[Eraser55]

I suggest expanding the use of artifacts. and introducing new artifacts

There are 2 types of artifacts. One type used directly as equip on ships. The other are "info" type artifacts (discs), mainly used for making repair beams, as far as I know.

Now, if there were hundreds more of these different discs introduced. And every disc could be used to make existing equipment better. Like if Dss25 gold could make a normal rush engine faster.

And maybe there would be an artifact that could upgrade your pos to some kind of superpos, with more slots or bigger hangar and so on.

[Wild_Bill]

I'm all for new and useful artifacts. Definitely think DSS should be of greater value; same for the UC's. Would like to see less "crap" artifacts; more new stuff like arti weapons with different strengths and weaknesses, radars with different sizes, ranges or effects like the "deep radar" but instead allowing the targetting of 'roids, mining lazers of different sizes or perhaps with built-in mining laser amplifiers. Very good stuff would be rare. Currently the ratio of good artis to less desireable ones are the same for every non-station sector, regardless of the danger factor. Combined with Jumps idea of an expanded universe with more unreg between the factions, you could have areas where certain types of artis are more prevelant or where more desireable ones are more likely to be found.

But yeah, more stuff and new stuff are definitely a good thing.

[Jump]

Personally, I could care less about artifacts. I know some find it fun, but I would rather see some real game play and more realistic adventures in Jumpgate to come.

[Diver012]

I enjoyed the Artifact Hunt myself....

Maybe one way that could expand arti hunting could be finding something to big to put into a cargo hold... something that would have to be hauled in by a ship with a tractor beam?

[vorlon31]

scrap hunters.

All these ships blowing up here, there and everywhere - scrap metals, broken guns, barely working powerplants, search for it, find it, sell it/fix it - that's what Id like to see in Jumpgate over any artifact.

The precollapse stuff has been floating round for years- we must of collected it all by now and shold now be able to recreate it in unreg cp's..

[Injustice]

Copied/pasted this from jgcentral. It's an idea I had about a month ago when I heard about Jumpgate was getting worked on:

"I still say my idea for a blueprint-based manufacturing system would fix the economy overnight. I personally could sit around and cook up blueprints for weeks on end without getting tired of it. It's a bit long-winded so bear with me, but it would basically go like this:

Put a new blueprint-based player manufacturing system in place that would make use of all aspects of the Jumpgate economy and player participation. For starters, any and all blueprints could only be made for items which have had a custom producer built for them. This alone would make FM's worth running moreso than a good deal of them are now. Especially because, even if the current FM is for worthless equipment, getting it done would open the door for the next FM, which could be for an Instigator, Injustice, or Dream CP.

Okay, so CP's allow the making of blueprints, but here's the real kicker and the reason I think it would make a custom crafting economy fun. Lets say the Hyperial FM for the Dream CP was just completed (here's where the guesswork comes into play). How this works is, a pilot that flies into the Dream CP with Dream engines in cargo has those engines converted (reverse-engineered basically) into schematics. The player then takes those schematics and returns to Hyperial.

Based on the players faction rating with Hyperial, he can experiment with the schematic to create a blueprint. Experimentation would be done by taking artifacts and plugging them into one of three available upgrade slots. There are three slots for the Dream engine because it has three statistic variables, thrust, efficiency, and mass. Other equipment would have different amounts of slots depending on their variable quantities.

A specific example of this would be:

The pilot has an assortment of artifacts he can use to experiment with. For the sake of argument, lets say he has an EB3, AE2, EE3, CM3, AB3, UC5, a Rusty DSS4, and a PCE-5. Now, experience would suggest the best combination of three artys to use would be the EB3, AB3, and PCE-5. And indeed, using those three together makes for a respectable boost in thrust, and the efficiency is somewhat better, but the engine weighs a proverbial ton.

Basically what I invision is that each artifact you plug in will boost some or one aspect of whatever you're experimenting on, but at the expense of one or the other aspects. Plugging in the EB3 boosted the engines output by 12 mps in a Nix, but made it weigh a lot more. To add another twist, the non-specific artifacts like DSS's and UC's would be the wild cards, having different reactions with different equipment and depending on what other artifacts are used.

