Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You sure. I thought that changed so that Freighters/Orca can dock in a Medium:

https://m.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/3qkr10/citadel_tethering_docking_and_asset_safety_recap/

Been reading into the Reprocessing Module Rigs on the test server and I feel that the Medium 'hisec' one should affect all types of ore and ice, not just hisec ores. Retain the same low reprocessing rate of 52% specifically for Hisec, as intensive reprocessing arrays with their higher bonus aren't allowed within hisec at all. Perhaps make a specific set of rigs designed for Hisec systems only, as you will with the non-hisec modules, then a 54% module for lowsec and beyond.

I feel that if Medium Citadels are the replacement for Starbases, they should at least maintain the equivalent of their features.

Moon Harvesting:
The current model with star-bases requires 1 tower per moon in order to harvest its materials. This tower is permanently stationed here until dismantled or destroyed. It continues to extract resources as long as the controlling players continue to interact.

With a drilling-platform, this can be established in the same way as towers, permanently stationed. I can also see this as proposed with the mining section, having a mobile-platform that can warp between moons, depending on the platform's controller's needs.

Gas Harvesting:
Seeding large nebulae like the planetoids can establish a use for platforms and gas harvesting. I'd like to see more products come to use through the use of gases. Perhaps the platform has a bunch of gas harvesters equipped in its high-slots, sitting in a cloud and sucking in resources over time.

Reprocessing:
The drilling platform absorbs the need for a reprocessing array or reprocessing facility. Different mods or rigs can affect the waste lost from processing much like implants and skills do.

Salvaging:
Since the drilling platform will be designed for gathering resources, it should be equipped with built-in mobile tractor units, tractoring in wrecks and cargo-containers.

Planetary Interaction:
This will be handled by Market Hubs as they will replace customs offices.

New Industry Proposals:
-Complete Industry:
Every object in the game is a resource of some type. Destroyed outposts, NPC mining colonies, the Black Monolith. Every object in the game should be broken down to smaller, more useful resources/salvage. It's the high-future where the denizens of Eve are beginning to understand the very nature of space-time, chemistry, and physics.

-Star Interaction / Solar Harvesting:
I just wanted to sneak this in because I like to see every object in the game as an intractable item that players can use / benefit from. I can see drilling platforms designed for solar harvesting, sitting near stars and absorbing the resources coming from within. These resources can come in the form of something new, to better facilitate a wider array of player production. What those items could be, I'm not sure. Maybe they can acquire the energy to fuel some new Dooms Day weapons, Gates, structures, or new consumables. This could be the preface of a Dyson sphere.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post. Its with my hopes that what currently works isn't disturbed, and what doesn't work, is improved. At the end of the day, the biggest questions we can ask ourselves when it comes to game design is this:
Is it fun? Is it challenging? It is rewarding?

I'm not sure if this idea was brought up yet but here goes.
Supposedly the boosts will be moved on grid. I have a suggestion.
We all know that rorqual on grid will be subject to hotdroping non-stop with bombers roaming around null and blow them up.
Rorqs, as they said, will have the ability to make the miners around itself and itself invulnerable and unable to engage which sould give time to PvPers to come and save them.
My suggestion is that drilling structures should have a special spot on the buildings exterior for ORE capitals. I love how putting the rorqual into the special mode changes it's look, instead now, you'd park the rorq on the building, which would extend its boost range.
This way, you could have a drilling facility just off grid and have a rorqual sit on it, boosting in a bigger AOE then default on grid.
It would look amazing, it would have rorq relatively safe(you could still scan down the drill and attack it) and keep the usefulness of rorqual as a boosting mining ship ^^

Pls just don't let drilling platforms spawn belts from nowhere... thats just dumb, what's next? Spawning planets for PI?

