Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Done.

Just a quick suggestion that I have put in the survey, for other's consideration.


Quick fix to the "offline to refill your silo" problem:

Ultimate Solution: to be able to refill / empty silo without needing to offline;
Quick Fix: at least, show the reaction timers in the reactors, so that we will withhold offlining if the 1-hr cycle is about to end. (similar to the timer available in planetary interaction)


This means alot, all those reaction industrialists know. Everytime we offline we face the risk of breaking the cycle ... causing unnecessary disruption to the production line. This is totally unnecessary game play ......

I quit after a few questions. Since I didn't understand many of them, I think they're not geared towards noobs like me ;-)

If you change the questions after the survey has started, it really impacts the integrity of the data you're collecting unless you keep the them separated. Someone w experience in statistics would be able to help. Are you making sure there's no duplicates in your sample?

Okay, I say in advance I'm typing this on my phone, and I know that butchers the format of messages when I use EVEGate for mail...so hoping this keeps my paragraph breaks instead of becoming one big block of text. ;)
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I took the whole thing. I'm in a Corp that's a member of an Alliance that does Sov Warfare and has built an Outpost and owns a few and so on, so I COULD rightly/honestly access all the questions. Here's my feedback here, because the survey is kinda wonky to me. :)
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The BIGGEST single problem with POSes is the role and Corp tied mechanics.
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I cannot stress this enough. Due to the nature of Eve, even in a Corp like mine where we have a relatively high degree of trust among the members, people are super cautious. This means that the rigid role system ends up with like three people having actual access to anything regarding POSes. So unless I make my own Corp, this means I will never get involved with the setup or mantenance of a POS. I can donate PI and Ice, I can donate Fuel Blocks, but I cannot online, offline, move, upgrade, or get into the guns on any POS. I can't set a personal POS up that I CAN do these things on. I don't think I can even anchor or online a POS or any structures related to one, even though I have the requisite skills to do all. Nor can I poke my nose in a WH and set up a
POS base of operations - again, unless I make my own Corp or can get the Corp to trust me with ALL POSes it owns. And don't forget that NPC Corp members cannot uses POSes at all, for a similar reason.
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Before anything else, this is the number one problem with POSes. Not saying there are no other problems, but this is the big one. A more flexible role system, a role system that can be set by POS instead of for all POSes, or having versions of POS that are not tied to Corps (a "Mobil size or something?) would go a looooong way to helping.
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The other thing is it would be nice to be able to live out of a POS better. I'm not sure the BEST way to make this happen, but I feel like a POS should be a mini-Outpost. More mobile and modular, but not having all the amenities, or having weaker versions of them. Instead, POSes have more specialized niches. Better research or refining yield, or are used for a safe staging location. While these are cool, it doesnmt compare to an Outpost for most purposes. This is LARGELY a due to the role system!
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Since I've not had the ability to use POSes other than for research jobs or safes, that's the extent of what I can give as feedback.
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Outposts/Upgrades/iHUBs:
This is all largely the same. The structure is so limited and the ownership and cost so much more these are even more tightly controlled than POSes! I can do no more for any of these projects than donate Trit to building them, basically. But...to me this isn't ASA egregious as POSes, because of the fact that they are more straightforward for the most part (dock, undock, repair, clone), and sorta do their own thing, I guess. Though it would be nice to contribute more to them, too, I just have no idea how. It'd also be nice to be able to set up Station guns. :)
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Deployables, on the other hand, are in a good place, I think. I'd like to see more varieties of them, like a research post, a reaction post, a small moon mining post, etc. Basically, the things you have to have a POS for now, just smaller and weaker versions. Note that this is LARGELY a because, again, of the inaccessibility of POSes due to the Corp/role system (see a trend here?) Even varied modules like a little dead space pocket generator and the like would be sweet.
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Industry Co-op:
To me, industry is one of the few things a player can do alone. This shouldn't be taken from solo players. The flipside is, a group should be able to do things together FASTER, but with limitations to prevent swarm/Zerg building. (And I don't mean that as sacrificing your worker drones to build stuff! :p)
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So as an example, suppose I want to build something with a couple buddies. Would it not be nice to be able to jointly work the project to increase day time or odds of success? Use an exponential decay where people can jointly donate one of their work slots to a project to decrease time or material requirements, or increase odds of a research success. Put caps on it (if, say, I have the "Research Project Management skill to only 3, only 3 people can work on my project, and each one must donate 3 of their research job open slots to the project.)
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As a person that DOES sometimes play MMOs solo, my overriding principle is always that good design let's skilled and dedicated solo players do the same thing that groups can do, only that groups get to do them faster or more efficiently. In this way, you can reward groups while not punishing solo players. This is a big deal to me with any and all Co-op gameplay SHOULD, in my mind, adhere to this principle (with few note able exceptions - a single pilot downing an Incursion mothership, for example.)
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It should also be noted that most Industry projects and tasks in the game arenmt really interactive or engaging to begin with. So other than joint projects, I'm not sure what you COULD do to make them more Co-op...
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Sov Warfare...well, I'm one of those weird people that likes mining and likes shooting at Sov structures. But the timer system is problematic, and the Sov Mechanics are confusing and un intuitive for most players. While I get the necessity of timers, it tends to cause a lot of TZ problems (though the alternative of systems switching hands every few hours across TZs is a little unpalatable). I'm not sure of a good fix with current mechanics - partially because of how convoluted they are.
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I get the history and why we have Sov now instead of mass POS placement for ownership...but in some ways, I think that might have been better. And the idea of occupancy Sov also has SOME merit. The ideal solution is probably a hybrid of multiple...

