Player Features and Ideas Discussion

UPDATED THREAD 31/08/2012 HERE.

This is a discussion about system upgrades received when donating LP into the FW infrastructure hub, and how to make them more appealing after Inferno. Please refer to the FW blog for more details.


At the moment they are:

• Upgrade level 1 - 10,000 LPs required: +1 more station manufacturing, ME, PE, invention and copy slots*, 10% price reduction for medical clones (not jump clones), 10% reduction in market / contract broker fees


• Upgrade level 2 - 25,000 LPs required: +2 more station manufacturing, ME, PE, invention and copy slots*, 20% price reduction for medical clones (not jump clones), 20% reduction in market / contract broker fees


• Upgrade level 3 - 45,000 LPs required: +3 more station manufacturing, ME, PE, invention and copy slots*, 30% price reduction for medical clones (not jump clones), 30% reduction in market / contract broker fees


• Upgrade level 4 - 70,000 LPs required: +4 more station manufacturing, ME, PE, invention and copy slots*, 40% price reduction for medical clones (not jump clones), 40% reduction in market / contract broker fees


• Upgrade level 5 - 100,000 LPs required: +5 more station manufacturing, ME, PE, invention and copy slots*, 50% price reduction for medical clones (not jump clones), 50% reduction in market / contract broker fees


• Buffer - 100,000+ to 150,000 LPs

* Slots are only given for stations that already have that given activity before upgrade. For instance: a station only having science slots will not receive extra manufacturing slots.

It's a start, but nothing fancy. We would like to iterate on that after Inferno, and we have already heard some good comments, but your input is welcome.


Some ideas, not necessarily in any order:

• Bring back the cyno jammer, if polished enough to be shot down by neutral third parties. Fanfest taught us it is a very tricky move, so we want to hear from all interested parties here
• Move station deny docking from being automatic when a system is captured to something that only happens when the enemy upgrade a system to level X
• Provide science, manufacturing time reduction bonuses to further encourage industry in low-security space

Speaking of which, how do you feel about neutrals having access to your precious upgrades? As explained in the blog, the original goal was to promote an industrial backbone in low-security space, but you may feel differently.



Thanks for your time!

Industry needs customers. Therefore any form of restrictions are a contradiction to provide incentives for lowsec industry. As long as the sales tax is as low as it is now, there is simply no reason to take the risk to move good into FW lowsec, because you are never more then 15 jumps to the next highsec system that can act as a local hub.

Since you can buy ISK with a PLEX but you can't buy screen time [1] it's travel time that get's you customers not pricing.

[1] That's the time a player spends in from of the screen actually watching a client. Bots are so popular because they get you stuff/ISK with very little screen time. For the same reason mining scales better then running missions.

FW agents in the stations should be linked directly to the upgrade level. Level1 upgrade gets level 1 agents, Level 2 gets level 2 agents all the way up to 5 (yes add level 5 FW missions). Make the missions go to the nearest contested space and add to the victory points for capturing that system.

Also Incentives should be added to industrialists in the war zone. Something like faster production times, reduced mineral cost, lower taxes, less waste on reprocessing, faster/cheaper research and copying of BPOs etc.

Cyno Jammers at Level 5.

Thanks for looking into FW. You guys rock

I only have a little experience with FW but I am very happy to see it getting lots of attention. Thank you also for all the communication.



Maybe I am missing something obvious but what would be the reason for doing this? To add additional incentive for upgrades? If so, I think there are a lot of other/better options for that since tying docking rights to upgrade level breaks immersion and feels gimmicky to me. Also, wouldn't that make docking rights change more frequently with systems being upgraded and then having their upgrades stolen? If so, I think that frequent changes of "can dock/can't dock" would be annoying.

If you're going to make docking rights variable, then I think it should be tied to sovereignty like you've currently planned. It is more straight-forward so new players will more easily understand this mechanic which will be so important everytime they cross enemy lines.

Move station deny docking from being automatic when a system is captured to something that only happens when the enemy upgrade a system to level X ....

I think this needs to be done in 3 levels

Level 1
Corps that are soly military the faction prevent docking, Leaving Opposite Faction Stations and Non Military Stations open
Level 2
Call corps that are pro Faction and Non Military Stations are close. Only those of the Opposite faction are left open
Level 3
All stations are closed to opposite faction.

This would represent the block aid of a Station. and stations loyal to the enemy faction will hold out as long as possible, while the Pro-Miliia would be looking for any reason to shut down access to enemy traffic.

This would also make it easier to defend or reclaim home systems. Scalling up the difficulty of controlling a larger portion of space. Also adds a little character, role play with in faction warfare. More emersion.

