Player Features and Ideas Discussion

PVP and combat focused aspects of flying in space are getting a lot of attention, so I started thinking of non PVP ways of adding to the game that could be reasonably implemented. Just wondering what people would think of the following ideas to liven up space somewhat and encourage more diverse playstyles.

Wreckage Fields/ship graveyards:

Like asteroid belts for salvagers, they could be positioned as warpable in system objects populated by hulks of destroyed ships. Spawning wrecks randomly and possibly NPC salvage ships among the debris. Still not (nearly) as profitable as looting a Player battlefield, but would generate consistent salvage opportunities on a longer timetable. They could easily scale with security status of the system and if you want to get real fancy you could place them at the locations of famous player battles from EVE history.

You could get real fancy and spawn them after player battles, with durations/richness set by the size and scope of the fleets involved. IE A 2000 ship battle could spawn a wreckage field that would spawn new wrecks for months.

NPC Mining spawns:

We already have hauler spawns, why not NPC mining ops that drop industrial oriented loot? Hell why not have Mining Officer NPCS?

WTB Esteban's modified strip miner

Monuments:

Permanent structures which can be anchored to denote significant events in the player history of Eve, such as to commemorate the first Player Built Outpost, or Player built Titan, or the First titan kill achieved without Cheating (Sir Molles).

Heck, you could even make them anchorable structures with an effect on PI and sovereignty down the line (AS they represent your cultural grasp on an area of space).

The key is permanence, Offer players the ability to make their mark in the games history visible in space. However, they can be "defaced". So if you lose your space you can see a once gleaming monument that's been blasted and changed into a "Ruin" with a barely legible inscription (And of course, can be restored again).

You could also possibly confer slight gang warfare bonuses for the corps/alliances that erect them when they are fighting in grid. However they should be hellaciously expensive and largely used as an isk sink.

Artifacts

To punch up mining and research some, the possibility of finding relics from bygone ages encased in ice/crashed on asteroids.

Imagine your just sitting there mining away doing your job... and your sensors respond that they've "Found something In the Ice" and gives a researchable object which can yield either modules or bpcs. This could also be another avenue for meta/faction/officer industrial loot

They could also be scannable spawns randomly in system.

More Non Combat NPC missions

Have agents offer the occasional Non Combat non hauling mission. Such as Performing emergency repairs on a fleet of civilian vessels (yay one more chance to use the Opux luxury yacht model) as it transits an asteroid storm (and takes armor damage consistently for 10 minutes).

Or a shady character asking you to hit a customs official with a passive targeter and ECM while he makes a run through the gate.

Or npcs asking you to scan down items of value, or haul for their mining ops etc. In general it is an opportunity to get players equated with skills that are applicable to the broader eve playing experience in a flavorful immersive manner.

Secondary products/Production process

This is more of a critique of rigidity of the Eve production process then anything else. There really isn't anyway to create secondary products in Eve, and no way to alter production processes to respond to market shifts. Which tends to make the industrial side of eve easy to integrate vertically but impossible to integrate horizontally.

IE, I have tons of Mining capacity, tons of minerals but need more isotopes/moon goo/etc. I recommend you simply add BPO's and BPC's which represent alternative processing methods and can allow you to get a slightly different output.

Say one would be "Gravitationally Pulverized Crokite" Requires x amount of units of crokite and when reprocessed outputs substantially less minerals and a small but significant amount of Helium isotopes.

Or say "Vacuum Dessicated Blue Ice" which can be used to get a negligible amount of reaction materials at the cost of isotopes.

You could introduce Hundreds of processes which could allow greater interaction between previously unrelated segments of Industry, allowing industrialists to respond to market shifts by essentially converting (with varying levels of efficiency) the materials they have stockpiled on hand into the materials they want or need. It shouldn't allow you to completely stop mining/ice harvesting/moon mining/ etc. However if you find yourself sitting on huge stockpiles of one production ingredient, you should have some means of doing something else with it that could potentially make more sense.

