Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is cute. We've been trying to get content added to wormholes for years. What makes you think ccp is gonna waste their time adding content to incursions when they are working

Problem: Missile ships are mostly useless in incursion fleets
Solution: Add one large structure that needs to be destroyed in each VG/higher, so the cruise/torp ships have something to shoot at while the Vindis pop the frigs and the Machs/NMs pop everything else.

Problem: Assaults are the only incursion size that severely restricts the ships you need to have on grid. This is one of the main reasons why relatively few people run them because once the systems get NCN walled, you need to have a specific fleet composition to run them.
Solution:
A: Eliminate the cruiser side gate
B: Open the cruiser side to all hulls
C: Restrict the cruiser side gate to allow x amount of mass to pass through per fleet. This amount should still allow a few battleships to take it with the needed logi support. The mass used by a ship in a fleet should fall off after about 10 minutes. This mechanic here could be abused by people dropping fleet to take the gate and joining in each room so their damage is counted in the site towards the fleet. So to counter this, the fleet damage counter would have to take a snapshot of the people in the fleet when people actually take the gate and not count them if they have not taken the gate while in a specific fleet. This would ensure that people who disconnect would still receive payout if they get back in site and in fleet for the end of the site.
D: At a minimum, allow command ships to take the cruiser side gate since all other battlecruisers can take it that have a larger mass.

Problem: Scouts are essentially pointless to run
Solution: Buff their payout to be roughly around L4, maybe even as far as between L4 and L5s. This will allow a couple of people to go out and still run sites if they cannot get a full fleet up.

Problem: The influence bar turns blue very quickly and once blue, virtually stays blue all the time.
Solution: Change the effort required to an exponential formula so it takes longer at the end to fully blue the constellation.

Problems: Vanguards are overcrowded
Solutions:
1: Fix scouts so they're a real stepping stone to incursion content.
2: Fix assaults so they're worth running, i.e. NCNs.

Problem: Scouts are unused, or used only by solo players messing about.
Solutions:
1: remove scouts, add another VG or AS system.
2: Up the payout and difficulty to sit between l4s and l5s, with incomming DPS that is just local tankable in a standard battleship without implants. ~ 2-3 romis or other normal grade cruisers per site and 3-5M payout with a fleet of 3-5.

Problem: Headquarters are over crowded.
Solutions:
1: fix AS sites.

Problem: Assauts are under-used, with all systems being run until NCN walled and then fleets standing down.
Solutions:
1: Increase payout such that NCNs are worth running as is.
2: Fix NCNs.

Problem: NCNs suck to run as is, to the point where they kill AS fleets and the systems end up NCN walled.
Solutions (pick one, or a combination):
1: Open up the cruiser gate and let Battleships in
2: Allow in command ships at least. Makes no sense you can't take a t2 version of the same class.
3: Remove a pocket or two entirely. The EHP required to be burned will still be approximately equal.
4: Reduce the sniper targets in the final pocket, especially as antems and yulais have fairly high alpha.
5: Eliminate the cruiser gate entirely.
6: Balance the spawns between the two gates better and open them up to all ships. (This is my most preferred solution)

Problem: Influence in highsec is a joke.
Solutions:
1: Increase rate of influence increase in highsec. 4% per hour means a single unshiny VG fleet will barely hold influence down.
2: Increase payout slightly while under influence, giving a reason to grind a new incursion.

Wouldn't that just mean that the Bloc's would warp in and dominate the system, given that they would be able to field much larger gank squads in addition to smaller Incursion fleets to actually run the incursions?

Oh, and also the potential for captials to end up in the system after the sec stat returns to normal?

Some ideas I had in my years of min-maxing incursions

Problem: Guns being the predominant weapon system, Missiles and drones being inferior as a main weapon system.
Suggestion for solution: Give shansha tracking/optimal range disruption, and having it spread over a majority of the human fleet.


Problem: NOS being useless
Suggestion for solution: Give shansha battleships a realistic base cap. No 3800gj cap isn't realistic on a Nightmare-class battleship when my own Nightmare gets 9200. Nosferatu are an interesting mechanic to utilize, and they would be a fund tool while not being overpowered due to limited range.