For a new player, it should be easier to learn how to set up a small POS, moon harvesting etc.

I tried to channel all the rage and frustration I've had over the years with POS and it's interface in the survey.

Regarding structures, the permissions system needs an overhaul badly so that corps don't open themselves up to theft just because of a limitation in game mechanics.

I mean, all the large alliances use holding corporations with alts to hold all the valuable structures (sov structures, outposts, POSs housing capital assembly) mostly because of the limitations in the roles system.

I would like to propose an overhaul to the POS system. The current system was created to fill a need, but does so in a pretty crude way.


The POS is pretty much a substitute for docking. Everything inside the shield might as well be docked, it pretty much is the difference between inside and outside. But unlike being docked, everything is still controlled by a UI designed to fly ships. Also modules anchored inside the shield are usually not much to look at, since they are arranged in a way to make finding the one you're looking for easy.

For those reasons I propose switching from towers with a shield to a station with room inside to build in. Stations would still use the current POS modules, but those that are anchored inside are represented by a slot system, instead of 3d graphics. They would use the same right-hand panel that NPC stations use. Installing them would be to dump them into a specific hangar and select assemble, like we do ships, except that hangar has a maximum volume. I would not replace any existing POS with the new bases, instead let them coexist and phase out the old POS when people stop using them.


Doing this would also mean that the modules would no longer have individual hangars. As a replacement for those, the new bases will need a large standard hanger, as well as a large fleet hanger to make up for the possibility of floating ships in space. This makes several things more convenient, such using a blueprint that was just researched without having to go there and put it from one module to the next. It does however create the need for more complicated corp hangars.

My suggestion is that everyone in the corp has their own individual, but not private hangar (item and ship). Corp roles determine who can access whose hanger, but of course the owner gets to allow others to access their hangar as well. These hangars will log activity by others than their owner, but not prevent theft HTFU. In addition the corp should be able to create and delete corp hangars at will, instead of always having six. Stuff from deleted hangars automatically goes into the master hangar.
This means that some people will have access to a ton of hangars, so I believe accessing corpmates hangars should be a different window, toggled on the right-hand menu, and work more like a file browser than a list.


Some stuff just has to have out-airlock components, such as supercapital assembly arrays, supercapital hangars (no shield to park them, right?), moon harvesters and jump bridges. For that reason stations need to have slots for those kind of modules, that attach modules to the outside, on predetermined places, similar to high slots, but bigger. Those modules still are protected by the station shield, but can be attacked if the station goes offline.

Reactions should probably be included in the new industry window, except it would require silos as in- and output location, and of course start continuous cycles instead of jobs.


