Player Features and Ideas Discussion

EVE Online is a very cerebral game. You know what else are cerebral games? Real-time strategies. So I was thinking, wouldn't an RTS be a great way to introduce cerebral people into the EVE universe? Of course it would! But why stop with just an RTS, why not make it an MMORTS and fully integrate it with EVE Online? Additionally, there is already a massive expanse where the game could take place without directly interfering with the lives of EVE players: moons.

Introducing EVE: Domination

Setting
EVE: Domination is set on the countless moons that inhabit New Eden. Mineral rich and full of promise, these moons have only barely been touched by immortal hands... until now. A new breed of immortals has arrived, dubbed by some as "the overseers". Specialized neural interfacing allows for higher rates of control than has ever been seen before, allowing the direct manipulation of entire moonbases. The moons themselves are procedurally generated and fully explorable, with no arbitrary limits on movement or expansion.

Lunar Customs Office
Or as some like to call it, the "LOCO", is an orbital customs office designed to allow the transport of material and materiel to and from the lunar surface. As it is not strictly neccesary to use, there's a large degree of freedom of managing it. The owner can determine which substances are contraband, what the tax rate is for certain items, and so on. Overseers could use the customs office to place sell orders on exports, as well as place buy orders for imports, creating an economical link between the lunar overseers and the interstellar capsuleers. One day this system could totally replace starbase moon mining, which is, to be quite honest, lacking. Send fuel and supplies down to the moon and receive moon materials in exchange.

Deployment
To begin work on a base, the overseer must deploy a command center to the moon in question. In high-security and low-security space, this is done primarily by InterBus, with a time delay dependent on how many systems away the Command Center was before being delivered, with low-security space having a longer delay and having a costly fee. In null-security space, this would have to be done by a capsuleer directly. Additionally, other structures can also be deployed, either in conjunction with the command center, or after the command center has already been deployed. Resources and supplies can also be dropped by using a special cargo container made to survive planetary impact. Deployed command centers contain supplementary minerals.

Units
The primary taskforce of the base are units. Units are mobile entities, and are the responsible for base construction, assault and other tasks that require a mobile force in exchange for consuming bandwidth. They can be custom-fitted with modules to suit your needs.

Structures
The foundations of a base are the structures it comprises of. Structures are stationary entities that perform various tasks in exchange for consuming powergrid and CPU. When structures take too much damage, they enter reinforcement mode for a period of time set by the holder, up to 24 hours. When in reinforcement mode, they cannot be destroyed normally but are disabled from functioning. Additionally, once they leave reinforcement mode, they must take time to recover, proportional to the amount of time they were in reinforcement mode.

Deposits
Resource deposits are the main source of usable materials on a moon, and as such are essential to the industry of a moonbase. All deposits contain one type of material, which can either be an ice ore, an asteroid ore or a moon material. Additionally, they come in three variants: trace deposits, standard deposits and rich deposits. Trace deposits are too sparse to be very profitable, and are primarily for in situ usage where importing would be too much of a hassle. Standard deposits are reasonably profitable, but mining them is still somewhat inefficient. Rich deposits are very profitable, and are primarily useful for trade rather than in situ usage.

Sorry to say, but most RTS are twitch games about memorising initial rush strategies. Very few of them are cerebral. Turn Based games are typically more cerebral because they aren't about the frantic pushing of buttons.

This is not a bump.

;_; Well I had a lot more to say, but the character cap was bullying me.

Edit: I took your advice and butchered all the unnecessary bits.

If you're going to use the term so loosely, we might as well be calling Dust 514 an RTS.

Neither of which play like an RTS for the individual.

I used to FC for wormhole alliance. For all intents and purposes I was playing an RTS and that's how all the other larger EVE alliances and organizations look at the game as well. If EVE isn't an RTS then Nexus The Jupiter Incident is in for a serious crisis of identity.

Actually, I've played a couple of very well done "slow RTS" mmos

Starjack and the now-defunct Beyond protocol to name a few. Look them up. They are both very cerebral games, each with their own singular design flaw that prevents them from flourishing. (Starjack's primary mechanic of creating instanced universes by stealing systems from existing ones, and BP's unnecessarily complex mineral system)

There were based upon principals of always-on interaction, advanced unit AI configuration for offline fighting, and shielding mechanics similar to stront timers to help confine and protect fights.

In fact, Beyond Protocol had one of the coolest NPC espionage systems I've ever encountered in a game. It was the only game in which "Spymaster" was a realy role with real game mechanics and not just a PvP meta-role and was very useful and lucrative if you dedicated your research and resources to it. I spent a lot of my time hiring agents, sabotaging things, and stealing high dollar blueprints while running counterintel-for-hire services for my local alliance. It was stupidly fun.

These didn't play like your "twitch format" RTS games, but a lot more like solid 4X games with granular unit control and design. I think this type of gameplay could be a boon to the eve universe, producing the third part of a cycle connecting with EVE and dust. In the beginning, on a single base on a single planet it's very sedate, but the pace scales with the user's commitment. At my height I was spending hours adminstrating a vast network of terrestrial and space bound colonies in these games, responding to threats, engaging in combat and high stakes politics with other players, and generally doing all the things your average alliance officer does in EVE, only what I was administrating was full of NPC functionaries that carried out their tasks like the efficient little robots they were.

We'll use the OP's title of Domination for this.

Domination produces DUST gear from EVE+ DUST resources, and PI/POS "tethers" for space elevator style operation. This means Domi players can boost production for EVE players, as well as create a new revenue stream by producing DUST equipment. In addition, like DUST, the "base game" is tied to empire warfare so that it isn't dependant on the interest of EVE pilots or DUST mercs to function as an enjoyable game.


EVE provides orbital strike support for both DUST+Domination, and is the primary method of transporting goods. This creates a universe-wide content driver in to EVE from both games, and in a way that DUST currently doesn't reach without making the scope of EVE totally dependant on the health of either game.


DUST provides terrestrial drone components used in Domination units and structures, and perhaps DUST matches can be integrated in the the Domi systems for optional actions. For instance, Domi players may only have the option to destroy structures, but hiring a team of DUST mercs (who must have a suitable clone imprint delivered to the site by and EVE pilot) they would be able to in stead capture facilities in a PvP + PvE drones scenario, where the Domi player is responsible for deploying and managing their drones and/or hiring mercs, and mercs can easily bring home drone salvage from these battles that is a more efficient means of building them. This would add value to DUST for people who want to interact with the wider world without making DUST completely dependant on the interest of the other two games to function.

Cookiecutter? You think my idea is uninspired? Compared to most RTS concepts it's quite original.

Not everyone can be the FC at the same time, you know.

And it still doesn't play like an RTS, even if it is in real-time and does involve strategy.

True, but not everyone wants to be an FC.

Because Tom Clancy's End War isn't an RTS with voice issued commands much the same way FCing is issuing verbal commands over your chosen voip client.