Player Features and Ideas Discussion

James 315 just lamented that "supercaps don't have a counter". But consider this for a moment, keeping in mind this could be a solution not only to this idea, but also more badass integration between Dust and EVE, which I feel is not living up to its potential.

Capsuleers think in terms of bigger is better; the side with more big ships wins. Yet the ships are unimaginably large. The Leviathan is over 18km long. How does a crew manage so much ship? In the real world, the larger a corporation is, the larger insider threats and undercover spies and social engineers can wiggle their way into the cracks of the organization.

I would like future warfare in EVE to involve ships that launch small pods that penetrate the outer hull of a large ship. These pods contain a small team of Dust mercenaries. They battle PvE style through the ship, achieving small but increasingly better damage against the capital, supercapital, or titan in battle. Let's say the first stage is easiest, overloading a shield generator causing a 5% loss of shield recharge rate for the ship. But the next level is harder, granting a bigger bonus. Ultimately, if they team is lucky enough to reach the final stage kilometers deep into the ship, they could disable the entire shield array, or remove the ability to jump out for x-number of hours. Maybe activation of the self-destruct system?

Unfair to all capital pilots? Now we introduce ship internal defenses. There would be skills that increase the internal security, such as sentry gun count and power, improved droids that patrol the ship, and more hit points on internal structures. Ultimately, they could unlock the ability to hire their own Dust team to defend the castle, turning the microcosmic PvE fight into a lopsided PvP engagement. This also promotes sovereighnty support to extend across the CCP universe; for example, if none of the Dust mercs with good track record wanted to align with CFC, then they might get stuck with crappy players.

This scenario from a technical perspective should have negligible effect on lag and TiDi involved in supercap fights, since it would all happen on Dust servers. Sure, the firing of an infiltration pod happens in EVE, but it just spawns a generic Leviathan map, Avatar map, etc. in the Dust network that mercenaries can sign up for. Then any negative bonuses they unlock would be transmitted to EVE servers to be applied to the single ship in question.

I also imagine battleships, capitals, and supercapitals could have one team infiltration at a time. If they die and get wiped out, another could take their place if a specialized ship gets the shot off to infiltrate the ship again. Perhaps the team could choose to abort from the ship to avoid the death future levels will bring (perhaps many of their crew have died and they don't want to suffer a loss), but only if they get far enough to bring the shields down. Since they are so much larger, however, Titans could have two tracks available for Dust teams to pursue. They would be separate, but double the chances of successful internal damage to the ship, and double the skills required for the Titan pilot to successfully defend itself.

Oh, and as an added bonus, CCP could advertise even bigger battle numbers, with thousands of PC and console players taking part in different facets of one massive battle, all influencing the outcome.

Good point, but that's why my examples included only slightly harmful effects for balance. And the Titan pilots have a say over the power of their internal defenses by use of skills or perhaps subsystems, to where a highly defended Titan is practically unbeatable to a Dust team (as it should be with a 100bn ISK ship).

Also I think this mechanic should only be possible when the Titan is engaged in warfare, not when it's sitting around in space.

Perhaps not Titans, but some kind of structure or station related to Sov would be good.

Of course, Sov needs fixed first. Bullet sponges are blech.

Yeah, I've seen that before. It really doesn't negate my point, nor detracts from my idea.

This again?

At least it's not a regularly featured re-run like AFK cloaking.

How about we have DUST do nothing, and die the natural death that it was designed for?

First you explain how anybody could hope to win in a fight against 24 titans if they only have 22. See how this is a balance thing against supercap fights being purely a numbers game.

So it does seem slightly unfair to Titan pilots, but they will get the upper hand in every infiltration, even skilling and upgrading to where it is near impossible to infiltrate. Also, they effects against them from these mercenaries won't be as crazy as "we sent some mercs, they shot some dudes and the whole ship blew up." Just minor things to help the fight in tiny ways.

Admit it, this would add some dimension and excitement to the 10% TiDi day-long supercap fights.

really? This post appears almost every other week. I even keep a quick copy paste file in my appropriately named dust bin.

I just entered "dust" into the forums search and came up with three posts that were on the first page of results that clearly stated that dust boarding eve ships to kill/capture/sabotage/steal was their goal. Poorly trolled sir.
as for the copy paste:
" lets recap:
Eve is a game people Pay to play, dust is f2p. What product makes the real money, and is available to anyone with a decent computer?

Eve has a well established "time-in" skilling method, Dust is grinding to your daily limit.

Dust was forced on EVE players, and took development time and money away from EVE.

A space battle is usually fast. when it isn't fast its time dilation'd. In a ti-di battle, no one wants added complexity, it slows things down further.

I've spent years skilling myself up to have very strong defences and this would bypass all those skills.

I've worked to get into the ship I'm flying. It will be lost due to my incompetence or overwhelming factors, NOT by some twich-artist with a PS3.

You want me to pay more isk to have a defense against a f2p game

Eve is about space, and dust is about planets and unimportant objectives. Enjoy your FPS, just keep it away from my internet spaceships."

You just want to PVE my PVP.

Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x9m58Vol1c

YEEEES MAKE IT HAPPEN

-1 Been suggested multiple times in this forum.

I'd be willing to entertain the idea if the dust players had to sit in someone's cargo hold for 4 hours while the fleet was forming up, and jumping into system. I'd also be quite happy if they had to spawn back at the stating system when their transport was blapped. It'd bring about the same entertainment value that the titan pilot would have.