Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In order to have an empire, you must be able to control all aspect of life in the area. For an Industrial Empire, this would mean controlling the all industrial aspects. In Null this is fine; the PVP core can control the industrial aspect of the empire. In High Sec, access to resources cannot be controlled without war deccing every pilot you see. So instead, control of processing centers could be used as the basis for an Industrial Empire.

To initiate this, each of the NPC corps in the game should have actual wallets setup. Income would come from broker fees, office rent, refining fees, corp tax, etc. Additional income could be made through manufacturing and trade between NPC corps (think NPC haulers always traveling between stations). Expenses would come in the form of upkeep. This could include agent salary/mission rewards, maintenance, etc.

Based on these wallets, it would be possible for NPC corporations to become unable to maintain their holdings and would allow player corporations to take over. This system could be used to create hostile takeovers, with players boycotting certain corporations or attacking their trade convoys to force them to sell stations.

The Industrial Empire can then be created by purchasing stations in a certain area so that the corporation can control rent, manufacturing, refining, etc. These stations would still have their maintenance fees, as well as upgrade costs, but would provide the owning corporation income through the same methods the NPC owners had.

Agents

An overhaul of the Agent system would be required for this change. First the Agents would have to provide some form of income to the corporation that hired them. This could be something related to the maintenance cost in the form of protection money paid to Concord to keep the station safe. Each mission ran from the station could reduce this fee by paying players to keep the station safe instead of Concord.

Next is how Agents will change based on owner of the station. When a new corporation purchases the station, all agents would be removed. These Agents would then become unemployed. The new owner of the station can choose to employ them, adding one maintenance fee (Agent cost) while reducing another (Concord protection money).

sometimes a corporate empire becomes a monopoly. Most features of a station are still available in POS form in high sec. And the corp owning the POS would still need to price services such that they get business or they would not make a profit from owning the station and would have to pay all maintenance costs out of thier own pocket.

In RL we also have laws that prevent CEO's from embezzling an entire corporations assets, but in Eve its common place.

With the massive up keep to operate each station, running all the stations in a given area would be a task in itself. But nothing would stop a corporation from setting up thier own POS to achieve the same tasks as a station.

As for possibly removing agents from the game, a slight modification to my initial idea would be that Concord, with thier infinate income could pay the Agents a fee for hiring players to kill rats. This would work similar to contractors where a corporation hires a contractor who then pays his employees after taking a cut. This would mean that corporations that have a lot of mission runners will make a significant incocme and would make it harder for player corporations to take thier stations.

The idea is that it would take a huge cooperative effort just to take a single station.