Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'd like CCP to implement and test these features ASAP, or at least before my sub runs out.

It does remind me of a Sci-Fi version of Illyriad, a F2P game i'm currently enjoying. If you're not familiar with it, you might want to take a look, if only to get more ideas.

One nice thing about this suggestion is that it allows players interested in PI to focus on quality over quantity. If I hate having to manage multiple networks on multiple planets, I can opt for a "supernetwork" on a single planet instead.

Your on to something there.

But, how will it work and or what would the benefit or difference between the various bloodlines be in terms of populations?

If the answer is none, then there is no real point in having it. This suggestion will at no point attempt to demand that CCP generate or display any of these populations npc for npc. That would lag us all to hell. So we will never see these populations, they will forever be numbers attached to our PI, the same way isk is displayed and attached to our wallet.

If say on the other hand, that:
Minmatar type civilians granted additional bonus to the industrial capacity of industrial PI buildings
Caldari Civlians granted a tax bonus to Civlian PI
Gallente civilians granted a service or entertainment delivery bonus or something to social PI
Amarr civilians granted a military bonus or something to military PI

Then this would be well worth pursuing and developing further.

And how would the civilian populations be distributed?

Would we attach the type of civilians that are attracted to the City on to who the sovereignty owner is?

i.e Amarr sovereignty in hi-sec would attract the 3 Amarr blood lines.
Amarr low sec would attract the Amarr pirate factions

And so on and so forth.

Thoughts on that?

Something else that just occured to me on the planetary gate front, is that if they were capable of transporting goods/persons, they would likely be connected to other planets/systems controlled by the controlling pilot. This would make them incredible important strategic targets for any mercenary operations funded as part of a (trade) war between pilots.

As for the actual mechanics/transport limits on them, it would actually make sense in both a rules and story manner to have them based on position. Need a timer for "cooldown" between allowed transports. Well guess what: Fakeworldia II and IV only line up for a usable tranmit window once every twelve hours. As a shiny new target to shoot at, players could install an orbital transmission booster array to alter/shorten this cooldown period, but it would still happen at some point or another due to relative position/occulsion by stellar objects/radiation surges in the sytem (or some other hand-wavium reason).

For transportation range: perhaps a cue could be taken from the already existing PI skills. Each rank/transmit system upgrade would allow for an additional range of access, all the way up to region wide. Of course, to be able to support a region-spaning PI trade network, you'd have to have invested a fair bit to get to such a point...

I actually live off PI and PVP and I can say this.... this sounds pretty amazing. Right now PI is pretty cookie cutter, make POS Fuel = profit. I'd like to see more depth in PI but something else I'd like to see is being able to rent out temporary facilities. So lets say Ive got 15 planets in a lowsec system. However my alliance suddenly decided to pack up and leave. It would be awesome to be able to contract out my entire 15 planet setup that can maintain a 12.5k Coolant per day setup and either have someone permanently buy it from me, or rent it out to someone for a limited time with them paying me on a daily basis for a certain value depending on how much potential profit there is. Of course this would mean I wouldnt be able to build a new set of 15 planets however I think it would be a cool living to sell people, corps or even alliances awesome setups like the ones Ive made in the past. Im really good with PI and I know how to build settlements very efficiently, It would be nice to be able to capitalize on that knowledge and make a few isk here and there.

Possibly as an alternative to a mass limit would be a volume per unit time limit (especially if there is going to be some form of finite window available). After all, you can only physically cram so much through a gate/fit so much on the transfer pad at once (I'm thinking the "Let's go to Atlantis" boarding scene from SG-1/SGA where everybody lined up carrying/pushing gear and just kept going). Like several other things you could set up a queue of stuff to transfer that went automatically once it was set until it hit the window close.

If paired with the orbital tranmission booster idea, this would dovetail nicely into the Eve/Dust link, where a combined force would be needed to really embargo a planet. Eve-side to blow the transmitter network and cut down your window, and then Dust-mercs to go and "cap the flag" of the physical gate location to actually prevent its use.

Another potential way to allow an interaction would be some kind of anchorable "blockade unit" within Eve space that generates a gravity/distortion/white noise field that would prevent/make difficult the transmission process. So you wouldn't need Dust mercs, but there would need to be some kind of timer/other cost (and who really just loves protecting SBUs now? >.>)

For the Eve shooting at Dust side of things... the only thing I can really think of would be to either have bots in Dust (which could just be really fail...) or to allow Eve players to deploy mecha-killbots into Dust situations that are scary enough to actually be able to take/hold the gates. Their programming would have to be really simple (along the lines of "Take and hold gate. Patrol around within 100m after that") to limit their functionality for other purposes and not take away the special effectiveness of Dusties, but if anyone has better ideas, please speak up :)

This post is a continuation from the Social PI post

* SPI Building attributes to be determined in 2.1 Assembly Hall post.

