Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Interdiction should be manned IMO. Anchored bubble are fine if you keep a presence around them. I don't know how it should be made to work in game but but the bubble should deactivate when nobody "guard" it. The only bubbles that should remain active when there is no one around are the interdictor ones since they are temporary anyway.

I'm all for having anchorable bubbles decay over time, based on their size and tech.

I think the bubble/nullification ecosystem works very well as it is, to be honest.

Boring feedback I guess? Anchorable bubbles expiring eventually would be fine, but they can already be shot, so whatever. Nullified ships have plenty of drawbacks to keep things balanced. Nullified scouting + non-nullified combat/hauling is generally optimal nowadays, which IMO is a right and a good and a joyous thing.

Should you be able to have nullified combat ships? Why, or why not?

Yes, as long as they dont have the same defense/offense capabilities as the ones without one. If you get more security, you should get less of the rest to keep it balanced.

How about non-combat ships? Shuttles? Blockade runners? Yachts?

Yes. This way more people from "safe" highsec will take a look in to the other parts of space and notice it might not be as bad as they though it was. Ships without offense should be able to have more defense.

Should anchorable bubbles exist? Should they decay if they exist?

Yes. The more variables in a game, the harder things become to predict..... aka more fun. A timer.... absolutely!

'obvious' isn't always as obvious as you might think. Which is why I'm kicking this up for discussion. In internal discussions, there's been more disagreement than expected on both sides.

This pretty much... also all deployables give a killmail/lossmail. Make bubbles do the same. People will spam them less willy nilly if they get lossmails for them.

Maybe start by gate rats shooting anchored bubbles. As others have noted you could add a timer that requires players do to maintenance on anchored bubbles. For example every 6 hours bubbles power down and need to be onlined again. Maybe require a small amount of t2/3 PI materials to run.

This would allow players to secure a PVE operation they plan to do on that day whilst also removing the bubble menace that nullsec entities currently employ. Also enforce the maximum of ~10-15 bubbles on a gate more vigorously, players who get petitioned for this should receive a penalty after the first offence. This should never be tolerated.

I do not like the idea of adding more nullified ships, t3 cruisers and interceptors are sufficient for their purpose.

I feel that interdiction nullification should only exist for "travel" uses, allowing you to get past anchored bubbles, but not past interdictors, it always felt a bit cheap to write off the entire category of player manned interdictors, relying on instalocking interceptors.

You could maybe give heavy interdictors a special scripted bubble that's smaller and stops nullified ships, but then we're getting into pretty gimmicky territory.

One aspect of this which I feel important is interceptors and anchored bubbles. For wormhole groups a large section of our content is from getting connections to remote nullsec areas and catching miners/ratters using interceptors to get past the large (100km+ diameter) bubble setups on gates. Removing nullification entirely would harm this gameplay, and even if you made bubbles take fuel or give killmails, I'd feel better if it actually forced interdictors to sit on gates and have a real presence.

T3 cruisers should probably lose nullification if we get a big T3C balance pass, I'd be happy with them all getting a grav (warp speed) subsystem there in place of it, or a mode system similar to T3 destroyers.

Anchorable Bubbles.


Anchorable bubbles are good for keeping nullsec dangerous. I don't think bubbles should decay BUT I think they should have a minimum anchor distance to other bubbles. (For example 100km)

This allows continued disruption in the form of drag bubbles and single bubbles on gates but removes the absolute cancer of 50 T2 Large bubbles stacked on a single gate.


Nullified Combat Ships

One of the best parts of nullsec pvp is that you can force some fleets to fight. Nullified combat ships are up there with oversized prop-mods in the anti-fun department. I do understand the benefit of nullified ships for small groups - hit and run disruption tactics provides options for david vs goliath, however the ability for larger groups to utilise this on a greater scale leads to horrible abominations like slippery petes.

Honestly removing nullified combat ships from the game would be a fantastic improvement.

Nullified non-combat ships

Nullified non-combat ships are a bit of a debate. On the one hand a large number of groups and older players have great access to jump freighters meaning that the need to send hundreds of industrial ships through long nullsec routes is a long way in the past. On the other hand the continued lack of options for newer players adds to the daunting side of nullsec.

I don't think that nullified non-combat ships is a bad thing. There are still ways to catch such ships (smartbomb camps, insta-lockers etc) and they provide a valuable service in allowing lower-skilled players to move cargo through dangerous space.
I think a module that allows nullification would be a good idea, with the caveat that it increases align time. Fitting restrictions could prevent it be fitted to unsuitable ships. This could even allow for T1 industrials to have access to nullification if CCP saw fit.

I think that nullification should not be a ship bonus and instead a restricted module as that allows easier tinkering for balance and always means there's a drawback to fitting one.

+1, I really like this idea! Imho a much better approach than a flat "decay time"