Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Fun thought for an early Saturday morning.

About a month ago I read an article about a player who fitted his Venture for combat and surprised (and killed) either a PvP-fitted cruiser or battle cruiser and, combined with some interesting discussions on making barges and exhumers viable for low and null sec, my mind went a-thinkin'.

This Q-Ship idea takes a different tack than those above discussions where the ships described are well rounded in order to fight off rats and PvPers. This idea is aimed at using the element of surprise to add doubt and some caution to the roving PvPer out looking to bump off miners.

Take any barge or exhumer hull and add in 4 (tech 1) or 8 (tech 2) weapons slots but also leave the existing mining slots. Add in some mediums and lows and tank them up. They would otherwise look and act just like their normal counterparts, up to and including showing up on scans and the overview as normal mining ships, but once a PvPer attacks - OMGWTFBOOOOM!

In essence, these would be cruisers (T1) or battle cruisers (T2) disguised as barges/exhumers. The proverbial wolves in sheeps' clothing.

But Rayzilla! These would just make all the normal miners obsolete! Who wouldn't want the best of mining and combat rolled into one magnificent ship???

Yeah, they'd be a little too awesome, hey?

But wait - there's more! Time to rein them in...

My idea to leave the mining gear intact is pretty much just for show. A PvPer warping in and seeing a barge/exhumer just sitting there in space not mining anything is pretty obvious. It's an OMGWTFBOOOOM-mobile.

So, not only take away all mining bonuses the normal miners would have but even go so far as to nerf them possibly to the point where the mining equipment is little more than a light show. They'll still mine ore/ice, but at a very, very slow rate. Throw some weapons bonuses at them, tough to make them semi-viable PvP boats (dedicated PvP boats should always be better). Cut their ore hold capacities to 75% or even 50% as well - maybe more? Make them able to mount only T1 mining gear.

Possible applications would be the solo guy who just wants to mess with PvP-ers as well as embedding a few into a mining fleet to surprise the heck out of attackers. The hard part would be for the player to refrain from using all the weapons to combat NPCs - kind of blows the cover of being just your normal everyday carebear. The proposed nerfs would keep them from taking over high sec unless it is known there are suicide gank operations in the area.

Adding ships like this into the game would add a little protection to the guys in normal miners as their attackers would be a little more wary about attacking them. Right now, you see a barge or exhumer you just see an easy high-value kill mail.

Just for fun, this could also be done with all the industrial ships. Hey! Look! A nice juicy unarmed Iteron V! Let's get it! OMGWTFBOOOOM!!! Could you imagine an Orca that was really a disguised battleship? No ore hold, at most half-sized cargo hold and fleet hangar and maybe...maybe...half the maintenance bay. But - EIGHT large weapons. Loot piñata? I think not!

Would this work? Why? Why not? If not, then could the above be tweaked to work?

*grabs popcorn*

I like the idea of being able to surprise other players but given the current way in which ships are designed in EVE this would not work, as was said earlier (Right Click > Show Info) would show the wolf in sheep's clothing to be a wolf. The only way to make this work under the current ship design concept would be to put out a new line of T3 ships with subsystems designed to allow for great mining, great combat or average at both.

I honestly don't think CCP will go for it though. I would personally like to see all of the ships redesigned using the T3 subsystem concept so we remove the tie between visual design and role. Why should my Rifter have to be a gun boat or my Manticore be a SB?

The ship would have to spoof show info, which I am sure is the major problem.

And to the feminine product who suggested I propose this because I got ganked - go biomass yourself.