Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Imagine if you could put up a special big player owned station, like the NPC stations, in Null-sec, and then you could bring up a screen with all your corporation's things that require fuel and strontium, and then you could employ NPC Fuel Freighters (FF from now on) to fly to refuel them from the station you put up.

balancing issues:
1. Isk cost of hiring these FFs. Could be a good isk-sink.
2. How hard FFs are to kill.
3. How much fuel FFs can/must carry at one time.
4. Whether there are multiple sizes of FFs.
5. If you can decide how much they carry at one time or not.
6. If you can decide how often they travel.
7. If you can decide when they travel. And whether you can decide when for each individual POS.
8. If you can have only 1 such station per corp or multiple such stations (if there is just one then its a prime target for hell-camps and then you may as well just do all the boring logistics of refueling POSes yourself so you are not this vulnerable).
9. How much fuel costs (if fuel prices are high and these NPC haulers are easy to kill then way too much fuel will be lost to players killing them, driving demand for fuel and hence price even higher).
10. If the amount of FFs being killed is linked to the amount of fuel that can be made.
11. How FFs travel. If FFs travel by jump freighters directly into the POS, or if FFs land at 100km in front of gates and slowboat at 50ms. ideally FFs would travel by gate and be able to use jump-bridges when instructed to in the route-setup. How far from gate FFs would land and how fast FFs go is a balancing issue. Also, whether FFs are immune to fex webs.
12. Whether there are good tools for quickly changing routes and schedules of FFs. The idea is to make logistics people have to spend less time doing logistics fueling their own structures and more time killing enemy FFs and structures.
Lucky number 13. Whether players can take FF missions.
14. If the FFs refuel strontium or not.
15. If killing red FFs give some sort of bounty reward, or just the dropped fuel and some salvage.

The null alliances are getting so big and organized now that its time for the empires to take them seriously and bring them to the diplomatic table. With trade agreements and all that jazz. This FF feature could be the start of that. The roleplaying story would be that the empires would allow and maybe even encourage empire (NPC) citizens to take jobs in null.
15. This station that I have referred to in this post could be the supercapital station where you can dock supercapitals. Especially if we assume that you need great standing with one empire faction to make one, because supercapital docking ability seems like something the empires would have already. Maybe an alliance would have to get recognized as an empire by one or more empires, through various means, in order to be able to make these stations.
Balancing points of the station itself:
1. Can it be destroyed?
2. Can it be moved?
3. How long is the reinforced mode? Can this be chosen? Can a reinforced be turned off so you can move the station?
4. Can the station be moved with all its contents? How would this work?
5. How many supers can be stored there?
6. Can none-supers be stored there?
I'm sure there are more but I'm tired.

Bonus feature: Player corps could hire NPC agent in this station that issue missions to kill bad standing FFs. Possibility 1 is that the agent requires you to kill any red FF and bring back its tags. Possibility 2 is that the mission mechanic would be able to read when and where the red FFs would be so your own people could then put bubbles in the path of a specific randomly chosen red FF. Not a player FF though I think. The mechanic can be taken in two distinct directions here, or even take both directions at once.

I am sure that anyone who are involved in huge logistics for dozens/hundreds of POSes would welcome this. If you do not do large scale logistics you won't understand how much tediousness this would eliminate.

Why do you want people to do tedious jobs NPCs can do?

Because a player will always outsmart an NPC. It then is only a short time before these Fuel Freighters are intercepted by hostiles. If it is run by a player though, it would happen at random times, utilizing scouts and the like to investigate how "safe" it is to make the run.

For a game that relies on player interaction and doing stuff, this is a pretty bad idea. I wouldnt be suprised if you just got people camping the station waiting for the next npc freighter to undock cause it doesnt know not to. And then pop youve lost all your fuel.

Edit: Infact basically what your saying is you want to control every aspect of its movement, you just dont want to move it yourself...
Grow a pair and get a freighter with a corp that can protect you. or contract black frog.

