Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I originally posted this idea here and to my surprise someone liked it and it wasn't immediately trolled. So I celebrate this by presenting it here.

The situation: Mining and industrial vessels can be very expensive and are very easy and quick to kill, by suicide-ganking as well as regular combat in low/null/wh or hisec war. This is working as intended.

The problem I see is that it is virtually impossible to actively defend those vessels. It is so easy to kill a mining barge or exhumer that even a strong fleet of defenders cannot prevent an attacking force to kill all the mining ships right under their noses without even having to engage the defending combat ships. In many cases, the attackers could kill the miners, then all die to the defenders and still win the ISK war.

Existing tactics to keep industrial vessels alive do not really work and even if they do work they are boring for everyone (logistics perma-repping miners).

This is bad as it makes hiding as soon as any potential enemy appears in system the only option for industrial fleets.

The proposal: Introduce a new module 'Invulnerability Sphere Generator'. The module occupies a mid slot and has a very long reactivation delay, maybe 5-10 minutes. When triggered, the ship is protected by an indestructible sphere for a certain amount of time, maybe 1-3 minutes. During this time, the ship cannot be damaged by any means. But it also is completely immobile. And activating the sphere triggers aggression so that the pilot cannot safely log off.

A ship fitting the sphere generator cannot fit any offensive modules: No weapons, combat drones, scrams, webs, links etc. To make the module non-viable for roles like forward scouts, it could also greatly diminish the ship's base speed.

The fitting requirements need to be tweaked in a way so that fitting the module requires a meaningful but reasonable tradeoff. For example the CPU needs could be thus that a Hulk can't fit a MLU and the invulnerability sphere generator both.

The effect: The sphere is like a pause button. The defenseless vessel gains a window of time that allies can use to effectively repel the attack and save the industrial fleet. It will not save the lazy carebears: If no one is there to help you, your death is as certain as before, only slightly delayed.

I see all sides profiting from this: Miners can now be defended. The defenders can engage in meaningful fights, not only avenging the already blown-up miner but actually saving him. The attacker gets more fun fights, because a paralyzed miner in his sphere will motivate way more people to try to save him, as opposed to now where few people care to try to avenge a Hulk after it is already gone. People would be able to run industrial ops even with neuts/reds in local, as long as they have the power to defeat the attacking force.

Afk miners would still die miserably because they won't activate their sphere in time

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Additional ideas that came up to address valid concerns and critique from other players in this thread:

1. Prevent immunity from hisec ganks where the ganker would fire a shot, then the miner triggers his sphere and the ganker would be killed by Concord, unable to complete his gank:

Not at all. If he presses the button he will just sit there until it expires and can't get away. If no one helps him, he'll die as soon as his sphere expires.

Ok... how about this: Before the sphere disappears completely, there is a period of 30 seconds where invulnerability is gone but the ship is still immobile. the ganker can try to gank; if the target triggers the sphere, he warps off again, stores ship in Orca and comes back when the invulnerability has ended but the ship cannot warp away yet. The timing shouldn't be too hard.

For this to be a viable thing. i would say it would have to be restricted to fitting to an Orca(maybe...) but more as part of the siege mode of the Rorqual. The bubble would protect the miners however it would only have the total shields of the Ship, like a pos shield.

While inside the shield offensive modules cannot be used, would need to be a high slot, and take alot of cap to activate, so the rorqual cant just jump out right after.

The rorqual or orca(maybe... not a real capital) would not be able to receive remote reps or remote cap.

Ships on the inside would be able to target things but not engage offensive modules. This will allow miners to continue mining if the Rorqual is able to tank the incoming damage.

Orca and Rorqual has more than sufficient HP, the whole point here is that a Mining barge or exhumer can't survive long enough for a defending fleet to react and save em.

Yes, thank you for not reading

So a mining fleet in low or null gets attacked. The miners punch their 'siege' button. And then the situation is resolved between the defending fleet vs. attacking fleet? I kind of like it. Right now even if you have an escort the. Industrialists get shot first for KB efficiency. This at least gives them a fighting chance. And it encourages moving out of high sec more.

For your initial idea, just no. The reason is simple: the only thing that's invincible are structures in reinforcement mode (player-owned anyway), and that requires stront and is mounted to a very large, very immobile, entity. What you have proposed is basically that but compressed down to a ship level, being only a few minutes rather than however long the stront lasts. You also have so many negatives attached to it that it almost makes it not worth the while. Also, just by wording alone people could sit inside of the shield and blow **** up.

The later refinements, however, are much more balanced. Limiting it to 0.4 and to capital industrials makes it quite balanced. I'd say you could, instead of having it take shield HP to online, instead use stront since it's basically using the same technology from a lore standpoint of the reinforce mode of POSes and other structures.

How about you go lock yourself in a sphere that makes you completely immobile, and have someone huck it down a flight of stairs.

Stupid idea is stupid.

I like the concept, I think invulnerable is a bit OP. I think what is needed is a way to force / encourage an attacker to kill the escort ship before the juicy target.

Ideas:

a) Remote shield generator -- allows escort to increase shield HP of target ship, speed penalty to escort

b) Shield Expander Sphere -- escort becomes immobile, but escort shields expand to 2000m radius. Attack on anything within the shield hits the escort and triggers aggro on escort instead of shielded vessel. Once shield is below threshold (25%? 50%?) it collapses back to original size and module deactivates.

First just makes ganks against weak targets take more ISK. Second requires you to gank the escort before you can gank the miner. In both cases a sufficiently powerful fleet can still kill the miner without waiting for timers to expire.