Off Duty/offline activities.

[Kumoblade]

Planetside, obviously, is a game that relies on Population for success. When Populations begin to fail, the players who are still paying feel the pinch.

One of the ways I think they could alleviate this is by having Player Characters have off Duty Activities or Jobs when you're offline so you can continue to be an asset to your Outfit/Faction while you're not logging hours and raking in kills.

This kind of system would kind of coincide with many of the various ideas I've thrown around the forums and will be using several of them in an example. I'm really horrible at explaining things (being a right brainy and all), so hopefully an example will hit its mark.

Example 1.) offline engineering/researching/Crafting.

Your Outfit for House Harkonne...errr Terran Republic finally has accumulated enough RND (research and development for those who aren't familiar) to construct a new Variant of the Prowler (not an easy task, but a very rewarding one). The engineering Officer of the outfit accesses the Outfit garage and with a Vehicle creation UI puts all the pieces together and fastens.

He browses through the cataloged inventory of salvaged/manufactured/crafted/stolen parts retrieved from the hard working soldiers/engineers/hackers of the outfit and their respective level of the parts available. The Outfit had its heart set on the 'TW6000' Engine. It provided more speed than the Standard Prowler's 'PLR750 Single' at the cost of torque. He chooses the 'TF30 Tiger Fang' Tank Treads and a plethora of other parts that makes this Machine Unique to your Outfit. He crops out the Chaingun from atop the main cannons to add room, and adds a mine-sweeper to the front of the tank. Its still a prowler, but its YOUR Prowler. Satisfied with the changes, he strips the tank of its default colors, and gives it a fresh paint job with your Outfit logo centered right on the front for all who get mowed over to see.

Once the virtual schematic is assembled (Think Iron man, when he's working on building his Suit, he builds it virtually then it constructs it), An estimated time of Construction is displayed in the corner by the Confirm Assembly button. There will be an option of the Outfit Leader's approval at Outfit leader request, but he's the engineer's Officer, what does an Outfit leader know about building sophisticated drums of war?

With all the severe Modifications that will be performed to a stock Prowler, the build time is 72 hours. (The More radical the changes from the default, the longer the build time till complete.)

This build time assumes that there is 1 Engineer working on this fine piece of machinery. A lowly NPC working for Minimum Wage and has a nasty itch on his hind end.

Clearly, this will take a while with just him working on it. However, for this Build/Construction, there are 6 Engineer Slots available to work on this Project.

If your character is an engineer (of varying degrees), you can head to the garage and request to assist in working on constructing the Tank. There you will fill one of the engineer slots, and the Estimated time goes down. You may then sign off, and continue to help grow the Outfit. Or you may choose to stay online and continue fighting while still helping build/craft the machine. (Akin to fallen earth's crafting where its real time based, and can be performed while online or offline while you go about your business.)

With a Salary system, you could even continue to make money while offline as long as you were working on something/maintaining a job. And depending on your engineering rank, it would determine how much you made on the job, as well as the bonus you provided to the work.
Engineer Rank 1 - For every Hour you're on the job, the build time is cut by 5 Minutes.
Engineer Rank 2 - For every hour you're on the job, the build time is cut by 10 minutes.
Engineer Rank 3 - For every Hour/ - 20 Minutes from build time.

From a single person perspective, it may not look like much, but when you have 6 people working on it, every hour, you cut a significant amount of time from the total build time of the machine. A 72 hour build time with 6 level 3 engineers would be knocking 2 hours off the build time every hour, essentially doubling its build speed and your brand new tanks would be on the field by 36 hours.

Depending on Outfit Rank/level, you could store so Several vehicle variants in your garage. Once a Vehicle Varient/Custom vehicle is finished, it can be accessed for building at terminals for combat.


This example was longer than I had anticipated.

other Examples would be Weapons Development/Armor development/Information gathering/Resource gathering/Not doing a damn thing/Medic/Salvage RND for new parts/Guard or NPC Soldier/Convoy Escort/etc.. etc...