Assembly Hall

Interesting idea... though the wall of maths doesn't add much to the proposal.

But yeah, I can totally support the idea of a Tech 3 revolution, where instead of having a limited array of specific ship hulls that you slot subsystems into, you get a starship design system, where you add components off a series of menus to create a ship concept that you can then independently research and produce.

Specifically, I'd suggest that the original design process require a lot of high-end research skills, and instead of producing a BPO, it produces a 'Prototype Specifications' document, at some arbitrarily huge cost. That document can then be researched to produce BPOs, which you can then sell or keep as you choose. That would put the whole process of ship design > research > production > distribution in player hands... though at the same time, the whole process should be a huge ISK sink from top to bottom. The game can stand largish ISK sinks at this point... and making a high barrier to entry will encourage people to buy into already existing ship designs, rather then everyone going ahead to make their own.

The math is important... eventually. At the proposal stage, it's only important where it helps you illustrate your proposal, and in this case... it doesn't actually do that very well. Yes, you can use "Prototype Specification Document", if you like.

But to address the main point; capsuleers have a LOT of money. Like, seriously, huge piles. And BPOs are expensive. You can expect to pay over a billion ISK for a researched battleship BPO, and you will pay even more just getting an unresearched mining barge or capital blueprint off the NPCs. Hell, there's a vast host of capital part blueprints, which are individually over a billion ISK each, unresearched.

I envision that, under the new system, there will be piles of ship part blueprints scattered across space, and the best will only be available in terribly inconvenient places like pirate faction LP stores. Not sure whether or not to make subcomponent BPOs available at all; if any sort of PSD design requires a steady flow of LP-fueled purchases, then that will both sink ISK and drive more people into missioning in weird places.

Accordingly, as the PSD designer, you have options. You can pick exclusively low-end, easily fabricated parts, acquire the relevant component blueprints from the LP stores of assorted hisec corporations after doing a couple missions, and go to town, producing ships with little more then minerals. To design your 'cheap' ship, you'll pay little more then the base cost of 1 billion (assuming a frigate PSD), and can then spit out BPOs for distribution or resale, as you like. People will want what you're selling, since even a fairly unimpressive PSD-pattern ship will be better then a T1 hull.

You could, instead, pick mid-range components, which require more then just mere minerals to produce (read: expensive bits from exploration or wormholes or something), and whose BPCs are more expensive on the stores. Depending on your access to nullsec, you might consider using low-end pirate faction BPCs at around the same price... less material cost, but harder to get at the blueprints.

Finally, you could pick ntohing but the very best of the high-end components, and make your ships exclusively with the best pirate components from the four corners of space. You'll pay through the nose for both the blueprints AND the parts.

Depending on the choices you made, you'll now be presented with the final list of ship specs, and a cost ranging between 1B ISK (for a low-end frigate) to something like 200B ISK (for a high-end battleship). This puts the higher-end stuff beyond the range of most individual capsuleers, pushing it further in the direction of PSD research being a corporate effort. In any event, you could probably recoup your expenses fairly quickly selling BPOs, since anyone with a BPO can do everything the PSD holder can... except make more BPOs... then anyone who wants to make your ship but didn't have the initial investment to drop can get the same benefits by just grabbing one of the BPOs produced once the PSD is finished. For that matter, like-minded individuals not part of a corporation might put together some kind of investment program, where they pool funds towards a PSD, and grab their BPOs as they are produced, in some way agreeable to the investors (or they get scammed by the inventor, either way). Alternatively, you might stretch your profit out longer, and make more money long-term, by only selling BPCs... since anyone who wants to fly this shiny new ship you invented needs your blueprints to make it happen.

In any event, I've illustrated the chain of production well enough. Well trained capsuleer scientist invents a PSD with a pile of cash, and turns it into BPOs. BPOs get properly researched, then distributed according to however the funding organizations can agree, and possibly BPCs get sold. Stacks of part BPCs are shipped in, and in combination with the main BPOs/BPCs are used to create the ships.

Ultimately, this either gets you ships that are slightly better then T1 hulls in some ways, or ships that are specialized in an unusual way (say, a frigate with a bonus to both scan probes and salvaging, or a cruiser with a bonus to smartbombs), or an ungodly expensive T3 faction juggernaut that lays waste to everything before it.

Personally? Yes, I do expect alliances to want fleets of monster ships. That said, the devil is in the logistics. As envisioned, it's NPC null that'll be the source of the really awesome pirate parts. To get them, you need to run missions there. That sharply limits the available supply. That has a profound effect on the price. I fully expect these changes to make NPC null especially dangerous, as everyone will want in on the action, and everyone will want to murder everyone else who got in ahead of them. The individual capsuleers who will inevitably wind up in the most awesome and dangerous ships will be the ones who run mission ops... in gangs, of course, for protection against anyone else present in that part of space intending the same thing.

As presented, the only alliances that'll be in a position to field fleets of awesome ships are those that base out of or otherwise have a degree of control over a given faction of NPC null... or those willing to expend ungodly sums of money importing the high-end stuff from Jita. And even at the high end, these are still, ultimately, ships that can be destroyed... and even if they are better then most, when the high-end stuff dies, that is a notable ISK loss. You don't usually see alliances fielding fleets of faction battleships, because that involves a notable loss of ISK. What makes you think anyone will want to field fleets of T3 faction battleships, given even greater pricing constraints?

Oh, there will certainly be individual niche roles that demand the cost. Off the top of my head, I can see alliances shelling out bigtime for Command Battleships to sit their FCs in. Battleships geared for Logistics and EWAR roles will also be valuable, since a battleship-grade tank will give survivability to the otherwise vulnerable vessels. But the bulk of the fleets will wind up being either standard T1 battlecruisers / battleships, or (depending on how logistically feasible it winds up being) cheap-grade T3 player redesigns optimized to support the FOTM doctrine, made up of bottom-tier cheap parts imported from Jita by the Jump Freighter-load.

