Player Features and Ideas Discussion

NPC corps: the bane of anyone trying to be taken seriously on the forums, the haven of new players, and the annoyance of combat pilots who end up in a food distribution corp for some reason when they drop out of a player corp.

As they stand, NPC corps have a few benefits and a few downsides: immunity to wardecs, (relative) immunity to "teamkilling", no requirements vs. no corp hangars, few fleet ops, ridicule from leet player corp members, and a higher tax rate.

With this suggestion, I aim to do something about the second downside mentioned. I propose that NPC corps give their members something to do, in the form of randomized corpwide-availability tasks

I see these tasks as semi-impromptu, non-compulsory mini-missions. A military training corp like the State War Academy, for example, might occasionally request capsuleer reinforcements at a minor skirmish on the Gallente border or in Luminaire, while an industrial corp like Native Freshfoods might need an escort for a convoy - or if the escort failed to defend the convoy, a few capsuleer ships might volunteer to run a replacement cargo to the destination. There are many possible objectives, some of which have the potential to create other tasks depending on the results.

There is also potential for more live events: a GM or CCP happening to be in the area of a border skirmish might log in an NPC admiral or some such, and escalate the skirmish a bit.

As for rewards, I suggest something small by the standards of advanced pilots, but meaningful to rookies - and with a little fluff thrown in. A convoy saved from pirates might give a reward of perhaps 25,000 ISK, some (slightly valuable) trade goods...and perhaps a few Questionable Holoreels , while the border skirmish on the other side of the Federation might reward participants with a Janus* or a Tristan.

Oh, and as usual there's a self-plug or two in here: sciencey corps might have Stellar Cartography events, and the *Janus is the Gallente FW-based ship. I'll try to dig up the threads for those in a minute.

Discuss!

Other than FW, CCP does not want players to be in NPC corps. Even in FW, they want players to join as corps 9which sadly has more downsides). They added the tax not that long to help try to nudge players out of NPC corps. At least, if it was all about taxes, a player corp was probably lower (plus you get hangers, etc).

Not saying it's a bad idea. It just doesn't further the goal of getting players into player corporations.