Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Currently invention and creation of player ships relies entirely on what is already there. No capsuleer has ever actually made a ship, they all end up being empire, faction or ORE ships. This is likely with good reason as it makes it easier to balance and focus bonuses and ship stats when they have a core that they follow. (amarr being laser/armor ships while gallente are drone/hybrid armor ships ect)

However with the new direction CCP is going with more and more control to players I think it's about time capsuleers get a shot at it. So how could this possibly work?

Players would use materials and components similar to how they do now for industry in relation to ships or invention. However they would do so without inserting a blueprint. Rather then working their way to construct something from a blueprint they would be working backwards by constructing something and hoping it works.

Unlike regular ships capsuleer ships would be harder to construct from a blueprint requiring the major parts of a ship to be invented and constructed together creating the ship. This means before you can even get to the part where you can try ship construction you would be creating capsuleer ship parts. Engines, shielding, life support, drone control systems, targeting arrays, sensor systems and so on. It would likely require at least one of each of these core systems but could require more then just one of multiple core systems. The core systems themselves would also be complicated to make requiring multiple salvage materials, reaction materials, possibly even blue loot or data cores among other things.

Because of this complexity even in the basic parts it would take a while to get the actual technical data to construct even a single core system let alone an entire ship. This would be compounded by the fact it would have to have the right parts AND the right number of each of those parts for it to work at 100% and only parts that work 100% can be used in ship construction (similar to how you can scan sites to 80 or 90% but you can't warp unless you have 100%). Once you have something at greater then 65-70% you will be able to create a BPO of the part or ship.

So if you had all the right components to make a ship system but you had the wrong number you would likely already be over 50% working, however that wouldn't be enough to generate a BPO and test the part. Lets say you had all the components and at least half of them were in the right quantity, now you're at 75% working and can make a BPO. What do you do with these BPOs if all they do is create partially working ship systems? That's where testing comes in.

Testing would likely require another structure (no empires allow for this kind of testing so it is not available at any empire stations it must be done in a POS) that would stress test the parts players put in along with some consumable (like fuel for an engine). Testing the parts depending on skills, fuel type, fuel quantity, and amount of time spent testing said part would reveal at least vaguely what could be going wrong and what needs to be changed to make the part 100% working. Given that there would be multiple different ship systems and each system could be made different ways to apply differently to created ships (like how each empire has sensors but the type of sensor is different for each empire ladar/radar/grav etc) this creates depth and would require players to do actual research and inventing (or at least tinkering).

So now you have your tested parts and want to build a ship. Well that works in a similar fashion however rather then test the ships, if you get over 65% working and create a BPO you will be able to go straight into ship building. However the stats on the ship will be degraded or there will be issues with how it operates likely depending on which ship systems you put into it poorly. There could add further depth by requiring additional minerals and materials in addition to the completed ship systems to build the ship.
This would mean that the ship traits, hp, resists, sensors, speed, agility, grid, cpu, even cargo space could all be affected by how well/properly you construct the ship. Of course with no official source players would have to build and test these ships themselves by flying them or creating other similar ships with minor changes to see how to improve their design.

Once a player, corp or alliance produces a ship at 100% and is the first to do so they would get the right to name the ship (or at least have their name in the description). At no point would any of these BPO/BPC be seeded. The only thing that might end up seeded would be capsuleer ship skills allowing capsuleer bonuses to apply to these ships.

This would mean that corps and alliances could have R&D divisions that work at gathering and test building components and ships. This opens up competition between player groups as to who can create these parts or ships. Imagine a trade agreement where one alliance trades their advanced engine and sensor tech for advanced CPU architecture. It would also be interesting watching alliances try and steal tech, or blueprint designs before they're even a BPO.

This would be a massive feature and basically would just be ships made by CCP that the players have to discover how to generate in game. This method could also be used on modules or structures. It would also be interesting to see how the empires react. Imagine seeing a ship a major alliance has been working on publicly (that it's being made, not how) and then if development took too long for some reason you see that same ship under an Amarr or Caldari banner. There are a lot of possibilities with this.

