Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I agree that they should not be passive. They should require control if the drilling platform can mine.


I also like the idea of a XL making its own asteroid field and breaking the rocks down to usable types around its self. However the miner has to be in system using the platform for the actual ore to be harvested either by Entosis Link or docked with the structure using mining assets like pos guns. However you mining equipment can be easily ganked.

Also an XL drilling platform should be visible on scanner or overview like stations or asteroid belts.

Let me see if I understand this right. You want a single platform to autonomously and automatically harvest resources from everything in the system? If so, then Hell, no! This is a terrible idea. You are essentially advocating for CCP-approved botting.

---

I am vehemently opposed to any of these structure generating any passive income beyond what is already possible. I am not opposed to them giving bonuses to active play. I don't care a whit about where they can be anchored, so long as the stated goal of no anchoring location restrictions is maintained except where doing so would break game-play.

Since so many ****-a-maimy, obviously broken, and clearly self-serving ideas have been thrown out there, I think its time to refocus the Drilling Platform concept on the relevant issues by reiterating the OP:



Please remember that the Drilling Platforms line of items includes everything to do with resource harvesting and processing. This means everything from silos, reactors, and siphons all the way up to a fully upgraded Minmatar Refinery Station. This is a huge selection of items and processes, both passive and active.

Moon mining has its own issues because of how the resources are gathered. Ore, ice, and gas are all actively gathered using mining ships. I don't have an issue with a small platform being able to mine by equipping it with strip miners. But why? Why spend that kind of isk and take that kind of risk when you can do the same thing with a much cheaper exhumer or barge?

If one could anchor a platform and have it mine passively, what is to stop a player or group of players from anchoring 10, 100, or 1000 of them? This possibility scares the crap out of me and should be squashed immediately and permanently. No passive mining!

If one wanted to anchor a reprocessing array and some sort of tractor beam array in the belt (assuming tractoring asteroids were possible), then thats cool. Can we make jet-cans and other cans tractorable? That makes a lot of sense because it reduces the mind-numbing hauling an time spent doing things other than resource gathering. Same goes for ice.

It seems to me that storage, processing, and distribution of gathered resources should be the area of focus that these things enable. Not passive gathering.

Gases, especially cyto- and mykoserocins, have no form of compression and have insanely huge volumes. CCP, If you want to do something really beneficial, give us gas compression. You can't even fit a 2-week supply of gases in a perfectly-skilled DST without completely gutting its defenses for cargo-expanders and cargo rigs. Or using a jump freighter.

What level of complexity and effort should be required for a single player to be successful at any given task? What about a small corp? Or a small alliance or large corp? I know some very well organized players that run dozens of reaction towers solo with a few alts and a couple of accounts.

We should be looking at what size of platform, and thus size of investment, should be required to perform certain kinds and levels of reactions. For example, creating strong boosters from gases requires 5 reactors and over a dozen silos of varying types. What scope of drilling platform should be required to perform such a complex task?

What about complex reactions like Ferrogel? Or Hybrid Polymers? At what level of investment should these options be available to players? What risks are appropriate for the reward levels? These are all questions that need to be answered.

The highest level of structures are going to be the replacements for stations. The middle for POSes, and the lower end will be more like the small structures on POSes and deployables. Let us keep this in mind and be helpful in finding inventive and useful ways to enable the player-base to use them without breaking the entire economy.

At the moment, we currently use a POS to passively mine moon go. Could we have a smaller structure that just mines and stores the goo, and a larger one that will mine, react, and store? Will these still be vulnerable to siphons? Are we ever going to get siphons for complex reactions?

What mechanics are going to replace reactions? What about reactors and silos? Are these going to become some sort of fitted module? Will they become scripted to select reaction types? Or will we have to swap service modules every time we want to change the reaction we're running?

Any type of automated or automatic mining should be scrapped and removed in total. there is a difference between making mining available and fun verses making mining irrelivent for groups of players and moving it in total to a afk structure farm run by 1 person.