[Part 1 of 3]

Buildings for Social PI:

Command Center (Upgrade-able)
-(Same power grid and CPU bonuses as Civ/Ind/Mil centers)
-Level 0 (5 slots)
-Level 1 (10 slots)
-Level 2 (15 slots)
-Level 3 (20 slots)
-Level 4 (25 slots)
-Level 5 (30 slots)

Links
- Links = Roads and connections that allow travel between buildings/Slots. No links, no happiness.

Housing blocks (Upgrade-able)
-Housing blocks are single slot based buildings that allow a number of players to setup “apartments” inside. These apartments are glorified CQs that players can either own, or rent to renters/pets at a nominal fee per month. The number of Apartments that a housing block can sustain is dependent on the level of the housing block.
-Level 0 (0 apartment slots)
-Level 1 (20 apartment slots)
-Level 2 (40 apartment slots)
-Level 3 (60 apartment slots)
-Level 4 (80 apartment slots)
-Level 5 (100 apartment slots)

Apartments
-Apartments are capsuleer own-able CQs on a planetary network that can be built or rented within apartment block slots. Naturally they will look different from the space based CQs since they could actually have windows etc. Each apartment block will have its own personal hanger per pilot/owner just as stations do currently. Planets will not be provided personalized storage space outside of apartments or alliance warehouses.

Promenades (Upgrade-able)
-Promenades serve no function save for beautification. The player can select the kind of visual path layouts and designs that will be visible when wandering social PI networks, with regards to the styling and what kind of areas are available. In short, the promenade ends up becoming the look and feel of the city outside and in between the various player-owned buildings. This building type will be purely for the pursuit of immersion, as the level of promenade in use will add a number of wandering NPCs and flying vehicles to give the city that “it’s alive” feel.
-Level 0 (5 NPCs on the whole network)
-Level 1 (25 NPCs + 1 flying vehicles on the whole network)
-Level 2 (45 NPCs + 5 flying vehicles on the whole network)
-Level 3 (65 NPCs + 25 flying vehicles on the whole network)
-Level 4 (85 NPCs + 50 flying vehicles on the whole network)
-Level 5 (100 NPCs + 75 flying vehicles on the whole network)

Star ports (Upgrade-able)
-Star Ports will enable players to land or dock with the planetary network with their spaceships. It will be a publically open facility and display all of the ships docked on the network from other players. This will become the default (and only) ship spinning screen for planets. Each Star Port will have a limit of active ships it can allow docked (depending on the level of the star port). Docked active ships pertain to active pilots with ships in the star port. So while each player can have multiple ships in their hangers, they can only have 1 active ship at a time. These ships become persistent. So if a player is docked on a star port and they logoffski, their ships will remain visible (and as such, can be stolen or damaged during attack without the proper protection mechanisms in place). The same scenario applies if a player has a ship in the star port and jump clones to a station on the other side of Eve. As of this post, sub-capitals and capital ships alike can land on star ports. Supers cannot.
-Level 0 (25 ship port)
-Level 1 (50 ship port)
-Level 2 (75 ship port)
-Level 3 (100 ship port)
-Level 4 (125 ship port)
-Level 5 (150 ship port)

Bank
- Social Banks will differ from civilian NPC banks in the sense that these structures can provide loans to players. Player A sets up a bank on the social network. This bank will not belong to a NPC faction, but will be owned by the corporation/alliance the owner is in. This allows the CEOs and Directors to set the interest & tax rates for their own banks. The bank is linked to corporation (dedicated) or alliance (Executor Corporation) wallet division. All loans will become contracts between the player that initiates the loan and the corporation wallet the bank is linked to. Alliances can setup dedicated corporations with a set amount of isk in its wallet specifically for banking operations as a fail safe, or if they are feeling brave and lucky, link the banks to the main executor corporation wallet. The loan duration can be selected from the list of time frames for the contract from the contract drop down menus, alongside the amount desired. The corp CEO, director, financial directors or bankers have to approve all loans prior to the contract going active and isk transfers commencing.
- Once a player has selected an amount and duration, the alliance interest rate is applied and is due, along with the money borrowed at the end of the specified time frame. Once the player confirms the contract and the banking corp approves it, the money is withdrawn from the applicable corporation wallet division and paid into the player wallet. The contract is binding and persistent. So even if a trail character takes out the loan and then fades into history with 2 bil in isk, the isk is automatically deducted from the player who took out the contract, alongside the owed interest when the contract runs out. This will put player wallets into negative values if they do not have the isk, regardless if the character is deleted or inactive. So if you just need that 20 mil for a new battle cruiser or if you need 2 bil for a faction fitted Capital with the intention and capability to repay said loan, the player alliance driven planetary banking sector is there to service your isk needs.

SPI buildings list continued [Part 3 of 3]

Small Shipyard
- Similar to POS based small ship assembly arrays. Import materials + blueprints and install the job. Owners can charge a nominal isk fee/tax per job or make the service free as per existing 0.0 POS/outpost mechanics. Can construct shuttles, frigates and destroyers.

