Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello,

Incursions are a curious subject in the EVE storyline. The repetitious attacks by Sansha's Nation exist in a state of limbo - although clearly possessing of advanced techniques/technology, game design restrictions hobble the over all 'world ending threat' to a 'nuisance' level. Incursion had a powerful feeling at the start of it, but as farming mechanics settled in its threat presentation evaporated.

What I propose is a face lift of Incursions, shifting it away from Sansha's Nation and to the Rogue Drones faction. This can enable a much smoother integration into the EVE story and help preserve the 'threat' value of future Big Bads in the EVE world. It also makes use of a faction that players can happily settle into as a farming mechanism.

For those unaware, Rogue Drones are semi-autonomous machines that act of their own interest and will. Most behave as extensions of a Hive Mind, but a few have something akin to true sentience. Their driving motives are difficult to discern, but we mostly see them collecting resources and violently propagating themselves in space.

Rogue Drones are every where in the New Eden star cluster, and they have different Hives spread out in space. Each Hive may be independent by itself, or in alliance with others, how they cooperate internally is not clear - equal sources point to one Hive Mind, or many local Hive Minds.

If we were to take Rogue Drones and face lift Incursions towards 'Outbreak', we can take what the Rogue Drones already do and fit it right in. The setup would be along the following lines :

A Rogue Drone Hive, or collection of Hives, begin a massive mobilization effort in a constellation. Enormous Hive fleets begin assaulting civilized space, consuming resources both raw and human. Stations are taken over, asteroid belts are stripped in record time, planets become harvesting grounds for their resources, etcetra.

No special trickery is necessary, no unique technology or otherwise has to be injected into the storyline. The motivation of the drones is all that changes - 'the why' becomes the story center piece. What caused these machines to up the ante? Whats their master plan?

At the end of an Outbreak, if it survives and 'ends', there's a couple options. The Drone Fleets can simply disappear into unknown parts of space, or be tied into another Outbreak else where. Conversely, if players 'finish' an Outbreak, they end up destroying the primary Hive(s) responsible - thus killing that strain entirely. There's definite room for there to be a 'oh they got away and things are worse now', and 'good work their over all effort has been reduced'.

This approach would enable a clean transition while still preserving the core game play players enjoy from Incursion. But wait, there's more! By using the Rogue Drones in an Outbreak environment, the planets they attack can be the ones where Dust Players do their NPC matches on. Cross connectivity can occur at this point: Dust Players can ask help from Outbreak runners on planets with orbital strikes, etcetra.

The net result is that in the storyline, players engage an enemy who fits the 'endless numbers' stratagem quite well. Although Sansha's Nation was built up to have this ability, players perceive that an end 'has to come'. The Sansha storyline can't truly progress while its stuck providing the material for a feature game mechanic. Rogue Drone cleaning up, however, may never have an end - the little buggers get every where like rabbits. Perhaps there is no grand plan to them, and all that has happened is we have taken their story habits and made it realized in the game world.

I hope you enjoyed my suggestion :)

As a final thought, there is something to be said about Incursions from different factions (angels, guristas, etc). I am not certain how feasible that would be in the game programming, and how much work would be involved custom tailoring that many Incursion settings. Rogue Drone Outbreaks to me seem to be the simplest means possible that can continue the 'global attack' capability.

Thank you for your time.

Ghost, you've got a winner here.

Laughed a little after the seriousness of the rest of the topic. Well done Ghost Hunter a good suggestion for adding some dynamic content. I'm not for a static universe and more DOES need to be done with Incursions to up the ante. Rogue Drones and Sansha maybe?

Well done Capsuleer, you get a +1 from me!

tbh i never understood the whole sansha incursion thing in the first place. i can get a borg-ish civilization that assimilates people as it goes along but why would they continue invading extremely hostile space for years after getting their cyborg asses handed to them time after time after time?
with drones it's a whole other matter. anyone who ever used a computer can attest that it has no sense of self-preservation whatsoever, so the perseverance and failure to adapt can easily be explained by a "faulty strategic algorithm" or some such.

I like the idea.

The Drones strip a system clean of the roids. One payout would be that large amounts of alloys would be dropped as a mission reward.

Another drop would be new implants based upon Drone technology. Such implants would be similar to the implants that we already have.

To make your idea even more interesting I suggest that Rogue Drone Incursions be accessed only after a certain amount of LP from the Sansha Incursions have been won.

For example you would need 100,000 LP from the Sansha Incursions to purchase a Gate Key that allows you to enter the Rogue Drone area for a week.

From there you would need to secure special passes by taking out Drones in the asteroid belts that allow you access to the Rogue Drone complex sites.

Your idea would also fit in very nicely with DUST514 as an expansion patch.

I think replacing and/or augmenting some of the Sansha incursions with Rogue Drone "incursions" (Outbreaks) would be a very believable progression. I like the idea of Sansha fighting the Drones for resources too, but since Sansha slave soldiers are supposedly cybernetically enhanced human beings there's also the potential for Sansha to ally with the Rogue Drones. (Srs bad guy fleet = Live story event?)

I'd like to see new incursion sites and harsher penalties for not defeating an incursion too, but those idea are probably best posted in the Incursion forum...

EDIT: I can't find an Incursion forum :'(

Overall seems like a fairly great idea




This however both scares and confuses me. Ghost shouldn't use emotes.

I endorse this product and\or service.

It would be nice to have a little more dynamic stuff happening.
+1

My idea is too similar to your idea for it's own thread, so I'll contribute here

This should be what makes 0.0 space actually dangerous.

CCP schedules another event for some event like the Seyllin Incident that further jogs WH space and gives the sleepers a rattle. "Sleeper Incursions" start spawning . But not just any old sleepers. Nope. Sleeper Dreads. And Sleeper Dread incursions aren't like normal incursions. They warp to your poses and SBU's and TCU's and reinforce them. They shoot the modules and services. And they come back at the end of the reinforcement timer.

Obviously the frequency of such 'incursions' would need to be balanced. But it should be more frequent the longer a system is empty. This would mean that any 0.0 space with sov, needs to be lived in and defended regularly. Maybe then going for a 0.0 roam wouldn't be 50 jumps of dead systems before getting hotdropped

The appearance of Sleeper drones in K-space causes the normal Rogue Drones to go berserk, and start raiding all of New Eden.
*diabolical laughter*