Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I really don't think putting rules on the size of alliances/corp will solve anything, these entities exist outside the game, the only thing this will create is a multiplication of assets holding "alt" alliances controlled by the same people.

This isn't a half bad idea though it'd definitely need more NPC space pockets to make it work. There are a lot of areas in eve that are incredibly isolated like that. Gate connections like you're talking about though, to NPC space or even back to lowsec, could be interesting. One thing they'd do for residents in deep nullsec is open up new options for logistics. In manny's scenario any sort of commerce to and from empire, if you live in deep null like that, is either "get ****ed", "blue up everyone closer to empire than you and still have to slog freighters 30+ jumps", or "hope you can find convenient wormholes." Those gate connections would offer a fourth option - a rapid transitway that'd take you right to your doorstep, or at least a lot closer... but that very same thing makes them predictable routes and thus dangerous to use.



The fact that you have to be in a massive coalition now doesn't mean that the opposite is optimal, ideal or desirable. If sov nullsec is meant as a place to carve out and build your own nation then, well, nations can be large or small and the mechanics should recognize and support this.


What they do have are usually short connections back to Empire, a population constrained by mechanics (limiting how much logistics has to happen in the first place) and the ability to influence if not outright control the ability to get into their system at all. And if player build stargates weren't already meant, from what's been said, to go to new space, maybe you'd have an idea. Anthar's suggestion would have a similar effect, though.



The problem with NPC nullsec is that it's increasingly becoming "worse lowsec but with bubbles and bombs". More of it could be interesting (see first quote in the chain) but it could do with some love as well.



e: My reaction to Manny's set of suggestions the other day was about as vitriolically over the top as I feel his power projection changes are. The real problem I've got with it isn't so much what I feel are the bad ideas (NPC trader, hubs hackable in the way he describes, over the top projection nerf) nor the good ones (I like the notion of tying the other indices into sov more though not quite so much in the way he's describing) but in what it fails to really address or even apparently think about. Some of it got touched on above - ****ing over people living in deep null with no alternatives, no thought to upsides of living there. Some just aren't touched on at all - what's the carrying capacity of a system for player income, how does that as well as value of alliance income sources drive the meta (hint: extensively, at least in my opinion), is production based entirely on locally sourced materials really that feasible (up for debate), etc. So I guess you could summarize that all as "some good, some bad, but mostly just feels half assed."

To credit, though, it's spawned some decent discussion.

Freighters were added with Cold War (along with Dreadnoughts). That brings them in on June 29th 2005.

Carriers came with Red Moon Rising in December of 2005. Also Supers and Titans although the first Titan was not built until until September of 2006.

The Rorqual was introduced in in the Revelations II midpoint release around August/September of 2007.

Jump freighters came in Trinity which was December of 2007.

This dev blog from Trinity 1.1 comments on cargo expanded dreadnoughts as a cargo transport.

Just to help out with the historic accuracy of rose tinted glasses.

I am watching this thread with great interest and am very happy to see the discussion it's spawning.

It's very interesting to compare the ideas being discussed here with concepts we're discussing internally.

GodsWork is pretty thoroughly convinced that the large alliances like PL/BOT, Gewns/PRBLD, and NC./NA. would rather split apart and give up most of their sov, than to use alts to create a pile of compartment alliances, and hold just as much sov as before, but with new added bonuses to counterbalance the increased effort.

So it boils back down to variables, throw us some dam curve balls CCP!

How about cosmic storms that sometimes accelerate a jump drives range putting them randomly on the other side of the map (or even in unknown space!), make electrical interference screw up your ability to plot a jump correctly so you land in random areas of space, even fail to jump occasionally so you end up with 2-3 capitals that are stranded on the field.

Lets have Star gates malfunction from time to time and leave it up to the players to fix them. Have them fluctuate in destination as a glitch sometimes making travel easier other times making it harder. Turn jump bridges into more reliable gates, sepeate them from POS and have them as an anchorable structure that can be hacked to gain access, how about hacking a jumpbridge to land pilots that jump through it at a different destination? used for a dirty trap or a cunning get away plan.

What about restricting what is visible to you in a system to your ships scanner? change certain ships default scan ranges based on class, suddenly scanning/max scanner range ships become more useful to fleet movement (via fleet warp mechanics), lets get rid of local chat as a broken intel tool in favor of the for-mentioned. Build up more specialist roles within fleets so 1 person can't just login 12 accounts and do it all (like most large scale FC these days).

