Assembly Hall

I had this idea for long time, however I never got time to put it on paper. Idea is not originally mine, it is taken for my old beloved and never forgotten game, Shadowbane. Shadowbane had "resource mine" fights which was best PvP I played so far.

Anyway, I gave my best to adapt this idea into EVE universe and mechanics.

Main goals of this system are to generate persistant PvP conflict, revive and boost low-sec, encourage small to mid size PvP fights, enable planned time PvP on regular basis, lower impact of high end 0.0 moons, allow smaller corporations to fight and hold their valuable piece of EVE universe, which is now limited exclusive to large alliances and NAP-s in 0.0 space.

I am open to suggestion and criticism, so please post possible problems, suggestions or solutions. I will try to include them and upate original post.

My current goal is to get this idea into CSM focus, and my ultimate goal is to get such system inside EVE universe one day – I am sure it would keep me and many others entertained for a long time.

Also, English is not my native language, so please forgive me for possible errors, and I hope it is understadable enough.

Preface

Recent advance in planetary mining technology and geology pulled by ORE Syndicate scientists allowed prospecting and yield of valuable minerals - previously available only deep in moon cores. New Eden's „Golden rush“ era starts as ORE Syndicate deploys hundreds of Planetary Mining Facilities throughout the galaxy.

Empire factions immideately claim exclusive rights to planetary mining operations.

0.0 space however provides little or no security for ORE engineers to assemble mining facilities, so those resources remain untouched.

Dozens of greedy corporations start endless conflicts to claim undefended low-sec facilities to get their share of wealth.

Goals

- generate persistant PvP conflict
- revive and boost low-sec
- encourage small to mid size PvP fights
- enable planned time PvP on regular basis
- lower impact of high end 0.0 moons
- allow smaller corporations to fight and hold their valuable piece of EVE universe, which is now limited exclusive to large alliances and NAP-s in 0.0 space

Mechanics

Planetary Mining Facilitiy

„Planetary Mining Facilitiy“ is new structure in planetary oribit. It is similar to Customs Office. It provides fixed daily ammount of high end moon goo. Minerals are stored in Customs Office hangars, so they need to be hauled out on regular basis.

Claiming Mining Facility

All mining facilites have powerful POS-like shield which renders them „invulnerable“ for most of the time. However, shields must go offline for one hour maintanace every two days. During that time facility is in „vulnerable“, and offending entites are able to shoot down its defences and claim it as their own. Once defences hitpoints are brought to zero, facility is in „claimable“ state.

Claiming is done by a player ship being in range of and succesfully using „Defense Reconfguration Module“ on facility. This is new item which has 6 minute activation time. Using the module renders ship unable to move, similar to using cyno field generator. There is also a new skill „Defense Systems Hacking“ which lowers „Defense Reconfiguration Module“ activation time by 10% per skill level. With maxed skill pilot would need 3 minutes to claim the facility. After successfull activation, facility is in „claimed“ state with clearly visible claiming corporation.

Once the maintenance window is finished, facility is owned by corporation (not idividual, and not alliance) who was able to claim it last. It goes to „invulnerable“ state again.

Window of opportunity

Each corporation can define its own „window of opportunity“ time. That is one hour period in every two days when all corporation owned facilites are in „vulnerable“ state. This way corporations can plan defense of their facilities in times that match their timezone play time.

„Window of opportunity“ cannot me changed more then once in two days.

For corporations that are part of an alliance, „window of opportunity“ is set on alliance level. This is to make a bit harder for large alliances to take and control multiple facilites.

Having this „window of opportunity“ on respective alliance and corporation level will make harder for single entity to hold multiple facilities at once. At the same time, this will allow smaller corporations to claim and control one or few facilites close to their base of operations.

Star map

Star map will have new filter to show all planetary mining facilites. Color of system would reflect time until facility is vulnerable. Red (more then six hours) > Orange (one to six hours) > Yellow (up to one hour) > Green (vulnerable).

Constellation chat

Constellation wide signal is sent once facility enters in „vulnerable“ state. This feature is here to attract unaware individuals or gangs of possible ongoing conflict opportunity.

Problems and solutions

Impact on economy

Impact on economy would be unavoidable. However, number of facilites and mining yield should be carefully calculated and scaled to predetermined percentage (lets say 20%) of current high end moon goo production. Possible solutions is to allow this new input of moon minerals, which would result in anuavoidable decrease of T2 items prices. Another solution is to decrease yield on current moons to keep nominal total yield intact. I like this one more.
Others yet to come...

I have a version of this idea for moons using PI networks located here.

Thank you. Yes, it took almost a year or more to get to that point.

But getting back to your idea.

