Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In Eve, probably the most traditional means of accumulating wealth for nullsec rank-and-file pilots are mining and ratting. Frankly, these suck: they are deadly boring and easily botted – I was wondering if a more dynamic, player-driven and exciting system couldn't be created. It should be harder to automate, and tend to inject less raw Isk into the game, but still bring cool toys to blow stuff up with into the game at a fast pace, and finally bond gnarly pirates with industrialist (well, no guns drawn before the cheese course at least).

(generic sci-fi fluff names used for convenience)

Essentially (details later):

Players can anchor one 'dark energy collector' per account in any nullsec or lowsec safespot (got to be away from other stations POSs etc.). It collects 'dark energy', at a somewhat erratic rate, based around the system's sec rating, and stores it as 'dark matter'.

Bad guys can raid enemy territory, bust these collectors open and steal the dark matter, or black-ops flotillas can sneak in, hack the collector, and attach energy leeches to divert a small percentage to their own collectors.

Essentially, nullsec grunts, when not on alliance ops, can attempt to raid and pillage or leech enemies' collectors, while defending their own collectors. Nullsec grunts PVP for their living.

The dark matter gets used to manufacture dark mining crystals. These mine ore at terrific rates (and burn out quickly), maybe even gathering some random other materials like bits of moongoo (but not unbalanced amounts obviously). The downside: the dark crystals send out cosmic signatures which quickly draw some badass sleeper-like NPCs to the operation.

The mining operation itself will hopefully be much more exciting and erratic with NPC elite tacklers, DPS ships, logi ships, ewar etc., all (somewhat) coordinated into making life challenging for the players. The spawns can be dynamic and more NPCs can warp in if the player fleet receives reinforcements etc. Basically, it should be a much shorter, more intense and more productive mining session with a few destroyed player ships unless they have a balanced group themselves and coordinate well.

And with this burst of new minerals, fresh combat ships, infrastructure etc. can be made. Maybe tie it sov upgrades somehow?

Anyway it's a bit tl;dr already. What do you reckon?

Why not just make the current player owned structures easier to destroy, to serve the same purpose?

You should read it. It's a fairly good idea. It means that you can actually harass enemy space without a 200 man blob and you have to protect your space constantly and use all your members to get all the resources you can out of your territory. It's just for null sec anyways.Our current system is way more terrible and complex than this idea.

I reckon... F&I is that-a way.

Not a bad idea, but is really sort of complicated and convoluted, and would require a lot of dev time. I would wait until the POS revamp and see if that engenders passive ISK generation with potential for raiding.

Sounds fun, though, and I can't poke any glaring holes in it, which is more than I can say about most hip-fired "brilliant ideas". The biggest worry would be that this would collapse to tragedy of the commons.

Sounds a lot like hisec mining in a Hulk or Mackinaw these days.

I meant "passive" as in how moon mining or research is passive. The fact that others can interfere (and easily, too, not like taking down a moon mining POS) is the one thing that makes me like this idea. I suppose I shouldn't have said "ISK generation" since this is neither an ISK sink nor a faucet, but... "asset generation" or "wealth generation" would fit it better.

Ed: The fact that it's coupled with a low/nullsec mining buff is the cherry on top.

That aspect of 'passive income' is sort of the whole point Petrus.

I'd like to swap: pew...pew...pew...pew yay 1.4M from an Angel battleship, or bzz...bzz...bzz...bzz yay a heap of crokite (which is, mental stimulation-wise, passive and pathetic) to something where passive stuff happens in the background (dark matter accumulation) while you PVP in the main game (to protect yours or steal extra).

Obviously the collectors have a maximum capacity by the way. You cant set up an collector on an alt account and let it fill continously for a year or so like research points, for example.

You realize that all the major alliances will just horde these structures in their home system, so it will almost be impossible to attack said structures without a titan blob breathing down your neck... No, this will end up just like the current moon goo system, except on an individual player scale.

edit: didnt read the second post... oh well too lazy to fix it.

Thread moved from General Discussion.

I guess you got it after the second post: alliances can't horde loads of collectors in dead-end systems because each one's efficiency would suffer badly. It should then be easier to raid somewhat valuable outskirt-system collectors. I don't think -1.0 sec should collect too much better than say 0.3 sec or whatever. Lowsec and poor nullsec should be viable sites for a collector.