Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Lol, my version of the idea was going to feature star to star - hence "star drive".
Was to be more of a mini-portal jumping for smaller ships to catch up, using stars as a general "cynos" area.

edit: Oops I meant buddy-jumping like Black Ops or Titan bridge.

Mine is less complex but seems that complexity is what appears to be more interesting, so I guess I'll drop it and focus on something else heh.

Never mind me ;D.

As I think more about this, I realize that it needs some more balancing.

As we have it written here, no one will ever use jump freighters again... they would just use freighters to go directly from JITA to null sec and back.

So, I would make the following additions to the idea:

First make it require a rig. Call it a Capacitance Overcharge rig in small medium and large sizes and a drawback of 10% reduction in capacitor recharge rate. Prohibit capital ships from using them...thats my gut, I don't think that long warping should be available to capital ships.

This does two things, first it prevents freighters from doing long jumps, so if you want to carry 900,000m3 of stuff, you gotta use the gates, secondly it means you have to sacrifice something in order to use it, whether that is sacrificing a little tank or a little damage or a little cargo capacity, its a cost.

Second balance I would add would be a counter to it. A "Deepspace Probe" that is deployed at a sun and while deployed allows the controlling ship to scan for incoming long jumps. It should detect a signature when it is within one hour of landing but it would only say "something is coming" not "20 somethings are coming". When the incoming signature is within 15 minutes of landing, the probe can discern the total signature size of the incoming long warp, so a gang of 10 battleships at this point would show up as "Deepspace Contact, 4500m signature" When the gang is within 5 minutes of landing, the probe can say "Deepspace contact, 4500m, 10 entities" within one minute, it can break up each ship as an individual signature radius. It would never give ship types. This way, an alliance can defend its space by using probing ships to cover the stars.

Third balance, nothing will tell you exactly what time you will land at the other star, you would have to estimate that yourself. You can log off and your ship will continue to warp, but if your ship lands while you are offline, it will remain in space at the star for 15 minutes before performing the warp off and disappear thing. This way if you are lazy, you are risking a lot and suicide gangs in high sec can camp stars for incoming haulers full of blueprints.

Fourth balance, when you land at your destination, your capacitor should be empty.

WIth these four additions, I think it is a great idea.

It would allow people who don't own null sec space to conduct ninja mining operations. Imagine if you and your 30 closest friends pilled into hulks and orcas and set out to mine all the ore in a single system in 0.0 that you didn't own.

It would also allow corps and alliances that don't have titan bridges to long warp into enemy space if they so desire.

That would work, but have it be a module that can be limited to non-capital ships? Orca could be an exception?

I came into this thread expecting a terrible idea, but I think this actually does show promise.

Actually, the more I read about it the more I like it.

It doesn't intrinsically add anything to the game by itself, but remember the game is all about user-generated content. That means with this new capability, players will develop new strategies and counterstrategies that alter players conduct of war in ways more profound than the addition of any new ship class or module.

I think this would be a healthy change for the game.

this but the time is rediculous. give us like maybe 2 minutes in warp to travel between systems. the gates are meh sometimes but i would like to just travel faster also basically between systems.

That was the point.

And if they are not paying close enough attention, its pretty easy to light a cyno in a deserted system and titan bridge a fleet into it, or probe for wormholes to jump in behind peoples defenses.



Yes it takes longer, that is the price you pay for being relatively safe. It would likely not be used often between high sec systems except when someone wants to move from one place to another, then they can just set up the warp and log off.

