Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yup. Me again. Babbling about rogue drones again. I'd say I'm sorry, but this idea has been burning a hole in my mind for the last few weeks, so you folks are just going to have to put up with my nonsense.

Anyway. I saw an interesting thread about infomorphs a few days ago, and it won't get out of my head.

To summarize for those of you not familiar with the concept, an infomorph is basically a digital mind. It can be uploaded, downloaded, copied, transmitted, etc. Now, think about that from a tactical perspective. A mind that can transmit itself across the universe, download into a ship, and immediately fight is a scary thing. A mind that can copy itself into 50 ships and fight as a single coordinated being is a terrifying thing.

Rogue drones seem to be the perfect vehicle for this. They're already basically infomorphs. They just don't have any of the cool features that come with it.

How about we give them the cool features?

In the lore, rogue drones tend to fill in the gaps wherever another don't reach. And they obviously communicate with each other. So why not give them a spawning AI that reflects this?

Over time, more and more rogue drones spawn in any given system. After enough time has passed, they'll even start to appear instead of pirate cartels in the belts. In order to get rid of the things, you need to destroy one of their hives.

Lets say someone destroys a DED site or other (I'll get to this "other" later) site. This disrupts the rogue drones. The bigger the site, the worst the disruption is. And unlike the pirate cartels, if the rogue drones feel unwelcome, they can just transmit themselves somewhere more appealing. So, over time, the rogue drones start to disappear from the heavily patrolled areas (You know what I mean. Places where there are generally a lot of capsuleers) and start to take over the more abandoned areas of the world.

Of course, there would have to be a justification for these pests taking over areas. Lets say that, the bigger the rogue drones get, the better the rewards for killing them are. I'll go over some potential rewards later on, but for now lets just say that the more abandoned an area is, the better the loot will be.

This creates an interesting dynamic. People will actively try to "farm" drones, letting them grow big and strong before they pluck them. But as anyone who has tried to chain belt rats will know, all it takes is one idiot to ruin an entire plan. If someone comes in and clears things out early, the group that wanted to farm the drones ends up with nothing.

So the group that wants to farm the drones has to defend them, too. But it wouldn't be cost effective to dedicate a huge group to defending drones. The loot just wouldn't be worth the cost of keeping that many players out there. The most practical way to handle this is to have a small roving gang. This is true in both low sec and null. And....unless I'm mistaken, one of the most common complaints about null sec in particular is that it's either empty or filled with a massive blob of players. Small roving gangs would help that out a bit. It wouldn't "fix" null sec, but it'd at least make it a little more interesting.

Now then. Lets talk about those "other" sites. With the new upgrade to Rogue drones AI, they need infrastructure. Something that can download and upload rogue drones at high speed, and churn out new bodies for said drones. Basically a hive. After enough of a rogue drone presence builds up, a hive is created. It has to be scanned down like any exploration site. Difference is, the longer it's left alone, the bigger it grows. The bigger it grows, the better loot is available. Of course, the bigger it gets, the harder it is.

What I'm envisioning is something almost like incursions, but rather than being constellation based, you have to actively track them down.

Now, lets talk loot.

There are multiple things that could be done for loot, and I'm not nearly smart enough to balance them. So I'm not going to try to. I'm just going to spray ideas, and we'll see what's practical and what isn't.

1. Rogue Drone Scripts:
You know how rogue drones are mostly information? It seems to me that something mostly information would make pretty good scripts for things like tracking disruptors, etc. Basically, these would be faction versions of scripts. Maybe we could even update some drone gear to have room for new scripts.

2. Rogue Drone structures: You know how we have pirate control towers? I wanna see drone versions. This is probably impractical lore wise, but....shut up. Rogue drones are cool.

3. More faction loot from Rogue Drones: Whats on the tin.

And....I'm out of ideas. Gimme a break. I'm running on 5 hours of sleep.

Hey, wanna help out? Gimme more ideas for loot, lemme know if you think I'm brilliant or idiotic, etc, etc. Just...please, no "This is hard to code, so isn't going to happen"

I really like this one! I've always wanted for rogue drones to have some more flavor in game, just as they do in lore. I've had tried to start some threads about it, although i focused more on the swarm feel - lots of high-damage low-hp ships, etc.

BTW, mentioning infomorphs, isnt that what capsuleers are? ;-)

Perhaps 'inactive' drone ship BPCs as a reward? Or something that could be reverse engineered into them at least. Everyone wants a tentacle dominix after all.

Or maybe faction rigs? Hell, maybe some kind of non ORE mining ship that specialises in drones or something, I don't know.

But yeah, I like this one too.

(Hives drop drone poop too? Go on...)

Would be nice to see more to Rogue Drones...

Missions like "Attack of the Drones" keep talking about that a Hive might be nearby in the system, but we're never send further to investigate if this is correct information.

+1 all the way.

This one's a really good one!

I ove this concept- and I'd totally be involved with this if it got implemented-

+1