TL;DR Advanced ship creation requiring the manufacture of components/ships that generates a blueprint rather then the other way around. Kind of an advanced Eve version of the horadric cube where you have to find the recipes.

The ships would be balanced around their stats at 100% Likely the power of these ships would be between T1 and T2. Like navy faction stuff only with probably better resists.

Everything prototyped would be weaker then this form meaning it would be either useless compared to T1 ships to slightly better where as 100% completed would be able to match T2 and faction ships in a fight (assuming skill/fittings were about equal).

The skill bonuses, because they're capsuleer, would be interesting because they wouldn't be bound by typical racial traits like empire ships are allowing for say an armor missile boat or a shield drone boat. Maybe there's a new ship that could fit a role players have wanted filled for a while but havent got (like engineer class ships). How cool would that be, a capsuleer ship made by and for capsuleers.

it be all fun and games till the min/maxers ruined it. I will assume you have a genuine interest in not making overly op ships here and want the this would be cool factor (I have my moments of being optimistically nice and not always jaded and pessimistic lol).


Its not you I am worried about. I am worried about the blob theorycrafters cooking up recipes with the intent to get an edge in their favor. They will min/max for an effect. They do now in he confines of what eve has even. And its not to make eve interesting. It be to make a battle as much as an I win scenario as possible. And some wh crews and pirate crews...won't just pick on 0.0 blobs here.

Again, piping in with the opinion that the minmaxers would ruin it.

It would be quite easily possible, if the designs were fixed by the input, to create a few completely ridiculous designs, a lot of ho-hum designs, a few good designs, and 2 or 3 completely brokenly over powered designs. Look at strategic cruisers as implented for PVP for an example if you can't figure it out yourself. There are a few truely face melting configurations for almost every role if you pick the right t3 for that role.

Heh, even in the first paragraph you just can't help it.

This would be an accident waiting to happen.

a good example of the "player designed" in action would be archeage, that game boasts "hundreds of calsses built from skill sets", but in reality, yeas there are HUNDREDS, but only 4-5 actual combinations are useful, the rest being subpar, and the difference between a "sub-par" one and one of the min-maxed ones, ebcause of stats and how they synergize with the "build", means it could take 5-6 "sub-par" builds just to compete with a single min/maxed one


now imagine fleets of hundreds of these under the nullsec powerblocks (only guys able to afford this expensive form of ship construction), no one would be able to get out there, especially because everyone would just rather join them for access to the ships and winning team



not to mention could you imagine the database bloat?

A lot of you seem to think this allows players to build ships with adjustable stats. It does not. These ships will have their stats already figured out. It's just rather then getting BPOs seeded by empires players create them. Their base strength would be around T1.5 or faction. There will be no min-maxing except to the values that already exist.

It's like saying the final result is the Thorax or actually a better example would be the Navy Exequror in terms of power. It can't min-max any stats more then what the thorax currently offers. The only difference is that instead of being a gallente ship that has seeded BPOs it's a capsuleer ship with BPO's invented and seeded by capsuleers.

THERE IS NO ABILITY TO MINMAX.

Further the closest they are to T3 is that you can skill up T3 sub systems to get better bonuses. This is similar to how you can use ship systems to get slightly better stats on the final product of the ship. However like with a T3 where you can't get higher stats then having the ship skill to 5 and the subsystem skills to 5, you wont be able to make a ship stronger then what is already there.

Using the Thorax again. If capsuleers were to create this ship using this method it would NEVER be better then the current 100% developed thorax is now. The prototype systems would only ever be weaker. And since the thorax is balanced at it's full potential, so too would capsuleer ships. You are not personally building a ship that can do anything you want, you are building to a ship that is hidden in the game already, but you have to build it in order to fly it.

The ships themselves would be relatively balanced within the game ship classes and tech levels. You wont be able to make anything and if you tried it would likely not be something that generates a ship.

So you want us to be able to "invent" navy level ships while we can alraedy "invent" T2 level ship? Possibly new navy level ships but still navy level ships right?