Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Jump clones are a great feature of EVE Online. They allow us to instantly travel huge distances so that we can be involved in things that wouldn't normally be possible. The majority of players who use this feature, I would venture to say, are people who are focused on PvP as a main activity in EVE Online. However, the ability to install jump clones is based on the standing of you or your corporation; a standing requirement of +8 with the station owner's faction.

Requiring players to grind standings to the extremely high (from a PvP focused perspective) limit of +8 with dozens upon dozens of factions is not fun or feasible. Take myself and my corporation for instance. We're mercenaries, thus we travel all over the universe on a very frequent basis. We find ourselves interacting with a huge amount of factions on a regular basis. If we had a mind to use jump clones in all of the stations that had medical bays in our areas of operations, we'd spend more time grinding than fighting.

Of course, there must be an entry fee for jump clones. They're a very powerful tool that players, corporations, and alliances can use in a large variety of ways, strategically and logistically, and shouldn't be ridiculously easy to obtain. But I do feel there should be another way.

My proposition is that an individual can pay a very large fee for using a jump clone facility that he does not have standings with, proportionate between his current standings and +8.

That is to say, if a pilot has +1 standings with a corporation, he'd pay X million ISK while if he had +5 standings with a corporation he'd pay (X - 4) million ISK. I used numbers here originally, but people misunderstood that as my suggested price range. I've edited that with variables.

Likewise, a corporation could pay a fee calculated out for every member of the corporation, but at a slightly more forgiving ratio than an individual player.

I think this is best used as a temporary method of gaining access to jump clones, the window of time being somewhere less than a week.

This would allow players and small corporations much easier access to jump clones but who have no interest in doing missions for an inordinate amount of time just to unlock one faction's access.

I'd love to hear thoughts or improvements upon this system if others think it would be useful.

Yeah, I've heard of them, but it's not feasible for say, the CEO of a corporation to leave his corporation and join a broker corp just for one jump clone. Neither is it an acceptable solution for regular members who simply want to stay in their corporation or who need to install a jump clone quickly.

I don't think that forcing players to leave their corporation to join another each time they need a new jump clone is a good idea, it's simply the best we have right now.

Ooh, this is a tough one. On one hand I don't really like the idea of being able to "buy" something normally restricted by standings, I feel like it cheapens it. On the other hand, I really like the potential for this as an isk sink. I think the cost should be higher though. Perhaps 5M isk per level of standing lacking. This way, if your completely neutral to a corp (0.0), then you would have to pay 40M for one jump clone. Now that could rack up in a hurry .

I don't think 7-8M is a very large fee at all either. That's why I said I didn't mean for it to be reflective of actual cost, but it made for easier representation. I'd rather not put an actual price on it since there are so many factors that I'm sure I'm unaware of that would be taken into account.

Love it, +1

Its mostly this. However the "workaround" is MUCH less burdensome than you suggest here. So much so that to put it this way is disingenuous. Firstly, jumpclones are permanent. The CEO should never need to leave his corporation, because the CEO should already have jump clones. Furthermore, in your OP you said this..



This is also disingenuous, because using jump clones doesn't require any standings. Are you confused about how jumpclones work?

There are player options that provide this service, you can put an alt in charge of your corp for a day or two just fine to get yourself JC's. You could even reward a member of your corp to start doing missions for some obscure NPC corp with medicals. All emergent, player created game play and content that allows you to get JC's just fine. Also, you can get standing up really quickly if you do it right.

I don't see any reason (other than "effort is bad, everything easy") for this, certainly no valid reason.

I think it's a pretty reasonable argument right here. If you're going to lead a corp of other players, some of which may even be new to the game, you should know how to do these basic things already. You could set up your own jump clones before founding a corp / accepting the position of CEO in a corp, and if you don't, it's no hassle to do it later.

Nobody is forcing you to leave. Installing a jump clone requires standings with the owner of a station. You can achieve this in several ways:

1. Buy jump clones from a non-NPC station. There are many outposts around, and some of them regularly offer this as a service.
2. Grind the standings on your own character so you can install jump clones in an NPC-owned station.
3. Grind standings as a corp, so your whole corporation can install jump clones in an NPC-owned station.
4. Join a corporation that already has standings.

I got my first jump clone from EC-P8R back in the day. I also bought one in Providence a few years later. I've never run a lot of missions or had high standing with an NPC corp, and I've never joined a corp to buy jump clones.

Besides, I don't agree that the entire game should be open to everyone, regardless of the choices they make. Even if you could only get jump clones from NPC stations, it still makes sense that you would have to take a specific path (missions) to get access to that feature, the same way capital ships can't use gates, so you're choosing to fly a ship that won't be able to do that, or the same way only corporations can put up starbases, so you have to join one to be able to mine a moon, and so on.

You only need standings with 1 corp.

Get to +8, fly around to all their cloning stations and install clones to your max allowed by skills

Once you have the clones installed you can jump to any, doesn't matter who owns the station they're in.

I think that circumventing the need to have standings with a faction by simply paying ISK (for whatever reason), would set a bad precedent in a game where actions have consequences and you have to work for the things you want.

It would also take away from those who have set up businesses in game offering jump-clone services.

As has been stated further up this thread, you only need standing with one corp... and you can then move your clones all over the place. (Once you have your clones you dont even need to maintain standings. Its only required to create the clone, you can then use it and move it anywhere)