Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Planned obsolescence is the practice of building things with foreknowledge that they will wear out. It equates to a maintenance and replacement cost over time.

“That’s horrible idea, I don’t want my ships to wear out!”

Consider though the market possibilities of using a ship for a few months and selling it cheap to some new guy. He gets a leg up into a bigger boat and you can buy a new one at half cost.

Salvage could be fleshed out to be a little more interesting. Maybe rather than having upkeep be 100% npc sink, noctis pilots could have an upkeep option. It would be a lot of fun if the repairs required some of the cheaper salvage components, just to give them some more value and meaning.

Mechanics like this encourage player to player interaction without forcing it on anyone, and they create an atmosphere that is less agreeable to bots.

This isn’t an option that results in shiny new toys, but it would lend greatly to the feeling that Eve is a gritty dark world. For myself that feeling is worth more than all the carnival rides and WiS candy on the interweb.

Thanks for your time in consideration of this idea.

I thought I was playing dystopian libertarian space soap, not capitalist money grab

I don't want to discuss specific implementation, only to get a general feel for the idea. It will be more fruitful to discuss specifics once it becomes clear what people would like to see from such a thing.

I look forward to discussing things more there.

Moving to Features & Ideas Discussion.

well really the whole game seems like a chore sometimes. Its just that many of the current chores are solo in nature. It would be neat to have some more dynamic options.

Say the first 30% of wear and tear have no adverse affects. A pilot is flying around at 25% and a noctis shows up in system and advertises mobile repairs in local at 50% station rates. Its kind of a fun interaction that saves some isk for anyone who flags him down.

On the other side, if people don't want to be bothered maybe they can just set up automatic repair programs for their ships. In that way the isk gets sinked. I'm all for more sinks and faucets in the economy. ISK flow just feels really static lately.

You somehow look like a scrap metal tycoon.

The term "Sink" in Eve means something that removes ISK from the game; NPC taxes and fee's, clone costs, ISK spent in LP stores. If there were ship maintanence costs payable to NPC stations that ISK would also be "sinked". If you pay a pilot in a Noctis to perform the maintenence then that money is just circulated in the game.

Ship maintanence set up this way would be a great sink and at the same time create a new career path for people. Just another in game option for interaction is all. And a market for all the worthless scrap would be interesting.

Maybe im misunderstanding some mechanic in your post, but id have to disagree.

I live in a C6, you know how often we get acess to k-space in an area thats actually USABLE for supplies? (hint hin, middle of nullsec isnt where were going to send our haulers). when your talking 150+ active players, NONE FO WHICH can dock in the system they ar ein everyday, it would get to the point in wormhoels where YOU DIDNT LOG ON UNLESS THERES A CTA. since logging on at any other time would be burning your ship.

so yeah, not supported, dont want another 15 hours of cycling statics every week just to bring IN haulers full of salvage.

The point of ship degradation over time is to create an NPC sink that could also be tapped by properly skilled and equipped players. I had not considered people who live deep in W-space, TY for posting. I think it should be a minor sink and one that is easily overcome, as someone else pointed out it could become very onerous over time. There is no reason that POS docking bays couldn't have an auto maintenance function the same way that NPC stations would.

And someone in your corp would still have the option of skilling a noctis up to the point where they could do the repairs for cheaper using salvage material.

I think CCP is going to reduce clone costs for high SP characters soon. And so the ship maintenance sink could help to even that out.

If this system is ever going to go live - prices for salvage needed for maintenance will skyrocket to the point where there is no profit between station/noctis maintenance. So unless noctis pilot gets those salvage parts himself he wont get any profit and even then it'll be more profitable to just sell those @ market - less hassle.