Player Features and Ideas Discussion

One of the intriguing things about EVE is the back story on its many aspects. So I'm developing a back story on this ship that will leave it as an open question on whether EVE will ever see this ship concept or not.

I hope you find my story clever.

I will update the story everyday (unless something real world comes up) and I promise it won't take more than a week to write it out. It's in my head and I just have to express it.

I updated my story.

Please, humor me

No.

This is becoming frustrating. I begrudgingly reread your story a couple times, what does this ship do? Weaponize CONCORD? Your story was a good fit in My Eve but right here it's all about gameplay and mechanics.

Hi.

I am not going to read a story. I came here hoping to see an interesting ship proposal, and I have seen nothing in 2 pages. I won't be surprised if this gets locked for the thread gets locked for redundancy, as it contains no features nor ideas.

Okay.

SOE and the ORE Corporation has collaborated on a ship concept that's been sitting on ORE's drafting table for years. ORE believe it would revolutionize Industrial transport and shipping but they would not commit the design to production because it was too much of a risk to pilots being that ORE's, like other industrial ship are bulky and slow.

That was until SOE made an engineering breakthrough with the use of a new hull material technology called Quantum Spatial Phasing (QSP). The technical details about how QSP works will be explained in my story. But, for now it was the technology that ORE was looking for to make their ship concept a reality.

The new class of ships SOE and ORE are designing is called Starlifters, and what the hull design allows the capuleer to do is carry other capsuleer pods in its cargo hold. In other words the Starlifter is a transport ship for other capuleers and their packaged ships. It's a concept that doesn't exist with any other ship in EVE.

The reason why ORE was reluctant to produce a transport ship like this was because they knew a passenger transport ship would be just as vulnerable as any other indy ship, and the idea of a ship kill transporting other pilots was not very marketable. But QSP will change that.

There are two version of the Starlifter space craft, a regular Tech I version and a Tech II military version called the Vanguard.

Now, QSP also has some very special benefits unique to the Starlifter because of its effects on warp field mechanics (there are also draw backs too, I but I can explain those later). Here are a few.

1. A pilot can drop out of warp at any time before they arrive at their destination.
2. Its hull material makes the ship extremely fast and agile for an industrial ship.
3. The ship has an emergency warp function that allows the pilot to warp off in the direction it is facing almost immediately.
4. You cannot scan this ship down with combat probes because of its QSP technology.
5. The tech one version is modestly effected by warp interdiction sphere's while the Vangard is immune.

But most important to ORE is that QSP significantly delays Ladar, Magetometric, Gravemetric and Radar targeting sensors when locking onto a Starlifter. We're talking anywhere from an 8 to 14 seconds target lock delay on a Starlifter depending on the Starlifter's pilot skills.

What this all means is a ship concept that allow's it's pilot to be extremely evasive to targeting, which means a better chance to survive gate camps, and give a pilot a chance to explore the farthest reaches of low or null sec space.

Here's where it gets interesting. The military version, the Vanguard is able to perform in-flight warp drops of its payload. Basically, the Starlifter is the EVE equivalent of the very real and very capable C-17 Globemaster III (Google it).

Now here are some of it's drawbacks.

1. There are no high slots on the Starlifter because the higher power requirements disrupts the QSP technology.
2. Ship modules, fits or modifications that would affect it's signature or cargo capacity will also adversely affect its QSP technology, so no microwarp drives or cargo expanders, etc.

and finally, SOE and ORE do not want to enable the criminal enterprise that would interfere with their commercial interests, so they would work with CONCORD to restrict pilots with a security standing of -5 or lower from flying the ship in high or low sec (criminal pilots can still fly a Starlifter in null or worm hole space). Further more, SOE and ORE would offer a Starlifter pilot's licenses through their LP store, which are required for flying Starlifters in high and low sec space (some restrictions apply, but I can explain that later).

And finally, here are some other interesting abilities the Starlifter offers.

1. The Starlifter would offer a whole new way for pilots to earn ISK by serving as "airline" pilots basically.

2. Passengers on board do not appear in the local chat channel or in the ship overview. This opens up for some interesting clandestine travel as a service though New Eden.

3. The in flight Warp drop opens up a whole new possibility in military logistics support and battlefront staging for war campaigns

That's pretty much, it in a nut shell. Wrote about ten pages of description, to include load mechanics, doctrine uses, visual effects descriptions, even the new type of scams, challenges for better or worse that the Starlifter would bring to EVE.

I have more but I'll just stop for now.

Thank you

But not just pods in the cargo hold, their packaged ships as well.

Remember the Starlifter would be EVE's equivalent of the C-17 Globmaster, basically anything the C-17 does the Starlifter can do.

It's a force mulitplier in battlefield logistics and tactical support. The Vanguard would be very much the same.

So you want a bowhead with :

can also carry pods/other pilots
can stop it's warp in space without the need of pre-setup safe spot \
faster and more agile
emergency warp with no align requirement
literally unscannable
only modestly affected by bubbles (WTF does that mean?) while the T2 model just bypass them
crazy low signature so it's can't be locked on fast (which also mean applying damage to such ship if it's also fast and agile will be borderline impossible)
can drop cargo or maybe ships while in warp
and somehow, for **** and giggles, has a limit on sec status

Is this really what you are proposing?

Now I get why you didn't want to just lay it out there. I'd be ashamed to propose such broken ship.

As a suggestion for the future, nothing is preventing you from both explaining your ideas and showing off your stories. At the same time.

Suggesting something in form of a short story is a novel concept though, I'll give you that. Communication theory is not your thing, I guess.

Thank you for the responses, anyway. I think the Starlifter concept would be a game changer in many ways.

For one it would not be a bowhead (that's one ugly ship). I would propose it's cargo is limited to 25,000 m3. That's four pods (1000 m3), four packaged destroyers (5000 m3) and a 1000 m3 to spare for fittings. So a 25,000 m3 is waaaaaay under a Bowhead, you could not compare it to that.

Secondly, some of you think this ship would be broken. I argue that it would not be broken in EVE. For one you would not beable to use any high slot items that would include weapons, salvagers, cloaks, probe launchers, cyno or jump portal devices and other things. So the ship is very limited to do one thing and that is transport.

I think, however some of you are bothered by the idea that this ship being difficult to target (not impossible but difficult) would mean in could allow players access to null spaces jealously guarded by some alliances (cough, cough), so yeah I could see why some folks wanting to protect their special interests by being dismissive about this concept. Further more it just eats at those who just want to camp at gates and keep people out of space, and being powerless to stop them I guess.

But the whole point of this ship is to do just that and that is to get players out to low and to null and to wormhole space.

And as for this concept being unoriginal because there has been other pods transport ships proposed, I think those ideas were proposed to solve other minor problem, but I see as a problem is a lack of player participation in all parts of EVE space as a liability to this game, and that will put it back where it was before CCP introduced Alpha Clones, which is stagnant growth, the bane to any profit model of a game.

Believe me, this idea of the Starlifter is really for the benefit of EVE and its players, not some fancy wish list from a player wanting a pink pony. I put a lot of thought in this idea because I love EVE, but I see it's short comings.