Enhanced Coop multiplay concept

How about this as a basic concept:

A player has an account on a server. The account is password protected and tracks the players wealth. Values are saved when he/she leaves the game.

To gain wealth
You can bring cargo (from your SP game) with you and have it recycled at face value. A pod of seeker missiles would get you 489.00 Credit Units.

To re-arm (or heal) your ship you can dock at a friendly station, you will be charged (minimally) for that dependent on the weapons or launchers you have. (A seeker missile will cost around 12.5 credits because there are 40 in a pod at 489.00 per pod).
You can buy tip-offs about a valuable freight transport entering the system or a hidden stash from some seedy charachter who contacts you when you are docked.
(i.e the game won’t offer a Job Board where you can simply pick and accept a job)

The higher the price of the tip-off the more value to gain but also higher risk (tougher escorts). If you get shot you will spawn again but so far away, that you’ll probably never catch the escort. Thus, you loose your cash (Freight transports and escorts will be AI)

High value tip-offs will only be sold once, so a wealthy player who can afford a high value tip-off will have to negotiate with other players (hire wingmen) to help him take down a big convoy.

You won’t be able to buy weapons or change your ships loadout but we could arrange that you can buy power ups for some weapons (time limited to 1/2 or 1 hour or so) if that is what the majority wants?

You don’t have to be a pirate, and take risks like hijacking transports: You can be a trader…
Just bring cargo online and trade it with other players. (You’ll be limited to the amount of pods you can have online but you can always run back to base and get pods from your stock. (The trip will only take about 3 minutes). Traders can camp inside a small “Wepi” (Weapons inhibitor zone) that is comparable to a LDSi zone around stations.

You can choose to be an engineer (service tech):
Gain wealth by traveling around re-arming and repairing (healing) other ships. re-arming (or getting repaired) from an engineer is more expensive than re-arming at a station (because the engineer pays a 50% higher price for resellable goods at the station when he loads them.) But, the engineer can travel with you as part of your troop.

Or you can be a mercenary (wingman) and let others worry about getting rich while you just have fun.

Now the drawbacks:

With all this functionality a server will not be able to handle more than around 6 players at a time (maybe 8 with a cable connection). You could however play on several different servers and travel back and forth as much as you like. (would be like jumping from one system to another and if you had 2 PCs you could even play on two servers simultanously).

Assume you steal some cargo and get some people angry at you in one system and they chase you to another system (Server): OK, first they have to check the long range scanners (Gamespy) and find out where you are.
Now, you have 3 allies on that server plus yourself makes 4. The retalliation force could come in with a max of 2 ships. Not very good odds! Might be fun for the guy that got the others to chase him, though?

6-8 players per server isn’t really a massive multiplay game is it?

Whadda you think

Have Gun, Will Travel