IE There might be situations where you might want to burn a huge pile of Isogen, to get a small amount of strontium (or whatever) because market forces dictate that the tiny amount of stront is worth more then the Enormous stack of ISogen.

This is really the only solution to the problem of loot drops and npc orders setting caps and floors on mineral prices that I could see CCP ever implementing. Close the loop there and allow inefficient conversions and all of a sudden the price of trit is NOT determined solely by NPC sell orders of shuttles, but instead it can be set on just how badly someone wants (or doesn't) a secondary product.

Came to tear apart a bad idea. Stayed because some of them aren't really all that bad. Still should be in F&I though.

Holes to be poked:
salvage field - It sort of exists in the form of the Deltole Comet, and sometimes the Luminaire Titan. imo, those are the right way of having it implemented, but they should be exploration sites rather than static. Also, I think there are existing exploration sites where you salvage a can and it drops salvage, just like hack/arch sites, but I always thought that mechanic was totally lame.
monuments - nothing should be permanent in EVE. Even indestructible outposts were kind of a bad idea (by their very existence they imply EVE has a built in expiration date) and supposedly were going to be made destructible shortly after launch, but then CCP saw a butterfly. I just have the feeling monuments will be abused somehow and mostly clutter up the game with garbage that can never be removed. What's the TTP factor with it?

Otherwise, not bad ideas. I like the idea of scanning out someone in an RR mission and shooting their NPCs.

I would like to see all the Ships which are currently restricted to Nullsec to fly around freely everywhere in Eve.
Put checks and balances in place to stop Titans and other big ships from stealing peanuts where they're not meant to steal peanuts, but I want to see them all flying everywhere.

Some of these things already exist (monuments are quite common and the first titan wreck is a permanent place that you can go to).

The rest were some interesting approaches to industry. Anything that makes the underlying industrial mechanic more approachable and entertaining is a good thing. I like the idea of a continuum of refinement/processing.

I really like the NPC idea. Why not take it a step even further and say corporations can charter NPC ships to transport goods and patrol sectors of controlled space. Certainly such large corporations would not count solely on the support of capsuleers. There are many of us, but there are a lot more regular people doing regular things... well... regular that people would regularly do... in space... >.> yes

Essentially it'd be more crap people could shoot. Which is fine, as long as the killmail obviously shows you ganked a NPC Orca, not an actual player controlled one.

Welcome

I like the idea of adding more NPC wondering trough EVE universe. There ware really good points about new PVE opportunities that could be tied to PVP - protecting/pirating NPC that ferry stuff via low sec. I think that may be every good boost for low sec life experience.

Capsules are demigods of New Eden but where are the mortals? Taking away mission rats and racial customs, there is fewer mortals ships than capsules. There should be many times more NPC ships in space that there are players... That would add the feeing that eve is... real...

And to clarify any of those NPC should give KM. those are just place fillers for us, the gods...

I also like the idea of adding salvage fields and relic excavation from ice block or asteroids. But IMHO it should work as an escalation to the existing exploration. For example every asteroid in any type of exploration site (even combat sites - most of them have asteroids) when mined could contain artifact that could point to next site. But not necessarily the same type. For example, while doing radar, you open code protected can and find out a location of secret pirate outpost. Then you kill NPC and mine the site and you are lucky to find artifact that points to the origin of the field that directs you to the bigger belt and so on... Every step could bring higher value revard (better modules, ore, T2 salvage, PI components, BPC, datacores ect) and could direct player trough whole galaxy. To 0.0 and back to hi-sec and so on. There may be no end in such chain if you are fortunate enough...

This would work as another layer of escalations (so current Combat sites escalations aren't nerfed)

With regards

If we could do even a 100v100 fleet battle in Kisogo or any other noob system I'd do it in a heartbeat. It'd be something to show the new players something pretty cool.

+ 1. That is all.

+1

Awesome ideas. Could be useful for making lowsec less lame.