Assembly Hall

This idea came to me while avoiding writing an essay for uni, and is intended to spice thing up a little and to provide a positive altrenative to the suicide ganker playstyle.

Arise, Sir Rat

Any player account who has achieved 25+ unique pvp kills in EVE should unlock a speical 4th character slot, which is a mechanical device not a true character slot. Visually, it could be just an empire icon next to the usual 3.

Picking the "Rat" option, the player should then be given a choice - which faction(s) to fight for, which should be changable once per two months. Once a Sanshas or other pirate faction the player is randomly allocated a ship they quality for, in space. The ship should not be able to be docked, but otherwise should operate normally. If the player leaves the ship, by dc or ejecting, the NPC pilot resumes command.

The player can then go do thier worst against other players, as a super-smart rat.

As a player collects combat rat points on thier rat toon, by blowing things up, they should advance in what ships & contexts they qualify for, starting at:

1. Mining belt rat, highsec
2. Mining belt rat, any
3. Complex basic rat
4. Complex medium rat
5. Complex advanced rat
6. Complex commander rat
7. Incursion rat (B/M/A/C)
8. Incursion logistics ship
9. All your rats belong to us
10. Rat Admiral

By invitation only: Jovian highsec incursion rat.

All your rats belong to us

The rat player can jump at will from rat ship to rat ship in the system, effectively flying the whole rat squadron. Player is not removed from scene until the last rat is destroyed. Mechanically using the "get in ship" command, with range = 200 km.

Rat Admiral

The rat player can call other rat pilots to join their rat fleet, setting requirements as preferred. The Random Allocation then streams qualifying pilots to that encouter, enabling a Rat Admiral to potentially have a complete incursion fleet under rat player control.


Arise, Lady Cat

Any player who has achieved 5,000,000,000 units of metals mined in EVE should unlock a speical 4th character slot, which is a mechanical device not a true character slot. Visually, it could be just an empire icon next to the usual 3.

Again unlocking a new "character slot", but for Empire factions or CONCORD. If qualifying for both, the player must choose cat or rat.

Cats get to prowl their Empire space, or Highsec for Concord, looking for wanted criminals. May engage on locating anyone who is Wanted, and can fly to asteroid belts (etc) looking for thieves. Hard coded to not be able to do anything that would trigger a criminal flag (your lawful crew politely refuses to open that can or fire on the gate guns).

Also randomly allocated, with the allocation preferrentially directing the cat player to any qualifying system where two or more rat players are. Cat Admirals may issue or accept invites from players with good standing towards their played faction. Yes, this would mean that potentially a Rat player incursion would end up fighting a Cat player fleet + normal players. Sounds like a recipie for carnage :)


Checks and balances

Random allocation. This is essential, or the system would be abused (duh). The rat pilot needs to appear "somewhere", without any power to choose where.

BUT (this is important) - the idea is fun, so the rat should be added into a location where a player currently is active. It's no fun if you are a rat in an asteroid belt in a system no-one is mining.

To the victor, the spoils. A rat admiral incursion fleet should give higher rewards: fighting players is, after all, significantly harder than fighting NPCs with their predictable tactics. The more rat players in the fleet, the higher the reward should be: personally I would have a random PLEX drop chance added in (everyone in the fleet has a low % chance of a PLEX dropping in the station where thier medical clone is, if they defeat a Rat Admiral fleet with 3 or more rat players in it).

Both rats and cats would be able to loot things normally ... so a long lived cat or rat would potentially have very tasty loot anyway. Perhaps the wrecks of cat/rat ships should be automatically blue.

The player pilot gets ejected if the ship does not fire before taking 50% of its defences if in range (with the rat crew mutinying against their cowardly captain), -10 rat points.

Pilot may eject at will, which after 20 seconds logs them out. The ship instantly reverting to NPC control, and if in a strange place like a CONCORD battleship at an asteroid belt, will despawn according to the usual NPC despawn rules.

Maps: the rat pilot should have no starmap, waypoint or autopilot options, they are where they are. They should be given WH entrances / exits.