The place where I see it being used more is for two things:
Ninja mining in nullsec. If you and your mining buddies want to mine to good stuff but don't own space, how difficult is it to warp your gang of hulks and orcas through low and null sec space? The risk vs Reward of that proposition at TOTALLY out of whack. It makes it so that any industrialist who wants to participate fully is RELIANT on PvPers to provide security. Now, I am not saying that that is bad on its own, I just think there should be an option for industrialists to get some of the good stuff with a risk factor that is greater than if they live in the space with PvPers in their alliance and lower than if they tried to do 20 jumps through hostile null sec. So in this way, a mining fleet could set up the warp from their high sec base to a system that one or two of them have scouted and found to be deserted but rich with ore/ice. They all warp, and hang out talking about BS on comms while they wait (miners are nothing if not patient). When they land, they spread out to start clearing out the belts. Their fleet might be just a couple of Mackinaws with their huge ore bay, of they might be 30 hulks, 6-7 orcas and a cynoed in Rorq or two. When they are done, or if adjacent systems get some activity, they can go back to the star and do the warp back. If the people who own the space are paying attention to the map, they would see a spike in "average pilots in space in the last 30 minutes" without adjacent systems having the same spike, which should tell them that someone either cynoed in or long warped. Although before reading this thread, I just always wanted CCP to give the Rorq the ability to bridge industrial ships the way the BO can bridge coverts and recons and the Titan can bridge anyone. But thats just me.

The other use I see is for null sec fleets who want to get the jump on someone by not using a cyno and are willing to sacrifice the speed they would normally have using gates. THey could initiate the long warp, and then sit backhand wait, when they enter system, while the other guys are scrambling to figure out which gate the spike came through, the attackers have some time to get ready and pick a target.

I suppose one other use would be someone who is moving in or out of null sec space. When they put in the POS changes and we are able to put up small one man POSes anywhere in space, it would be cool to drop a POS in the back of someones space that they hardly ever use and be a squatter.

Well, CCP was insisting to loosen up the rather static POS/Sov mechanic. I could've sworn they mentioned something about mobile outposts/pos at the recent Alliance Tournament.

So all in all, it is not far fetched.

I like the "edge of star system" part via gravity well. Kind of brings the feel from Sins of A Solar Empire as well as some Homeworld stuff.

Maybe we should really consider "big NPC titans" like PoS or Outpost-stations are as the actual Long Jump vessels that brings the fleet to the enemy. That could also apply a temporary wormhole or anything to "call in reinforcements" - with a long cooldown timer so that it isn't easy to just zerg the defenders.

Defender must destroy the actual FTL Outpost-HQ, somewhere like how Incursions is done. I don't know, just a long shot idea to toss in.



Had an idea alike that one some year or so ago. It was more about blindjumping with a mini-carrier as well as taking frigates etc along.
But I like that part of your idea in terms of ninjamining.

Right now, it is simply too difficult to even think about crossing boarders. In terms of ninja mining, it would give the defending 0.0 nations to shoot down stuff. I don't see a problem with that one.

We haven't even begun to talk about how the module might have an extreme fitting requirement that would gimp certain ships that try to fit it. You can't expect your cov-ops ships, fitted with a torpedos and/or bombs, to be able to slap this module on all willy-nilly and be combat ready.

Furthermore, I would imagine that a new ship or perhaps a current ship could receive a bonus that would negate the fitting penalty of this module. Your ship would have to be dedicated to using the module in lieu of using traditional means of travel. On top of that, you're still in danger of being snuffed out on the other end if the defending group gets their warning early enough.

Point is, it's not a free ticket out of gate camps and it's not supposed to be a jumpgate/cyno killer. At least, that's what I've come to understand of it so far.

My suggestion to this idea is probably not that important,
but I think it would be good to have some sort of "distant minimal jump range" meaning that you cannot just walk-your-way-to-next-door-Mordor. Without the cult phrase, I mean that you can't just to the next constellation just like that.

It has to be a REAL long warp with the mentioned timeframe of x hours so that the defenders who are sitting on the other side can actually have a chance to prepare themselves somehow. In other words, it should not be that I can just perform a next door jump with my fleet. So it has to be a called Long Warp for a reason. It should consume time as well as a load of fuel resources.

I did not read the recent posts, so let me do that now ;).
Gonna work on that other FTL idea now.


edit: posted a smaller version of mine after all - for what it is worth.