Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yesterday I got an idea into my head and started combing the forums to see if someone else was faster. Since I haven't found anything like it, here it goes:

You all know how all NPC research and -copy slots are always full everywhere? Well, except for production efficiency research slots. Those are plenty to find. Right now there are exact to possibilities: Either you start going large with your own research POS, with all the added costs and headaches running your own POS entails, or you have to settle with some half-forgotten NPC-research station in some godforsaken backwater, were you "only" have to wait two weeks for your free slot.

There is no inbetween for people who just want to occasionally research something, it's not even especially newbie friendly, since waiting for a free slot for weeks isn't fun. Oh, yeah I forgot: They can try out PE-research, since those slots are almost always unused, but that's it.

Here is were my idea comes in:

NPC-slots cost money, your own slots in your own POS don't. But what if you could sell unused slots to outsiders? There are apparently a lot of people out there who are willing to wait 80+ days for their slot to come down from the NPC-heavens, so I guess those same people would also be willing to pay for player-research slots, if it were possible.

Right now we can't do this. Well we can't because we would have to accept strangers into our corps, give them access to our POS, then they would of course not pay for their research slots and instead run off with everything they could grab. This is Eve, after all.

My suggestion would be to change player owned labs to work a little bit like NPC-stations, but with a twist: You could decide to turn on a "public" mode on your lab or labs and other players could then access the research slots on those labs from outside your POS-shield (let's say somewhat around 10km should be max range to the shield for outside-access).

You could also configure how much other players would have to pay for your service, but since all NPC-research slots are insanely crowded, you could demand easily several times of the money NPC-stations want. Essentially, if you end up having free slots you won't need in your research POS, you could decide to sell them instead of dismantling your underused labs.

Even better bonus idea: If you could run a mobile lab in a combined public and normal mode simultaneously. This would be the optimal thing: You could reserve certain slots for your own corp's use and configure others as "open" slots. This would also be the most flexible option: If you can run your labs at full capacity, fine. But if you have a few slots to spare, you can still make money off of them.

So this it. What are your views on the matter?

Edit:

As someone has suggested below, the player-owned lab slots could be opened to their alliance, first. If possible, this change could be made together with everything else. I mean, how hard can it be to change this little bit of POS-code? Just copy+paste from the NPC-part of research slots and your work is half done! (I wish.)

Second Edit:

New ideas have turned up:

-Dynamic NPC-research costs. If all slots are full, the price rises fast, if at least two slots are free, the prices drop slowly.

-Some sort of "Public Research Com-Link" structure for a new, modular POS-system. It links your labs either to a station (NPC or one those player-made ones in NullSec) or to other player-made structures like depots or something and allows slots to appear at the linked structures as open to the public. A shot at circumventing theft. And since the necessary information to start up a research job has been send at the start of the job, blueprints won't vaporize the moment someone packs up his or her lab. Instead the jobs in public slots continue until they are finished and delivered, then the slots will vanish.

And letting others pay for slots you can't fill right now is somehow bad? After all, you can demand as high as a price as others are willing to pay, which looks like a lot if you see NPC-waiting queues longer then three months. If some people are willing to wait that long, they're willing to pay you something extra for a slot you can't fill right now.

Good point, I'll add it to the OP.

What, and make standings even more useless? But if CCP finds some other way we can use faction standing, I'm all for it.

My guess is that they'll make a modular lab to go with the other modular POS structures they're hopefully working on, and they'll remove most npc slots then.

This, very much this.

work it like how the offices are -- check usage at (some interval):
- if all used then hike the price.
- if all less 1 are used, then no change
- if free slots >= 2, then lower the price (by a smaller margin than the price hike).

This idea isn't bad, it would force people to move occasionally. Hopefully NPC-research slots would become a lot more dynamic, with more slots sometimes freeing up in some abandoned backwater. Good for resourceful newbies!



I didn't even think about this. After actually thinking about this problem, I came up with some sort of solution:

If CCP goes ahead with new modular POS-systems, the new labs could get a small, additional structure. A so-called "Public Research Com-Link" which links your lab with the next NPC-station and allows the holder corp of the POS to configure certain lab slots to appear in-station, open to the public. Ad some fine tuning, like a flexible code that makes the paid for slots part of the NPC-station code-wise (so if the POS or the relevant structures get dismantled, the public research jobs won't just disapear into the aether and can at least be finished) and some sort of mechanism for cases were there is no NPC-station available, and all will be good.

Instead of just linking to local NPC-stations, the PRCL could link to other player-made structures, too. For those who live in empty systems or in NullSec (or W-Space) and still want to sell their free research slots for some reason. Maybe this way research slots could be made available to other alliance members, too.

I'm not sure how the case of linking research between different player-structures should be handled. Some sort of compromise seems to be the best: If the labs or the PRCL are lost, only the not-public research jobs are lost, too. To destroy the sold public research, the linked player structure (which can be anywhere in-system) must be destroyed, too.

Likewise if you sold your slot, you can't just cancel the public research slot to steal the blueprint, since the blueprint is in the other structure, which may or may not be actually part of your corp/alliance. You can pack up your labs and POS, though: The sold jobs continue until they are finished and vanish after the other players got their blueprints back.

If this system could work like that, players could make a living of selling not only research-, but also production slots over similar structures. I envision people who like to be some sort of captain of industry, without the annyoing work. People who like to work with a POS, but don't like doing research and production could sell slots to people who want to try/dabble in those parts of the game, but for some reason can't. (Corp doesn't trust them, so they aren't allowed near a POS, to cheap/poor for their own POS, NPS-research slots all full.)

I already suggested to ccp to PLEASE Make pos's secure for pilots to use outside of corp; keep their input and output separate in hangars and, if in corp, show a tab other than "personal hangar" such as the ones they're allowed access to. This would be on EVERY module in pos, where access is set to "allow public" and the assembly lines are managed to allow public. These game mechanics are already there to allow based on standing and charge based on it as well.

All they need to do is make a "personal hangar" tab when you view hangars of a pos module and allow starting of manufacturing/research jobs from there and output goes there.

The size of the personal hangar would be based on the module....ammuniion assembly = 100k. Ship assembly (large) = 500k or so (these are estimated examples of sizes needed to hold materials to make stuff)

FINISH IT CCP!!!! The majority of mechanics is there; you just need to take the "personal hangar module" and incorporate it into each pos module, as a tab everyone allowed in shield sees and size the available to be based on materials needed to fit to make the intended items made in that module.

If pos goes down, delete the jobs. If the module is unanchored, do NOT give whats in it to the corp; instead, destroy it.

this would make people have to come to trust a corp to use their pos.

I live in NRDS space; i have neutral friernds that I would gladly allow to use my labs and etc.

Also, when making this ccp, allow to allow in force field based on standing, not password and, if they attack pos, make it where they are attacked by it.

Simple enough to answer, when doing research the BP doesn't have to move to the tower, set it up like it currently is, and make it so it merely needs to be in the station in the same system. Its how we do it now, so not really an issue.