Salvaging Event Ships/Flagships

[Malok]

It was brought to my attention that, with the most recent patch to the Factory, utilizing old "Ships of Legend" (i.e. Flagship-sized event ships) is pretty much out of the question.

And at face value, I get the logic behind it. With every iteration of the factory, there's a renewed emphasis on balance. And there's nothing worse for sitewide balance than a three-year-old ace in the hole that was made during the Wild West era of the Factory.

But. Having said that, it's a hard pill to swallow. Those ships have a lot of history behind them, and even more posts. So what I'd like to propose is an option to bring these monsters up to factory standards while maintaining the work that went into them.

Salvaging Flagships

At any time, the original submitter or current owner of an old, approved Flagship can opt to bring the vessel up to current factory standards.

Doing so will require the vessel to be downgraded to Unique Battlecruiser in terms of dimensions and will be expected to be balanced as such. Event rewards will still apply and be respected, though it will fall to the writers to balance the resulting ship accordingly.

What would this look like?

Let's take the Jupitus, my diet Malevolence for example. It exceeds the dimensions of a Battlecruiser right now and it's event perk is a canon Ion Pulse Cannon. So, I'd have to resubmit the ship at 3,000 meters maximum and balance the ever-loving-mess out of it until it passes the current factory scrutiny.

Now, will it be as strong? No. Will I get to still use something my faction busted butt for years back? Absolutely.

And yes, I realize the idea isn't perfect - but the spirit of it is simple. Give us, the folks who've been around forever and have made the ancient Ships of Legend, a way to keep those stories alive. Give us the tools to balance them and we'll do so. Eagerly. But slapping our wrists and saying "no soup for you" is a hard pill to swallow.

And I know we can do better.

Thoughts?

 

[Netherworld]

[member="Darth Metus"]

For the love of all that is holy, slow down your avatar. Someone's gonna get an epileptic seizure from that.

As for the idea, I don't see why you couldn't already do this under current rules. Resubmissions have been done before.

 

[Malok]

[member="Netherworld"]

The verbage of the rule here:

If a Major Faction is recalled, merged into another Major Faction, or drops to minor, any Flagships created must be decommissioned and archived. No Flagships are transferable.

With few exceptions, every Event Ship is a Flagship. What used to work was providing an IC thread in the submission modifications that proved the ship was changing hands to a new major. But, as of now, all Flagships have to be decommissioned and archived when the major faction gets recalled.

So every Event Ship has to be decomissioned and archived.

I'd rather Nerf it than throw it away. I think most folks would.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

I mean, there's not really anything to nerf. With the possible exception of the Astral Horizon, they're all woefully underpowered.

That said I think resubbing the old 3km ones as unique battlecruisers should be fine, especially given the above consideration.

 

[Cathul Thuku]

Before I can actually understand what's the rationale for [member="Darth Metus"]' proposal, or comment on it, I would like to know what motivated that rule in the first place. Perhaps there is some reason that we may have missed.

The potential for abuse is limited by the writer base's ability to use a flagship; plus, the few factions that actually had one at some point only used them for the largest engagements, with the GE using it most.

 

[Cyrus Tregessar]

[member="Cathul Thuku"]

Writer subs 5k flagship for faction after doing the requirements. Faction folds. Writer 'defects' with said ship to another Major Faction. Said Major Faction gains flagship with none of the work having gone into it.

Now you might think that such a course of action (defecting with a flagship to another faction) is perfectly reasonable. And of course it is. So reasonable, in fact, that the process of defecting, refitting, and re-commissioning a flagship could very well be a flagship thread.

Just don't want to see a bunch of 5k dreadnoughts getting passed from faction to faction with no overhead. Where this issue becomes somewhat more complex is in the status of old event ships that were once considered flagships but are now fairly deficient in terms of power. My take, as mentioned before, is that it should be resubbed as a Unique Battlecruiser (if too large, cut it down to size somehow) and judged based on its own merits. There's some nuance to it (some of the old event ships have very special systems or weapons) but it should be able to be handled on a case-by-case basis.