Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is a bad idea, but I think there is a gem of a good idea.

Why do you have to be in the same corp as a POS to deliver fuel to the POS?
Maybe there should be a POS fuel Receiving Station that can be anchored outside your POS, and if your POS is set NRDS the POS fuel Receiving Station will receive fuel from random people. Then you can hire random people or, {Color here} Frog, or your alliance mates to deliver fuel straight to your POS.

I can we swayed by your argument to why POS refueling needs its current level of tediousness. Which can not be said for the previous arguments made to try to do the same. A safe spot for ones entire corporation/alliance is worth the tediousness of refueling.

The "a lot of ppl play eve because its hard work." -argument however, is not a good argument for keeping things tedious.
"it separates ppl who can mange many responsibilities with skill from those that cant, and eve gives an advantage to the skilled hardworkers over the lazy ppl." - No, it simply awards those who spends lots of time in Eve. I think that is a good balancing point, awarding those who play the most. But Eve is the world's most time-consuming game already, so we should do what we can to decrease the amount of time tasks require.

Maybe we can take another approach. Lets think up a way to cut the time it takes to refuel POSes. Lets say the Fuel Freighter (new ship) would be able to jump directly to anchored Fuel Freighter cynosural field structure next to POS shields (or inside, you decide). Then a Fuel freighter could jump from POS to POS darn fast.

But I do find it funny that the first reaction when offering an idea that makes something easier to do, is "you're lazy if you don't want to do things when they demand as much effort as they do now". May explain why CCP has historically almost never made anything simpler. Which may explain why the Average Eve player plays for over 200 days of the year, for an average of over 3 hours each time (I think that was what he said on this video, can't be bothered to see it again just to check: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie9V2P5El0E ).

Tchulen, "Anything that takes pilot actions (ie, flying) out of the players' hands and performs them with NPCs is moving backwards for the game, in my opinion." - While I do agree in principal on this, we can choose to have the fun stuff in the hands of people, and boring stuff in the hands of automation. The players do the fighting in spaceships, they don't work in a factory building the nuts and bolts for the ships. And refueling is sort of boring, unless you get lots of refueling done in a short time (or at least get to do it slightly faster each year due to some new module or ship that makes the whole process take less time).

People mine and refuel POSes and rat because it gets them isk (or the ingredients that they need to make fun). Not because its fun. The reason people "enjoy" increasing efficiency is because they want to mine, refuel and rat as little as possible. I sit bathed in spreadsheets to choose what to manufacture next, all because every extra isk I make from it is one isk I don't have to mine or rat. I enjoy being able to suffer through less boring stuff. There's a big difference between this and enjoying boring stuff for their own sake.

Whoa whoa whoa. slow down everybody.

Ok. on making automatic fueling stations... no. Ok seriously, whats so hard about moving a bit of fuel every now and then. So you grab a handful of friend, load up your blockade runners and a couple ceptors as scouts, and run the gauntlet to high (or you know, just go through a couple WHs like most people).

Ok lets look at your idea part by part.
So this thing seems to be basically an outpost, that you can't use for regular outposting activities. (for some reason)

That you can requisition these freighters from (like really, it can't just be a module for an outpost?)

You have to haul the fuel to this station (from highsec or wherever, which is the most time consuming part of POS fueling)

And then pay to hire NPC freighters, to travel the 1 or 2 jumps aroudn your region to fuel your owned POSes, because your transport guy decided GG for the day.


Can they travel several jumps?
They go on a regular schedule?
Do they have defences?
I doubt that that they do, and in the case of any POSes within your territory, unless there is a current roving gang, the freighters will be in virtually no danger anyways.
How many of these stations can a corp or alliance have?
So this is mean to centralize your logistics so they spend all their time transporting fuel to just 1 system then let the NPCs handle it?
How would the affect WH dwellers?
Are they jsut boned by this? Only nullbears get the luxury of having NPCs do all their fueling work?
Would it require SOV to put 1 of these up?

Cost is kinda ridiculous because it would be a waste of money to spend several mil having NPCs do what you could just have a couple pilots do in the morning after they're done their daily PI.




So you say that alliances are getting big enough that the empires should be diplomatic with them, and empire freighters that never venture out of high should be taking up this diplomacy?

If alliances are so big, y can't they just have a couple of their members cycle around and handle fuel needs?


