the feedback guys. I hope to have something new to show here this weekend.