I'm curious as to market availability in wh space; and also if they'll automatically show up on the overview. and if so... can markets have npc police spawns? so all markets could be safe-ish to incetivize trade between neutrals? i would really like to see markets inside whs; where explorers can reste their tired wings and buy some probes for the trip; maybe even sell some of their loot for the industrialists... and i'm also curious how these markets are gonna play out in hisec... i'd also like to ask for ccp to not remove the outposts we currently have; leave them be forever, just like historical places; maybe make all them freeport tourist sites or something... it would be nice to have some reminders of an older era laying arround new eden. cheers o7

With this setup you could also have alliances set a tax on this equipment. It keeps a % of all the rocks it tosses into space. So you can have it somewhat passive if you chose, or 100% passive (i.e. Goons or someone sets 100% tax on there r64's) but they can be poped easier. This though, however, also pulled in the issue of things not changing. Certin moon ore would still only be available in certin areas of space. Where as i think moon goo need other means of getting it, like comets, or new roid feilds. So essentually i could pick a constalation and have everything i need to live and build everything i need. You would get more goo from moons but moon mining really needs to die.

If I could make one change to moon mining it would be that moons deplete, and their resources respawn on a random moon elsewhere in the universe that doesn't currently have a moon mining structure.

Alternative sources of moon goo such as comets, cosmic signatures, and shattered WH systems would also be a huge improvement.

Markets.... in a player owned structure.
You said some interesting things in the presentation. I think you want to avoid any circumstance where you create NPCs trading to the player modules and items that the players themselves can manufacture. ie: if they want to compete with other players, they need an assembly array. However, for items the player cannot produce, then either this would need to act as a remote trading service tied to a particular station or hub with an NPC transporting for an additional fee plus time for travel (can it be intercepted - ie: NPC convoys moving through low null?) or it simply acts as a way to have NPC move the items from the local regional market to the Structure - again, it should be something that can be intercepted by other players.
I think it might be unwise to create a mechanic where items simply appear without any risk.
However, this would be an interesting way to obtain meta items that are non-faction and non-officer.

Such a Market hub would also mark the Structure on the overview - especially if it allows players to trade with each other.

The market can be restricted - ie: visible to corp or alliance.

Resource structures should increase the availability of the resource in the system - ie: better detection leading to larger ore deposits or more anomalies appropriate to the module. It allow hidden fields to spawn whose Bookmark can be purchased for a set amount from the person requesting them (should not be an on demand but randomly generated and despawned - sometimes you won't have any, sometimes a lot). Once the location is visited the location can be found via combat probing. People who did not purchase a pass and enter the anomaly could be shot at by sentries - easily defeated except by lightly armed and poorly tanked ships. If in a fleet, the rights to mine are shared among all fleet members even if the purchaser leaves. If the purchaser enters a fleet, the rights are automatically considered shared with the fleet.

Role for Mining platform (un-deployed)

• Mobile - (Can warp around the place, and can moor at other structures
• Ability to scan for resource anomalies such as Gas nebulae (gas harvesting anomalies), Large asteroids field (ore harvesting anomalies), planetary rings (moon goo anomalies), or large ice field. (I left PI out as I am unsure whether it is included as part of this resource gathering)
• scanning of these sites will be limited to the mining platform, but once scanned down, will show on radar as per normal anomaly mechanics

Role for mining platform (deployed)...

... at large asteroid field (can be anywhere in system)

• Ability to attach to large asteroid
• fuel is required for the drilling of large asteroid. The drilling is not to gather resource but is a game mechanic to spawn smaller asteroids for mining
• Ability to set drilling focus on specific asteroids to spawn such as arkonor, bistot, crokite, etc... (but will be at a slow spawn rate, large quantity)
• ability to set drilling to spawn asteroids based on priority order. IE, arkonor first, followed by bistot, then crokite... (at a medium spawn rate, medium quantity)
• ability to set drilling to spawn asteroids without any preference (spawns all rocks available on large asteroid) (at a fast spawn rate, smaller quantity per asteroid)
• at the end of the drilling (based on mechanics chosen), the large asteroid will be destroyed making more asteroid spawns unavailable. This means the platform needs to be un-deployed and the scanning process begins again

*NOTE*
a large asteroid will contain certain types of ores with limited quantity

... at planetary ring (located around planets of course). I also haven't thought much of what to do for this so feel free to add your 2 cents.

