Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Based on your compromise as-is*, it likely won't help things. In the first place it would, at least to people like me, practically demand that the T1 variants of those named items also use nothing more expensive/rare than isogen in their construction as well; fair's fair after all. In the second place it would compound the damage already done by CCP's band-aid fix to the issue by making it even less likely that players will reprocess named items than they are now.

If that's not enough such a change would likely compel mission runners' vocal minority to demand a compensatory increase in rat bounties to compensate for their diminished profits. CCP would be put between a rock and a hard place on the last one. If they don't increase bounties they'll generate ill will among a fairly sizable population segment, or at least the vocal minority thereof. If they do increase bounties it will result in even more isk flooding into a game that already doesn't, so far as I've seen, have enough isk flowing out of it. Consider this as well; even if CCP doesn't raise the bounty value on NPCs the lower profit in looting will result in fewer people looting and salvaging missions which in turn would result in an increase in the amount of isk entering the game as more and more people turn to "blitzing" missions to get as much raw isk as fast as possible.

Consider this. If the mineral value of named items goes down so too does the likelihood that they will be reprocessed. As fewer are reprocessed more will glut the market. Eventually things will even out to the point where named items cost less than they do now and are likely reprocessed at approximately the same rate as they are now.

However, along the way T1 item prices will at best remain static and at worst will rise due to the drop in availability of high-sec supplied noxcium, zydrine, and megacyte. The usefulness of T1 modules, however, will remain the same. When you combine the complete lack of any boost to their performance with the increased price relative to M1-M4 modules even fewer T1 items will be sold after an idea like yours gets implemented than are sold now. Even if industrialists make more per item than they do now they'll still likely end up losing money in the long run due to decreased sales volume.

Honestly, so far as I see it the best way to improve the profits of industrialists without simultaneously setting up a dangerous economic domino chain or screwing over mission runners is to increase the meta level of T1 items to something approximate to their mineral value as compared to meta modules modified by rarity. The more rare meta modules should be better than T1, the more common should be worse. If you provide a solid reason for people to use T1 over named they will use it, and then they'll lose it, and they'll need to buy more.

If you maintain the current mineral value of named items then their market value should remain relatively stable. As such it will likely not significantly impact the profitability of mission running while serving to increase the profitability of mining and building T1 components. With the industrialists bearing the brunt of the changes instead of industrialists and missioners/ratters/plex'ers/incursionistas/anyone-else-who-kills-NPCs-for-a-"living" it will have a smaller impact on the game as a whole and likely be easier to tweak and balance.

* - Something that occurred to me while I was editing my post was that if you increased the quantity of sub-nocxium minerals dropped so that the total value of the named items remained the same while excluding the more expensive minerals it would have a far weaker economic impact and cause minimal short-term changes to the behavior of people who kill NPCs for the majority of their income. It would, however, likely alter the market for every "high-sec mineral" except nocxium. Nocxium, zydrine, and megacyte would likely go up in price while tritanium, pyerite, mexallon, and isogen would likely drop.

Doing this, however, would still not address any issues involving T1 items being significantly overpriced compared to named modules for any item type that has a glut of named modules in the market which in turn would mean that the primary increase in profits to industrialists would come through the same of items where named variants are rare or non-existent and that such increases in profits would be debatable given the subsequent drop in low-order mineral pricing. Really the only people who would unequivocally profit are those who primarily or solely mine nocxium, zydrine, and/or megacyte.



Even though one aspect of a game might not be "realistic" it doesn't mean you shouldn't push for "realism" in other aspects of a game. Any game that isn't built purely around chaos and/or anarchy as guiding themes needs some semblance of "realism" in order to properly function as a game, even a game as non-game-like as EVE Online.



Then why are you trying to "supplement" mining?

And in the end it still wouldn't really do a thing to make T1 modules more useful or attractive than even the worst meta modules in terms of doing their intended job and not just being mineral blocks, and the only people who would clearly benefit in the short and long term are those who mine the "NZM" rich ores exclusively.



So then what about PvP'ers? If people shooting down NPCs don't get complete module drops from their kills why should PvP'ers get them from player ships, and if all PvP'ers get from ship kills is broken stuff or parts to make other stuff why should they bother PvP'ing for profit (and yes, I am aware that overall PvP is the same as gambling where most people lose more money than they ever gain from it) any more?



