Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I find whole clone ugrade thing as a nuisance simillar to buying fuel for ships or going to toilet with orc warrior or stuff like that.

As long as your basic clone cost more than your ship, you're not going to notice any change.

I've been mulling the idea that perhaps we can buy blank clones at certain grades that we can decant aspects of our 'in-game' consciousness into, so for example lets pretend that I am a highly skilled character that can do just about everything, but I fancy going on a frigate roam in null.

To do this I buy a blank clone with a 5 mill sp limit for a couple of hundred thousand isk, then I load in skills that I have already trained from my main clone that can do everything that I want.

I fill up the 5 million sp limit with things like the correct frigate skill to 5, controlled bursts, gunnery, afterburner to 5 etc, etc. Then I clone jump into that and go for my roam. If I get podded I wake up in the normal way in my main clone none of the worse for wear.

The obvious advantage is the clone is now cheaper than the frigate I am flying, I probably won't install implants in my 'frig combat clone' so my training time will suffer, but I will be able to comfortably have fun in my frigate by giving up lots of versatility that comes from having a highly skilled main clone. If we include a limit to how often you can jump into these clones similar in nature to the jump clone mechanic (reduced in time by infomorph psychology skill perhaps) then it would reduce abuses.

E.g. my fleet needs an jump carrier pilot, but I've already jumped into my frig combat clone and have a cool down period of half a day or so left, so I cant re-jump into my main and help my corp with their jump freighter needs.

I think CCP is going towards something of this nature as we've had hints of a similar ability in the Jita 4-4 chronicle. I like the idea of having a mining clone that only has the skills I need to fly a barge and mine in null that is as disposable as a cheap frig. I might do more low/null sec mining then...

All other aspects of clone life should remain, for example if you are out and about in your main clone and don't update it then you should lose sp if you get podded etc.

With respect to the above posting. CCP - Plesae consider making it so that the Corp itself can take out a monthly Insurance for it's pilots - that can come off the Corp Billing system.

This could be easy for us to use - could make Player Corps more attractive than NPC corps - and wouldn't hurt us that much as we make tons of money - and it would enable us to offer our people a better incentive.

Following on from Mag's Post - yes - a flat rate fee would be good too - scaled with membership?

I think the problem is for the very high Skilled characters.
So it would be more interestening to revamp the price curve instead to just reduce the prices.
Needless to speak about the implants.

But, the jump clone timer is to me a bigger problem, and I continue to ask a skill that reduce the timer by 10% per level....

Dust Bunnies don't pay more for better clones. With Planetary Conquest they just pay for clones or the infrastructure to produce them. I wonder if there's a way to do the same for capsuleers?

I'd prefer to see player-built clones in the market, with capsuleers switching to the DUST style of clone system: you buy a bunch of clones, stick them at a medical facility of your choosing, and your respawns are free just as long as that supply of clones is available. At some point you'll run out of clones and fall back to your medical insurance clone, which is provided for you at cost as per the current system.

I'd also like to see the removal of the distinction between "medical clone" and "jump clone". You would just have a bunch of clones over here, a bunch of clones over there, and some of them happen to have implants fitted. It would also be nice to be able to fit implants to clones in bulk, so I could have a stock of "interceptor piloting" clones over there in FW space, a stock of "hisec arazu" clones over there in hisec where I keep getting killed in wardecs, and a stock of "ultimate explorer" clones.

Then when I get podded I have the opportunity to choose which stock of clones to reactivate into. Well, perhaps I make a decision before I get podded about which stock of clones to use, and the current process of activating a jump clone instead becomes the process of selecting which clones I get reanimated from when I die (not unlike selecting a fitting before spawning in DUST).

Sure, keep a timer on how long I can switch clone types i.e.: infomorph psychology impacts how quickly I can switch from one head full of implants to another, or one cloning facility to another. I can live with some kind of backstory about capsuleer clones being far more complex than DUST clones (mostly due to the neural linkages to our spaceships and the magic of implants & hardwirings, rather than just being another meat bag with a fancy cranial implant).

I am a dictor pilot with 102 million skill points. I +1 these changes :)

I haven't scrolled though all the posts so forgive me if this was brought up previously....

People gripe about the cost of a clone after being podded but it's usually significantly less than the cost of implants.

Okay it costs 5 mil ISK for a 42 mil SP clone, 20 mil ISK for a 92 ml SP pilot and 30 mil ISK for an 120 mil SP pilot. This is about half the cost of two +4 learning implants.

People like to talk about the 150 mil ISK cost for a 450 mil SP clone... Who has 450 mil SP? I'm not saying they're no pilots out there that need a 450 mil SP clone but it's not the norm. Even an 156 mil SP clone only costs 45 mil ISK.

You might argue well a clone is required but implants are not. This is true but who wants to gimp their training time that badly. Not doing either results in a significant loss of SP. Even when I fly in nullsec and know I'm going to get podded a lot I have two +3's.

Of course I'm talking about pilots that are cheap and only have two learning implants installed. Anyone that looked at killboards knows that many pilots have more than just that.

The problem is not that they cost too much across the board, it is that the costs go up faster than the SP they cover.

The exponential rate of SP stored on the clone is about 1.3, a 30% increase from each clone grade to the next (compounding). But the exponential cost increase is much higher. It starts around 1.4 but goes up past 1.5 around midway, and goes back down towards the top.

The clone grade Omega costs 11.5 times as much per skillpoint as does the clone grade Beta.

New players who don't know how to make money can easily pay for their med clones with some excess ISK they accidentally made shooting a couple of highsec belt rats. Now I do feel that new pilots should have cheap med clones so they can go die several times and learn how to PVP, but also the price should be enough for them to feel it. That way it won't come as a surprise later when med clones start costing ISK.

Middle-aged players like me have a pretty fair med clone cost. I'm at clone grade Rho, and while the cost of my med clones is annoying, it serves to make me think twice before flying blindly into a suicide fight and also encourages me to fly something that cost more than pocket lint. I'm not a baby pilot anymore, this is how it should be.

But older players have to pay out an arm and a leg just to cover the med clone. It's extortion, and makes a lot of them not want to play as much. We need them in our fleets!!

I agree... That is one thing that separates Eve from games like WoW... When you die it costs you... Get podded and costs more! In WoW it used to cost gold for repairs if you died in PVP but so many whined about it they changed it.