Player Features and Ideas Discussion

In recently published devblog CCP annouced new deployable - the ESS.

While at first glance it looks like the first small gang objective we were waiting for since like.... always, I guess, it seems half-baked and flatly inadequate. So imagine something that is both quite simple and at the same time could be first step to tackle problems with current sov mechanics.

TL;DR - let put a "door bell" on I-Hub. Press it and wait for local's response. If they can't fight you, they don't deserve to make their living in that particular system.

First off, we don't need new structure. There's a lot of structures around. For example, there is Infrastructure Hub. Rarely seen by players outside CTA fleets when it gets reinforced or blown up. You can live in a system for a year and - if there is no war - not see it once. Shame, it looks nice.

So let put a service into I-Hub - the same way the outposts have "station services" as targetable objects. A roaming gang can attack it and quickly put it into reinforce mode. How - it's to be defined. Shoot it for 5 minutes or hack it, but capitals and supercapitals can't target that object. It should be "only subcapitals" thing.

The timer would be fixed and it should be 15-30 minutes (again, ballpark estimate) countdown. When I-Hub service enters RF, there should be system-wide notification of it so everyone will know about the fact.

After timer runs out, attacking side can finish the job - kill it or hack it. The consequence would be offlining all I-Hub upgrades for fixed amount of time - say 4-6 hours. Then it would online itself again without any need of intervention of owner. Full auto thing, this is all.

So, locals would have 15-30 minutes to form up and defend their system. If they win (as in fend off attacking party), I-Hub's upgrades remain online. If they loose fight or refuse to fight at all, they'll moneymaking ability for few hours will be reduced as punishment for not being able to defend.

The rationale behind 4-6 hrs timer is that it should "ruin your evening" - no more good anomalies for you that day. But next day it will be OK and you don't have to spend time in fleet repping it like RF'd POS. More over, you don't have to be worried about any roams happening outside your time zone. If you are Euro and a gang of angry Aussies comes to you around DT and offline your I-Hub upgrades, you won't even noticed it because it will be back online before you'll sit at your desk in your prime time. That's assuming the Aussies will even bother RFing that when they won't get a fight out of it.

Now, till now we were talking about single system. Roamers can't RF I-hubs in whole constelation in one evening - it would take too much time and effort. So even if your I-Hub gets hit and you can't defend, you can always move next door. But what if there's a bigger campaign against you? It scales nicely as during real war you can have few gangs RFing stuff in your region and either you fend them off or you start bleeding your disgruntled members not being able to make ISK.

Right now, when roam comes to a system there's little reason to fight it. Best case scenario - you win fight and hold status quo. Worst case - you'll loose ships. Better to way till roamers will get bored and move on. This is flat out against what 0.0 Eve should be about.

Thanks for reading and I hope you could understand my idea well enough as English is not my native language.

I don't agree that it is "one sided". Please note that the timer gives plenty of time for the defenders to form up. They can bring anything they want and - I would imagine - quite often it will be hard counter to what roamers fly. Roamers will have trouble to reship.

To clarify - say the window to "finish the job" should be another 30 minutes tops. That won't allow roamers to travel back far and bring counter to counter.



If you think about an Euro player that logs in at 22.00 ET only to find his system "offlined" by roamers 3 hours earlier, that could be remedied by lowering the "punishment time" to 3 hours.




Bear in mind that local has to travel inside a constellation (provided they call for help of other alliance members) and attackers need to travel "on foot" way farther. Unless you consider titan bridges mandatory in small gangs. So the RF should be longer but then you'll give an advantange to bigger alliances which are multi TZ over small gangs that are usually single TZ.

This is the rationale behind my idea of "lasting effect without roamers present". Because otherwise roamers could just permacamp that system and get the same effect on defenders wallets... but that is just bad gameplay for all.

It has my vote. +


Large alliances need to start becoming accountable for the large swathes of space that they hold - it, along with a couple other factors (jump bridges, belt ratting nerf etc) are the prime cause of why 0.0 space is so dead currently.

This will force people to fight for the space they enjoy using, and should also open the gates for smaller entities (if so desired) to claim territory due through daily harassment.

It will go towards solving the 'isk at the top' ratio as rental alliances will be less inclined to pay out for space that has a reduced output.

Even if it doesn't do that, it will at least help make 0.0 a little more dynamic - why are we not already adopting a 'domination' style platform, like the one's you see in incursions or faction warfare? Granted it is a little different, but consider it a mini domination arena.

Edit, obviously this is in it's early stages but it could work

Bump... moar discussion or should I motion to implement it ASAP?

Sounds interesting, it should create some nice dynamics. I tend to agree with Secret Squirrell though : it's a bit too much in favor of the attacker. The roaming party can RF an I-Hub, move next door to RF another one while the defender has to form up. The attacker can keep RF'ing I-Hubs all over the place without engaging the defender if he doesn't feel like it, while the defender still has to defend every single I-Hub the attacking party RF'ed on the way.

Instead of RF'ing the I-Hub by shooting at it then just coming back to finish it 30min later, you could imagine a mechanic where the attacker has to remain on field at the I-Hub for a certain amount of time (15-30min). At the end of this timer, the I-Hub is disrupted for a few hours. There would still be the same 30min window for the defender, but the attacker would have to commit a little bit more, while still having the option to run away if he doesn't fancy fighting off the defender. But then, it's a bit too much in favor of the defender I guess ?

In favor of activities that stimulate PVP but not those that penalize people because of timezones.

Having something that disrupts the local economy does not favor small gangs and will undoubtably be used by larger groups to troll the **** out of small corps - whether they put up a fight or not.

The Plex system, while flawed is at least a 'reward' based PVP system. Think smaller.