Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The Purpose:

To create a more dynamic Eve universe and to stimulate conflict between neighbouring corporations. I propose a change to the way we mine moon minerals that will:

A) Not raise the cost of moon materials for T2 production.
B) Create more reasonable PvP objectives for smaller corporations and roaming gangs.
C) Discourage single-user entities from controlling vast regions of space without populating them.


The Brief:
(This section is for those who won't read the full post; and in no way translates the full mechanics of the concepts presented later)

Each corporation will deploy a Celestial Mining Platform (CMP) on a valuable moon mineral. This CMP will mine for 7 days, but no one will have access to the material mined during this time. Once the 7 days are over, it becomes vulnerable to a hacking attempt. If hacked, the material within can be plundered by a roaming gang/pirate corp. The material on the moon is depleted and will respawn randomly elsewhere in the Eve universe.

If the CMP is reinforced (and destroyed just like a POS), it can be plundered before the 7 days is over.

The basis:

Migrating moon material is a commonly discussed topic these days. The theory is that by having moon materials migrate, the borders between neighboring factions will become more fluid. Players will be encouraged to take and give ground depending on the value of the starsystems in and around their empires. This may or may not be true.
My idea involves including the implementation of migrating moon materials, but focusing less on the sovreignty aspects and more on combat. The current system allows players to take and control valuable moons without taking sovreignty in a system, and I would like this to remain the same. However, I would want these conquests to become more frequent, and less mundane (To clarify: 400 battleships shooting a POS for an hour is mundane). Of course, the advantage should always be given to the defender…

Just because a corporation has an infrastructure hub in a starsystem should not give them dominion over all of its resources. If there’s an infrastructure hub deep inside the drone regions, and no one within 30 jumps of it for 5 days out of the week, then that system should be less useful to its owners. More importantly, that system should be more enticing to players who might want to liberate some unguarded riches.

The Problem:

In order to keep T2 prices constant, you need to maintain the same influx of T2 materials that is currently there. The problem with that is that right now there are only a few powerful corporations with access to these moon minerals. And that means brutal efficiency.

You can bet that almost every Technetium moon in the game, at present, is being pumped 24/7 because there are many people dedicated to keeping them active and maintained. Therefore, any migrating moon system will result in a lower influx of T2 materials, and T2 prices will rise.

If Technetium moons moved, then people will fight over them. Every day. New POSs will be deployed daily. Technetium will be destroyed in the transitions. Sporratic intakes of Technetium will slow down production lines. T2 prices will rise. And that’s not good.

The Solution:

Celestial Mining platforms (CMP). If moon materials are going to migrate, then there is a need for a platform that can be assembled, and dissassembled quickly. That’s it. It will essentially act exactly the same as a moon mining array in all the same fashion with one catch: It’s not protected by a POS.

Due to atmospheric distortions caused by the mining laser, there is a gravity well (interdiction sphere) surrounding the CMP at a radius of 15km (discussed later). Furthermore, the CMP will have a large hit point count like a POS (don’t freak out yet). The reason for this is because we don’t want people rolling around blasting platforms to be jerks. “Why not?” you might ask, because most of you are jerks. Because you don’t want T2 market prices to rise from where they are. Furthermore, you want to encourage players to mine the moons available so you don’t want to make their investments in CMPs too easy to destroy. Every corporation will have several.

Once a CMP is deployed on a moon with resources (ex. Technetium Moon), it mines for exactly One week plus a timer set by the corporation (much like an I-Hub). However, the moon will only ever yield exactly One week of material. Once the material is mined, the moon is depleted and the resource migrates to another moon somewhere else in the Eve universe.
The mined material is deposited into a storage bank in the CMP. This storage bank is inaccessible (even by the owning corp) until the end of the timer set in the previous paragraph. Once that timer is up, the storage bank can be opened normally, and all deposited moon-goo can be removed.

But the CMP can also be hacked. If a pirate corp or roaming gang from a competing corporation reaches the CMP after the timer, it can use a hacking module to attempt to hack into the CMP and steal some of the valuable material within.

A week of moon goo. That’s a lot of ISK. A lot of incentive to roam, and fight. And it will not interrupt the flow of moon material to the production lines because the material inside is still mined, utilized and sold and will therefore make its way to empire to maintain T2 production. The only thing that’s happened is a transferrence of ownership of the material.

The release timer for the moon-goo is public so any roaming pirate gang in the area may try to take your prize from you. You will need to mobilize a fleet at the end of each week to secure all resources in your empire. You could then use that same fleet to steal a neighbour's well-deserved ISK.

This encourages conflict that can be geared more to towards taking and holding space, rather than bashing POSs/I-hubs down