Player Features and Ideas Discussion

There is no question that the overwhelming majority of pirate ships are flown in high sec, and it just digs at the back of my brain as I fly around..... Why would concord and the big 4 be okay with a bunch of pirate ships all over the place? There is the caveat that so long as you have a non-hostile security status they don't care what you fly because you're probably shooting someone that is not them, and not their concern. But wouldn't they want to control the appearance of them merely for the sake of propaganda and public appearances? Doing anything outright punitive to the capsuleers is out of the question, but they could always institute some bureaucratic BS to make flying pirate ships in high sec less convenient.

So what about a tax? Give it an 8 week or 80 day period like insurance and if you pay the tax you can fly that pirate ship in high sec. Undock or jump into high sec in a ship that hasn't had the tax paid on it and you get a pop-up demanding the payment immediately. Refusal to pay the tax gets your ship impounded until you pay it plus the impounding fee.

This doesn't have to necessarily make pirate ships too expensive to fly in high sec, and in relation you can lower the LP cost of the ships, making them more affordable to use in low sec and null sec, so that we see a shift of where the ships are used as they become slightly less popular in high sec and slightly more popular in low and null, where you would expect to see them more frequently.


Yes, I am proposing a change to the gameplay simply to appeal to my sense of the cultural aesthetic of New Eden. Deal with it.

Edit: Upon further mental gestation I've come to the conclusion that changing the cost of the ships in the LP store would be ineffective. As demand rose for the ships due to PvP use the LP value of some stores would increase, while other stores that do not use ship sales as a base for LP values would remain the same, and in combination with the desirability of the different ships for different styles of PvP and the popularity of those styles it would just make a clusterf*ck of the pirate ship market without any discernible improvement for the number of ships used in PvP.

So I screwed that up. Any better ideas than shifting costs onto the risk-averse players?

Who said they were trying to control them?

Bureaucratic BS was the exact term I used, and it's exactly what I meant. They know they can't control the capsuleers, so they just irritate the **** out of them for arbitrary reasons in order to maintain public appearances.

This is exactly the kind of political bullcrap I'd expect from the New Eden empires.

Restricting all opposing faction ships would also stifle trade, so they have no interest in that. Pirate ships are definitely not used for trade though. Simple yet important distinction

You could say that that just excuses everything that isn't a military oriented ship and the rest from the opposing faction should still be taxed, but there is also the argument that so long as capsuleers are being used as a pseudo-militia to fight the other side (FW is more than pseudo, even, they're an outright militia) then that major faction has no problem with capsuleers acquiring resources from the enemy and subsequently using them to shoot the enemy with.

Pretty simple. So long as you think you can control where the gun is aimed, it doesn't matter who made it or who is holding it.

Major faction ships make up the vast majority of vessels in the space lanes, so targeting them for embargos or taxes is impractical. Pirate ships however make up a small minority from a political and financial perspective, but can be used to control a huge portion of public opinion.

The pirate ships are also used to work for each factions. They are also used to counter Sansha invasion during incursion. They are also used to fight opposing militia in FW.

We are also allowed to fly close to anything because we have the pilot liscence.

As long as you, the pilot of the ship, don't **** them off, they don't care what you are flying.

If you understood my angle your post was written in such a way to obscure that entirely. I said something much to the same effect as what you just stated in my second post.

Empire factions don't care what ship you shoot the other empires with. They do, however, care about keeping up appearances with the billions of people on the surface of the planets who vote the politicians into office, who would find it advantageous to use a small portion of the capsuleer community to gain a significant amount of popularity with the general populace.

There is a perfectly sound background to support this, and if used correctly it could help put more pirate faction ships in low and null sec where we'd all like to have the opportunity to shoot them, while simultaneously adding more depth and flavor to the New Eden universe.

So we implement it only for gallente since the others dont vote anyway?

Popularity is popularity, it doesn't matter how people express that. Either it keeps the slave revolts manageable because the Sansha aren't going to steal their babies, gives you more influence for financial manipulation of the markets or just makes you a swell guy, either way savvy politicians will find a use for it.

Sure. Sounds pretty impossible but it's a legitimate suggestion so sure.

But that also doesn't take into account that we will see just as proportionately more pirate ships in high sec where the risk/reward ratio is severely out of balance when compared to using the ships for PvP, with the exception of frigates. And that's what bothers me. The pirate ships get good PvP bonuses but are more popular for mission running, and from my perspective it's like dressing a pack of wolves in frilly dresses and playing tea with them.

I don't see any reason why the justaposition should be so severe between their intended purpose and their actual use, and again this is almost purely a complaint about aesthetics. I want to find a way to motivate more people to fly pirate ships in PvP and less in PvE simply to put things in their intended place.

How often are Neuts used in PvE?

Are 90% strength webs any more useful in PvE than 60% webs? Not really, rats are slow in general.

Fewer drones that have a higher survivability benefits PvP much more than it does PvE. People have done nothing but complain about the Gurista changes for PvE.

The rest of the ships have bonuses that are just as well suited to PvE as PvP but there is one more thing to mention.

It's a PvP game, and all ships are intended to be used in PvP, but some are more strongly oriented in that direction for a majority of the PvP activity that Eve players engage in.

I do not see any mechanical or gameplay reason to ban penalize pirate ships from high-sec (lore or "personal aesthetic" is not reason enough).


And besides... if this idea ever saw the light of day you would find yourself despised by every single carebear and industry baron in the game followed by tearful shrieks of nerfed playstyles and ragequitting.
I do not think the DEVs want to endure all that just to satisfy your personal taste on how things should be.