Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Busta Rock,

While I do agree with all your really great points you've made or the theory of it in spirit I think that the following is a bit off this thread:

There DOES need to exist more hauling option in EVE BOTH capital and sub-cap, however the segment of EVE ships really lacking right now is a +150K hauler in the SUB-cap range; something that can be modded and provide new-Orca class hauling.

The Orca is a mining hauler/mining op manager.

This thread and what I'm attempting to bring to CCP's attention is a General use hauler with more than an Indy, less than a capital and with module slots. PERIOD

This is the segment of ships that is SEVERELY lacking, think about PI, building Industrialist and speculative haulers, give us some love for crying out loud!

I'd like to see a range of haulers as well. There's just too big of a gap between indie's and freighters. I think there should be a choice between capacity and tank.

100k m3 = 500k EHP

300k m3 = 300k EHP

900k m3= 180k EHP

There should also be some choices for moving fitted ships in a ship bay. This type of ship would require some new artwork though since these things would be huge.

3mil m3= 600k EHP

6mil m3= 400k EHP

9mil m3= 200k EHP


This would give players the choice between moving stuff solo, picking a mid range option, or needing some escorts.

Oops, my last reply missed the subcap part.

So I did some comparisons of ships and it seems that a BS sized indy would be about the ideal for subcaps. Right price, right size, and seems logical to take old BS hulls from bygone era's and convert them into cargo ships.

A 100-150mil ISK ship. No high slots, 3-5 mid slots, 4-5 low slots, 3 rigs, and starting cargo of 20k with 5% bonus per level. That should get you up around 120k m3 cargo maxed expanders/rigs or you can go higher tank instead. Figure about 5% agility bonus per level as well and align time around 8secs. Finally a base EHP of 40k (armor or shield depending on race) giving BS like defenses. There wouldn't even need to be any artwork for this, just reskin a BS from each race.

Alternately just have one ship from ORE and simply the process.

There is no deeper emergent ecosystem in all of online gaming as there is in the universe that is EVE Online. Here we live, pay taxes and die and then live another day to live and die and pay... To Live and Die in New Eden is both a curse and a blessing.

The main reason there needs to be new hauler is so that we can buy them, pay taxes on the stuff we sell that we hauled in them and then die in them at the hands of low-sec pirate gankers, come'on CCP you know this is the right thing to do - GO NEW HAULERS.

EVE's eco-system exists because CCP wills it to exist after careful listening and consideration from the players, what other MMO on Earth does that? Hint: Nulli Alia

Yes actually. Usually within my home region mind, but still. A freighter or a JF would have been perfect for it, but I just used an itty V.

The argument that cheaper ship prices in general is good for the game is specious. Eve is a PVP game, and that PVP can only be meaningful if it comes with consequences. If ships and modules were very cheap or free, we may get lots of PVP, but it would be inconsequential, as ships could be immediately replaced - it would be impossible to actually damage an enemy by preventing him from replacing ships. Cheap, replaceable ships are good for newbies learning their way, but they are not appropriate for more experienced players. Eve has not been materially damaged by the price rises of the last few months.

As for rapid movement of large volumes of material being bad, well, think about the consequences of easy rapid movement in highsec. It favours the formation of a single superhub with 2000 people rammed into it. Attempting to buy and sell outside this superhub is unwise, because demand and supply is ever more pulled into the superhub. New industrialists attempting to compete in this hub inevitably lose out to bots, 0.01ers and the more experienced, dissuading them from continuing from Eve. Meanwhile, vast volumes of space far from the superhub become empty and useless, and, CCP fights an eternal war against the lag of 2000 people in a single system.

Now imagine Eve without freighters in highsec. It becomes silly to transport minerals and manufactured products from their sources to a superhub. Instead, ships and modules must be built close to where their materials are mined. This favours the formation of regional hubs and gives greater opportunities for new miners, industrialists and traders. It helps spread the population out across highsec, reducing the number of useless, empty systems. Costs go up - but as discussed, this is not a bad thing. We no longer have 2000 people in a single system, with all of the terrible camping/neutral-RR mechanics and accompanying lag.

If you are going to start introducing haulers with ridiculously high EHP, then you are really going to need to fix NPC corp hauling.

Suicide ganking is lame, and IMHO a silly mechanic, but currently it is the only mechanic that makes the majority of high sec transports/miners valid targets. And since there is no downside to hauling/mining in an NPC corp, it is a bit of an issue if you render suicide ganking obsolete.

So either introduce some kind of downside to hauling/mining in an NPC corp, or as has been suggested before on these forums give characters in an NPC corp over a certain age and flying certain ships a suspect flag. (So 7 month old toon in an NPC corp flying a JF = suspect flag. While a genuine 4 month old noob, still in an NPC corp and flying a drake, would be fine)


This is not really a bad thing, cheap replaceable ships just means people fly better ships more often.

Easily replaceable ships not only results in issues with homogeneous fleet comps and personal set-ups (T3s for all!), it also results in mudflation and all the issues commonly associated with mudflation in other games.


Have you ever been somewhere like syndicate? The market is dead because all the alliances there just JF in their ships from Jita, or tell their members to use black frog. The same is true of most alliances and regions in the game, even in low sec where logistics is considerably easier.


Making Eve more monotonous sounds terrible, until you realise that you are arguing about removing valid targets and replacing PvP in Eve with some kind of synthetic PvP.

I believe I've seen you posting in other threads, and I disagree with you on the grounds that you seem fine with the idea of PvE and PvP being separated, ala theme park MMO game design. The whole point of Eve is that when you are building your little empire, you are doing it in spite of other player's attempts to stop you or take everything from you.

The idea of protecting your logistics chains from attack, via hashed together mechanics and invulnerable high-ehp NPC corp haulers, goes against that concept. And it helps contribute to that sense of a horrible, dead game world where people make money in high sec and PvP for no apparent reason in low sec and null.

You want to create haulers that are, for all intents and purposes, invulnerable to ganking. Hence, invulnerable logistics chains and further segregation of PvP and PvE.

Plus your haulers don't really effect anything outside of high sec, since JF and covert ops logistics are the primary method of transport there. And high sec already has ample trade hubs, so there is no real merit to your claims of these new haulers providing "more ships, more options, more industry".


1) Population distribution is done by character distribution, not accounting for alts of any kind. The data provided by CCP is as a result relatively useless.

2) I was using empire building as a random example, but for what it's worth I don't think "empire building" automatically means null sec. A lot of people build trade empires, cornering markets or leading the way in specific areas of industry. It was meant as a generic term, I was not claiming that "Sov is the end game.".


You would in high sec, because you've just created cheap invulnerable logistics.

Would they be any use in low sec or the rest of Eve? Not so much.


You can't really take hauling ships, which is a single role, and compare them to the litany of various combat vessels. It's like me saying "hurr durr, why you no have battle ship class scanning ship?!". How many classes of combat ship there are is just completely irrelevant.

Anyway, what it real boils down to is the fact that you want 600k EHP haulers in a system where the only valid method of attacking them is suicide ganking.