I like the idea of them being half ship half station

1. Player can get into structure and firstly scan system for passing by comets (new thing having rocks, ice and gas) and big asteroids (using new probes), when stuff is scanned platform warp to that element a drone like thing (just cosmetic thing like warping scan probes), and that drone will push asteroid/comet into platform, when it's near platform then structure pull it with gravity hook and place on own orbit.
2. From now on pulled asteroid/comet is ready for mining (and for everyone not only platform owner), You can mine it using mining ships or by platform itself which you control (it have mining lasers which player control like those on ships but with better yield so even if someone want to steal your comet, you will outmine him)
3. Platform depending how its fitted it can specialized in boosting fleet mining or mining itlelf better (player driven not passive) or just fitted for better and faster asteroids/comets pulling.
4. In future can be used for ring mining

Maybe pulling thing should take some time depending on distance but lets say average a few hours, so You must scan and pull and if want refit for mining etc, also You can scan, start pulling, let's say comet will arrive in 2 or even 6 hours, if you wont show up then someone else can mine it so You loose, especially if there will be chance for some epic comets and asteroids (with chance like for officer or little more)

Also could be cool if they can be moved without unanchoring (because of limited pulling range) lets say by warping but very slow and with very long pre warp stage.

PS. Something completely awesome would be if owner could push back those pulled asteroids into enemy ships thats attacking platform or just for fun

I'm OK w/ small deposits of moon goo in HS also, but turning on a goo harvester would give you a suspect flag and some form of docking timer. It would give the HS guys a taste of the good life, but the suspect flag and docking timer would add the needed risk and not require a war dec to allow player interaction.

Just say the goo harvester messes w/ CONCORD communications or something. Not enough to merit CONCORD taking action, but still bothersome enough that they will 'look the other way' if a goo miner comes under fire.

To start with I’ll start by saying I’m not a mining expert, nor is that the area of the game I’ve focused on but I’ve been doing some theory crafting around the new drilling rig platform and wanted to share my ideas for debate.

I started off with some simple ideas surrounding the drilling rigs which were

1. = Allow them to spawn an asteroid belt once a month
2. = Be able to transport ore back to a station / industrial array via ore pods
3. = Be able to warp to either Asteroid belts/sites or moons
4. = The idea around ore pods (See further down for details)
5. = The rigs should have an anchoring / un anchoring time

But from those basic ideas I thought okay so let’s thrash this out a little and see what I come up with, which has lead me to the ideas below.

So the way I see the drilling rig platform creating the most interesting game play is to have it come in 3 different versions.

1. The Vanilla T1 Drilling Rig = This is a rig that isn’t great at either moon mining or belt mining it gives standard abilities to both.

1.1 It can warp within a solar system but only to moons / planets or mining sites/belts.
1.2 It has an anchoring / un anchoring time.
1.3 It can be deployed by a JF / rorqual.
1.4 It has say a 20% bonus to both belt mining and moon mining.
1.5 It can be destroyed during the anchoring time and reinforced when anchored.
1.6 It tractors in ore cans automatically to its cargo hold and stores moon goo the same way etc after a 30 second delay.
1.7 It has the ability to send its cargo back to either the new industrial arrays or a station in something called “Ore pods” (more on them later). (Active Ability)


2. T2 Moon mining Drilling Rig = So this rig is specialised towards moon mining and it has bonuses towards that area.

2.1 = It can warp within a solar system to moons only or be deployed there by a JF/Rorq.
2.2 = It has a 50% reduction to anchoring / un anchoring time.
2.3 = It has an 80% bonus to moon mining efficiency.
2.4 = It can be destroyed during the anchoring time and reinforced when anchored.
2.5 = It collects moon ore via ore pods that arrive at the rig that are tractored in after a 15 second delay.
2.6 = It also has the ability to send moon ore back to either an industrial array or a station automatically via ore pods. (more on them later). (Active Ability)
2.7 = Once a month it’s generator has saved up enough energy to activate a cutting beam that hoovers up 3 day’s worth of moon mining in 1 hour.

3. T2 Asteroid Mining Drilling Rig = So again specialised towards asteroid mining and bonuses geared towards that game play.

3.1 = It can warp within a solar system to asteroid belts or Asteroid sites.
3.2 = It has a 50% reduction to anchoring / un anchoring time.
3.3 = It has an 80% bonus to Asteroid mining lasers efficiency.
3.4 = It can be destroyed during the anchoring time and reinforced when anchored.
3.5 = It automatically tractors in ore cans after a 15 second delay.
3.6 = It also has the ability to send asteroid ore back to either an industrial array or a station automatically via “Ore pods” (more on them later). (Active Ability).
3.7 = Once a month it can spawn an awesome asteroid belt that includes mega asteroids the content of which would depend on the sec status of the system it’s deployed in.

