Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Now you youngsters gather around and let uncle Reaper tell you a story..

Back in the day, when most of the current eve player base had never heard of eve, there was an expansion. This expansion was called exodus. In it we were given neat tools like PoS' and Mining barges. One of the features they wanted to bring is, was System wide Asteroid belts, and Comet mining.

From what i understood, system wide belts were reintroduced as the idea of ring mining, which appears to have gone no where. But i'm not going to address that today. I have always been interested in the idea of comet mining, and a few time si posted an idea for how they could be used. But i think i have a better idea that would be interesting. So.. here we go.

Comet mining would be as it says, you mine comets. Comets would be large moving objects in space, that would travel between systems and need to be scanned down. They would remain in a system for 12-24 hours, or until mined out, then they would move past the range of your sensors and appear in another system. Comets would be able to be scanned down in HS, LS, 0.0, and WH space.

Comets would or could consist of three parts: And outer shell of ice, that could be used for a new type of fuel, or just some of the current ice giving another means to mine ice, a middle core or normal ore, and then a central core of moon minerals.

So now a bit more details. Players want a way to break up some of the cartels moon goo, and as ring mining was stated to maybe be able to get moon goo form it, thus taking it away for the moons, this would be a nice transition. It could also give yet another boost to exploration, as well as a boost to mining.

Now then, once you scan down the comet... your bm would become invalid in about an hour or so. why? because the comet moves. Its not a stationary object (though from programing and design not sure this would work) so you have to maintain a range on the comet or lose it. Also, like deep core mining, the comet is going to throw off particles of ice and rock which will damage a ship. Thus making it a tad bit risky to mine them. And bringing in a new module for comet mining, and a new ship, the T3 industrial, which would have subsystems to make ti more durable for comet mining, but not as good for regular mining.

So we have an exploration boost, mining would have to be a tad bit interactive as you would have to keep adjusting your speeding to stay with the comet, this would give gankers and pvpers new ways to kill people, and could possibly introduce T3 industrial. That and i have wanted to comet mine for 10 damn years now lol.

This was a few expansions before my time but I think the idea is an excellent idea and should be taken into extreme consideration by CCP.

Since comets wander a solar system, not certain if they wander the Universe however, and would come into contact with other chunks of space rocks I would have to say that the core of the comet would be a random variable of either Moon Material, No Moon Material, X type of ore and mineral along with x type of ice surface and x type of gas tail all which would be mineable.

Some comets would have gas that would damage the ship similar to mercoxit mining.

To make mining a comet even more interesting perhaps CCP would be so brilliant in developing a new race that lives on a comet and harvests its resources. As the comet wanders around the Universe the inhabitants would periodically leave the safety of the comet to raid the solar systems that the comet is passing through using advanced cloaking devices to avoid detection except for when they are attacking.

A comet passing through a solar system would be similar to an Incursion event where the markets would be affected until the comet has been completely mined or leaves the system.

During the time that the comet is present in a system its inhabitants would periodically raid the belts forcing the local NPC rats to leave.

For high sector 1.0 - .5 the largest type of ship encountered would be a single battleship escorted by three cruisers and five frigates. The farther that you travel into security space would determine how many of the belts would be affected the comet inhabitants if there are any to begin with.

The comets would also come in various sizes which would determine if inhabitants were possibly present.

Comet 1 - 1 kilometer in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 15%
Comet 2 - 3 kilometers in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 20%
Comet 3 - 5 kilometers in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 25%
Comet 4 - 7 kilometers in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 35%
Comet 5 - 9 kilometers in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 40%
Comet 6 - 11 kilometers in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 45%
Comet 7 - 13 kilometers in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 50%
Comet 8 - 15 kilometers in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 60%
Comet 9 - 17 kilometers in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 80%
Comet 10 - 19 kilometers in diameter / chance of being inhabited - 85%

A new type of mining ship would have to be create in order to mine a comet. I would have to say that two variants one being a tractor beam and the other being a grapple barge would work best. Each would have their advantages and drawbacks.

New types of mining lasers would also have to be develop that could penetrate the comet to the layer that the pilot wanted to mine. The same with drones.

Another idea could be to develop Cometary Interaction where the pilot would deploy comet command bases to then extract the ore, minerals, ice and gas that would be present.

It would also be interesting to be able to retrieve Comet Fragments that the comet would leave behind that would appear on the scanner much the same way that roid and ice belts now randomly appear. The chunks could be any type of comet debris that would need to be refined using special skill in order to determine what was present. The pilot could even find some salvage or modules relating to the comet inhabitants theirself and even a Comet Inhabitant ship BPO.

There are a lot of avenues that the early explorers of New Eden took when the Universe was first discovered. A group of settlers would be rather intelligent to colonize a comet that would carry them around the Universe as it would keep the expense of fuel to a minimum allowing the settlers to explore the Universe at reduced cost.

Some interesting opinions so far - I'll offer another.

My vision of comets is as follows:

• They appear in all areas of space, but the higher the security level, the rarer they are. (Undecided yet if their composition, or the ratio of components, should change, though.)


