Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It seems CCP feel like their time is best spent tackling tiny little issues such as rebalancing the web bonus on a ship that is barely ever used. Yet we still have 342892349834298432 other problems in regards to interfacing and controls in this game.

I think it's time they instead address something that is fundamentally broken: POS permissions, or the lack there of.

I'm not going to go into details on this; everyone who's used a POS knows what I'm talking about. If you don't, do the following:
1) Setup a POS for your corp
2) Attempt to set it up so members cannot easily, easily, easily steal from eachother
3) Return to this thread and agree with me.


But... WAT ABOWTZ DA THIEVERIEZ??!?1
Scamming and thievery is part of the game, that's fine. It should be balanced. A thief who earns enough trust to gain general permissions in a POS can still engage in thievery. It's not supposed to be so easy.

In it's current state it's a choice between:
a) Give the person access to everything
b) Give the person access to nearly nothing
c) Give the person access to nothing

There needs to be a
d) Give the person access to his/her own specific hangar, lab slot, manufacture slot, etc.

This means anything shared within the corp can still be stolen by a thief who gains the trust of the corp. You know, having to actually earn his stolen loot.

I dare say the same people working on ship rebalancing are not the same people as those working on game UI and server code.

Who says there shouldn't be built in opportunity for corp theft?

Eve is a game of conflict.

Game mechanics that facilitate avoiding conflict wherever possible do not do it justice.

I don't think you should be able to lock down assets completely unless they are in your own personal station hangar.

But then again I think a lot of crazy things,

like a single person shouldn't be able to maintain a pos network that spans regions,

coalitions shouldn't be able to reach thousands of members without getting torn apart by enterprising back-stabby people turning on their friends

and assets shouldn't be able to magically *blink* across the vastness of the universe, avoiding treacherous gate travel.

theft,
espionage,
sabotage,
destruction,
conflict,

PVP

There should be opportunity for theft. There should also be an opportunity for corps to protect themselves from theft through some other means than denying access to everything. Currently there is no way to give access incrementally, as its earned. Result: Corps just do not give access. Some corps do not recruit for the same reason. This is supposed to be a social game, yet game mechanics punish you for being social.

There should - but it be because you trusted the wrong people. Not because the corp permissions system resembles something you'd expect to find on Windows 95 and has the UI to boot.

It's worth mentioning that CCP hasn't actually announced that they're going to rebalance the web bonus on Serpentis ships. The only thing that happened was CCP Rise commented on them.

Anyway, if you don't want people in a corp stealing loot from each other, then stop using corp hangar arrays and anchor some personal hangar arrays instead. You can't steal from someone else's hangar - or even see it, for that matter.

Mobile labs are somewhat of a different matter, but I believe those already have specific roles regarding who can access them.

Anyway, I thought I might write a song for you that sums up at least some of your frustrations that you can sing at FanFest.

You do like Pink Floyd, right?

"We don' need no web rebalance!
We don' need no Dev control!
No Serpentis nerfing in the sandbox!
Team Five-O, leave our ships alone!

Hey! Five-O! Leave our ships alone!

All in all, you're just another frig in the blob.
All in all, you're just another frig in the blob!

If you don't scram and web, you can't have any killmails! How can you have any killmails if you don't scram and web?!"

Granting access to particular tabs in hangars is done via the Titles system. Each title can be configured to have any combination of access to any combination of tabs.

Granting access to control tower fuel bays is easy. The necessary role is Fuel Technician.

For everything else, there are 4 levels of permission. From lowest to highest they are:

alliance

corporation

config equipment

config starbase equipment

The level of access required to use an array can be configured via the structures tab of the control tower's 'configure' menu. I would suggest that a first step in an overhaul of the corporation permissions system would simply be to rename a bunch of this stuff and make it easier to find and use. The underlying mechanics are mostly fine.

OR... CCP should make an official POS management tutorial.

Example

Rename "config equipment" and "config starbase equipment" to something more intuitive e.g. Tier 1/2/3/etc... POS operator

It might be useful to have more than 2 tiers, but that would require something more than a tinkering with the UI

Allow directors to change the access level requirement of individual modules by right clicking on the module in question, instead of having to use the control tower menu.

POS life is communal when you get down to it though, too much security is just building walls in the sandbox. Those walls may serve to keep out thieves and prevent corporate espionage, but basically... hands off my meta gaming! :P