Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Update:

Change the existing cap booster module, so that it can take three kinds of "ammo" : full, one-time-use cap charges; full, rechargeable cap charges; and (rechargeable) empty cap charges.

If you activate it with full charges loaded, it will fill your capacitor, and (if they are of the rechargeable type) place empty charges into your hold (nothing gets placed in your hold if they are one-time-use type charges). If you activate it with empty charges loaded, it will drain your capacitor, and place full, rechargeable charges into your hold.

There could be separate blueprints for "one-time-use" and rechargeable cap charges, the rechargeable ones being significantly more expensive (5-10x more?)



Ancillary shield boosters would work in exactly the same way, but filling or draining the shield instead of the capacitor, depending on whether full or empty charges are loaded into them.

________________________________OLD OP______________________________________________
Pretty simple. Make it so that cap charges don't just disappear, but instead turn into "empty charges" in your hold (maybe only 50-75% of them?). Another module can then load empty charges, and use up your cap to fill them, placing them back into the hold again as full charges.

Allows more creativity and fine control of cap. Either solo (if you are out on a long adventure which varies between moments of intense cap usage and moments of boredom, like gate camping, then you can last longer without docking) or in groups (your salvaging buddy on a mission, for example, could be recharging some caps via jetcan for the combat ship while salvaging, etc. without having to be near you necessarily, like with logi)

Sounds tedious, sounds like a waste of time and cap in combat. I can't see any good reason to want to reuse charges because they are dirt cheap, and also is their even a ship out their that has the spare room to fit such a redundant module?

yeah we carry something like this when we 4x4. its a battery boost when it gets low from wenching or big lights. use this for a kick in the pants, jeep starts, then let it sit on the engine to recharge for next time.

i love the idea of recharging cap boosters when you are sitting idle. down side would be once you click the mod on, over 1/2 your cap would disappear leaving you vulnerable for a bit...

i like it!!

Cost is irrelevant, because this isn't about saving money. It's about not having to dock at a station / being able to hold more than a hold's full of charges (or holding more of something else), with the tradeoff of having less of an immediately available capacitor "buffer"

True about the fitting, however.

Okay, how about instead of a separate module, we simply modify the existing, regular cap boosters so that they can load empty OR full charges, and when activated, will discharge full ones or charge empty ones, depending on what is inside of them?

Then it doesn't take an extra module to fit. It would just be a native feature of the cap booster module itself.

Similarly, the ancillary shield booster could charge empty cap charges (when loaded with empty ones) by sacrificing available shield strength (basically you cause damage to your own shield to charge booster charges up)



During downtime, when you aren't using your cap very much, you can unload your full charges and load up empty ones, and run the module on recharge, then switch "ammo" back to full a little while before you expect to see some action.


Game design suggestions do not have to "solve problems."

For example, what "problem" does the existence of EWAR modules solve? None. They simply add variety to the possible combat strategies, and variety makes the game more fun by letting people develop varying complementary strategies.

Sometimes, a GD suggestion is simply about adding interesting, varying content.

That is one possibility. Much higher cost, but fully reusable.

My earlier alternative was to have them cost the same as they do now, but there is something like a 1/3 chance that they will break every time they are used and not yield an empty cell. So the recharging mechanism could effectively give you about 3 times your starting amount (after multiple rounds of recharging), but they would eventually all break.

I kind've like your "more expensive" idea better, tbh.



I disagree. This recharging mechanism is useless DURING a battle, obviously (or at least pvp battles. Maybe during certain missions, in between waves, etc.).

So, this would mainly be used during downtime between fights. And currently, during downtime, you could ALREADY always just stop what you're doing, fly all the way to a station, buy new ones, and fly back. It's just that that is:
A) Really annoying and unfun to do, and
B) Doesn't really make any sense, lore-wise. Why would an advanced space age civilization not have figured out the technology behind rechargeable batteries yet...?

So really, this is mostly a suggestion that would remove the tedious grind of flying to a shop and back after a battle, allowing people to spend more time pew-pewing in the field and less time doing annoying refueling runs. It doesn't really give any massive advantage to combat itself. it's a logistics/convenience thing. And cost alone is a sufficient disadvantage for logistical convenience.


By the way, for those who might not WANT to pay more OR use this mechanic: We could just have two types of cap charges: one-time-use, and rechargeable ones. Both work in the same modules, but the one-time ones disappear, and the rechargeable ones place empty charges back into your hold, which can be loaded into the modules and charged back. Only the rechargeable type would be more expensive than currently.