• They appear randomly, not in fixed predictable systems. (sorry, but comets shouldn't travel between systems - they would have to have a warp-speed capability to do that in under 100,000 years)


• Initially, they need to be scanned down, and they start out in the furthest reaches of the solar system (potential "issue" with deep bookmarks being made, but I'm ok with that). Over a period of days, they head further into the system where, at some point, they don't need to be scanned down (but with penalties, mentioned later, but perhaps it should always require scanning down - not too fussed)


• They are BIG - 50-100 KMs across! They should dwarf your ship!


• Within the shroud of the comet, perhaps you could have some sort of effects? Reduced targeting speed and visibility? Perhaps the gases should have a small effect on the shields, but every so often a random chunk of ice falls off the comet body, something big enough to cause a serious amount of damage if it hits you. (It would have to be reasonably visible in advance, to give you an opportunity to avoid it, if you're paying attention. (Stealth nerf AFK mining thread ) Also, the closer to the star it gets, the more dangerous it is - it's melting a lot faster at this point.


• It should be moving across the grid at a reasonable speed, so that you'd have to move with it, and bookmarks should be useless after a while. Should it need an AB on your barge? They have rather limited slots as it is.


• Composition-wise, I was thinking they'd have volatile (and valuable) gases on the surface (which burn off as they approach the sun, meaning you'd have to scan it down while in deep space, if you want them. Under that, there'd be ices, and the core is made of rock and minerals (moon-goo?).
The closer to the sun it gets, the more gases and ices are melted off, so by the time it reaches the point of not needing scanning down, it's reaching the point of being a barren rock.


• I don't think it needs a new ship or mining modules; the existing ones are fine - gas extractor for the gases, ice strip miner for the ice, and ordinary strip miners for the core. "Moon"-goo might cause a problem though - there's no strip miners for those. This would therefore suit a mining gang with a variety of fits available and an Orca/Rorqual/depot available to change rapidly.


• How valuable should it be? If the whole thing is worth billions, it'll attract gankers like flies, but it could also justify hiring an escort, as they know they're probably going to get some action and be paid for it.


• Issue: the shroud of a comet can get rather large, and it's tail can reach millions of KMs in length - somehow, I don't think the game engine could simulate that, so perhaps it doesn't get anywhere near the star, for the graphics to remain manageable? (which would nerf several of my ideas above).


• Issue: possible new mechanics needed. Existing rocks don't move - can the devs just grab a supercarrier, slap a big comet skin on it, and bastardise the bubble mechanic with a hidden snow generator around it? Probably easier to create something new...

I like the idea. Instead of having to scan them down, though - make them a standard warpable object. The caveat is that comets travel at 1,000 m/s - so you'll need a fast cap stable ship to catch them and keep up. The ores would be uber-rich and more than make up for this. To keep some variety, I think the standard "anomaly" should be a rogue asteroid with comets appearing more rarely.

I really like the original idea behind this. I was also thinking the same thing awhile back. I was also thinking how fun it would be for certain comets to be really fast. Basically only a mining frigate with a mwd can keep up. Other rocks would be slower, but they would all be huge. The ice on the outside is awesome. I also like the idea of taking damage from the comet.

would be funny if you could web them to slow them down :)
soloable in a venture but if you have a barge you will have to group up with support ships

What if they had to shoot the comet to dismantle it and then salvage the pieces of it? Of course with area of effect damage and high speed rocks

Hally's Comet has a speed of around 1000 m/s when it is the furthest from the sun and up to 100x that when it is at its closest.

This could make for some interesting mining techniques if this speed variable could be introduced without breaking the game engine.

When at its slowest, the comet could be mined by matching speed with it in a fast ship. Since it is so far out, its "cheaper" ice layer would be thicker and be the primary resource taken from it. I also like that this is the point at which it is easiest to scan down.

To get the the more valuable inner cores of the comets, a ship might be required to anchor to the comet since nothing in Eve could match the comets speed when closest to a star. The ice layer would be thinner here, as well, but still would have to be removed or broken through to get to the good stuff beneath. There would definitely be a need for a specialized ship and equipment here. Also, because of the speed, scanning one down would be harder.

Once scanned, however, its trajectory would have to be figured and the special ship would have to warp to a point in the comets path to "jump on" to it as it passes, or it could latch on when the comet is moving at its slowest, I guess, but then we would just get AFK comet mining, I think.

Since no rats could keep up with the comet, the debris and gasses coming off it could cause damage to the mining ships and/or the comets path could take it through some dangerous anomalies thag damage the ships from time to time.

The anchorable ship would necessarily have to have a large hold capacity to be viable. However, it could be balanced out by separating the cheaper icehold frm the more valuable comet goo hold. This could help mitigate ships jumping on early and going AFK while mining the good stuff as only the cheap stuff would be AFK-able.

Oh I remember this. Would be interesting. +1

Ha!

I posted about this on the RvB forums a few months ago. I was reading mynnna's CSM thread and "incursion like content for miners" was mentioned a few times.

Well, this would be it wouldn't it?

Here is my take on it

Things to consider:

- The comet may be flashing off some gases that have value. I see that there is a proposal here to have "layers" with possibly the best one being in the middle, but I think there should be a reward for those who get there first, and gases sound like a good candidate IMO.
- The comet will attract *lots* of miners, and that would attract gankers... and that's good! There may be defensive fleets to protect the miners
- the art for these could be really nice, and would help sell the game