Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Implant Manufacture System

CCP has hinted at players making implants, so I'm going to throw an idea out there. The best analogy for this idea is like fitting a ship. There is CPU and PG, using these, players 'fit' an implant to perform various functions.

There are a number of parts and pieces to an implant, they are as follows.

Implant Parts

Chassis
Neural Interface (CPU)
Bio Interface (PG)
Mezzanine Bus
Attribute Processors
Core System Processors
Subsystem Processors
Auxiliary Processors

Each of these parts has a function as follows, there are two main categories, Structure and Processors.

Structural Components
Chassis The foundation of an implant. Think of it like a mother board.
Neural Interface - Provides CPU to the implant and acts as a bridge to the brain
Bio Interface - Provides Power Grid to the implant by utilizing the electrochemical energy of the host
Mezzanine Bus - Provides the pathways to link Processors and Interfaces to the Chassis

Processor Components
Attribute Processors - These processors impact character attributes, a different processor for each of the main character attributes such as memory and perception.
Core System Processors - These impact ship attributes such as hull HP, shied base HP, resistance, ship PG, CPU, Ore Hold Size, etc.
Subsystem Processors - These can impact attributes of modules on ships, so can impact such things as tracking, rate of fire, base damage, missile velocity, afterburner speed boost, etc.
Auxiliary Processors - These Processors provide enhancement to any other processor to which they are linked. This will be explained further.

Now, when players build an implant, they do not use a BPO or a BPC. They instead "Craft" the implant by placing the necessary parts on the Chassis and actually build the implant.

See this mock up to get an idea of what I mean,
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/AdunhSlavy/ImplantBuild512.png

What we see here is a player who has built an implant that will increase the rate of fire by 2%. The two red objects Bio Interfaces, giving PG to the chassis. The blue is a Neural Interface providing CPU. Notice they are connected to the chassis with those little green lines. Those green lines are Mezzanine Bus components.

We also see two silver boxes. Both of those are Rapid Firing Subsystem Processors. Connected to them are those green and orange boxes. The green boxes are Perception Attribute Processors and the orange are Willpower Attribute Processors. The smaller blue boxes connecting the Attribute Processors to their respective Subsystem Processor are Auxiliary Processors.

Edit - Just wanted to point out that a Rapid Firing Subsystem Processor needs two Perception and one Willpower to match the skill "Rapid Firing". Also, not in the mock up. If a player wanted to create say a +5 Memory Implant, they would use five Memory Attribute Processors, linked in series to one another with Auxiliary Processors and then one end of the series would be connected to the Chassis with a Mezzanine

Also in the mockup we see, on the left, the inventory. This is how many parts and pieces we have in our hangar/lab. Down on the bottom will be a set of tool buttons (that I did not draw to spare you my lack of artistic ability) that we use to drag/drop from our inventory, rotate and place our bits and pieces.

Notice that the pieces all have sizes. Only so much can be placed on a chassis, and the Aux Processors and Mezzanine Busses can not be placed just any where, they have to line up.

More expensive and better implants will be manufactured from smaller components. Smaller components will require more risk to obtain. Structural Components will be more common. Large processors more common and safer to find, smaller and more specialized components will be more dangerous and more difficult to find.

Players will need to discover the recipes, try to cram what they can into a chassis and see what works. When a player sells an Implant, the buyer can not see how it is constructed, they can only see what an implant can do.

Certainly over time there will be player made sites of all sorts of implant designs ... just as it should be.

Those sound like good ideas to me. Maybe even add something like corpse processing, and when you pop a rat, out comes a pod and you can pop him before he warps away.

Player corpses, rat corpses, dust corpses.

I would try to stay away from too much of this coming from rats though. Rats already drop a lot of stuff, and Eve does have a bit of a "too much ISK" problem. My preference would be to have these resources come from something other than bountied rats. Perhaps some can come from rats, but not the majority of it. Eve has a division of labor problem, I'd prefer not to add to it.

Turns out, people like Burning Jita more than they like Flaming Forums. The third is likely in planning as we speak.

Now that the stickies are gone ... bump

It would depend on how many "recipes" CCP made valid. If there were only 10 valid types, then regardless of how they are assembled internally, those 10 would still be the only valid types.

Suppose a +3 Whatever. Three processors vertical or horizontal across the chassis ... would it matter?

Coding it all ... that's the issue. I suspect if CCP does any sort of implant making, it'll be what we are used to, blue prints or something very similar.

the idea is always something i believe CCP wanted to do,

but i think they looked at maybe having the BPCs dropping in sites and the +1 > +5s being bpo styled ones or even max run bpc from the FW stores

Fact is already in the DB there is the R.A.M Cybernetics, and has been for as long as i care to remember

So its something that has been toyed for some time

Personally i would happily see the hard-wiring be a drop in the Sites (+3 and below highsec +4 and below low sec +5 and below nullsec)
Then have the learning ones either be BPOs or BPCs from the LP stores

Removing NPCs doing artificial price controls is bad? Since when?

NPCs and their arbitrary price controls are a bad thing.

Now pay close attention ....

If implants parts are found at sites, methods and activities, that do not involve shooting rats that give bounties, then so long as the materials produced are rare enough to maintain ISK/Hr parity with missions, then people collecting implant parts and doing production will not be producing ISK from rats.

The villian in the picture is doing the missions, not the other way around.

The less people there are shooting rats for bnounties, the less ISK enters the system. It's a concept known as oppertunity cost, and it can be viewed from a number of perspectives.

Suppose 1000 ISK a day enteres the system from shooting rats. and let's suppose that 200 ISK a day is consumed by players cashing in for implants from the LP stores. The net gain a day is 800 ISK.

Now let's suppose that CCP moves implant building and resource collecting to an activity that players can do, an activity that does not involve shooting rats. Where are players going to get their 200 ISK day worth of implants? Well some of them are going to have to go and gather those resources, 200 ISK worth. So those players are now not shooting rats; chances are about 200 ISK a day less of rat shooting.

So 200 ISK less a day of shooting rats, or a 200 ISK a day sink ... the net result is an 800 ISK a day net gain.