It apparently doesn't mean what you think it does as you tried applying it to me when nothing I posted in any way, shape, or form was intended to "supplement" anti-NPC PvE activities while much of what you and others have posted has been about nothing but supplementing mining and related industrial activities in order to boost their income.

Now if you want to rephrase your statement I don't mind a bit, just bear in mind that mining is generally more boring than anti-NPC PvE is.

I think you'll find that a lot of people will disagree with that idea when you're speaking of combat in general. They will expect that PvP is to be the money (which at the core is what this is about) sink, not PvE. Even if you could get a majority of EVE's population to agree that even PvE should be a production "sink" I'm sure you'll find that more would rather it be a "sink" because of increased difficulty and chance of losing ships and modules and not because of lower profits or altered drops.



Mining would have to become extremely important given its current issues for many players to be willing to "ride herd" on miners and do so properly which is to say not while watching YouTube videos or dubbed anime.

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Rather than me (completely) rehashing my objections to your suggestions and counters I'm going to suggest this.

#1 Introduce a new mechanic to allow players to repair ships and modules using base minerals instead of isk. The mineral cost should be ME0 mineral cost * % damaged +25% of the preceding value. Whether or not there's a mineral "tax" based on NPC standing, an isk tax, or no tax at all is up for debate. All fractions should be rounded up so that if a gun requires. 1 megacyte to repair you have to pony up a whole piece.

#2 Introduce a new skill, "Reconstruction" or somesuch, described along the lines of "Player skill at using base minerals to reconstruct damaged ships and modules" and providing a 5% reduction to the aforementioned 25% penalty. At "Reconstruction V" the mineral repair cost for something would be ME0 build cost * % damaged.

#3 Incorporate a randomized chance to have NPC module drops damaged to emulate incoming damage to a player ship going through the hull to damage modules.

Doing so will allow NPC combat mechanics to more closely mimic PC combat mechanics which in turn will have the effects of reducing mission running profits while enhancing "realism" with regards to NPC combat. It will also allow for an alternative to isk-based repairs which will help funnel minerals out of the game environment and subsequently increase the value of said minerals. Likewise due to the overall increased cost of acquiring working M1-M4 modules their price will also go up, and it will go up in a fashion that does not require modifying their rarity or mineral value allowing for a much more stable price fluctuation in the market.

The key factor here, however, is that it follows currently established mechanics and doesn't replace your "1200mm Heavy 'Scout' Artillery I" drop with a "Damaged 1200mm Heavy 'Scout' Artillery I" item. It provides for a potential increase in both the amount of isk leaving the game as well as the amount of minerals, and while many players won't appreciate such a change there are more psychological benefits to using established mechanics than to implementing new "damaged" drops.

Unfortunately that still doesn't directly address the problem of people not having a real need or desire to buy T1 modules to be used as intended. It might pan out in the long run that enough people stop looting wrecks to cause enough of a rarity-based price increase so that M1 modules are more expensive than M0 modules, but that's not guaranteed. As such I still believe that shuffling the M0-M2 modules around to make T1 modules halfway between the worst modules and T2 modules is a good idea.

If you make T1 modules worth the mineral cost as compared to named modules people will buy and use, and lose, them more often. The idea of using T1 modules as part of a repairing or building named items would achieve the same thing, but generally speaking it's been my experience that people are less receptive to changes that make them need something than changes that make them want something.

Introduce mineral based repairs. Force NPC drops to mimic PC ship module damage mechanics. The costs of named modules will go up as a result of both the mineral/isk repair cost and their increased rarity as fewer people collect them due to the reduced profit margin. Isk-based repairs help funnel more isk out of the economy helping to ****** any inflationary effects while mineral repairs help funnel minerals out of the economy to raise their value/price on the market. Bump the current M1 and M2 modules down a notch to M0 and M1 respectively and make T1 modules the new M3 with stats adjusted to compensate. With stats more befitting the modules' mineral cost and increased rarity costs for the other named modules, especially the M3 and M4 modules, prices should change to make T1 items more profitable for industrialists in the long run while not significantly harming any other group of EVE's population.

Hence reordering item meta levels to make T1 modules actually worth their mineral cost and therefore more likely to be purchased and used in their intended roles.



Another difference between module drops with a chance to be damaged and "upgrade components" is that the potentially damaged modules can also be reprocessed straight to minerals instead of first needing to be used to construct something which in turn makes them more useful for the production of T1 ships, capital ship modules and components, and T1 items with no or few (as per named capital modules) named counterparts on the market.