Without the POS shield you can no longer provide mining boosts or boost the POS shield while being protected. I think the boosts could be accomplished by modules offering the same bonuses as Orcas or Rorquals (the Rorqual module not in high, of course), while they are being manned by a pilot. Skills included. I don't like the shield boosting practice very much, a bases defenses should be determined by its modules. Passive recharge modules or boosting batteries should replace that.


Defenses would stay the same, although an assistant to launch defensive modules to the desired place and anchoring them would be of great help. Especially if it had a queue.


In order to have a full base many corps need multiple towers and warp between them and then it's always a question of what is where. Not even to mine the moons, just to have storage, industrial and defensive capabilities. For that reason I think there should be an extra large station, a mini outpost so to say. It would need to be built up like a POCO, eat lots of fuel, can comfortably fit everything needed for manufacture, research, reactions and hangars, but have an upper limit of onlined defensive equipment, to make it on par with a large POS defense.

Some more Ideas:

Starbase attributes/bonuses could be adjusted using something similar to rigs. If a Starbase has say 4 rig slots the owner could decide what they want the tower to be good at. Bonuses to Factory, Labs, Weapons or Storage.

Being able to fit Repair modules to the Starbase, would also be helpful, should it survive or even during an attack being able to repair the Shields, Armor or Hull would make sense if it can be done by ship, having options to do that would be good, even if the Starbase has to use engineering modules and capacitor to archive this.

Sensor Network, The old system scanner which had been removed, it would be interesting to reintroduce that but maybe using several structures across a system this would give the owners of the system a strategic advantage in defence and maybe give new options for managing fights.

Jump Bridge, Cyno Array and Cyno Jammer, these could all be made an independent structure and maybe a new models that could be armed.

Allowing Starbases to be sold for ISK or transferred like a POCO would introduce a new profession to the game.

Allowing Public or Alliance access to a Starbase facilities for ISK woudl be at times be helpful.

Include a market module to Starbases and contract support that could have a scaled access based on standings, so if the owner wants to create a market tower to sell their products they can. This also allows for inter corp/alliance markets to be easily set up and managed. This could be helpful in many areas, from Highsec systems with no stations to WH space.

I recently skilled into a t2 bomb launcher only to find that to change ammo loaded at a pos requires cargo expanders as it is not possible to drag the ammo directly from the launcher to the CHA without sufficient open space in the ships cargo. Perhaps there is some trick I am missing but this seems so bad as to be comedy.

Player-Owned-Structures are an area of game content that a great many players never get to use.

- You need a large group.
- If you have a large group, AWOX paranoia tends to lead to privileges being limited to a few people.
- The Roles interface is a pain (so I hear, I've never had the privilege of using it).
- They're expensive to setup, maintain, and defend.


So lets take this in a different direction. How about some "poor man's POS" deployables? When I'm running agent missions, I see all these Large Collidable Object type things, and the gears in the role-playing part of my brain start spinning... "How is it that these dirt-poor NPCs can have all these things at random spots in space, but we rich and power capsuleers cannot?"

Admittedly, my thoughts on what we would actually do with these structures are not deeply developed. But short term, undefended Silos, Cargo Rigs, Shipyards, Habitation Modules, Radio Telescopes, etc may be useful. They don't need to have complex fueling requirements or ownership mechanics. And don't restrict them to limited real estate (moons); players could plunk them down at random spots. Their only defense would be their obscurity and, as a result, they would serve as cheap, short-term structures (days to weeks... maybe hours).

- Ore Silo. Looks like a 'pressurized silo', works like a million m3 Giant Secure Container that only holds ore and can only be scooped up when empty.
- Cargo Rig. General purpose, effectively an Enormous Secure Container.
- Shipyard. ????? Maybe the Shield-Armor-Haul repair depot that players have been asking for.
- Habitation Module. I've always wondered what they looked like on the inside (during the two seconds before I blow them up). Fill it with blackjack and hookers and it might make Walking-In-Structures worthwhile.
- Radio Telescope. ????? I've seen many suggestions for various system-wide scanners, remote observation posts, etc.

As I said above, my thoughts on this are not deeply developed. I'll let everyone ruminate on it for a bit. But my point is that there should be a class of structures between small personal structures (Mobile Depots, secure cans, etc) and conventional POSs that are more accessible to the common-man and small corps, even if they're are things that could be knocked down by a single battleship in five minutes.