Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A new feature request; the ability to hack harvest corpses for information or additional abilities their implants. Let me try to explain...

Once you've dispatched someone's poor pod, scooped up their frozen corpse, transport it to a special facility, and by using the hacking mechanic try to extract information from the corpse you can use a specific ship module to harvest the implants from their heads...

Here are some possible rules for this mechanic:

• Your ship must be fitted with a special module for carrying the corpse, to keep it from decomposing to extract implants from the corpse while in cargo


• The longer the corpse is out in space the less chance of extracting anything from it, this can be countered by having more than one corpse from the same pilot for the hacking attempt
• The laborotory would be a deployable unit, much the same as the new ones in Rubicon
• Harvesting Hacking the implants requires using a version of the new hacking game. with the possibility of you setting up your own security defences The mini game will take into account the number of implants, and will base it's complexity on that.


• A new skill would be required to hack harvest corpses, the higher the level the higher the chance of success


• Much same as invention other materials maybe required, plus more corpses of the same pilot would increase your chance of success as mentioned before
• The corpse's owner can counter the hacking by not only previously setting up the security defences, but by also wearing specific implants. This would raise the chance of a failed hacking attempt, causing the corpse to explode, destroying the laborotory and damaging anyone in the vicinity

Possible rewards for a successful harvest attempt:

• Access to a known POS password, location maybe unknown
• Access to one of the pilots private hangers from station. This would one time use, as the station would update it's own security access
• Impersonation: the ability to appear to other pilots as the corpse's owner, to play any trickery that may come to mind. For a limited time only you will appear in the overview and in chat as the pilot of the corpse. However if attacked your identity will be lost.
• Jump clone access: The ultimate prize; the ability to access an offline jump clone of the dead pilot, the pilot must also be offline. You would essentially become the pilot of the corpse to do as you wish. However the jump clone will become extremely unstable, and will only survive for a very short time. Death would be unavoidable.


• The full set of implants 100% usable
• Only some of the implants, maybe not 100% usable
• A jar of brain goo

This would add a whole different dynamic to the idea of a spy, and or the "meta-game". It would also give corpses a value, rather than just being a trophy. Corpses of a higher ranked pilots maybe become quite valuable. Hacking a corpse gives you something that can't be mined or produced, which makes it completely unique, but you need to attain the corpse first which creates the conflict. It also adds to the whole idea of trust no-one which EVE is famous for, and the sense of actual loss.

UPDATED: This has been updated to simplify the idea and bypass the fear of identity theft.

Flame, Add, or Like! Also I have no idea how this would fit with EVE lore.

:D

Rather than information, which seems complicated and difficult, the ability to harvest implants would be fun. And macabre, but hey, that's good too.

Whenever capsuleers are about to die their brains are fried by force scan leaving you nothing to hack.

That's a totally valid point, and you're right essentially I'm proposing a form of controlled identity theft. But then you have to think about what makes up your identity in EVE, or others for that matter. Not everything is always as it seems. Which is one of EVE's strengths. Most corps will openly accept that they probably have spies in their camp, and don't really trust anyone. Identity is an interesting concept in EVE.

Unfortunately identity theft is fact of life, as are scams, something a day one noob will be subjected too. At the end of the day API key theft or trading is common place in the meta-game, which is a far darker form of identity theft.

But then, spies in your corp or being scammed or whatever, wouldn't reallt grind on you in the same way as someone impersonating you would. Yes it could be simplified to just collecting the implants, but that wouldn't really lead to anything. Where as something like this would lead to more conflict, more interaction.

As for the brain scan, well not all systems work 100% all the time. I should know I work in IT. This is a mechanic of chance, hoping a system has failed to protect the deceased, and hoping you might succeed on gaining from that.

Or put it this way: Would this game mechanic produce more conflicts or less?

System cannot care less about protecting you. Its main objective is to scan and transfer data, killing you(current clone) in the process (then you are fried by explosion and then suffocated and deep frozen by space vacuum). If system cannot work 100% of time - permadeath of capsuleers would've been a thing in EvE.

Implants should be the only thing you can harvest. In fact, the act of mind transference destroys the neural tissue of the brain, which is precisely why it's done at the moment of death.

hee hee! Well you know what, I'm happy to admit that maybe I have over cooked this one in my head. There's a difference sometimes of seeing something in your head then seeing it written down

Essentially I started thinking of a mechanic which involved the corpses, for some sort of gain. The rewards may have got a little out of control plus complicated true

However I do like the idea of implant harvesting, which could be a pretty lucrative sideline for the expense of PvP'ing. I still like the idea of a mini game, like the hacking one,for trying to retrieve the buried implants from the corpses skull. Unlike the salvager where you just wait to see if you were successful or not

Could be useful
Don't PvP or you will risk losing everything. Especially the shiny mission boat you have stashed away in high sec as a backup income source.

Well, unless you transfer your assets to an alt who never undocks and only transfer them back to use them.

Expect people to stop using jump clones. Then complain about long travel times around Eve.

Repo: The Genetic Opera?

I'll also add another idea into the mix...

The ability to harvest the implants either manually from your ship via a mini game, or automatically by some type of deployable.

The mini game would be more time consuming, but with a higher chance of success. Only high-end implants can be extracted this way.

The deployable would basically be a glorified mincing machine. No need to do anything except deploy, let it hoover up the dead, and collect what it extracts. A quicker process for large number of corpses, but with a low level of success.