Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Everything mentioned so far should be fairly balanced and provide some interesting alternative play styles in EVE. Beyond this point are some thoughts and options that would be more difficult to pull off and would probably take some careful balancing.There remain a few aspects typically found in stations that have been left unmentioned till this point, some should be obvious in their reasons.
Medical bays should probably be left out. At no point should the player have the option to make the RV a home station as far as their backup clone is concerned as that could lead to many issues of spawn camping or having no home to return to if the RV is unanchored or destroyed. It could be argued, however, that a single jump clone could be a useful addition, as it would allow the player to place the RV setup some distance from their typical haunts and allow them to visit once a month to keep everything active. A sort of monthly weekend visit to a vacation spot as it were.
The last idea for consideration would be industry. Research would be right out, anything of that nature would be better served on a dedicated station or with the backing of a corp for support. Production in a limited form however could be useful. Limiting the production to ammo and maybe drones would allow the player to survive extended periods of time away from a dedicated station without being entirely dependent on lucky drops from rats to keep their weapons firing. Of course such an option goes hand in hand with the last item for consideration, reprocessing. The ability to chew up the drops from rats or any ore mined would allow the player to almost completely avoid ever having to visit a regular station. The main consideration in allowing it though is efficiency. Too high and corps start insisting members all use RVs to eek out every ISK they can from every haul, too low and the player runs the risk of spending more time mining and supplying gear to reprocess then playing. An easy control method could simply be time. Allow the RV to be very efficient at reprocessing materials but take a notable amount of time to do so, or only able to do so in small quantities at a time, perhaps one run of ore per a cycle which would require the player to baby sit the station feeding in a load of ore at a time then switching the refined minerals to a nearby container before loading in the next batch of ore.
However it would be accomplished, the addition of some for of industry would be nice, however I fear it would be too difficult to properly implement and detract from the core idea presented above.

Ultimately, I feel the addition of the cheap RV style ship would be a worthwhile addition to EVE as it would allow new players to experience ships with multiple hangars, anchoring mechanics, a reason to use deployables, and perhaps most importantly, someplace to go and get away from it all when other players are harassing them in their primary systems. Giving alternatives to sitting in a station or just not logging on to avoid a war decc as a brand new character could go a long way in providing a more enjoyable introduction to EVE for new players. For more experienced players, the RV would offer incentive to branch out to null or WH space with less risk, as well as serving as a nice temporary setup from which to base solo PvP harassment deep behind enemy lines. If the RV is set up as a tech II shuttle, the RV BPC could also serve as an introduction to research for new players, Having simpler requirements in comparison to other ships would make it both easier when starting out on the path to research as well as keeping the overall price down as they would be so easy to make and replace.

Orca is an rv, and I have lived out of one, down by the river. I hope this motivates you to do the same.

The goal however is a low skill req ship for newer players, and I mentioned early on why a POS was not viable. The RV type ship would serve as an introduction to those other options for new players and would be fairly cheap and disposable for the more established ones. The most expensive thing in this set up should be whatever fully fitted frigate you are docking into the RV. The drawbacks compared to the other suggestions would be the very small fleet bay size and the relative fragility of the RV itself. It should be stealthy and durable enough to stop any casual bored frigate pilot but be chewed up by any organized group.

That would certainly fill the role of personal station as well as the utility in terms of handling industry related tasks, but it removes the entry level availability for newer players to take advantage of. An Orca or Rorqual have a skill and ISK requirement bit too high for a setup that should be open to as many play styles as possible. Cheap to make and cheap to replace are a stronger requirement here. Another problem with using the modules method is the scanning difficulty, the idea is to set up by a mobile depot to handle the fitting and containers for storage, if you have a ship that is easy to scan down it leaves everything else at risk, if the module makes it harder to scan down, you run into the issue of it becoming standard equipment for that vessel when it is used in any major mining job to increase defense. The RV is also intended as a sort of training wheels to handling ships like the Orca and Rorq.