Problem: Sansha's Nation Comander ripping inexperienced fleets into pieces.
Suggestion for solution: Not having a frigate with 11250 alpha, 10s rof or at least giving a warning about it in the popup you get when warping to the site.


Problem: Towers meaning everything in a contest, rats are rendered almost irrelevant in sites with a tower-bash present
Suggestion for solution: Give towers Resist and adjust their HP accordingly to keep the same ehp on them.


Problem: Assaults being inferior to VG and HQ Sites
Suggestion for solution:
1.) Change NCNs, come up with something else. Why not have an interceptor burn around collecting keys to open the next gate?
2.) Re think the spawn positions in all the assault sites.
I like HQs where you have 1 short range and 1 long range spawn on most waves. It gives everyone a choice on what to shoot and makes all weapon systems from short range blasters to long range artillery useful all the time.
In Assaults you have only 1 spawn most of the time. The spawns are very far apart. The waves are very heavy on slow moving ships. This renders short range weapon systems almost useless.
3.) Adjust the spawn rate of Assault sites. 2 Assault fleets can clear a system very quickly and a lot of incursions have only 1 Assault system. I can see this being a problem when assault sites get more popular as a stepping stone between VGs and HQs.

Problem: Ship restrictions on acceleration gates
Suggestion for solution: Allow Capsules into the sites for people to 'take a look' without being shot. Allow Expedition Frigates (Prospect) for people that want to mine/move Lyavite and scout at the same time. Allow the Zephyr in sites, having a ship not being shot by sansha could make for some interesting game-play.


Problem: Scout Sites being a missed opportunity
Suggestion for solution: Rework them as sites designed for ~3 ships, designed to be run in the downtime you have between incursion fleets. I think they should pay out about 70% of what VG sites pay and not require dedicated logi. But having some mechanic in there to keep logistic pilots entertained would certainly be nice. You could have to save some station being shot by sansha where you need a logistics ship to rep up the station to get your payout.


Other interesting elements I could think of:
Have incursion-sansha have a chance to drop 'shortcuts'. Those shortcuts could be mobile structures only anchor-able in incursion areas.They lower the resist of all sansha (maybe every everyone, even player-ships) on grid to make for different and more diverse experience.
Those shortcuts could be dropped in a can blue to everyone, free for everyone to grab. They could be stolen or sold to the competition, etc...

My only retort to that is, unless I am mistaken there are very few low/null incursion runner fleets, ratting encompasses all of new Eden. So 30 trillion isk comes from bounties (exploration and ratting) and 10 trillion comes from incursions which are generally in high sec.

So yeah the risk vs reward is kinda off there.

They are also not risk free. Despite being 'on farm' ships including shiny ships are lost to the sites on a very regular basis. A couple of seconds of inattention at the wrong time by a Battleship pilot in an HQ site, and Logi can't react fast enough to save them if they are unlucky.
The reason they seem 'safe' is because pilots are at their keyboards, paying attention the whole time, and following the FC's instructions very attentively. Exactly the situation they should be rewarded for after all.

The one change I would like to incursions is one I've been pushing for across all area's, ratting, missions, etc.
Instead of Outuni etc.... you just get 'Sansha Battleship' 'Nightmare'. So you can't pick and choose your initial targets in any site, on any belt etc so easily.

problem: pretty much everything except 3 pirate battleship hulls (and maybe the paladin if you fly armour (which, incidentally is also terrible)), or t2 logi ships are redundant and essentially dead weight being carried.
solution: i haven't got a clue.

problem: trivial and dull.
solution: we need in-game netflix streaming.

problem: missiles are just a horrible weapon system.
solution: they need to be instant damage like every other weapon system in the game, or they'll never see the light of day in incursions.

i'm sure there are some others i can think of later.

Problem: There is no benefit in running scout sites at the moment. These sites could be the place where lower-skilled players participate in 'fighting back the Sansha invastion', yet the ammo cost often outweigh the profits.
Solution: increase the payout of scout sites or rework them entirely.

Problem: hacking in override transfer array sites sometimes does not disable the rats from rapidly repairing.
Solution: I wouldn't know a solution, I expect it is a bug.


On the topic of OTA's: I think it would make the site a bit more interesting if the hackable tower would spawn at a random location. IIRC the site contains 3 'towers' but the hackable can always spawns in the same location.