Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I love the concept of rogue drones. AI gone haywire, hateful to all life? Yes. Give me some of that. Unfortunately, as they are in game, they're rather boring. They aren't really a threat, compared to other groups out there. They have no Ewar. As long as you can survive being shot by a bunch of virus laden garbage balls, there is NOTHING in a rogue drone nest that should scare you. And that's a shame.

To make matters worse, their loot is terrible. No modules, no nothing from average drones. Sentient drones drop some pieces you can use to make split damage drones. Whoop de doo. There is a reason no one goes after rogue drones anymore. It just isn't worth it.

Used to be, there was alloys that made rogue drones fairly profitable, but...lets be honest, those were a bad idea from the start. Give free minerals to a bunch of gun toting chumps and they're just gonna sell them for burrito money. That in turn is going to crash the mineral market and make a whole bunch of people unhappy. Dumb idea all around. Lets not bring it back. Instead, lets do something a little more interesting.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to direct your attention to nanites. They are basically drones in a nice, convenient paste format. And as anyone who has read certain Sci-Fi books should know, they are goddamn scary. They're capable of breaking down just about anything into more nanites, which will in turn break down more things into nanites, which will...you get the idea.

Now think about rogue drones having that kind of power at their disposal. Just for a moment, think of the implications.
That shiver you just felt? That cold feeling in the pit of your stomach? That's inspiration, my friend! And gut wrenching fear. But mostly inspiration.

Now, those nanites...how would we represent them in game? Having nanite attack swarms that eat spaceships would be a wee bit overpowered, don't you think? Lets look at resistances instead. Your ships resistances are the result of careful, intricate construction. And on top of that, you've got highly complex modules pushing the ship further beyond it's already formidable capabilities. Its a very complex setup, is what I'm trying to say.

And in my experience, complex things don't take very well to being ******* chewed on. Just ask any parent who has had a toddler stick something expensive in their mouth.

So to get back to the game mechanics, lets say that these nanite attack swarms go to work and start chewing on your spaceship. You've got defenses to prevent them from eating your ship entirely, but your resistances? Oh, they're going to be going down my friend. And suddenly, all those laser beams hurt a LOT more.

That kind of capability is something any capsuleer would drool over. So of course, it isn't going to be long before they start trying to work that ability into their own ships. And Sure, they'll be able to produce some gear that is kind of effective at the job. But for the best stuff, you need an AI at work. You need to get the components from the rogue drones themselves.

That gives us something of a reason to hunt drones again....but...I don't think its enough. Lets take it a step further. Lets say that rogue drones are a faction in their own right. And like any faction, we should have ships from them. But uh.....last time I checked, they aren't too keen on the idea of interacting with people. Or at least not in any way that doesn't involve lasers to the face. So those ships are something you're going to have to trick them into building.

So why don't we make them think they're building a new hive mother? Take those drone pieces, use them to assemble some new ones. Change just a LITTLE bit of their programming, so that they leave room for a capsule. And then throw them into a room with a bunch of wrecked hulls and let them go to work. Boom, new ships, just needing a few changes for them to be ready for capsuleer use. OF course, you will have to have a way to deal with the drones once you're done with them. They aren't going to take well to you running off with their mother.

For the bonuses from the ship...well...I'll let CCP decide that, but I'd suggest something to do with drones. Seems fitting, after all.

Hell, they can even fill the Caldari-Minmatar gap in pirate factions. After all, rogue drones ARE kind of the balance between ordered planning and jury rigged rust buckets.

So, what do you guys think? Am I crazy, or is this a good idea?

After catching my breath from the burrito comment, yes drones need more. I'd love to see them randomly field every type of ewar there is (they do scavenge in all corners of the galaxy after all). Kronos did give them some faction modules in the loot tree for sentients but that doesn't add up to much. Doesn't even have to be necesarily attached to manufacturing/etc, but humorous would be appreciated too.

"Do I want to know why that drone had slaver hound breeding records and 3 copies of Pax Amarria onboard?"

I completely forgot to put a counter in there, didn't I? Well, I've got an easy enough fix. Nanites are kinda their own counter. Its hard to chew on something while being chewed on, right? Then it just becomes a battle of who can eat who faster. And while that's happening, your resists are fine. Of course, if someone else's nanites are better than yours...eventually, you're gonna run out of nanites.

Like the thread, goes in a bit of the direction of a joke comment of mine: Drone ships are hosts, capsuleers are the implants, when you exit/eject a ship you can only do so by destroying the clone.

Your nanite idea could work like a tracking disruption module in the way of a negative active hardener or negative armor phaser. You get targeted you either lose a resistance amount or your resistance shifts away to a less effective one.

This new module could be weak for casual use but heavily bonused on drone ships.

And regarding artwork, each module type gets his own drone module, so all guns share one visual model, all launchers, all ewar etc... so you cant tell from the look what exactly is equipped, but still the group and the shp starts to morph like a T3

Well, luckily we could read past that for once, believe me, I found it interesting and charming enough not to link 10 rogue drone ship threads ... you know how quick I am. If I can let it slide, can you ?

Anyways, I see this more of an opportunity to collect good suggestions of the past and connect them, each of them might not have worked, combined, maybe. So here you go, make it work. I actually think I found a solution for the on grid/off grid boost so one day I have to make a new thread in this regard, it will combine existing ideas which all have failed standing alone .. so maybe one day is the right day (sure there will be 'sneak xxx thread' replies).

I just got a picture in my head of one of those Off line POS moons in hi Sec that have been there for a while and now has the attention of some rogue drones. Creating an opportunity to kill both the drone infestation and the POS it is drawn to.

+1 for adding some contenet involving rogue drones. They've always felt like an untapped section of the game as far as NPCs are concerned.

Rogue drone incursions would be cool as they hate everyone equally. And I've always liked the look of the rogue drone structures so a line of POS or deployable drone structures would be pretty cool, not to mention ships or reconstructed rouge drones for personal use (rouge drone gecko?).

In the interest of content creation, it would be cool if there was a way for players to encourage an NPC infestation/incursion/attack. So a way to align interests with the rogue drones and deploy an object or structure to increase the chance that a rogue drone combat sig spawns in a particular system or constellation. Obviously it would have to be balanced: only one per system, easily probed or marked on overview, destroyable without a reinforce timer, etc. The idea of using NPCs as 3rd party muscle to create chaos would be fun. And of course, the drones will have their own agenda.

I like this! I'd also love to see more for the Rogue Drones, and the ideas you posted look very promising. +1 from me!

I'm not sure I'm a fan of that idea. It seems like it could cause a lot of lag if something goes bad.

Okay....impression I'm getting is that rogue drone ships are a no-no. Heh. Thats a shame. I had all kinda of ideas for a structure tanking ship (light shields and armor that regenerate really fast, like some of the drone overseers). But lets forget the ships and leave just the module as a concept. What do you guys think of that?