Player Features and Ideas Discussion

After reading comments and thinking things through, I've updated this idea and deleted the bullshit flood of four distinct Expedition frigates. I've decided we have already enough frigate-hulls, so for this idea one frigate-sized hull is all that is needed. The combat-ideas are split of into a new thread (posted soon).

The new thread can be found here.

New Expedition Frigate

This second new Expedition-frigate is a significant alteration on the principle behind the one we have right now: The old Expedition-frigate is ideal to secretly infiltrate places and run off with precious ore or gas. The new one can do a similar thing with moon minerals and fullerene reactions.

Essentially, this ship does what mobile siphons can do, but is a T2-version specialized for this task. It will have a similar align-time as a T1-hauler and come close to destroyer-mass, since there is a limit to what the machines and specialized cargo holds for this task can be miniaturized. Lore-wise this ship is a secret project between the Intaki-Syndicate and ORE. Both organizations think they can profit from proliferating a ship designed to undermine their competition.

To allow some creative fitting choices and easy transport of a mobile depot, the ship will have 400m³ free space in its cargo hold and a 8,000m³ large specialized hold for reaction materials and moon minerals.

If equipped with a small specialized bastion module, you can warp close to a POS and activate it. As long as the module is active, your ship will be immobile, but essentially invisible to the POS as long as no actual human is overriding the automatic systems and actively targets you. The module interferes with Cyno and cloak activation, however: Cloaks and Cynos can only be activated when the module is off and Cynos are so badly affected there's a five-minute timer until the ship can use Cynos again after switching the module off.

After the first cycle was successful, the owner of the POS gets a message about your stealing, so being careful and cautious is rewarded, being greedy gets punished. This means you shouldn't stay too long to steal from the same POS, if that wasn't clear enough.

The ship can fit up to 2 syphon-modules. T1 has a cycle time of 60 seconds and can take 20 (raw) and 10 (processed) units per cycle. T2 takes 40 (raw) and 20 (processed). The skill gives 5% bonus to cycle time per level. The activated bastion-module gives 10% additional cycle time reduction per level in the relevant skill.

This results in a cycle time of 22,5 seconds on max skills with activated bastion-mode. T2 syphon-modules will take 100 (raw) and 50 (processed) units per minute. If there's only Technetium available, the ship would syphon off 125m³ per minute. Since you can't cloak with active syphon running and can be targeted by a POS-gunner if the defence isn't sleeping at the weel, this should be a nice balance between stealing a POS blind and being a sitting duck.

The ship can warp cloaked, but because of the gigantic amount of highly specialized technology cramped into this small hull, won't be able to escape bubbles. The necessary technology for nullifying simply didn't fit inside. For the same reason there wasn't enough time to design the ship around using cloaks perfectly: Only skills and rigs affect recloaking-timer and targeting after decloaking. There is no bonus to either of them.

On the other hand, the ship has an incredibly high sensor strength and an incredibly low signature profile, so you better lay some smart traps and gate camps out, because simply scanning it down won't be easy.

This results in a 10% bonus per level in Mining Frigates for sensor strength and 5% reduction of signature radius per level in Expedition Frigates.

Any comments?

Edit:

One comment suggested a T1-version of this ship should be introduced first. For this, the numbers as above should apply but with up to 50% more stealing "yield" at level 5. (The relevant skill for the T1-version would then be Mining Frigates, of course. Instead of Expedition frigate like above.)

Another suggestion was to cut down the numbers since the original numbers allegedly "destroy 15 hours of work in 1-2 minutes". This doesn't sound so bad so I reduced the steal amount by around 90% for the T1-version. This way, the siphon-ships still destroy hours of offline-waiting with their stealing, but the owners have at least a reasonable chance at logging in and stopping the culprit before entire weeks of effort are down the drain.

So, basically, you want Cov-ops frigates rendered obsolete.

Why do they have combat abilities?

Uh.... thats the opposite of how counting works.

