Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hello Space Friends!

My name is Lyris Nairn and I have been playing EVE Online since 2008. I think that I have something to say that is relevant to many of you. Especially in this age where renters are becoming commonplace and more people than ever are flocking to 0.0, the idea of a "faction Navy"-style mechanic in nullsec seems like it might be worthwhile. I envision there being introduced an Infrastructrure Hub or Outpost upgrade which would spawn NPC entities what I am tentatively calling the "Alliance Navy."

This upgrade would require a certain Sovereignty Level to install, and would require a monthly fee to maintain (like other upgrades).

The upgrade would have the effect of spawning NPC entities whenever one of the Alliance members (or some other entities as denoted by standings) is the victim of aggression. The spawned NPC entities would then attack the aggressor, and behave similarly to Faction Navy vessels in High Security space. Unlike the Faction Navy, these ships would not necessarily spawn infinitely: there might be an internal cooldown of only once per hour, or once every few minutes, or once per individual aggressor in some time window, or once per individual victim, etc. I am not really certain of the specifics, but I am confident that CCP would be able to hammer out the details and create a worthwhile addition to nullsec game play.

This sort of upgrade would be potentially useful to help make a roaming enemy have to dedicate more than a single ship to an attack on PVE ships (their preferred targets), and would force them to make choices about target selection, projection of force, and investment of numbers or assets. In short, I think this is a good idea! Tell me what you think in the comments.

Only if:

The owner had to fill a "navy hangar" with fitted ships.

Said fitted ships were salvagable/lootable/otherwise behaved as a player piloted ship

Piloting AI is considered to have bare minimum skills required to fly the fit.

Piloting AI is as dumb as navy ships.

This means you can throw trash and cheap navy vessels at the system's "defense hangar" but they're going to cost just as much as an actual person flying the same ship, and do a worse job of it.

Oh, and also you'll be paying the NPC crew that flies it an ISK salary every week.

None of these are unreasonable; though, dividing up the upkeep cost from "provide ISK every month" to "provide ISK every week and a bunch of other things" does seem needlessly complex. It would allow for greater customization, though: you could outfit an Alliance Navy of nothing but Insta-artillery fits, rather than whatever the default might be.