All 3 variations of the drilling rig can just hold ore in the cargo hold but due to its small size to avoid continual trips to pick it up the active ability of using ore pods can be activated.


Optional Extra for the T2 variety

Active Shield = So coming from the position of creating interesting game play I think a really neat bonus would be to have a defensive shield that would extend for say 50km and either have a timer or ehp.
The active shield would have to be deployed by selecting an option on the rig so you’d have to be there.

Ehp Shield = If it deployed an EHP shield then attackers would have to simply burn through the shield at which point it would drop, and the ships within would be attackable. So this means the more fire power you bring the quicker you get to kill the ships/ore pods warping to the rig inside etc. Also it has a cool down timer this can only be deployed say once per hour etc.

Timer Shield = So this deploys a shield that is impenetrable for a period of time during which the ships / ore cans that arrive inside can’t be attacked. After it goes down then the carnage can begin. Also it has a cool down timer that means it can’t be deployed again for another hour.

Building the Drilling Rigs

So to create the T2 variety you could make it so that what makes it a T2 rig is either done by invention and materials or by adding a destructible rig to the standard rig.

The invention / material idea has some great game play around resource gathering and trading etc

And the module rig idea has some game play around being able to change your drilling rigs by removing / adding rigs as the needs of your organisation change. This would have to be done when the structure is un anchored thus making it vulnerable etc.

ORE PODS

Ore pods are a new way for asteroid and moon ore to be collected and transported and have the following attributes.

1. = They travel by warping from the resource to the drilling rig / station / industrial array.
2. = When being sent back to an industrial array / station they can’t do it all in one warp their warp drives are small and so have spool up and spool down timers this creates opportunity for all sorts of game play (awoxing etc).
3. = When they drop out of warp they can be either blown up or looted by scrambling the pod to prevent it warping off.
4. = Scanned down using core scanner probes.
5. = When arriving at a moon mining rig T1 or T2 it can be looted until it is tractored in
6. = Completes the warp with just 1 cool down stop when transporting to a moon mining rig.

one problem I can see is that you need to be careful about how vulnerable the ore pods would be to being scrambled- it would be extremely irritating if someone could intercept all the ore pods mid-route. On the other hand, making it so that the ore pods are invulnerable wouldn't be fair to an attacker.

How I would suggest it is done:

1. the ore to be delivered is split up into 10 or so pods
2. each pod takes a different route to the destination
3. each pod goes a certain distance each warp
4. the pod can change direction only when out of warp
5. if changing direction, pods need to align to the new direction

basically, the idea is that if you have a lone ganker, they're only going to get a fraction of the ore by going after the pods- however, an actual attack by another alliance could completely interdict the pods.

That, and I suggest it be made that you have a choice- the structure can send the ore automatically to a station/another structure OR it can store the ore in it's own cargo bay (which could depend on the size of the structure- say, a small mining rig can store as much as a mining barge, a medium rig as much as an Orca, a large rig as much as a Roqual) but if the structure is attacked, it could all be lost.

Idea #2

Keeping the concept in place regarding harvesting from the platform itself, have the drilling platform be a centralized drone miner, from which miners need to actively extract ore. Effectively, each drilling platform send out a several dozen drones (or tugs, whatever) out to all the belts in the system, in this case dedicated to a specific ore type, returning the ore to he platform where it is compressed. The drones can be targeted and destroyed by others, very much like belt rats, and need to be replaced if this happens, so this encourages players to actively monitor their drones/tugs and the system the platform is deployed in for enemies shooting down their stuff. It again also encourages players to actively go out and mine the platform, but rewards them with faster yields than they would normally receive from just going after roids in a belt.

I'd prefer it is players had to be in the structure to mine with it- letting anybody and everybody mine the platform sounds like it'd make them hard to justify, considering how crafty gankers can be even in well-defended space. ( i'm in proviblock- yes, i know what the gankers will say- and reds are a perennial problem.)