Lasers - Sansha, Sisters and Blood Raiders
Projectile - Angel
Hybrid - Serpentis
Drones - Guristas
Missiles - Mordu

If you count in empire factions then Projectile is least used as its only Angel and Minm

Lasers - Amarr, Sansha, Sisters and Blood Raiders
Projectile - 'Matar, Angel
Hybrid - Caldari, Galente, Serpentis
Drones - Amarr, Galente, Guristas
Missiles - 'Matar, Caldari, Amarr, Mordu



Only way I could see this working is no guns, based around the Iteron 1 stats but higher align time, cloaky and nulified. No guns, no mids or lows (so no prop for mwd trick or stabs) and nothing can be carried except siphoned goo - you cant even put moon goo in manually at a station, it must be siphoned. Must be near the pos (pretty much toucing the shield of a large) but wont be targetted unless guns are manned and as soon as siphoning starts the owner of the pos gets an alert that its being stolen from and who is stealing. Also siphoning acts similar to bastion except 15 second cycle. Perhaps 10-15 cycles to fill cargo on average. Perhaps limit the amount that can be stolen from each pos to 10% of the mined goo of the last 24 hours (stops mass ****)

It has to be high risk. Nulification/cloak gives it a chance but the higher align time makes decloaking much easier. Could be fun hunting them and using them to bait out fights.

Why would you use guns? Sansha TD you into the ground in the small plexes in High sec, Blood Rader TD you into the ground (3/10 with 15/13 and 10 TDs on you in all pockets, for instance), Guristas jam you into the ground, Serpentis damp you into the ground. Guns are absolutely not suitable for exploration. The Astero is the only choice, not just because it's the only ship but also because drones are the only option in that field of activity.

I have removed some rule breaking posts and those quoting them. Please people, keep it on topic and above all civil!

The Rules:
4. Personal attacks are prohibited.

Commonly known as flaming, personal attacks are posts that are designed to personally berate or insult another forum user. Posts of this nature are not beneficial to the community spirit that CCP promote and as such they will not be tolerated.

So, at level 5, it takes 2 minutes to steal 15 hours-worth of technetium. And the POS owner only gets a warning after that 15 hours is gone.

If you don't see why this is a terrible idea from the above, I can't help you.

A question, why does it have to be T2 anyway ? The label usually comes with increased resistance (for all factions) and a tiny hp increase ... so what are the combat applications to justify this. - Or are yous till just trying to fill that imaginary list ?

The problem here is of course, there is no T1-siphon ship. But remember, CCP promised more Expedition frigates in the future. And if CCP wants to make a complete new ship and call it T2, I wouldn't object. Hell, if they're adding a second mining frigate as a T1-version of a siphon ship, that would be a good idea, too.



Since offline-players aren't playing the game, I think we could hurt them just a little bit. If someone takes the time to fly around trying to get your stuff, you should at least expend a litle bit of effort protecting your stuff.

If my numbers are destroying 15 hours of waiting around offline for the player doing moon mining in just 1-2 minutes, as you claimed, then you'll have to take into account that online gameplay should net you more then offline gameplay.

More risk = more reward.

Now let's correct the numbers since stealing 15 hours worth of moon minerals in a few minutes sounds still a bit harsh to me. Let's cut my numbers down by the factor ten. Now every 1-2 minute cycle of the siphon ship steals 1,5 hours worth of moon minerals. Since the player flying the siphon ship has a lot more risk to endure then the not-even online defender, this should be low enough.

If we go the route Fer'isam K'ahn suggested and add a second T1 mining-frigate to not let the siphon-ship be a lone T2-ship without a lower tier version, then let's say the T2-bonus lets the ship steal up to 50% more.

This should now be a bit more balanced, don't you think?

Again, not enough feedback. Which is kind of strange, people are always screaming for more content or more ships, but apparently my idea isn't crazy enough to get the bad kind of feedback.

Since there hasn't been enough people madly yelling at me, I guess this idea still has some merit. Apparently it just isn't on page one long enough to reach people. So again, if you want to add your own thoughts, this thread is still open.