Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Destructable Outposts

I think this would add alot to the game but there are some BIG considerations to making Outposts destructable.

Considerations

1. What do you do with assets in the station.
2. How do the defenders replace the outpost.
3. What do the attackers get out of destroying a outpost.

My idea for destructable outposts.

Rather than making outposts completely destructable (ie in the same way that ships are destructable) make them destroyable to a shell. What i mean by this is that destroying an outpost turns it into a wreck of an outpost. This outpost wreck (shell or super structure of outpost) behaves like a outpost but with none of the services. This means you can still dock but the only thing you have is your hangars and the ability to undock. This means peoples assets are still safe but they have to evacuate it themselves (allowing for even more options for combat).

The outpost can be claimed as a shell by anyone that wants to claim it. This shell then behaves like a outpost egg. In that if you feed it minerals and give it time it repairs the outpost. Now this could be perhaps 3/4 of the minerals required to build a new one as the super structure is already there and it is not quite as flexible as building a new one, as you cant choose which race outpost to build. To give people time to evaculate their assets and to fuel greater conflict you can not stop anyone docking while the outpost is a shell, no security systems work so even a claimed shell is free for all docking (like an NPC station). This gives it the added benefit of an attacking force being about to use it as a staging area without actually having to "take" the outpost.

So what drops when you pop a station, if everyones personal assets are safe what do you get. Well i was thinking that all assets held in escrow at that station are either dropped or destroyed (as per ship destruction). The items held in escrow are everything in that station set up as a sell order and everything set up as contract. Obviously the defender has the option to cancel all their orders when sov is dropped. This does however put the defending team at a disadvantage as they now have to manage distributing ammo etc manually from this station. Buy order isk held in escrow would be destroyed.


Lets look at the considerations i mentioned ealier with this approach.

1. What do you do with assets in the station.

Well nothing. This is effectively the same situation as currently. Your jump clones and your assets are safe in the shell but gives the added benefit of having an amount of time (while the station is rebuilt) to evacuate were you can DOCK and undock. If you dont then you are in the same position as now, your assets are locked in a hostile station where you can only undock.

2. How do the defenders replace the outpost.

As said above they fill the shell with minerals like an egg and wait for it to regenerate.

3. What do the attackers get out of destroying a outpost.

So i could see a few reasons.

a. Economic damage as the defender has to rebuild it.
b. As mentioned earlier a temporary staging area for continued conflict without having to actually manage the station you may not actually want after the conflict.
c. Potential to get escrow assets.

Obviously this means you could end up with shells sitting at planets forever, but if you say that no station can build were a shell already exists then this has a hard limit of the amount of planets in a system before people have to rebuilt old stations rather than just build a new ones. Im also sure most people will not want a completely safe place where hostiles can dock and be safe in their systems so i think the outposts would be rebuilt anyway.


Edit: Added this to the OP as i thought it was important

I think there should be principle that Eve should follow, and for the most part does.

WHAT PLAYERS CREATE, OTHER PLAYERS SHOULD BE ABLE TO DESTROY

I believe outposts and PI are the only exceptions to this (that i can think of).
Hopefully PI will get some type of DUST integration that will make them destructable.

Outposts need to be destructable. I say need as else space just gets better and better over time, never worse.


Im sure there are more things to condsider but i think this idea covers the big ones that i could think of.

What are people thoughts/anything you think i missed that this does not cater for.


KIA

Well, yes and no. conflict drivers in Eve are rarely ecomonic from my experience.

It allows people to burn whole regions to the ground and pillage them back to the dark ages. Not all conflicts are about taking sov. Some are about keeping the alliance grunts happy and active. This allows them to do this with some return and leave a huge power vacuum for someone to fill and rebuild. I think the the rebuild is the point.

In my early days null sec was more of a waste land. Since indestructable outpost building was allowed null sec is better served for outposts than some areas of low sec. As null sec only gets better and better over time, there is no way to destroy what the last people built.

I have not really heard about (as i have not been in null for a while) null sec living out of POSes for ages, though that style of play has now been catered for by worm holes i suppose.