The intent of having high entry level criteria is that rats in particular are only flown by players who know what they are doing, and have been in EVE for a significant time. While any system is open to abuse (as hulkageddon shows) it is not too bold to expect that someone who works long and hard to command an incursion rat fleet will use it for fun carnage and mayhem (as intended), not simply suicide it for ISK and risk being banned from ever playing a rat again.

Let the flaming begin

LOL

Classic.

So yeah... OP is completely loony. (Thats my subtle way of saying not supporting)

OP should go post in the RP board.

No, you can't get free PLEX by killing your alts under the proposal above.

Although you probably did get free PLEX already, by inviting your alts as friends, right?

You currently get free PLEX by killing your alt if your alt gets huge bounties on him, and then you pod him and buy PLEX with the ISKies. That already happens now, so don't tell me that this game can never have such a system as above because it could potentially be abused. Everything you add into a sandbox could potentially be abused, that does not mean that it should not be added. It simply means it needs appropriate limitations, and rules around it to permit censure if it does get abused.

You're an idiot. Not for not supporting the OP, just in general. You should post less.

laundering ISK? You can't complain about derailing a thread when you say something so stupid.

Don't support the idea, mostly because it's completely bonkers.

I like the idea that you can team up with a faction - Guristas / Serp / Sansha etc. But that's all I like. Having players roam around griefing with trollfaces on, attacking unsuspecting newbies with terrible skills in missions already happens - Giving players a way to do it without being Concorded is just ludacris.

If, in your scenario, you've got a newbie drake trying to take on three NPC battleships. his tank is slowly being whittled down, he can't sustain it. Griefer-Player-Rat warps in, warp jams him and newbie dies. (All PVP revolves around warp jamming or doing enough alpha damage so they pop before they can warp. If player rats can't warp jam, there's actually no reason to this idea because the player can and will escape. So which is it that Griefer-Player-Rats will have. Extreme High DPS or jamming capabilites?)

Griefer-Player-Rat sits there in all his glory after annihilating a newbie, looting his ship and leaving the guy with nothing. Griefer-Player-Rat doesn't get concorded because he's a rat.

Also, what about all the people who just want to "Rat in peace." Highsec mission runners with ships worth excess of tens of billions, the people who want to just fight computer artificial intelligence instead of being suprised by some griefer who's come to destroy months of effort? If i I recall you were complaining about Hulkageddon and how it targetted people who just wanted to do their own thing. Kind of hypocrital to suggest this.




This completely goes against EVE's "Sandbox" principle. If people can meet whatever criteria to become a rat, they SHOULD be allowed to do whatever the hell they want when they're a rat. Which is exactly WHY we have Hulkageddon, because that's an example of people doing whatever the hell they want.

The bounty system is also, as stated before, a loophole to launder ISK. You want to know why bounties in EVE don't work? Because people just pod themselves and claim their own bounty. It's free ISK from everybody who adds to the bounty. Same thing can just happen in this.


You lost me at "Lady Cat". I really don't know how to interpret this other than some odd way of roleplaying, but whatever rocks your boat is up to you, this is a sandbox game after all. What is 5 billion units of metal? So the industrialists/miners of EVE get to play for Concord/Empire factions? In what logical way do those two connect at all.

What is a "thief" or "wanted" person? In my experience in highsec, you've got a billion people who've stolen at one point in time or another, but you can't kill them unless they're flashing red. So what exactly are you proposing, here. That these super-miners-who-suddenly-became-PVP'ers can just waltz around Jita killing everybody whos got a skull next to their name because they killed somebody sometime ages ago? That's just.. stupid.

Concord is in the game as a "God's Judgement" for when players REALLY break the rules, like trying to attack a station in highsec, or killing other players for no reason at all. I don't understand any reason or use for having players partake in that - As there is no use for them.

Also please don't call them cats. This is actually not Hello Kitty Online.

then you talk about how Rats vs Cats can fight.. Sounds like a broken, flawed version of Fleet Warfare?

anyway. THATS why I think myself, and everybody else in this game don't support this idea. Before posting topics in the Assembly Hall, try to post them in "Features & Idea's Discussion" board, first. don't give the CSM more work to sort through threads that are not going to get the go-ahead.