Medium Shipyard
- Similar to POS based medium ship assembly arrays. Import materials + blueprints and install the job. Owners can charge a nominal isk fee/tax per job or make the service free as per existing 0.0 POS/outpost mechanics. Can construct cruisers, battle cruisers and industrial ships.

Large Shipyard
- Similar to POS based large ship assembly arrays. Import materials + blueprints and install the job. Owners can charge a nominal isk fee/tax per job or make the service free as per existing 0.0 POS/outpost mechanics. Can construct Battleships, Orcas and POS based modules.

XL Shipyard
- Similar to POS based XL ship assembly arrays. Import materials + blueprints and install the job. Owners can charge a nominal isk fee/tax per job or make the service free as per existing 0.0 POS/outpost mechanics. Can construct Freighters, Carriers and Dreadnoughts. These buildings can only be built in low sec, 0.0 and whs.

General Factory
- Similar to outpost and POS based manufacturing lines. These buildings allow the construction of t1 capital components, modules, weapons, medium, low slots, drones, ammunition, rigs or any other t1 item that has a BPO seeded on the market. Import the blueprint + materials and setup the job. Owners can charge a nominal isk fee/tax per job. This building cannot produce t2 or t3 items

Advanced Factory
- Similar to the general factory. This building can only produce t2 and t3 items. Owners can charge a nominal isk fee/tax per job. This building cannot produce t1 items

Drug Laboratory
- Similar to POS based drug lab. Import materials and blueprints from space and setup the job accordingly. Owners can charge a nominal isk fee/tax per job or make the service free as per existing POS mechanics.

Power Plant
- If present on the network, it provides power to all slots/buildings via links. If there is no active power plant on the network if it has no links to the other slots, or if the power plant is destroyed by invading forces, all slot based buildings and facilities go offline and cannot be used.

Communications Facility
-While the cities will be in a solar system with local (or not if its in whs), the planet itself will not have a local channel. To this end, players docked on planets will show up on local in space, but players in space will not be visible to players on the planets, nor will other players on planets be able to see or chat to each other outside of corp/alliance/public channels. The communications facility will uplink to the solar system local and show all users active within the system. The facility can also allow the modification of the local settings, to be instant (like Empire) or delayed (like WHS).

Bounty Office
- Allows access to the existing outpost bounty office from planets.

Faction Warfare Office
-Alliances or corporations that want to bring the Empire Faction War to areas of low-sec and 0.0 where it has not yet spread to, need only build a single faction warfare office. This office will spawn the needed space based FW bunkers that Eve players fight over, in addition to creating a FW LP store within the FW Office. In addition, if a FW Office is present on the planet with a Bar or Pleasure hub, FW agents can be purchased from the FW LP stores and placed in either the FW Office, the Bars or Pleasure hubs of choice on the applicable planet(s). The Empire Factions will subsidize the Faction Warfare Office each month with a payout from the Faction warfare isk pool. This pool is funded by the tax from the number of PI Cities located in FW space (Hisec and Low). All the tax paid from these cities end up in the faction tax pool and each month, the faction automatically pays out some dividends to all the FW corps and FW Office owners from this pool. Thus, the more cities each empire faction controls via FW, the more funding the cities and FW corps receive to continue the war effort for that faction.

With features like this I would definitelly bring more people into eve. Just imagine...... governing your own towns and cities.....your own district ......a planet ..... hmmmm.....

I have to admit, now that CCP allowed customs offices to deny access based on standings, it's really going to hurt allot of the individual & small time PI producers in New Eden.

This move has made PI yet another techmoon based resource reserved for the largest 0.0 and wh alliances, with said alliances being the major producers of PI goods on the market in the future. Expect to see the market come under pressure from increased price fluctuation and volatility as a result of this, steadily driving the prices of raw ores and finished goods into the stratosphere.

low-sec and hi-sec PI now need a buff in my opinion, with regards to planetary yields. I would expect to see hi-sec planets dish out allot of green zones instead of the nothing/odd spot of blue they do now, while low sec could even give out yellow zones.

This would help allot of people to retain the use of PI for passive income instead of having to make the switch from mining for raw materials free of charge to making a measly 10-20 mil profit a month if they move to hi-sec and buy raw materials for factory planets.

So the time for a PI revamp is drawing even closer and we can expect more moaning topics to pop up regarding PI.

What im about is something like this. lets take lava planets again. If you scan felsic magma you will its concentrated on hot spots, and i mean actual lava spots on the planet.
Here comes terraforming, you increase the temperature of the lava planet thus increasing those lava spots, thus increasing felsic magma. Terraforming wont change the planet type. It will just improve planet stats.
Ofc the terraforming result will not be permanent. A structure will keep this result active, and through dust etc it can be destroyed.