I like the idea of a parallel universe. I'm not sure how much work this would be, but endgame players would effectively have to work their way back up the food chain... perhaps have most of the common ships switch places with organic ships (e.g you can obtain organic version of the volcom, but space rats become normal ships); even if there isn't much of an improvement in terms of stats players would probably want trophy ships and such.

Large areas with missions and such (even the enigmatic sector, which felt rather small to me) are more interesting than straight up DGs (which is pretty much what most of the uber zones are). If FTP feel like they're missing something 'big' they're more likely become motivated and pay, wild space is just more of the same+ bases.

Another game I played had a cool idea along this line. It had a short to the point tutorial to teach you how to play the game, then at the end of the tutorial it gave you one of the most powerful ship for 24 hours to use in any of the test missions.

We could do something like that here, have a galaxy that new players have access to for a short amount of time and well they are in there they suddenly transform into a PWave Sniper or some such uber set-up that is fairly easy to understand and who's strength in DPS is very easily recognized. Then they players time is up and they are back in their Cadet, but that hunger to obtain the level of uberness they experienced for such a short time (and that they now know is possible) might keep them hooked.

the problem is there is only any real incentive to go p2p once you are at very high levels of f2p.

I personally think that bases should be ptp only. That alone is a massive incentive to pay; bases offer huge amounts of income as well as galaxies with your name on them, etc.

So what I think should happen, is have ftp base building be restricted to both tech 3, and to a limited number of galaxies. On the one hand, their bases will always suck; on the other, the galaxies would be specifically made to be rich in basic commodities, and the AI bases there would buy those commodities for decent prices, forever. Plus, once you go ptp, you can place bases that are tech six, allowing for much greater survivability in the next phase. In the center of the galaxy, have a countdown timer that counts down every 72 hours or so. After the timer counts to zero, a wave of weak bana AI come and attack the galaxy. These AI wont be enough to even kill tech three bases. Then, a few hours later, have another wave, and another, building up to be stronger and stronger until finally only the best build tech 6 bases can survive it...and then you win! If your bases are built well enough, you get to relax and make money for another 72 hours, after which the process will start over again.

However, have another timer next to the big timer; smaller, counting down every week to 10 days. Have there be a small mission where you ask what it's for, and you have to blackmail someone to learn about it or something, and finally it is revealed that an Urqa dreadnaught is coming through then, and there's nothing they can do to survive. And then, when that timer runs down, the Urqa dreadnaught warps in, blows everything to smithereens(resetting the galaxy(completely, including new planets, ruins, etc and things)) and flies off into the Sun. Set.

Oh, and one other thing; Ruins. Ruins are a HUGE part of the game, and part of having a fun time is finding cool ruins, but it's nigh-impossible at lower levels. So I suggest having this galaxy or system of galaxies be filled with randomly generated tech 0-8~ ruins. This would have the side-effect of teaching the player how to use colonies properly(sort of), and would also result in an influx of cool low tech ruin items into the new player market. And what could be cooler than that?

I love this.

Honestly, Playing as a Pwave sniper has got to be the most boring way to preview the endgame...give them an endgame zerker or FC or SD or something, but never a Sniper >.<

Most nubs would only understand raw DPS, and a PWave has that in plenty ^^

I would disagree, make them a zerker, so that they see the "pew pew pew" and then the "kaboom"! Rather than see a "wait for it.... wait for it.... wait for it... pew...
...
...
...
...
...
... ... pop." That a sniper gives you.

Ever tried ZHT on a sniper?

Any good sniper will have more instant DPS then anything but the best DPS Zerk, and a pure DPS Zerk is silly because a Sniper will simply beat it after a min or 2. Let the Zerks Zerk and the Snipers Snipe.

All I'm saying is if we are going to give noobs who have never seen the game before a taste of dps. While we all know that snips are way stronger. Letting them be zerk is a more useful option cause its very visible that they are doing a heap of damage. And its not like they're gunna be fighting snips on the 1 day trial they get anyways.

Yeah. It's better to be impressive than actually powerful. Honestly, a noob doesn't know what good DPS entails; they wouldn't know what to do with a really good pwave sniper. Heck, they'd probably get bored with killing everything and quit.

Give them a zerker, though, and they'll be all "Wtf, I can shoot umpteen billion bullets, Sub me nao!!!"

I agree with CygNoob. A zerk visually shows more DPS than a sniper, even though a sniper of the same power can dish out 25x more DPS(Beel AWC).

Bump for admin response?

If you want it to look impressive make it a FC/zerker + BST swarm using KMW.