Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So, by using a link, you are running multiple ships while potentially mostly AFK? -1

One area of concern is how the conquering mechanic will work with these structures in Empire space or Wormhole space where the 'constellations' are not as easily demarcated. Many of the empire constellations have both low and high sec portions, so pirate corps with all their members at -10.0 could be denied the ability to defend a structure when the sites spawn in high sec, just as a pure high sec corp would have issues with entering low sec.

Here is another suggestion...

Currently, boosting requires a dedicated account to sit at a pos, afk and provide active boost. If the ship warps, it breaks boost. if the ship docks, it also breaks boost. This also requires a dedicated account that essentially sits there and do nothing.

I propose that in the changes for structure coming up, the drilling platform is made into a similar role as a booster ship. The way it works is like this:

1. The drilling platform attaches itself to a large asteroid (not mineable via the usual mining barges / exhumers)

Things the drilling platform can do passively:

- Spawn mineable asteroids (or gas, moon goo etc) at set interval for miners to mine. The asteroids spawned will drift away from the platform (like a broken rock floating away), and getting further away until it floats off grid and disappear. This means miners have a limited time to mine the rock which is slowly drifting away.
- Automatic defenses vs players (providing guns are fitted to drilling platform), based on standings (similar to current pos setup)

Things the drilling platform can do actively (must have skilled pilot taking control of drilling platform):

- Spawn higher yield asteroids, providing similar yields from asteroid equivalent to what miners will get from a boosted ship. Yield bonuses will be dependant on player skills. Once rock spawns, it doesn't require the drilling platform pilot to remain online. Current game system requires a booster to be on and providing boosts to the miners themselvs. The new system will boost the yield of the rocks itself and not the individual players. The way to do this can be a skills based, mini game or a combination of both. Usually I am against minigames as it is just a distration from keeping an eye on local in null, but as a structure, it is not going anywhere, so minigame is ok.
- Pilot can take control of fitted weapons to use in PvP or PvE combat
- Pilot can launch transport drones (providing that the specific type of transport drones are built and placed in drone bay, such as ore transport drones, gas transport drones etc...), and assign tasks to transport drones. The players will set the following information:

The transport drones will have an input and an output requirement. Input is where the drones loot stuff from, and output is where loot is stored in (Personal hangar, corporation hangar, Alliance hangar etc). If the drilling pilot has greater security where they can view other corporation member's hangar, those personal hangar can also be placed as an output location

Can't think of any other active tasks that drilling platform pilots can do at this time but if anyone thinks of anything, post your ideas.
- Can use a tractor beam to hold a rock in place so it doesn't float away (opposite of passive where the rocks float away after a period of time)

that's about all i can think about at this time so if anyone else have ideas a active mining director can do in a mining platform, post a reply :)

I do not like how the most powerful capsuleers in New Eden control the most powerful moons despite not having a real presence in some areas they hold moons. I would hate to see something become non passive since I would like to think there are Capsuleers contributing more to New Eden instead of grinding ISK. If the is no other way so be it.

Originally posted as a seperate thread, because search function lied to me, and I wasn't following this discussion

So, I was talking with my dad and he hashed out an interesting concept for a deployable. A mining platform.

Effectively a medium sized can and a strapped on package with a mining laser and a battery just large enough to power one cycle with no energy recharge of it's own, the mining platform would be dependent on the player's ship for energy to run said mining laser.

Why I think this is both interesting and a good concept:
This would mean that other ships than just barges are useful for mining, and that attention to the mining process is able to significantly affect your income, while skill (getting the mining platforms where you want to mine first and keeping them fed efficiently) acts as a multiplier to the possible income. Of course, this is balanced by the requirements of being able to cap the platforms and then move the ore produced in something which can move ore better than the first logical choices, osprey and augoror, promoting either more skill and logistics intensive solo or group play. It also removes the aspect of linked miners vs. unlinked miners, as the platforms can't be piloted and thus would get not fleet boosts. Finally, such an operation would be hard to bot efficiently, and would likely be extremely easy to disrupt in such a case of botting, due to the much tighter cycles, and increased number of complex commands required to do efficiently

Positive concepts:
Active mining system, which uses a skill and attention driven mechanic to drive income
Increased options, with a balancing mechanism between high focus and low focus game play (income and risk proportional to them)
Low additional asset requirements (re-purpose most of the MTU code, container and mining laser graphics, etc)
Fits with developing more active content with minimal effort or added complexity, as it reuses existing mechanics in a new way
Requires active defense in less safe space, but easier to cut and run, making it a scalable risk vs reward scenario in most cases.
Already tangential to the drilling platform discussion, and can be cross posted there if this is close enough in concept in the eyes of CCP or ISD.

