[Harvester]

When the military patch went in, we were given a new set of high risk-high reward missions to do while we were tagged. A while back, in another thread, (I think it had to do with the shipyards) someone was discussing how espionage missions don't really do anything, well that got me thinking. What if, after you got done with these missions, you could modify your ship?

For example, as an Oct, you take an espionage mission into Sol territory, which just so happens to be for a shipyard in solrain space. Upon retrieving that information, you can aquire a reverse engineered Solrain shield, like a size 2 Alpaa shield (or have your ship modified to fit an Alpaa, whichever is easier to code).

These modifications could be done only once to your current ship, meaning that taking further espionage missions (in your currently upgraded ship) will only net you credits and xp. In a sense, I'ts like artifact hunting in that you get a special upgrade to your ship, but by limiting it to only one upgrade, it won't allow someone to become invincible by stacking artifacts on top of your stolen technology upgrade. As an added RP bonus, having this stolen tech could cost you some RP with the faction you stole it from, so it's not just a "Cool, I got a special upgrade without any negative repercussions!" deal.

[Ambrosius]

To me, this would be far too easy -- but of course that all changes in Jumpgate Evolution when there are 8,000 people online.

Espionage Missions have been discussed ELSEWHERE with the idea of having the "widget" retrieved during the mission have some value for future activities against the target faction.

[Wild_Bill]

Risk = Reward. Plus a non-continious, non-cumulative advatage. I like it. A lot better than just flying around dodging flux dumps & time spawns arty hunting. Here you have to actually go out and risk your hide for a bump in shields specs, powerplant, engine, etc. Then, just like an arty, if you take a pod ride, you lose it! Tell me though Harvester, in your implementation, would this upgrade/arty-equivalent be trade-able?

[Harvester]

Ah, now there lies another great subject. These "procured" devices could be seen as contraband, leading to a great new economy of smuggling (Something this game really needs).
The nice thing is, if these devices were returned to the faction they were stolen from, a reward could be in order. (More medals!!) The addition of these illegal devices also adds an incentive to steal them back (a sort of Robin Hood scenario where a factionalist uses the pirate tools to recover stolen equipment.) But you would have to be MT in order to use the pirate tools this way. I say this would add yet another great way to play the game, beyond just vanilla pvp, mining, hauling, fluxing, pirating, recon, that we have done for the past few years.

[dahalb]

I like the idea. They would have to be careful that it was indeed NOT too easy to obtain these things and as Ambro points out, part of that will be the online numbers.

If its a tech upgrade (like ship modding to increase slot size) then it wouldn't be trade-able and afaik, the pirate tools cant steal a shield off a ship but the "widget" or R.E.-shield (sz2 alpaa) would be my preferred implementation. The 'widget' could be stolen and the R.E stuff could be traded so contraband could be done.