Player Features and Ideas Discussion

When bubble material prices spiked accidentally (much sad) with either Kronos or Crius (I forget) I was happy. Exploit-level bubble spam is just that. Exploits to be reported and move on. Otherwise, I think bubble use is an acceptable strategy BUT they should cost more than they do now to hamper the "I'll throw 50+ bubbles out for virtually assured safety at low low low expense".

Raise the build cost on anchorable bubbles so that they aren't dropped with wild abandon and things will sort themselves out. I'd even happily shoot them at that point (killmail or not) because I'd know that someone was feeling the pinch at replacement costs.

That said OP: I'd say no to automagically clearing bubbles at downtime (for several reasons).
I'll also say that the idea regarding the faction anchorable bubbles cancelling nullification is a bad idea and completely breaks an intended game design feature (interdiction nullification) without any pilot interaction/presence at all.

Regarding the visuals ...

CCP recently found out that metaballs exist, a cool visual effect that got discovered
around three decades ago and not only doesn't cost a lot of horsepower,
but also solves the issue of crappy looking, overlapping bubbles.


*kinks*

TL:DR

It's no secret that in some cases bubbles are being deployed in such a way to abuse their intended use, which does not promote an active play-style, accountability and upsets the risk/reward ratio. The current petition system is in-effective at resolving the issue to do the time / effort required on both the user and CCP to the extent that hardly anyone reports the cases of extensive bubble spam.

I've posted a suggestion to a new mechanic to try and resolve this, some of the finer points can re tweaked to assist with cases such as r4pe-caging a POS, but the general idea is to removed anchored bubbles at server restart.



Example

"Other players should always be the greatest danger in un-secure space". A direct qoute from CCP. Having hellbubbled gates, along with using local chat as an intel-tool, is a counter to incoming dangers that do not require teamwork. Local is a horse that has been flogged to death hundreds of times during my time in EVE and I have no confidence in that ever getting fixed. Hellbubbles, however, is more recent and I hope might get adressed during the nullsec rebalance. I would like to go much further then the op and suggest the following:

1. Make anchorable bubbles one-shot items.

2. Give them a 2 hour lifespan.

If you hit that scenario, why wouldn't you

1. Find another route
2. Reship, fleet up, clear the bubbles
3. Send a ceptor through to see if it is actually a trap. If not, just slowboat through

I dislike bubbles and hate multi-bubbled gates. But downtime solutions are applied unevenly for different timezones. It would be better to just give them a shorter lifespan.

if you dont like them, shoot them. they cost lots of ISK btw so you kill many ISK shooting them

This is almost certainly correct, however it has been proposed that having rats blap them is the key - that way strategically placed bubbles - for example at POS are left well alone, as they should be.

I suppose their removal around gates only - and as discussed, the easiest lore fitting mech is to have the rats waste them.

Benefits:
People actively using the bubbles will splash the rats
Existing code can be used
It will probably have the side effect of rats shooting things like depots and MTUs - again pretty desirable
It leave strategic bubbles in off gate positions alone - if I want to seed a pos area with traps before an RF timer that comes out a half hour after downtime, this would kill that dead.

Drawback
Someone has to flip the switch
Rats perhaps would take a while to chew through things, something could be worked on there I think.

Deployable bubbles should just be removed, HICs and Interiction Spheres should be the source of mass warp disruption.

Have them require fuel to function, like a POS. No fuel, no bubble. This allows the bubbles to be used, but at a cost. I think this is in step with the Eve philosophy of "nothing for free". If the deployer allows it to run out of fuel then the bubble shuts down and unanchors itself, allowing anyone passer-by to avail himself of a freebie.

Another possibility is to make the bubble hackable; the larger the bubble the higher the hacking skill required. Once hacked the bubble shuts down and unanchors, giving the hacker a freebie.

Neither suggestion destroys the functionality of the bubble, merely ensuring the deployer doesn't get a no-cost, low-risk defence.

Idiot warning: no-cost refers to maintaining it.