Like really, even the corps I've been with have had up to 30 POSes at a time before, across only 20-30 active people (the others only showed up for CTAs) POSes with jump bridges that were used hundreds of times a day.
And at that it only took 4 people 1 day in like 3 months to get enough fuel stored up in null to run everything the whole time, and then once every so often when doing morning PI, would run around and fuel things up. No skin off anyone's back for the right to call a little bitty piece of space "home" for the time we were there.

Its not that it on its own takes a long time or a lot of effort, its just that given the 3 hour average gameplay per day, 200 days of the year, do you want the players to spend their gametime refueling a POS or shooting each other? Any decent refueler practically never gets caught by anyone else, so he may as well be teleporting directly from Jita to every station he refuels and back to Jita.
If the point of having to refuel is to offer more targets and opportunities for PVP (or "content" as some call it), then why is the refueling practically an invulnerable task that never causes content to happen? Its just a chore, like taking out the trash, you won't get involved in any excitement on the journey to and from the trashcan.

"So this thing seems to be basically an outpost, that you can't use for regular outposting activities." - Your assumptions, I have not suggested anything else but the fuel freighter service and supercapital docking as features of this station. That does not mean that is the only services available, it just means those are for another thread if you wish to discuss the particulars of the station itself.

"That you can requisition these freighters from (like really, it can't just be a module for an outpost?)" - If you wish to make another variation of the idea, go ahead.

"You have to haul the fuel to this station (from highsec or wherever, which is the most time consuming part of POS fueling)" - Not necessarily. It could be another isk-sink that it transports it from high-sec as well.

"And then pay to hire NPC freighters, to travel the 1 or 2 jumps around your region to fuel your owned POSes, because your transport guy decided GG for the day." - I'm paying my transport guy to transport. Are you simply getting him to do lots of work out of the goodness of his heart or aimless need to contribute and accomplish something? If I pay him or the NPCs matter little to me, except I can pay the NPCs less. I lose some profit margin because I pay him roughly equal to what I get from my isk-making work.

"Can they travel several jumps?
They go on a regular schedule?
Do they have defences?"

These are balancing issues I listed in OP. Come with some constructive words and stuff on this. You know, what defences if any should they have, EHP, dps, agility, warp core strength, whether they warp direct to gate or warp in at 50km etc. Please feel free to contribute.

"How many of these stations can a corp or alliance have?" - Also balancing issue that I think I mentioned.

"So this is mean to centralize your logistics so they spend all their time transporting fuel to just 1 system then let the NPCs handle it?" - Fair question. But you ask it as if I have already written the code for your assumption of how this would work. I have not written a Bible here saying this is how it must/should be, I have just said "would it not be nice if someone died on the cross for all our refueling?". More often than not the best/really good way to implement the idea in OP are made by someone else in page number 39 or something like that on the threadnought.

"How would the affect WH dwellers?" - Good question. But it is answered by the balancing issues (fex if you need sov to make one such station, and if you have to manually set up the route, because then you could send FFs to a WH POS, but you'd have to scan down the route and put it in every time.

"Are they jsut boned by this? Only nullbears get the luxury of having NPCs do all their fueling work?
Would it require SOV to put 1 of these up?" - All balancing issues.

"Cost is kinda ridiculous because it would be a waste of money to spend several mil having NPCs do what you could just have a couple pilots do in the morning after they're done their daily PI." - You imply fuel transporters work for free, that is ridiculous. If they get no more goodies and services than the rest of the corpies then you are not a good leader.

"So you say that alliances are getting big enough that the empires should be diplomatic with them, and empire freighters that never venture out of high should be taking up this diplomacy?" - The freighters themselves would just the be sign that the empires and the null-sec alliances are engaged in diplomacy. The freighter pilots themselves are not diplomats. You don't get a shipment of cars from Japan where the Captain asks to sit down in diplomatic negotiations with you, who is not the leader of the nation.

"Like really, even the corps I've been with have had up to 30 POSes at a time before, across only 20-30 active people (the others only showed up for CTAs) POSes with jump bridges that were used hundreds of times a day.
And at that it only took 4 people 1 day in like 3 months to get enough fuel stored up in null to run everything the whole time, and then once every so often when doing morning PI, would run around and fuel things up. No skin off anyone's back for the right to call a little bitty piece of space "home" for the time we were there." - You weren't paying those pilots, but I am pretty certain that someone did. They either took most of the moongoo cake or R&D cake or both, while you got occasional free ships and skillbooks etc for bothering to fight to protect their moongoo production.



This is your words based on your understanding/misunderstanding of what my stance. If I put German words in your mouth you would be no more inclined to respond.

........??

Where would he put the extra one?