Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Testing waters here.

We all love and hate those adorable anchorable bubbles. In contrast to their smaller, more fragile counterparts, they stay at a given location and run forever. Not to mention that it's hard to destroy them.

While I don't want to argue about the last point*, in the light of all the discussion about passive income, passive activities and too high passive bonuses, I think it's also time to think about these passive modules. Currently, they are placed, anchored, activated and then stay there forever and a day. They don't need care or anything, they just run indefinitely.

What I am thinking about is that they should have a maximum runtime, after which they turn off (and unanchor, just like POS modules). In order to have them run all the time (or most of the time, actually) you have to go to your bubbles, take them back into your cargohold and replant them every now and then. It would force people to fly through space and take care of their remains. If they don't, the bubbles just vanish and don't bother everyone any longer, unless the owners want that.

I'm also not talking about fueling the bubbles with whatever fuel (imagine fuelblocks pressed into the small bubble housing), but as stated a timer. The timer doesn't need to be measured in minutes or hours, this would destroy the idea of a permanent bubble, but a day or a small number of days instead would be a good start.

I don't have exact numbers but right now there should be numerous active bubbles around the universe, which are not attended and put unnecessary load on the server. With this, and even if it's just a tiny bit, server performance could be enhanced as well.

Opinions?

R

*way over 200k hitpoints on a large bubble packed into 585 m³? This is almost like a Neutron star. ;)