Player Features and Ideas Discussion

whats the problem with ships?

I can see this working for POS, Outposts and maybe even customs offices but not ships. If anything it could be a WiS feature for EVE pilots to board, hack and steal ships where the pilot has logged off, ejected or activated self destruct.

what would not work with ships?

maybe you can hack it from the next best terminal to slow it down temporarily till you reach the real ship computer core thingy. Or CCP could just increase self destruct time for ships to 5mins and reduce it for pods to 30s...

edit: or you may be so confident in your defenders that you do not even consider to enable the self destruct

We made a good living capturing ships attempting to do missions in contested low-sec.

The circumstances we set up involved very boosted long points followed by overwhelming
force including disco-ships to remove the thought that anyone caught was going to get
their pod away
unscathed.

Simple persuasion and not pod-killing the cooperative ensured a regular supply of
the optimistic.



Ransoming a complete hull with modules is far more cost effective than blowing hulls
away and hoping
for luck on the drop.

I rather like the idea of ship assaults - it really fits the genre.

However 3 minutes is about as long as a game could last.

-- Haze

yeah. but everybody can kill you while you play chess and winning the chess game gives more points as running over the line. Comparisons like that don't work very well.

I like the SUBSTANCE of this idea, but for it to work you'd have to literally add a new "disabled" state to basically willfully prevent a ship that reaches zero hull or self destruct from actually exploding. Using a percentage of hull nerfs hull and completely kills any ability to escape with low hull.

If we introduced, as an effect of the boarding module, an ability to arrest a structural breach that causes an explosion then it would be pretty balanced.

Now:

0 hull, your boat explodes.

Boarding:

0 hull, your ship still explodes, unless someone makes an effort to stop it from exploding.

The boarding ship has you locked and you are being affected by the "Emergancy integrity array", you reach 0 hull. You (the pod) are ejected from the ship (which is functionally dead anyway) and that hulk becomes the match. This is in effect if you've self destructed as well. Your ship is essentially a wreck with all the stuff still on it, being held together by the agressor's module.

Defenders - You could use boarding defense contracts like insurance, mercs based on leaderboard metrics. Dudes higher on the board respond to higher grade contracts. You could also use members of your own corp. Mercs stationed at a nearby planet, pos, carrier, or other vessel. You opt in to this system only if you see value in it. If you're a player that doesn't see himself in a position to actually regain a ship by defending against boarding (solo pilots for instance) this isn't a system you'll want to opt in to. IF defenders spawn, that action turns on a similar structural module. This prevents the agressor from simply turning off the boarding mod to hose the defense.

Objectives:
Stabalize the hulk by welding, repairing, hacking, etc. in order to return it to functioning status, then holding those systems whilst depleting enemy merc clone reserves.

The winning team gains control of the ship for whomever summoned it. That player has the option to jet all cargo and nuke it, restore it to 1% hull so a pod can hop in, or just nuke it. The mercs are paid either automatically (in the case of random roll contracts) or by player created specific contracts with corps/individials mercs.

Gang Interference

You can still target and shoot at it while the match is in progress like any other wreck. This actually sets back any repair progress inside. This means you can dierctly screw over the primary objective of both teams from the outside, but this action is counter to any valuable boarding or counter-boarding plans you may have had. If you know you're going to lose it and don't want the other guy to have it, go ahead if you don't have anything better to shoot at. mercs are already getting SP and isk for participating. This means that in large fleet battles you can essentially "fire and forget" boarding parties and move on, possibly allowing your guys in pods to get a new lease on life. It also means you can counterplay that strategy if you're actually winning the fleet fight. In short, interfering with the boarding fight once it's begun will be about as useful to your team as shooting at a pod, only its a much higher HP pod.

In this manner you're adding an additional wrinkle to ship combat but you're nerfing ships that choose to board, ensuring that boarding is a job for specialized vessels that can be prioritized in fleet engagements if necessary. They can be disrupted, scrammed, bombed, etc. However, the boarded ships are still just a secondary lease on life for ships that are already dead. As in self destructed or zero hull dead.

pretty much it in a nutshell. Rare on water, even rarer in space.

The OP is trying to find anyway possible to get DUST players into EVE space ships and it just does not work. Not from an RP perspective and certainly not from a gaming perspective. As other players have mentioned before, no capsuleer would allow their ship to be taken under any circumstance. Air locks open/climate control/reverse engine flush/self destruct/a standing crew much larger than any DUST team you could assemble... what ever it is, nobodies getting their ship taken from them in space by a boarding party.

It seems like it would be fun to include DUST players in our space battles, but let them fight on the planets, we can fight in the heavens. Theres just no reason you would inject soldiers into an enemy craft without thousands of numbers and full power armor(ala space marines in 40k).

What would seem much more realistic and much more balanced gameplay wise (because making mercs mandatory is not fun) is to have them be limited to cargo hold interactions. stealing a ships cargo is much easier than storming the bridge. especially when the ship is crewed by thousands.

Also loose all that nonsense about having to be in structure to board. again it makes no sense from an RP point of view and its just an awkward fix to the problems inherent in ship stealing. Take away ship stealing, and you dont need that whole thing.

If your boarding craft can approach its target, bore a whole through the armor and hull and steal some cargo, great! give them a two minute time limit before theyre caught and destroyed automatically by the ships crew to steal as much as they can carry. Each DUSTer taking a set limit of weight off the ship if they make it in time.

I don't like this idea one bit for anything other than static sites like stations or a pos. It's been suggested before, but as a capsuleer I would rather self distruct than yeild my ship, also I would rather play something else than play a game that hands over my hard won stuff to other players as a game mechanic.

Why can't I just scan planets for dust bunnies to kill, why do I even need a satellite link, why can't I ruin their game, because it's unfair that's why, yet the op wants to ruin my game in a way that is equally unfair by changing the game mechanisms to suit the boarding party.

i think you should read it again. The core requirement of the ship takeover is that you are essentially already dead. The player who attacked you made the decision to not "finish" you but attempt a takeover instead. No dust player will get your stuff, its the eve player who shot you. And its not guaranteed that he gets your stuff - which is also a core requirement btw.