EDIT: updated the OP with all the new ideas instead.

Ya'll need to make up your minds. Is this useless, redundant, and pointless? Or is it overpowered and unbalancedly good?

Can't have it both ways.


And as to the second quote (too powerful): i/we suggested adding both a minor, non-combat-tactics-oriented improvement, AND an associated steep cost. There's nothing inherently unbalanced about adding both costs and benefits at the same time...

I never said you needed to. I'm just pointing out that when people argue exact opposite problems from one another, it is generally an indication that the idea is better balanced than either of them think it is.


Horseradish. You were clearly suggesting that this would make the modules overpoweringly stronger in some (unspecified and unbalanced) way, while he was suggesting that it was an underpowered change that nobody would ever use. Those are precise opposites of one another.


1) No, I don't have to demonstrate that. As I mentioned earlier (and you did not respond to), game design is not all about fixing problems. Including EWAR in the game, for instance, did not "fix" any "problems." It would be a perfectly viable game without EWAR, and in fact there are many successful games out there that do not include this type of combat.

EWAR is a good idea anyway though, despite not "fixing any problems," because it adds variety to the game, and variety, as they say, is the spice of life. It is simply more INTERESTING and FUN to have more options available to you for strategy, and more possible patterns of benefits and costs to play with, especially in a sandbox game.

Thus, if a feature suggestion adds fun variety and an interesting new cost/benefit tradeoff option to the game, it can quite easily be a good idea, even if it does not fix any problems.

2) Even though I am not, in fact, OBLIGATED to fix a problem (above), this one does happen to fix a problem, anyway. It fixes the problem of people having to do the pointless and unfun grind of flying back to a trade hub or cache station when their cap charges run out, in between battles. Such a station might be several jumps away, if you're doing a roam, and having to go there adds nothing useful or beneficial to the game. Just tedious pointlessness.

If you're able to fly to a station to pick up more charges, then by definition, you are NOT in the middle of a battle. You've already either won or escaped your most recent encounter. So having to go to the station adds nothing to the tactical combat game one way or the other. All it adds is wasted time that pvpers are NOT spending going "pew pew"

The ability to recharge cap charges in the field means that pvpers would be able to essentially refill their hold with charges while en route to their next target, without having to divert to a station. This is more fun, because people get to spend more time doing what they want to do, but without giving them any unfair edge in actual combat.

3) Another problem that this addresses is the need for more pew pew in the game. This is pretty widely agreed upon as a real, quality goal in the game, by both players and devs (at least between willing parties). This suggestion helps create more pew pew by allowing people to recharge their cap charges while traveling to/hunting for their next target, instead of having to stop, take a detour to a station to refill, and THEN going back to hunting/traveling to the next target.


This is also a silly requirement. It's not possible to prove a negative, derp. Nobody can ever "demonstrate" conclusively in their OP that something will not create any other problems. That is not logically possible. It is therefore, by necessity, mostly the responsibility of people who disapprove of the idea, to bring up possible new problems.

However, from the discussion so far, I can suggest at least a couple of potential problems that people MIGHT worry about, which would not actually be real problems:

1) "This would unbalance / change combat in some way."
No, it wouldn't. It would neither make combat easier, nor more difficult, or have any other effect on real combat. Why? Because if your ship is fitted with a cap booster or an ancillary shield booster, this implies that your ship's fitting was NOT cap stable under its intended usage load during combat. I.e., if you fitted one of these modules, it's because you expected to USE it, and rely on it.

And if your capacitor or shield is not stable without cap booster charges, then that means that when you run out of cap charges, you're either going to die, OR you are going to be INCREDIBLY in need of / low on capacitor. Which means that the absolute LAST thing you would ever do during combat would be to use up a bunch of that nonexistent capacitor to recharge cap charges.

Thus, nobody is ever going to use this during combat, so, ergo, it would have no effect on combat strategy or balancing.

And that's fine, because that's not what it is designed for. It's designed as a convenience feature to prevent you from having to travel all the way back to a station IN BETWEEN battles, such that you can spend more time doing what is fun and sinking isk for the benefit of the game, while you're out on patrols or roams.

2) "This would screw over industrialists who make cap charges."

No, it wouldn't. Since rechargeable and one-time-use cap charges would be separate commodities, they can be given different prices. And thus the market would adjust on its own, such that the costs and profits to be made from each would reflect the real-world ratios of how long each of them typically lasts for in real usage.


I can't think of any other problems, and like I said earlier, it's not possible to prove a negative. So it's up to detractors of the idea to suggest others.