Negatives:
Potential for good players to vastly deflate mineral prices with large influx if not well balanced.
Another thing that might need to be added to overviews and possibly needing a new icon for same.

Proposed versions:

Mining platform I:
Requires anchoring 1
Uses a miner i, Medium capacitor battery I and a Large Standard Container to build
Packaged 75 m3, expanded 700 m3
Mines equal to an unbonused miner i
Cap of 20Gj, uses 20gj to cycle
Capacity of 650 m3

Mining platform II:
Requires anchoring 4, mining 5
Uses a miner II, Medium capacitor battery II and a Large Standard Container to build
Packaged 75 m3, expanded 700 m3
Mines equal to an unbonused miner II
Cap of 70Gj, uses 70gj to cycle
Capacity of 650 m3

Large Mining platform I:
Requires anchoring 3, Mining 5, Astrogeology 5
Uses a strip miner l, Large capacitor battery II and a Medium freight container to build
Packaged 600m3, deployed 6000m3
Mines equal to an unbonused strip miner l
Cap of 90, uses 90 gj t cycle
Capacity of 5700m3

Large Mining platform I:
Requires anchoring 3, Mining 5, Astrogeology 5
Uses a strip miner l, Large capacitor battery II and a Medium freight container to build
Packaged 600m3, deployed 6000m3
Mines equal to an unbonused strip miner l
Cap of 90, uses 90 gj t cycle
Capacity of 5700m3

Had a couple negative reviews in that thread, which I reported myself and which is located here.

Just stopped by to see if any Devs had chimed in on how the new structures will affect moon mining.

Are the rules going to change? Will multiple platforms be allowed to mine one moon? Are changes to this in our near future, or farther off?

For drilling or resource structures, I think it's important that they have an inverse relationship between security and profitability. Ideally, the simplest, cheapest, weakest and smallest ones go in places that only small ships can access.

The structures that need the most security are assembly and storage facilities. The can be extended to saying that they need the highest sensor strength, or the least exposure to probing. It would be reasonable to create system wide effects that can boost these, perhaps attached to sov. High security indexes, or anchorables which take advantage of these conditions, should diminish the efficiency of extractive structures.

Market or vendor structures offer us an interesting future option for keeping players in space. I think we are all familiar with the way that stations incentivize large numbers of people to go AFK.

One thing that I'd like to see with structures is to make them specialized. Some might be oriented to ammunition and resupplying ships, while others might look more like shipyards of various size. A harbor is a safe place in a storm. A ship is safe there, but ships aren't built to stay in harbors. It would be smart to put small docks in places that only small ships can visit. Medium sized docks and their environments might support small ships as well.

One thing that I'd really like to see from these industrial structures is something that caters to the obsessive industrialist. Make our skills apply to them individually. Instead of 300 max market orders everywhere, give us +1 market order slot per skill level at each vending machine. Maintaining significant numbers of them would mean spending a lot of time in space. The expense of database space and access time has gone down a lot since 2003, so it would make sense to leverage trends to cater to obsessive customers.

Ultimately, unless we are going to focus on making all future structures corp role dependent, all of the structures will need market components. If we are going to have a refinery array support more than just a privileged set of users within a single corp, then it would make sense to have it support a small mineral market. It could as easily be a place for a miner to vendor his haul as process it, or wheel and deal with his peers and competitors.

i am against any suggestion of the drilling platform to become the new "rorqual"

screw that idea and if fozzie even so much as thinks about it, then ccp better be ready to payout 2.2 bil in isk to every single pilot that has one.

the Capital Industrial Command Ship.. should have the highest boosting power over some damn gimmicky structure,

GTFOHWTBS.

I got an idea instead of the mining platform doing mining boosts. Have an rorqual or and orca moor with it. The pilot would have the boosts of there ship. While the can control an exhumer to do there mining. It would make a or orca pilot be able to work mining instead of just boosting. Maybe give the pilot of the command ship 2 sets of controls and overviews, one for the boost one for the mining ship they can control.

Any chance of doing station skins like the new ship skin system? Some people may want to color coordinate their stations, or their alliance assets in space.