You keep glossing over that detail in spite of the fact that no evidence has been provided that production of those items is an inconsequential portion of EVE Online's overall production base. If building ships, capital ships, their construction components, and their modules, and T1 modules like Bomb Launchers and Warp Disruption Field Generators comprised less than 15% of the total mineral usage in EVE Online I could see ignoring them, but nobody's posted any data to say one way or the other.



There should be no difference between NPC drops and PC drops from the perspective of the killer. If you alter NPC drops you should also alter PC drops.

How do you over come the....

I now have 30 different types of broken modules x 4 meta levels = 120 stacks

+ 30 different meta 0 stacks = 150 stacks

so do you... right click >> below stack all, click repair all >> poof they are all fixed

how do you keep track of all the modules you need?

No, this is what you are trying to avoid. This is not what I am trying to avoid, and based on past changes it doesn't seem to be what CCP is trying to avoid. They might have reduced how it affects the PC economy, but they could have negated it right then and there and chose not to.

Unless CCP has decided to make a break from one of the more traditional MMO mechanics, that offing NPCs gets you loot and, depending on game idiosyncrasies and circumstances, that at least some of said loot is immediately usable by players I'd much rather to work within the existing system to effect meaningful change than throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water while at the same time setting fire to the kitchen.



Yes, it does matter. The degree of economic impact removal of named module drops from NPC kills would have is directly related to the percentage of EVE's mineral consumption reprocessing those items feeds, and the larger the economic impact the longer it will take for the market to normalize. Fortunes might be made in times of widespread economic disruption, but when it's game economies you can also guarantee that subscriptions will be lost during those times as well.



And the only time said miner will make significantly more isk is in the short term before people who previously didn't mine (significantly if at all) train up alts or mains to do so and flood the systems with miners thereby driving mineral prices right back down again. It's a short term gain for existing miners and a permanent penalty for anyone who bases a significant portion of their income off of NPC drops.

Also, as I already pointed out if the price of minerals increases significantly enough quickly enough ganking miners for their ore, and haulers for their minerals, might actually become profitable enough that there is a significant rise in the ganking of miners/haulers. This also ignores the psychological impact of such a change and how it might cause people who just lost a large chunk of their income to decide to blame all miners/manufacturers for it and start ganking them on general principles.



The only way it will do anything significant for "production runners" is if you need a T1 item to construct every M1-M4 module in the same fashion that you need T1 modules to construction T2 variants. The problem is that it won't really do a damn thing to make T1 items more attractive for use in their intended roles unless "upgrade" drop rates are pathetically low so that even M1 items cost significantly more than T1 items due to rarity-based inflation.

The best possible thing you could do to improve the lot of "production runners" is to make T1 modules actually worth their mineral cost to the average player in comparison to at least Meta 1 and Meta 2 modules. The rarity of Meta 3 and Meta 4 modules warrants their having increased performance over T1 and subsequently increased price, though tweaking their drop rates to lower them might also be warranted.



From an in-game perspective there is no difference between a PC ship and an NPC ship except that most NPC ships aren't flown by pod pilots. From said perspective it makes no sense that one group of ships mysteriously blows up differently from other ships even though they might be the exact same ship model. A thorax is a thorax is a thorax; it has the same shape, the same core components from the engine to the computer systems, it has the same weapon capacities, mounting configurations, and ammo feeds regardless of whether it's flown by a crew (NPC) or a pod pilot (almost certainly PC).

Yes, and in a very real sense they already do something similar to that now by generally only dropping items from a group based on their faction. Guristas NPCs use railguns and missiles and drop railguns and missiles. You don't see Angel NPCs dropping lasers, and you don't see Blood Raider NPCs dropping artillery.

The modules come from wherever CCP says they come from. Asking where they come from is the same as asking where the asteroid belts that keep replenishing themselves day after day come from.

I wouldn't have a problem with it if CCP augmented "NPC life" to include supply and production facets. I really think that EVE Online has a lot of potential to have a thriving NPC ecosystem for players to interact with, cohabit with, and prey upon.

Sure, why not. At the very least with regards to NPC-controlled 0.0 space it makes sense that if the NPCs run out of resources they run out of ships. Except rookie ships of course. PCs can never run out of rookie ships so neither should NPCs.

Actually we, or at least you, have to worry about minerals too, not just modules. There are the occasional belt spawns of NPC ships that are "hauling" raw minerals. 50k tritanium here, 25k pyrite there, 50km3 megacyte over yonder.