It is already pretty easy to minimize the number of "trips" you need to make to refuel your POS. You can bring in many months of fuel at once with a JF, and store it in a hangar. You can bring in a weeks worth with a t1 industrial in a single trip. And that's for a large POS. A small POS will run 4x as long on the same fuel.

I'm not claiming that Fueling a POS is fun and exciting, but it isn't nearly as tedious as you're making it out to be. People reset PI extractors daily, they empty PI out of customs offices daily to weekly. Refueling a POS is not a big, time consuming chore in the grand scheme of things. Most groups have players that enjoy that work anyway, and we love them dearly for their efforts.

i like eve's direction where it removes NPC's and puts more responsibilities in the hands of players. for example, having players being able to scan other players cargo for contraband and then activating suspect timers on naughty ppl was an idea that made me smile.

this idea does not make me smile

QQ, You have to fuel POSes, the game doesn't' do it for you. QQ, you have to haul ore and PI to station, rather than have some NPC deliver it for you. QQ, You have to manually fly/jump assets from station to station, the game doesn't do it for you. QQ, you have to jump into a system to get recon on pilots there, it doesn't do it for you. QQ, you have to target hostiles, the game doesn't do it for you. QQ, you have to turn on hardeners and activate repair modules, the game doesn't do it for you.

What is wrong with you?

There is a big difference in having the game identify objects and list their attributes compared to having the game perform tasks for you! Did it ever occur to you that CCP has you manually fuel POSes to encourage flying in space. Did it ever occur to you that utilizing these structures is meant to come with the obligation of fueling them? Sure, the tasks can be tedious, especially if one guy is doing all the work. But that is why these are corporate assets, where the responsibility can be shared.

p.s. If they need a break, let the POS go offline. I'll happily come buy and blow up any assembly arrays or labs for the loot, as that's been very lucrative for me in the past!

Damnit.. forum at my post:

Reasons why a pilot should refuel POS's:
-- It creates an added layer of responsibility to operate a POS.
-- Many POS's are in remote areas, no where near accessible stations (WH's, hostile nullsec, remote nullsec, etc).
-- It isn't all that tedious in the grand scheme of things.

And since you really don't seem to understand this game:

To make a T2 Item, you need:
Someone to mine regular minerals
Someone to mine moongoo
Someone to react moongoo
Someone to react moongoo again
Someone to PI
Someone to combine reacted moongoo to make t2 components.
Someone to use minerals to create t1 items.
Someone to copy T1 BPO's to get T1 BPCs.
Someone to ascertain datacores.
Someone to invent T2 BPC's from t1 BPCs.
Someone to create the T2 Item from T2 Components, Minerals, and PI.

It is a fairly complicated process, and fueling POS's once every 4 weeks in the least tedious component of that process.

Also, when goons were talking about burned out logistics, they were talking about people moving ships and fuel and ammo to the staging system, which will be marginally impacted by your NPC POS fueling idea. Unless you make an NPC corp to move ships and modules from station to station, logistics will be a major job for anyone living in nullsec.

At the end of the day, I see no good way to implement your "idea", and frankly, human pilots flying in space will always be preferred to docked up pilots!

-1

Anything that takes pilot actions (ie, flying) out of the players' hands and performs them with NPCs is moving backwards for the game, in my opinion.

POS fuel was made easier with the introduction of fuel blocks. I don't think it needs any further simplification other than (and I don't know why they didn't do this) perhaps a specialist industrial that can carry POS fuel blocks like all the other specialised haulers.

Refueling one's POS is part and parcel of the requirements for having a POS. Planning for it and actually performing the tasks are part of the responsibilites of owning a POS. If you don't like refueling POSs don't use them.

Also, getting shirty with people because they don't agree with you does nothing for your argument.

how isnt more responsibilities better? a lot of ppl play eve because its hard work. it separates ppl who can mange many responsibilities with skill from those that cant, and eve gives an advantage to the skilled hardworkers over the lazy ppl.

But best of all, if u dnt want those responsibilities and just want to run around and shoot things, u dnt HAVE to have a POS.