Since this appears to be a pretty actively used sub-forum I'll just post these together in one thread.
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1. Make Ship Presets Great Again- Increase the number of presets from 3 to... something bigger.
- Have custom ship names be saved per-preset and not per-ship type. This will help identify the presets so that players wouldn't have to visually parse the guns and their placement.
- Add a button allowing the player to copy the currently selected preset to another slot.
- Include a dedicated "temporary" preset slot, much like the recommended loadout slot "R". When combined with the copy functionality in the previous point, players would be able to easily clone an existing preset and then make one or two changes appropriate for the particular match about to take place, without having to then go back and undo the changes later. This would be especially important for copying the dossier (see next point).
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2. Ship DossierAdd a text field to ship preset customization allowing captains to describe the ship's usual engagement strategy and lay out the roles for each crew member. This will allow potential crew members to review the captain's plan while in the lobby. This will make time spent in Lobbies of Icarus somewhat more useful. (Even moreso if players have the ability to browse the captain's entire collection of presets and dossiers for edification purposes.) Being able to review this information via text is a nice alternative to voice chat, especially when some of the more talkative players are socializing and stepping all over what your captain is trying to tell you. The captain could instead just write in crew chat "Please review the ship dossier."
Extra credit: Include an "OK" button in the dossier review screen and when crew members click it there is some indication in the lobby (at least for the captain) that the player has read / acknowledged the dossier. Maybe a star next to their name or something.
Insane bonus credit: When the "OK" button is clicked, the dossier disappears and the player is presented with a multiple choice question written by the captain and saved as part of the preset. (This could be simple bbcode style markdown that captains enter at the end of the dossier text.) A wrong answer wouldn't necessarily have any adverse effect other than alerting the captain that the player answered incorrectly (and so didn't read or didn't understand the dossier).
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3. Mandatory Loadouts(I know this is a hot topic, this is just my thinking for a possible approach.)
If a non-novice captain joins a lobby in an empty ship (or gets the consent of everyone already on the ship) they can enable mandatory loadouts, such that the current crew and anyone who joins the ship in the future will be assigned a loadout by the captain and will be unable to change it (other than re-ordering the tools for those silly captains who put spanner before mallet). This could be filtered based on player level, so if a captain wants to always allow other players with a certain amount of experience the flexibility to bring chem spray instead of an extinguisher, that would be possible. So there would be a field labelled "Mandatory loadouts below level [__]" and the captain could put whatever number they wanted to in there.
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4. Pop QuizIf GoIO is more knowledge based than skill based, how about a tool that allows captains to do a quick knowledge check?
When a captain joins a lobby they can enable a quiz of one or two true / false questions, such that anyone who joins their ship beneath a certain level of experience must answer them and their incorrect answers are reported to the captain in the chat console. Example questions:
Mortars and flak guns are most effective at stripping a target's armor. True or false?
Fire on a burning component can be extinguished while the component is on repair cooldown. True or false?
The "standard engineer loadout" does not include a buff hammer. True or false?
"Port" means "left" and "starboard" means "right". True or false?Sure, this would add an extra 10 seconds to the process of joining a game and starting a match, but since the average time spent in lobbies is about the same as the average time spent in game, an extra 10 seconds shouldn't be the deal-breaker here.