Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I think this idea has the potential to be a lot of fun with some very interesting gameplay, but I'm also having a hard time imagining CCP implementing it without it feeling like smaller scale, isolated incursion sites.

People will still game the system though, scouting these things out with 15-20 km/s Dramiels, Daredevils and soon Succubus', then coming back and cherry picking the sites with appropriately fitted ships, assuming there is enough isk to be made to make it worth their while. So long as you can enter the site from the same direction reliably it won't be hard to map it out unless the events within the site literally drift around.

Something else needs to be done to take this scenario a step further mechanic-wise to keep it from just being a variant of high sec incursions, and I likely won't come up with anything decent.

So get to work.

Why would it not? did I miss something?

How about having the gas slow your ship down? It would be like going through water, much harder to go through. Acceleration of ships will be slower too = more time needed to start a warp. If the ship is too big and massive, attaining enough speed to initiate a warp could require hours, if not months, making you truly stranded.
The warp drive will also be much slower due to EM interference from the cloud, requiring more careful thus slower navigation. Initiating a warp could also require more capacitor. Requiring you to do multiple warps in order to get in-out of the cloud.
Another thing I have in mind is a rotating cloud, transporting you around with it so that only fast enough ships can get to the center of it. Maybe a cloud around a WH... ahaha

Just imagine you jump through a WH and you discover that there's a spinning cloud on the other side. If your ship is too big, the cloud starts transporting you out of range of the WH and eventually making you lost forever, unless a mate in a fast ship comes to your rescue.

Your're right. I read the Piranha's post while coding at work... I misinterpreted "5,000km" as 5,000 (trimmed the zeros after coma) = 5km to 200km radius, which made me thought that all kinds of warp modules should be disabled. At least that was the intention I got somehow. My bad, sorry.

No, no. I double checked the original post and template post of piranha's. Yes, there is an interference, but that interference is meant to be "warp bubble interference", causing your warp drive to malfunction, but not mwd.

Otherwise, navigating through one would take forever if you cannot take out your ship.

Yep, there would be tons of choices. Since WH's have the ability to change behavior of the systems, the game mechanic supports altering everything already. Piranha, you have created an idea, which has boundaries of void, yet, possibilities of null, low and high-sec. Dynamic alterations are another mechanic that can be implemented. "Floating mapped altered mechanic clouds"... Sounds interesting.

Yeah, some folks have to remember that the theme is more important than the details when talking about this construct.

Now, of course, he devil IS in the details, so those details, the game mechanics, are of course crucial. And for that reason I think the whole cloud construct should be taken dead slow, if and when CCP decides to comment on this thread.

When I say dead slow, I am suggesting the first thing that happens, and the simplest thing, is CCP creates the randomized cloud to appear potentially in any system. Just the cloud. Nothing in it. Just a big old spot that appears out of nowhere, hangs around for a few days, and is gone. Use the wormhole mechanic for this. That cloud would warp disrupt, and kill dscan, and that's it

Then start fiddling with mechanics. See what would happen if there is NO local, not even delayed like womrholes. Then test it with different variations of that. Test the concept of dscan only be partially working, versus totally not working. Test having line of sight reduced from the standard grid to various sizes. (personally, I think 100 km in any direction is pretty good).

In fact, test whatever the players and CCP can come up with. It would be a true sandbox, and no one can complain about some other group having entrenched interests being serviced. Keep testing, and tweaking, until the players are happy, both PvE and PvP.

The lore behind it is that man has started fooling with time and space so much (player built startgates, or the new covert research NPC plexes, perhaps?) , that a totally new phenomenon is randomly appearing, where "normal" rules of space and time are being twisted.

Now, on to the PvE stuff, the stuff that will draw the prey in for the predators.
These spaces can suck in items and NPC's from anywhere in the Eve universe because of this twisting of time and space described above, hence allowing a 2/10 high sec plex to be parked maybe 500 km from a Sleeper capital escalation.

And here, CCP HAS to go REAL slow. Start with small stuff, only a few items in a cloud, whatever the size of cloud it is. Yes, it will not entice much prey in at the start, making these things kind of boring. But the quality of sites can be ramped up pretty quick, once all the other constructs are sorted out, because you know that once PvE sites start showing up in there, player groups will try to build methods to max min the zones. That is where CCP has to be able to change the constructs to stop that max / min'ing in its tracks.

So like I said, we focus on the theme, the add details slowly, tweaking as we go.
Further, this 6 week turnaround CCP is would mesh nicely with the iterative process I am suggesting.

Bump

Every concept would have to be play tested.
No way my original template could be perfect on the first attempt.
Lots of ideas floating about.

But like I have said before, the more I think about this, the more I think that if CCP ever implements something like this, it is within Valkyrie.

That sounds interesting. Would you also limit the overview?

How about removing overview listing altogether? You would have to interact with only what you are able to see on screen or have appropriately fitted sensors that identify targets, and thus replacing the local sensor overlay while in those sites.

It would point out ores, riches, even enemies, so you don't have to pixel hunt for them but not just have them line up on the overview like sardines. That would defeat the purpose of exploration, I think. Go out there, find them, on the screen! The space in EVE is beautiful, we should be encouraged to look at it more when hunting and exploring.

The other idea I had to expand on this sensor overlay that would replace the overview settings and the default sensor overlay that would otherwise scan for anomalies and other sites when not in this *nebula* type of room that you can get lost in - you could have a skill for it like Astrometrics (for any Star Trek - Voyager fans) and depending how skilled you are, you can increase the range of onscreen detection - this can allow you to get the drop on your opponents, or if you are outmatched, try to devise a quick escape before they detect you.