So... yeah. The reason why I suggested LP items and menus, rather then point-buy and a scaling bill of requirements, is because one of those ways is really easy for a large alliance to integrate into existing production chains, therefore producing top-tier ships en-masse and killing off any and all low-tier competition; while the other is obnoxiously difficult to mass-produce, and will require continual logistical effort to keep going. It should be obvious which is which.

The one thing big alliances have lots of is resources. In particular, stuff like moon goo and T2 components are in relative abundance. The one thing they need to expend special effort on is logistics; anything that requires bits not findable in their home regions needs to be imported, and on a regular basis if it's at all important. Given that, it seemed logical to me... not to mention infinitely more doable on CCP's end... to use a menu system over a point system. It can, and should, be a much bigger menu then the existing T3 options, with more slots to choose from and more items to go in each slot, but with a finite amount of possibilities nonetheless. If each individual part requires an individual sinking of ISK, from an individual mission runner who had to spend time running said missions in dangerous bits of space that's far less exploitable then 'spend x more money to get x more power'. Your suggestion, as is, would create a relatively linear scaling system, in which there's very little difference between the bottom and top of the line vessels, in terms of player effort needed to create them, where mine would result in a system with more individual involvement in the production process, and with far tighter logistical constraints on the edge cases.

What, really?

There are players, in hisec, who fly single ships that cost more then a billion. As corporations, they can deploy towers, and invest in things like Tech 2 BPOs, which cost much more then that. Hell, tech 1 blueprints cost much more then that. I don't think it's at all unreasonable to have those figures where they are.

+1

I just want more ships and more varieties of ships. Really don't care how.

While I find the prospect of being able to design my own monster ship appealing - the biggest concern I have regarding this is how to ensure balance

Currently with the right skills trained and using good fit/tactics most ships in each class are more or less balanced - some lend themselves better to certain roles than others

This allows players of different races etc to compete on a fair if not completely level playing field and ensures not only that there is a role for different ship classes and players of different skill levels but that there is a counter for just about any tactic you can come up with

The tactical/stragigic nature of combat in EvE relies on developing a knowledge of possible tactics and countertactics and trying to predict what you are going to face this is only possible if you have a defined types of assets on the playing field – in this way it is similar to chess a defined range of pieces with rules for how they can interact which are known to all players of sufficient skill– but try playing chess with the rules changing every few moves or a new superqueen suddenly appearing on the board mid game.

CCP takes great pains to ensure this balance and the fact that they need to periodically rebalance ships is a testiment to the difficult of predicting how ships will be fit and used on TQ as new expansions or an unexpected tactic unfairly favours one ship type over another.

And players will be strongly motivated to find the most unbalanced ships possible.

This proposal is likely to result in either a small group of win ships or a horrible mess in which there is such a range of ships/ships changing so fast ity is no longer possible to play in a stratigic manner either of which are likely to fundamentally break the game.



And if that occurs it will be far more difficult for CCP to intervene and rebalance player designed ships than CCP designed one - imagine having a ship you have spent huge amounts of ISK and time designing being nerfed and also this would have a massive effect on the market.

Ensuring balance in advance for any system that would allow changes in ship specs significant enough to be meaningful would be almost impossible in addition the design of player created ships would need to be factored in in the design of new content potentially making it impossible to predict the effects of new content

CCP should not put themselves in the position where it is likely they will have to intervene post hoc and on a regular basis to change the result of player actions

Anyone remember the kick off following the removal of TEST alliances sov structures.

While initial attract this proposal would be likely to lead to chaos and the breaking of eve if implemented.

Ok in regards to the post by Profundus Fossura,

I think that you need to clarify on your position

Do you feel that it is not possible for CCP to create such a system that is in balance with the existing ship balances

or do you have something against the idea in its current format?

Because basically after reading your post several times I can only come to the idea that you are one of those guys who fears change or opportunity.


Balance has been my sticking point from the beginning of this post, so any system must have a balance mechanic to it so that the more you make a ship excel in a certain area there are negative elements that crop up in counter to it.

Things like making a ship really fast would make it more fragile, strengthening targeting systems would increase signature and reduce cap recharge stuff like that.

My biggest point is that I would like any system to be on even footing with existing ships. So you can create ships which are compairable to existing ships. By no means do I support any system ment to allow super ships



I think that so long as the contracting shows the base stats of the ship being contracted it should be alright to use the existing contracts

But as far as the scamming thing, I can't imagine that many scammers would be willing to invest Billions of Isk to create a ship to try and sell for the sole purpose of scamming people.

as far as the market implications I would say that leaving it tangled would be ok. because it basically means people would have to figure out how and where to market their ships.

You might be able to make a unique ship but then you have to market it and distribute it. This further makes the existing ships possibly more attractive because they are much more readily available.

In regards to the market things should be stacked in the favor of the existing established ships.

On top of that if CCP see's a ship design that they like they can make minor changes and have one of the existing NPC corps either purchase the design from the creator, or even pirate said design into future released ships

I think in terms of the balance, the points system would help with that one.

If players spend say 60% of the ships points into speed, they are gonna have a super fast ship, but it's gonna lack in every other aspect - tank, weaponry, tracking, signature, etc...

So that would mean that, yes, a super fast fleet would dominate for a while, but they all the other alliances would put 60% of their points into tracking, and squashing the super fast fleets.

The balance would be achieved by the populous. If person a invents something, person b will invent the counter-measure.

That would give the edge to people who invent that new ship type first, which it should. But only as long as it takes the others to invent the deterrent.