Player Features and Ideas Discussion

*Apologies but I originally posted this in general EvE chat before I realised there was an F&I forum:

This is a bit left-field, but I had an idea the other day about changing the ship fitting system, and I think this would work well.

Do away with high, medium and low slots, rig slots, and launcher and turret hardpoints. Each ship will have a fitting space, defined by cubic metres. There would be a calibration requirement to fitting modules, much like there is with rigs. The current capacitor and powergrid system would remain.

After all, a ship is a platform, shouldn't I be able to fit what I want to it, so long as I have the skill to fit it and use it, the power supply and capacity to run it, and the space to fit it.

Each module would have it's own volume, so in a ship with only a small fitting space you can fit fewer large modules. Small blasters will have a smaller volume than T2 large blasters. Rigs will have very large space requirements and calibration cost. Larger volume modules also add more to the mass of your ship, increasing signature radius and reducing velocity and AB/MWD/warp capacitor costs.

There will be 2 new skills, module fitting, for each level of fitted module, and calibration fitting, so you can fit a more calibration-hungry (ie T2) module per level. There would be a different calibration fitting skill per tech level.

The idea is maximum fitting flexibility, but still constrained by the player skill level, and the size of fitting space, powergrid and cap of the ship.

This would mean that if I wanted to fit another railgun at the expense of a couple of armour hardeners then I could, which is how I think spaceships should work.

I guess some people would try to fit ships with only defence or only offence for use in fleets, so the calibration and power requirements of offensive and defensive modules would be set up to discourage this, but to be honest i would be curious to see how PvP would change. There's no point having a ship that's 100% defence because it could be safely ignored, and ships that are 100% offense are very fragile. A ship that's 90% defence and 10% smartbomb would be a worry, but it would also be very slow.

Anyway, that's my loonie idea. What do you all think? I doubt CCP would introduce such a large change to the core mechanic, if they tried everyone would emoragequit. But in my mind this is full of win.