I had hoped that my pdf would illustrate to you areas where PvP will be introduced with that proposal. namely, pvp in orbit, atmospheres and above star ports on city networks for a duration of multiple days per planet/moon.

I do fear however, that with regards to your proposal's goals, the only one that will be met, will be the fostering of small scale pvp, while at the same time, decreasing the overall level of PvP and large scale engagements.

I expect this to happen for 2 reasons:

1) Your facility capture mechanism. Its a rehash of the FW button mechanic, which in itself is extremely wanting. Its just an anom with some rats that expects a single player to fly around the button for 3 minutes in order to capture it. Once this happens, the facilities timers are reset and I presume your shield (if its offline for 2 hours over x amounts of days while being captured) will just reset and give the attackers 2 days to rally a defense fleet. Why would you bring a 1000 man pew pew fleet to grab a moongoo operation, if you only need 1 ship for 3 minutes every 2 days?

Sure, you could bring 50 ships and try to take down the shields of a structure that has no defenses... but why bother if you can just sit and wait for the shields to drop in the first place?

2) Moongoo. Right now, the only reason we even have a good old pos bash is 2 fold: To wipe the moon mining tower off the grid to enable us to place our own once we take your system. And to prevent the proliferation of super caps and safe spots for corps and alliances out in soviet mordor and whs.

By moving moongoo extraction operations from a POS (which is a very good idea) to a similar structure around orbit (which is not a good idea) you are merely moving the location the fight will take place in. It will in no way increase the amount of people involved in this fight (see reason 1), nor will it provide any actual challenge or fun beyond the same old POS bash method. So we will no longer see dread fleets taking out towers with large support fleets, when we can afford to risk a single frigate to do the same job in a fraction of the time. In fact, this could even lead to gate campers and ghetto pirate roaming gangs taking on moongoo operations. This in itself will increase small scale engagements. But as you could imagine, this would decrease the large scale engagements all together, thus lowering the average amount of pew pew.



Now... if you were to move moongoo to a mechanism such as PI (which you could make vulnerable to spaceship pew pew by sub caps in the atmosphere of moons and planets + dust mercs who would want more sub cap and capital ship support in their fights for it) and capitals (in orbit that would require sub cap support to prevent ambushes and embarrassing roflstomp capital kms), in a way similar to my PI suggestion, then you would force both the worlds of Dust and Eve to collide at gun point in the pursuit of moongoo and easy isk. Naturally, sacking cities as laid out in my proposal, will be a process that spans multiple days vs your 3 minutes on the FW button mechanic. That's a significant window of pew pew opportunity in a world where the more ships are involved, the better the outcome.

And we all know a target rich environment is not a single frigate, but a blob of sub caps with a whale or two in between.

Don't you think?

If the defending corp is in lowsec, odds are they do not have the numbers to be online 24/7, with the average corp size numbering around 23 odd people. And if you've spent time in the FW scene, you'l know that fleets very rarely exceed 50. If they do, somebody brings a capital or two along and we read about the tears in the news the next day.

So you will be looking at instances where 5 or less pilots will be engaging these facilities. Sometimes, without opposition. And as I stated, this will lead to the 1 frigate doing the work of 3 digit fleets in mere minutes before the vulnerability hour is up.

In 0.0, your looking at a different story. alliances with thousands of players who can afford to be on standby 24/7 incase things go down. But isn't that the same place we are now? With 1 POS mining moongoo behind the lines of thousands of ships?

There might be instances where your prediction comes to pass. Granted. But 80% of the time, it'l be a situation of team A roflstomps team Bs facilities because team B are offline or docked up for safety or dont have the numbers.



I can promise you, the majority of hisec dwellers are not in hisec for the moons. Nor do they care for the uber valuable low sec moons. They will not leave hisec to capture anything in the ghetto or 0.0. This will not encourage them to leave hi-sec at all. Yes, it might lure some people out, but it will not change the demographics in the bigger picture.

Your also forgetting the golden rule of 0.0 warfare. If it can fly and fit guns, blob it for win. I have yet to see a single 0.0 alliance that does not blob for kms, sov or lolz.

The alliances will blob it if they own 1 system or 100 systems. Even at alliance level, there is nothing to stop them from only holding 1 system and making it impossible to dislodge them from 1 or 2 odd moons. If an alliance with 3k pilots, owned 10 systems with 10 moons each, that translates into a 30 man gang.... on each moon across 10 systems. I'd like to shake the hand of a low sec 20 man corp that can effectively seize and hold that.

I dont mean to be critical or take a dump on your battery.

I firmly believe your idea has merit, provided we separate this orbital structure thing from moongoo and opt to have those facilities provide bonuses to sov holders or ghetto dwellers instead.