Missions & Complexes

While thinking of a way to increase the demand for ships while making them still affordable I thought up a few neat ideas:

(1) Deadly Distribution:

Currently higher level distribution may get into low/null but with a blockade runner there really is no worry about completing them, and the ISK is too low to even bother. Doing courier is more lucrative. So I propose missions that have pickup/dropoff points that require travel from an accel gate. The gate would not allow blockade runners but would allow any other ship. The item to be picked up or dropped off would be at least 1000m3 or more depending on the mission level so the mission completer would have to use a hauler. But there would be enemies to destroy between the accel stop point and the pickup/dropoff location. Obviously haulers would not be able to complete this alone, and non haulers would not be able to do the hauling. To make sure someone does not walk in and kill first then walk in later with a hauler, ships would auto spawn every minute or so as long as anyone is in the room (and visible).

To complete such a mission the mission starter would have to be in a hauler and have a player escort. The better the escort, the easier to deal with the regular spawn of the defenses. Harder missions could have both a violent pickup and another location with a violent dropoff. Each level of this mission would be harder and harder and have more cargo capacity required. The cargo would be a single massive item such that it could not be split into smaller cargo holds and delivered in pieces.

This would encourage more hauler deaths, but yield a new form of ISK acquisition. This would put a higher demand on the hauler market while giving out the ISK necessary to replace them (depending on successes). This would in turn make the market on ships more valuable (currently many haulers sell for less than their manufacturing costs)

(2) High Security:

Currently the burner missions require virtually the best of the best with PvP skills and still you might die. It is also restricted to frigates and destroyers with implied emphasis on T2 ships. This is not worth anything in terms of beefing up the missions for any T1 ship, or any ship above a destroyer.

What we need are missions that are more likely to cause player death such as increased webs, scrams, frigate/battleship variance, etc. At the same time, causing more death should include gaining more ISK in the result of success. Similar to the first idea, this would drive up the demand for ships making the market of them more valuable.

(3) Survival:

This idea ought to be fun: Stick yourself and your buddies out in a wave after wave assault that gets worse and worse until you all die. The arena would be accessible for 1 minute after the first ship entered by means of accel gate, but then afterwards would not allow more ships in. The field would be a giant inhibition field so you could not leave. Lower levels of this mission would start easier while higher levels would start off pretty rough. While knowing that you are almost certainly going to die (unless you survive all possible waves) the value of this mission comes from the pirate bounties acquired from all your kills. You'd also be able to loot/salvage wrecks after claiming the mission over (must complete a minimum number of waves to do so).

Agreed...we PvE players kind of cut-and-dry on that notion of "Add too much risk for missions and people will simply skip them because no reward is enough". Stupid, I know, I'm just as guilty of that as anyone.

On another note, here's a sort of question that's been eating at me for a while; I figured it would be a bad idea and never considered fleshing it out, but I'm gonna bite the bullet and throw it out there anyways, 'cause "the only dumb idea is the one never suggested", right?

I would not be entirely opposed to the idea of doing something like doubling rat EHP/DPS/Rep strength/etc while halving the number of rats in a mission spawn. The exact number to go off of can be put up for debate, e.i. we can argue something other than double/half, just using those to illustrate that the overall amount of things like mission time/full-spawn DPS/recommended tank-and-gank/bounty reward/etc would remain the same, but the individual rat would be a bit more powerful. Obviously, things like numbers and such in regards to EWAR and tackle rats would need to be looked at separately as well, and the loot tables and bounty/sec rewards would need to be considered.

The question is, what do you guys think about something like that...issues, recommended adjustments, points, yes, no, "f" you?