KIA

If a change to amount of DPS needed is required it could be done, but i was just assuming that the mechanics for reinforcing and stuff would stay the same. It would just be that rather than capturing the outpost when you pop it, you instead turn it into a shell then chose if to capture the shell or not. So the DPs requried would be the same as now. You would still have a chance to defend the outpost when it came out of reinforced.

The only thing i guess is if you would want a way for the defenders to surrender the outpost to the attackers so the attackers do not have to rebuild it if the defenders are happy for them to capture it (via diplomacy) rather than destroy it.

I was thinking about outpost destruction for a while.

Here is my idea :

a sov lvl 5 iHub upgrade that allow outpost destruction or de-construction :

When the upgrade is online:
- a vote is required from CEO of corp holding sov + CEO holding station and CEO alliance executor (or something better, feel free to comment)
- a long timer to destruction : something like 3 weeks (any sov change will revert the process)
- 3 step deconstruction, every step begins with an eve mail to each character/corp holding stuff in station
> 1st step all rights over docking etc are removed (i.e. every single eve player can dock up, evacuate etc)
> 2nd step, services are offline, station can't be used to hold medical clones etc
> 3rd step, markets orders are cancelled, blue print jobs are canceled and BPO are back in hangar and finally offices are removed

At the end of timer, you get an egg that you can scoop in freighter and do whatever you want with it.

If sov is lost/transferred, the process revert through the same steps again, everything gets back online after completion of steps.
ex : sov change occurs mid 3rd step, outpost will be fully op after half step 3+step 2 and step 1.

PRO :
- alliance can tweak outpost distribution within nullsec
- outpost destruction allow every one to evacuate : long timer + removed docking restriction
- PVP situations


Feel free to comment

hard enough to build as it is... now u want blow em up...... Their construction will never happen then

I like this idea, null sec alliances are way too comfortable, I wouldn't mind if some of my stuff got vaporized with the station it would encourage me to spread my stuff around and make it worth my while to defend the station.

What? Did I miss something, or did the OP call for an outpost EHP buff? I've read though that post several times now, I don't think you did though...

I would disagree completely with this statement they are easier to build than a super capital fleet. Yet there are 100s of these in the game. With the buff to low end minerals in null this would be even easier now than a when i first suggested it.

I get the impression you have never lived out of a POS. 50 bill or whatever it cost to make an outpost is sooo worth it compared to trying to live out of POSes.

I think you'll find every alliance gets involved in the invasion and conquest of space every now and again. What is the problem with the current system of conquest, and how does a pricetag in the tens of billions for every station solve it?

It already takes time, effort and resources to conquer a lot of stations. No-one is going to go roaming into another alliances space, grind through tens of millions of EHP, come back three days later and do it all over again, then three days after that to do the third timer just to annoy the owners. There are much, much better ways of doing things.

It's going to kill SOV invasions dead. How the hell does that fuel conflict? How does entrenching the current sov holders, making regions near un-conquerable even if the sov holders have cascaded and long since stopped fighting, pricing anyone without trillions of ISK completley out of SOV warfare and leaving invaders with new posessions they cannot possibly hold since the previous owners can come and go at will do anything but discourage invasions? What do you do about the previously mentioned groups dropping outposts in every single system they own in the face of invasion just to burn out the attackers?

Who the hell is going to spend a week and three enormous structure grinds just to 'pilliage' a system when it gives them nothing in return?

Do you actually know anything about station conquest?

I agree the SOV system is broken, in fact it the reason i left null. This was never about fixing SOV mechanics. I would not feel qualified to suggest SOV mechanic changes as i have been out of that for a while. This was about being able to raze regions to ground rather than conquering them.

All the problems you have mentioned above are SOV mechanic failings.

For example
What do you do about the previously mentioned groups dropping outposts in every single system they own in the face of invasion just to burn out the attackers?

Well this is a problem now, in fact it is worse, without destructable stations if a defender does this then that region is a grind FOREVER to conquer.

How does entrenching the current sov holders
I don't believe making outpost destructable is entrenching the current SOV mechanics. The mechanics for how you attack the outpost does not determine whether at the end of the attack you get given a choice to conquer or destroy (shell in my idea) the outpost.

What i was suggesting was a change to outcome of the attack not the mechanics for the attack themselves, because as i mentioned earlier i would not feel like i had enough information to analysis that.


KIA