How about adding bigger critical strike bonuses so you randomly get that sweet shot that actually "wrecks" and enemy vessel? or have ships malfunction so sometimes the MWD will not shutdown, the guns jam, the drones turn on each other, the smartbomb hits your hull, reps and remote reps overload shield (or armor counterparts respectively) causing them to shut down for a cycle due to an error.

Throw some more tactical choices our way so ships are not all one cookie cutter fitting and doesn't have a counter cookie cutter fitting. Hell lets do something crazy like throw out the idea of racial guns that are slowly becoming practically the same weapon systems and give turret ships a generic turret bonus and switch it up with the weapon systems, make laser beams actual beams that slowly increase in damage over time so hitting larger/tankier ships makes them the choice weapon but against fast hard hitting ships less desirable, Artillery actually artillery hitting way out there but having 0 close range ability.

Lets have dreads that can shoot broadcasted targets from across a system, like an actual dread would. Lets enable carriers/supers to have multiple pilots that can take control and warp fighter wings around system.

Why not have deployable Titans which can become a kind of private defended star gate, connect two up to establish a link to a warzone from your deployment zone that can extend their shields similar to a POS with the same reinforcement mechanics in place.

Why not allow super-capitals to refuel themselves on energy harvested from stars? make it a finite resources so multiple super-capitals would have to travel to different systems to recharge their fuel bay. Maybe depleating a systems star could cause system wide effects, everything becomes colder as an example. If this refueling system was implemented it would put supers more at risk to gain their benefits, refueling a titan so you can use it to jump a fleet would mean babysitting the titan at the sun prior to the op, putting said titan at risk.

Lets have Ewar back, force multipliers were nerfed because they were "OP" just like speed was "OP" now power projection is "OP". I miss force multipliers, I miss having an ewar wing, you know what if 10 falcon pilots want to jam 4 people from the hostile fleet each essentially tieing up 40 pilots with 10 I guess removing that threat becomes priority rather than an all out turkey shoot of blob a shoots blob b in the kneecaps until one of the blobs can remember what they were fighting over in the first place and goes home.

While we are at it, lets remove Cyno. Instead let everyone use the capital navigation tab to find out were they can jump to and allow them to jump blindly into systems, jumping to the largest celestial in the system (usually the sun). Lets see Star Harvesting combined with Star Camping. Combined with all the variables mentioned ealier in the thread, you could accidentally find yourself in the middle of a hostile zone, your alliance could send a fleet to defend you but although 90% would make it, 10% would end up slightly off course and they too could fall prey to awaiting hostile entities.

Oh how eve would be so much more fun I I owned it :D

*Snip* Removed quote of a deleted post. ISD Ezwal.

Not so much when it comes to power projection. Criticism could have been more constructive but I certainly don't need an idea of my own to deliver it, no more than a doctor has to catch something to recognize and diagnose it. Far as I'm concerned virtually everything about power projection is wrapped tightly around other mechanics that extensively dictate how and why and to what extent power is projected and I'd rather work from the perspective of revamping those to inform power projection changes, instead of blindly swinging for a 2006 era that never actually existed the way you remember and definitely never will again.

Call it a difference in philosophy.

But hey - it's a starting point, and to be fair here, I do see one tiny, almost insignificant aspect about it that I like, so who can say where that leads.


Least we can unequivocally and reasonably agree on something.

tl;dr: Importing from highsec means drawing on the mining power of "every miner in highsec", and (based on old diagoras numbers) there are something like three times as many of them as there are miners in all of nullsec, but any given corp or alliance obviously only gets a tiny fraction of that and trit production in nullsec is (from the best trit/m3 ratio ore) about 6-7 times what you get in highsec, with the end result being that local production means having a miniscule fraction of the output that you have available to you by importing.

Is that about the gist of what you're saying?

To be fair, the fact that CCP buffed compressed ore so as to leave compression/importation mechanisms available despite the refining nerf means they realize and acknowledge this. I think.

I don't think there's anything to be concerned with around your point about looking down on miners and so forth. If it's worth the time and effort people in nullsec will mine and do industry and so forth and just look down on those doing the same in empire. It's not exactly a large culture shift for the common "Industrial players are a bunch of whiny entitled carebears who contribute nothing and expect everything" attitude to become "Most industrial players are a bunch of whiny entitled carebears who contribute nothing and expect everything but I'm a valued member overcoming the challenges for the betterment of my alliance"

Completely agree with this, the current options are very unpalatable to many I think hence the 80/20 split between other areas and null. WH space has much more appeal to me as it limits the blob/renting mechanics.

you don't want to go to sov null, then. what's to fix?