The taxes on these station may also be effected by the person's alignment to a faction.

I can't like zarnak's idea enough. Lets add actual consequences to the game, so you can't just shoot at faction NPCs or militia members all day and still dock in their systems like nothing happened.

I don't see this being much of an incentive or benefit as:
- Even at max upgrade you only get enough extra slots for the equivalent of half of one sci/industry character.
- Manufacturing and PE slots are usually easy enough to find in high/low sec already.

Would be much more attractive if the lab slots received a bonus to their research time (like a POS lab) or for manufacturing (and to make things interesting) + 1 to ME of BPO/BPC being used per upgrade level.

There are several problems with your current upgrade system. Some changes are quite bad ( i realy wanted to use a different word here) and to be honest i expected more. I would prefer a delay of this changes (whole FW stuff not just this) to give you more time to work on it, there is no need to pressure yourself with this random date. I hope i can speak for everybody when i say people wouldnt mind, if you delay stuff for a few weeks to do it right/better in the first place. Here we go:


The first problem is that you dont encourage people to upgrade system. The reson is pretty simple, 2 of them are useless due to the current state of the game. The third one, medical clone cost reduction, is nothing fancy as well, but at least something to start with.

Problem number two. Level 2 is just a better version of level 1, level 3 is just a better version of level 2,... That is just uncreative/bad game design, as you (some CCP dev's) recently discovered and you reacted accordingly (ship rebalance). Wouldnt it be better to be like this instead:
level 1: you want to have this in as many systems as possible
level 2: you want to have this in the majority of you systems
level 3: you want to have this in some systems
level 4: you want to have this maybe in 3 or 4 systems
tbc.

The third problem are stations, more precisely the lack of stations. You aren't gaining anything in non station systems. Splitting the whole system up into two parts, one for station systems and one for the others, would make it more complicated in the first place. But it would be easier to deliver well balanced system bonuses.

The last problem for now is security. Your HUB can store 150k LP. A plex drains 5k/ 8,75k/ 12,5k/ 15k LP (minor/standard/major/unrestricted). This results into this: you can drain the highest upgrade in less than one hour (if you are alone!) and you can drain the whole HUB in less than 6 hour's (stacking of plexes or unrestricted plexes are even ignored in this calculation). Why would you upgrade your system when you can lose your upgrades that fast. There are two solutions for this problem: the inferior solution would be to reduce the LP drain, the better solution would be to increase the cost of all system upgrade. A navy BS costs 600k LP upgrading your system to its maximum 150k LP. Thats a serious inconsistency, especially when upgrading is considered as team stuff and not as a new from of "i want a corp just for myself".

Because bitching alone does not change anything; possible system upgrades (s - station system, n - non station system):

level 1:
-(s) reduced reapair costs (30%) for your milita
-(s) denies access to enemy agents
-(n) increased bonty on pirate npc's

level 2:
- (s) reduced medical clone costs (50%) for your milita
- (s) allows the creation of jump clones, not based on standing, for you milita
- (n) reduced fuel consumption for your milita POS's (like in 0.0)

level 3:
- (s) removes access to station for enemys and neutrals with standing below -2.0 to your faction
- (s & n) allows cynojammers to be onlined at milita POS's (they should need LP as fuel)

level 4:
- (s & n) reduced material costs for production (5%)
- (s & n) reduced waste from reprocessing and refining (5%)

level 5:
- buffer

Im pretty sure some people want stuff like super cap production and jump bridges as well in low sec. I think this would be the wrong way to go. Supers do not belong into low sec, the lack of countermeasures there indicates that. And jumpbridges; look what happend in 0.0 space, people became lazy and fat and FW space isnt that big, you can go from one end to the other in less than one hour.



Thanks to the person that did this "You have one previously saved draft for this forum/topic ", you saved me from writing this again.

Some ideas;

Improved PI upgrades would be nice. Perhaps more output per level.
Reduced cost in reprocessing and refining.
Reduced cost in repair
More payout per rat per level
More grav site spawns

Bonuses to science and research slots would be a huge buff to lowsec inhabitants however you need to add more science slots then. But if you do, the problem then becomes that FW pilots don't want to pour in LP into a station that others end up using before they will. So there has to be a mechanism for allowing FW pilots (and preferably the primary donaters of LP) to have access to the slots first.

I liked this idea;



I don't like lockouts because it would be unfair for say the Gallente militia to roam into enemy space and be hunted by pirates/neutrals who can dock but we can't.

Madbuster has a great idea for escalating lockouts;