Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Right now, PI builds are invulnerable to attack. This runs counter to the spirit characterising the rest of Eve - risk and reward. I believe mechanisms need to be introduced to make PI facilities vulnerable to attack. I can see Dust514 going some way toward this (is it though?), but a mechanism built into Eve is needed too.

One obvious example where the invulnerability goes against the grain are wardecs - it's possible to attack the decced ships and POSs, but the members' PI facilities are untouchable and can continue generating value throughout the wardec.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

An initial proposal:

Create new type of probe, which will produce a report on who owns all PI installations on a planet, or whole solar system. I lean toward planet only myself - there needs to be some work involved. This allows for warring parties (or potentially warring parties ) to find the right PI installations and then attack them. Perhaps the locations become a form of bookmark? Not sure...

In hi-sec, warring parties can attack each other's PI installations freely, having located them. This could be via a similar bombardment mechanic used for the Dust514 link. It could be restricted to certain ships classes and particular weapons of course, hence the bombardier ship may need to be near useless for in-space combat, thus requiring support or protection.

In lo-sec any PI installation can be bombarded, but the attacker (assuming no wardec) will get GCC and sec status loss.

In null sec, well, anything goes.

Notifications:

Upon being bombarded, the PI will send a notification to its owner and optionally the owner's corp (perhaps some sort of auto forward option? Or on some timer if the owner hasn't seen it or is offline? Lots of ways to configure that.)

How long to kill a PI?

This could get complicated. Perhaps new installations for shielding could be built. Or not. Maybe the higher the upgrade level, the more hit points the Command Centre has.

The principle needs to be that defenders get a reasonable opportunity to defend the installation. But PI installations aren't staggeringly expensive (unless the launchpad is stuffed with P4s I guess, but that's an interesting risk in my view) so it shouldn't be anything like POSs with reinforced timers or anything. My initial feeling is scaling from 15 minutes for a level 1 CS up to 1 hour for a level 5.

Then what's to stop the owner from simply launching any stored goodies and unbuilding the whole thing to deprive you of a kill? Nothing I suppose, unless launches are locked down whilst it's being bombarded, as are building or decommisioning. Not sure those are needed. If the PI owner unbuilds it, then the attacker has essentially succeeded - the PI is no longer there to generate benefit for its owner.

Some questions:

• Should it be possible to scan the contents of a PI installation? Could be good for timing an attack for maximum penalty.
• Should a bombarding ship be locked in place for a time, to avoid petty harassment and encourage commitment and support?
• Or not, to encourage petty harassment ?
• Should bombardment take place from the Customs Office? The standard planet bm? A custom bm, created like for launches?
• Should several ships be allowed to bombard at once?
• Should each additional facility need to be destroyed before the Command Centre?
• How would a damaged CS be repaired?

- - - -
That's about all I've got for now. Thoughts?

I don't see how this effect peoples real gameplay as just shooting the CC wouldn't do anything except shut down the PI on that planet until a new CC could be dropped. CC's are a dime a dozen...

Also you can see other peoples PI as it stands now just find their CC and click on it. Don't need new probes for this

And do you not know what Dust is? It was created because of PI and CCP wants to break into the FPS world. Bad idea is bad

Pretty sure this was on the original roadmap for PI.

Part of the problem with all of this is there is no real massive reason to remove a CC, other than to be an annoyance to your enemy. If the planets resources were more finite, then maybe a better reason to fight over them ( an example would be if more than one person mined in the same area it would effect everyones yields.)

The most likely candidate for a CCdestruction mechanic has to be Dust, but without making PI a full part of dust (not something FPS players will jump on) then it is a feature that is only there to serve EVE which is something CCP seemed eager to avoid.
Becasue of this you'd have to maybe look at some variation of orbital strikes to make them destructable, but again this then removes scope for dust or invalidates a dustruction method via dust.

it's a tricky subject in my mind.

I'm sure CCP will bump PI right to the top of their list of unfinished gameplay.

So, how exactly do I stop you blowing up my stuff while I'm at work? Or asleep? No reinforcement timers or anything, you want to just wander in and blow up my stuff while I can't defend it?

Why is that good gameplay?

Um...be in a corp and play nice with the other boys and girls?

For hisec, I was specifically talking about wardec situations.

I think that works if some other conditions are met:

1. They cost enough to warrant Dust514 players to want to do that for you.
2. That there are enough Dust514 players available to do it (there are a LOT of planets being farmed in PI)
3. That the time it takes to kill one scales with the cost of the CC and installations. A fully upgraded CC costs, what, 5m ISK? What the **** is that? Seriously. Aren't there dropsuits that cost more than that?! The thing returns on the owner's investment inside of 48 hours, easily. Risk vs reward? Um...no.

For PI to be "properly integrated" it needs to have a much wider spectrum of investment vs return. Then, it can be treated as an asset worth attacking or defending. Right now, who gives ****?

Us AU TZ people are pretty evil like that, we also mine the belts dry straight after DT. We do however get boned when it comes to PVP cause there is no one to shoot.



The thing is that at the moment war decs are pretty safe if you want them to be. You have 24h to take down a POS if you want to (plus they take ages to shot as well as shooting back), you can keep all your stuff in a station never to be shot at and not undock.

With your changes CCs would be totally unprotected in the event of a Wardec.

You might as well say that you should be able to kill some ones research jobs, manufacturing, buy/sell orders in a Station. All of those are a form of income (trading can be crazy profitable) the only difference is you don't even have to undock for them to work.

Just to turn that on its head for a moment: Why, exactly, should your stuff be able to print money for you while you are not logged in, with absolutely zero chance of anyone destroying it?

(I accept that trading, research and manufacturing all do this too, but PI isn't those things. It takes place outside of the station, on planets. Planetary bombardment is officially a thing. Nobody gets to earn ISK mining or ratting whilst not logged in either and whilst doing those things, they may get their ISK printing machine blown up.)