So experiment #1 using the EB3, AB3, and PCE-5 produces a blueprint for a Dream engine that looks like this:

Max Thrust: 3800 K
Efficiency: 0.63
Mass: 6700

Experiment #2 using the AE2, CM3, and DSS4 would create this:

Max Thrust: 3676 K
Efficiency: 0.68
Mass: 3950

However, using another AE2 and CM1 along with the DSS4 would net the following:

Max Thrust: 3720
Efficiency: 0.54
Mass: 2400

I know this is a long read already but there's more. When plugging a schematic into the station to experiment, the player would need to specify a production run for the final blueprint. Depending on the complexity of the product would determine the price, so say a blueprint to produce 100 Dreams would cost 100 million credits (just throwing a number out there).

Aside from credits needed to experiment, you also have to worry about faction rating (this is where players will be able to "cheat" a bit by trying to plug different artifacts into the schematic and seeing which ones will be accepted). So a player with a 106 Hyp faction rating that tries to plug an arty into the system but is denied can be assured that that artifact will have a better than average impact, although he won't know exactly how good until he gets the right faction rating and commences the experiment.

Once all is said and done and the pilot has what he thinks is the best blueprint he can get, he takes the blueprint along with the right commodities (which will differ from blueprint to blueprint) and flies back into the custom producer. At that point the CP will function the same as it does now except that since the product is coming from a premade blueprint, no credits are exchanged.

I know what you're thinking, but the increases that this system will offer over the stock equipment will be small increments, nothing too dramatic. Enough to make the crated stuff preferable to station stock, but not so much to make them obsolete. And as time goes by, the ideal combinations of artys for each specific piece of equipment will become known, so it won't take long for the desparity between different crafted gear will level out (no one corners the market, in other words). While the constant prospect of new possibilities from FM's creating new CP's for stuff like Instigators, Alpaas, Guzzlers, Havens, and even FF's means there's always something meaningful and fulfilling to do.

All this will make for more choice and personalization when it comes to outfitting ships, along with allowing for a real player merchant market, something which I think Jumpgate desperately needs to balance playability between the hauler community and us PvPers."

Radi pointed out the affect it would have on PvP balance:

"Meh, I tend to think the excentricities between the different factions would tend to balance that out. For example, a Nix with a crafted dream that was produced just to increase thrust still could not keep pace with a Phoon, and would either have power issues or handle slugishly. On the same token, a Phoon with a crafted insty that was heavily moded to boost power output would still have a power deficit compared to just about every other ship out there, and sacrifice some of that all-important maneuverability too.

The problem with Jumpgate that causes it to lean heavily into this niche market that everyone talks about is the fact that there is no PvE aspect worthy of note. The flux don't reward you with anything beyond a credit reward and occasionally a ribbon, the highest of which most people expect to achieve can be had by rank 30. The ultimate goal of the crafted equipment idea is to give the carebear crowd a long term goal that's worth pursuing, can be obtained individually or as a group, and will stimulate a player market economy.

Keep in mind the numbers I came up with for the blueprints were way over-exagerated. In reality, the player manufactured goods would result in maybe a 2Kps increase in cruising speed, maybe a 100K boost in power output, or a 0.005% boost in efficiency. Like I said, enough to make them preferred, but not enough to break the balance or make station stock obsolete.

And thanks to whoever moved this to it's own thread, after I posted it I figured I should've made a new topic for it."

[Radi]

The problem with arties is balacing. With PvP balance, it is tricky to get it right if you add more.

But the idea of finding something unique or even exploration is always a good one.

[alphabet]

All artifacts found should be unknown until you equip them. You may get a benefit, or it may randomly shoot your ship in reverse at incredible speed.

Its an artifact.. no one knows what it does.

[Pyrophred]

some of the direct equip should be fairly obvious. I mean if our tech evolved from the basic principles of the old tech, you could look at one of their engines and say "Thats an engine".

as for the less obvious equip maybe there could be sopme sort of testing station to check out the things you found, but after awhile you should be able to recognize things when you pull them in