Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Updated 5/1 based on comments


Problem statement:
Currently wrecks are not probe-able, only the player creating them is (his ship or his drones). If we want to scavenge wrecks being created by another player, we have to probe the mission down while he is still running it. If that mission is not probed down while the player is in the mission space, the wrecks he leaves behind are not able to be found by later scavengers.

Proposed changes:

1) Internal to the database, associate mission/complex wrecks to the mission/complex that spawned the ship.


2) When the mission/complex de-spawns (Missions despawn when turned in, and no one in them. Plexes despawn when rats are dead and no one in them.)
a) Abandon wrecks.
b) Add "abandoned "into the name of the wreck.
c) Increase the sig radius of wrecks considerably so that they match the sig radius of a player ship of roughly the same size (frig, cruiser, bc, bs). This would make the wreck probable with combat probes.


Concerns:
More player created loot/salvage:
Loot is getting a serious nerf with reprocess changes. Salvage already needs some love from CCP. If salvage prices fall too much, either 1) more people rig ships or 2) people will stop savaging.

Further reduces payout of mission runners:
salvage before you turn in.
mobile tractor for the loot.
think of it as freeing time that you would have spent looting and salvaging to be used to run more missions.


Resolved concerns:
Easier to find mission/plex runners while they are running:
Resolved by not increasing the sig rad until despawn.

More DB clutter:
I had originally proposed wrecks abandon after x amount of time, then remain abandoned for additional time, leaving them in the database longer. The change to make the abandon trigger based on despawn removes the need to leave them in space (database) longer than the 2 hours (though we could reset the timer at despawn time).

For what purpose?

Wrecks already show up in dscan and combat probe returns, they are just too small to be pinpointed. Making them probe-able is just a simply change to the database.

To create less ninja-ing? The ship running the mission is already probable so ninja's don't have any trouble finding you.

hmmmm....

I assume objects in space must have an "associated with" so that they can be de-spawned when the mission completes. Make wrecks associated to the mission. They do not automatically go away until the mission rests at downtime. Then, auto abandon them at mission completion when everything else is despawning. They last 2 hours from that time... I like it.

Updating the OP.

On top of that, why dont we just remove wreck despawning, that way in some lazier mission systems salvagers coudl go in weekjly and clear out a couple hundred wrecks after probing them down. make some profit.

Couple hundred? You could clear out thousands every day in at least a dozen systems that I know of. The amount of trash this would fill the servers with is astounding, and I wouldn't be surprised if it permanently locked some areas in TiDi.

There are systems where a salvager could run nonstop 8 hours a day in a maxed out Noctis with a Magpie for assistance and not even scratch the pile of trash left behind if they didn't decay.



I like the idea of wrecks being probable. I know some enterprising players who could make some good money off of it and a whole slew of others who would find it an interesting distraction to their normal activities.

One of the things that I can think is stopping this from happening though is the amount of hits it would fill your probe scanner with if you were looking in busier systems. I can see it crashing clients rather easily. There would need to be some way to filter it down to the single areas that have multiple wrecks and making them one signature. One way was already mentioned, but I think CCP would want to do it in a more integrated fashion, given their history, despite the fact that there are many easy solutions to this.

We have probe scanners and survey scanners, a salvage scanner could be introduced as well. Any place in space that has wrecks will remain a deadspace pocket for as long as the wrecks remain without changing any game mechanics currently. That's how grids and deadspace pockets work. Should a deadspace pocket contain only wrecks, LCO's and other typical things found in combat sites and not be visited by a player for 30 minutes it would appear on the salvage scanner's list as a debris signature. They could also appear for security missions that have been completed as soon as the player completes the mission with the agent. The salvager is then able to scan down the debris field and clean it out, no unusual mechanics or contrivances, just an extra module used for finding a signature that can only be scanned with a salvage scanner loaded with salvage probes.


It really makes no sense that these scanners don't already exist. Billions of isk is just left to disappear into the void of space every hour, and the Eve universe is full of profiteers and entrepreneurs looking for a profitable niche with little competition to make their fortune.

Players who're salvaging would likely be running security missions to make isk anyways if they can't make good money salvaging, so it could easily be made isk neutral in what it introduces into the economy. Salvage profits are being cut for people who run security missions and salvage their own wrecks for a reason, it was getting out of hand, but there is no reason that a person who does nothing but salvage behind people who only run security missions without salvaging can't make a decent living also.

I wouldn't increase the time wrecks last right away. If making them probable makes a strong enough decrease in available wrecks, then how much it decreased can be used to determine where to increase their duration to. Maybe it'll just be a nice benefit to the realm.


I thought of a fairly simple way to turn wreck-searching into a simple activity: rather than make every individual wreck turn up on the scan, any mission or anomaly hub pocket (characterized by a mission/anomaly warp beacon nearby) would link all nearby wrecks to the beacon and allow it to be scanned down as a single magnetometric object, with its strength being based on the number of wrecks and how big they are. An individual wreck should be more difficult to scan than a functioning ship. If a single wreck has 40% of the signal strength of the ship that made it, and each one in the same area afterward adds 10%, then it would take 7 ship wrecks of equivalent size to make them as easily scannable as a single ship. Very large numbers of wrecks would still be very easy to scan down.

When the main site despawns, the wreck "site" would remain, leaving the wrecks (of course) as well as the beacon for scanning them, and the deadspace pocket they are in if they are in one. Multi-level sites will lose their acceleration gates when despawning and instead you will get to other levels by scanning them down separately.

As for wrecks created outside of mission/anomaly sites, they will just be scannable as single objects and it will be up to the player to sort them out. This will also allow a savvy player to tell the difference between a mission site and the site of a player battle.

All wrecks already show up on dscan and probe scans. They are just too small to get to 100% to warp to them.

It is a very minor change to increase the sig res so that they can be found at 100%.

I like the 1 Sig per grid idea for wrecks, and the Sig strength based on the number and size of wrecks. No need to play with the de-spawn mechanics at this time. However Being an AU TZ player I would love them to stop despawning at DT.

Just make them abandoned as soon as the mission is turned in.

Good point.

More reason to associate the wrecks to the complex, then up their signature only when the complex de-spawns.

Superhamsters?