Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Introduction
A lot of miners have not stopped lamenting the loss of Gravimetric scan sites because now people can find their "Hidden" belts without launching any probes. Well that's too bad. There is no such thing as a hidden asteroid belt anyway. They are big and easy to find in the real world. Comets, however, are a very different story:

They are loners who move in irregular orbits around a star.

They range in size from tiny (asteroid sized) to huge (bigger than cities)

They contain a vast range of materials including water ice, rocky minerals and organic compounds.

>>> Think random assortment of POS fuel, minerals and gas clouds all in the same place <<<

They come and go, sometimes predictably (e.g. Halle's Comet) and sometimes unpredictably (those ones have no names)

(Predictable comets in New Eden will form the basis of a new tutorial about these sites).

They are notoriously difficult to find because they don't reflect much light.

They only become easy to spot for brief periods of time when they pass close to the sun.

Their real world properties and characteristics are perfect to be adapted to something resembling the old Gravimetric sites.

What I envisage:

A scan site that spawns randomly and lasts for about 2 weeks regardless of whether or not it is discovered.

Players who scan it down and warp to it will find a huge comet, large enough to place planetary command centres on.

Players can use the PI interface to harvest various minerals, ice and gases from the asteroid instead of PI materials.

Players must use their command centres to launch their goods into space before the comet passes into the outer solar system and beyond their reach for however many hundreds of years.

Inspiration and motivation
To me, this concept draws together a lot of existing features and combines them to make something new.

1. I think the PI interface is very cool. CCP put a lot of effort into it and it deserves to get used more.
2. I feel that CCP have tried to separate resource gathering from exploration somewhat in order to help new players. That's admirable, but more experienced players like the idea of putting in the effort to scan something down in exchange for a greater reward and/or a little more security.
3. Finally I really like the transitory nature of the incursions. It prevents one region of space from becoming better than another when ISK sources move around at random.

I picture this as the high end of resource gathering. It's hard to find, rare, risky (because the comet might disappear before you retrieve the resources you gathered) and has a high reward.

I gathered all my information about comets from the Wikipedia entry on comets

Have a +1

Although I'm not entirely sure about the PI interface, it is a bit of a click fest. But maybe with some polishing it could work...




One thing needs correcting though (to satisfy the little astronomer living in me)..


Umm... no. Their orbits are very much regular (as much as they can be in a more than 2 body system). The unpredictability or irregularity arises from the fact that the period of the orbit can be so large that for the human kind (the general populace) they seem to appear from nowhere and disappear to nowhere.

Nice Idea, but don't comets come with a trail of dust and rocks? so it could be cool for miners too, not just PI.

This could be a very nice addition, but it should be visible to everyone in the overview and maybe even in the star map. I am sure new players would be fascinated by this. I would definitely go and mine them. And BTW comets come by very often, so it should be a widely spread event and have at least 1-2 going on for each constellation, so that miners don't have to travel too far if they decide to specialise on this.

Comet mining could require new skills, include some new materials or a mix of materials and require some new module for mining them.

You're quite correct. I had to fight the urge to re-write half the wikipedia article I read while doing some background research for this idea. In the end I chose to word the description in a way that suited the game mechanics I was proposing, rather than reality. I apologise to the little astronomer inside of you lol.

Excellent idea. Make it extremely hard to probe and make it so a single player can harvest all the stuff would bring on top conflict which is always good, make it deplete quite fast but deliver the most valuable minerals or reactions (after all it's a comet why reactions couldn't be in or wouldn't be possible?)

+1bazillion likes

Maybe consider the other aspects of comets. Sometimes they fall into the sun. Sometimes they hit a planet. Sometimes they break up into smaller pieces. Sometimes they undergo orbital disruptions. Some are metallic with iron and nickel, rocky/stoney, some are icy, some are carbonaceous. Just a thought to supply more options to the mix. As an aside, when the original author said irregular perhaps they really referring to the varied eccentricity in comet orbits. I really like this idea no matter how it is implemented I feel it would be a good addition to improve the feel of the game.

Super idea. And really like the idea of a comet tail for miners (without PI skills), too - when the comet comes, there is no time to train before it is over., but afterwards, you have motivation to prepare for the next. Make it possible, for a short while only, and only once or twice per year per system (with hugely irregular intervals) for players not involved in PI/moon mining/null-sec mining to get aquainted with the tools, mechanisms and benefits (and to get their grubby little hands on some of these materials). In null-sec, I guess the comets should be extremely mex-rich, if I have read the forum threads correct, but that is for sharper minds than mine to decide and balance.

Also, the concept of a comet could be used as basis for a tutorial on PI and/or moon mining, which could be independent of system sec status - even if it does not make it to TQ otherwise.

I like it. Although if real-life gets in the way [as it always does], you may be offline for the last few days that you have to get everything off the comet.

So maybe add a way for your corp/alliance to have even basic interactions to the PI interface [or whatever happens to be implemented]. That, or give it the option to become a corp/alliance activity.

I know this has happened to me on a few PI installations and I end up losing out on a good chunk of materials [due to other people performing PI on the same planet - less of an issue but still]

This is actually a fantastic idea. I'm not totally sold on having to use the PI interface to gather though. I'd rather just point a laser and shoot the rock.

Maybe some kind of special comet laser or expand the role of deep core lasers.

i remember suggesting something similar some time back, but more in relation to Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt objects

Kuiper Belt is a region of the Solar System beyond the planets, extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to approximately 50 AU from the Sun. It is similar to the asteroid belt, but it is far larger—20 times as wide and 20 to 200 times as massive. Like the asteroid belt, it consists mainly of small bodies, or remnants from the Solar System's formation. Although some asteroids are composed primarily of rock and metal, most Kuiper belt objects are composed largely of frozen volatiles (termed "ices"), such as methane, ammonia and water. The classical belt is home to at least three dwarf planets: Pluto, Haumea, and Makemake. Some of the Solar System's moons, such as Neptune's Triton and Saturn's Phoebe, are also believed to have originated in the region.

Oort Cloud is a spherical cloud of predominantly icy planetesimals that may lie roughly 50,000 AU, or nearly a light-year, from the Sun. This places the cloud at nearly a quarter of the distance to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. The Kuiper belt and the scattered disc, the other two reservoirs of trans-Neptunian objects, are less than one thousandth of the Oort cloud's distance. The outer limit of the Oort cloud defines the cosmographical boundary of the Solar System and the region of the Sun's gravitational dominance.

The Oort cloud is thought to comprise two separate regions: a spherical outer Oort cloud and a disc-shaped inner Oort cloud, or Hills cloud. Objects in the Oort cloud are largely composed of ices, such as water, ammonia, and methane.