• Ability to survey planetary ring to find resources for moon goo mining (making it available for active miners to mine)
• ability to set priority for survey scanning for specific moon goo (similar to ores, allowing for different spawn rate and quantity)
• at the end of surveying, goo resources is depleted, making it necessary to move the platform to new location

... at gas nebulae
same as first 2, but just gas. If you can think of more mechanics to add, feel free to add your input

• possibly have a mechanic to detect dangerous gas fields making it necessary for miners to avoid

... at large ice field
Similar to ore, but with ice. drilling is necessary, fuel is required

*NOTE* for all four types of anomalies, once depleted, the normal despawn mechanics applies for said anomalies. (Once everyone leaves, it despawns and is no longer in anomalies list. For null sec, the nullsec indicies applies. Indy level 1 (ore upgrade), will guarantee 1 large asteroid with small variety of ores. as upgrade level increase, more variety and rarer ores is made available.
Upgrade for other type of resources (while it doesn't exist), can also be added in game. upgrade for ice field, planetary rings, and gas field. As for highsec/low, despawn mechanics will take x hour before anomalies become available again. Lower the sec status, faster the respawn rate of anomalies and rarer resources available.

Now for the fittings. The platform will consists of x amount of high slots, x amount of mid slots, x amount of low slots, and x amount of specialised slot.

• High slots will allow the platform to fit offensive and boosting modules (such as weapons, ewar etc (similar to ships, and structures (the one that is coming), mining boosting modules (increased yield, increased rate of gathering, less cap usage, etc)
• Mid slots will allow for modules such as increased storage capacity, shield modules (regen or increased max shield hp), increased range of weapons (similar to omnidirectional links), etc...
• Low slots will allow for armor modules, bonuses to specialty modules, etc
• specialty modules... see below

list of specialty modules

• Ship Mooring - I am assuming that structures will always be attackable (no invulnerable timer), and as such, ships moored (not docked), has the ability to add bonuses to the platform depending on the ship moored. Combat ships (with weapons), will have its weapons controlled by the platform (added firepower). Mining ships will have its lasers controlled by the drilling platform, increasing the drilling rate. More lasers on ship, faster drilling rate.
• Drone Transportation bay (Not for combat) - this specialty module houses transport drones, which will gather jettisoned cans around the mining platform. The settings for this drone transportation can be set to the following:

1. retrieve cans and store in personal storage (items retrieved will be stored into can owner's personal storage in platform where the owner is the only person with access to it
2. retrieve cans and store in corporation storage (places in specified corp storage location)
3. retrieve cans and store in alliance storage bay

• refinery - one for each type of resource (remember you can refit before deploying)
• compression unit - again one for each type of resource
• manufacturing module (ammo, small ships, medium ships, advanced ships, etc). manufacturing modules will have an input (where to get mats from), and output (where to put manufactured products to)
• long range transport bay (or interbus) - allows for storage of transport drones which has the capabilities to move items from a specified storage bay to another storage bay in another mining platform with same long range transport bay. meaning more than 1 platform is allowed in system with specialized capabilities. (1 for mining minerals, one for moon goo, one for producing t2 ships.

sorry, ran out of space to type...hopefully you get the idea and can come up with more modules or abilities

I think people are thinking that this interbus thing is going to go from the Delve to Jita and back delivering you endless ammo and mods for your ship.

You restrict this to inter-constellation delivery only. So lets say you are in Omist, in the 8MJ0-4 Constellation, and are in station 6T3I-L. 6T3 is Your Homebase.

The market "hub" for that constellation is AXDX-f (2 jumps away).

You want 4000 Antimatter rounds and two Magnetic Field Stabilizers. You can contract out to Interbus micro delivery. They'll go 2 jumps to your constellation market hub, pick up your bullets and Stabilizers, and bring it back to you while your doing something else.

Lets say you are in that same above Constellation in station 6T3. 4 Jumps away in the next door constellation (RL36-K), in the station at Z-70K1, there is Antimatter and Mag Stabs at 1/2 the price of the one in AXD. You cannot contract interbus because they won't jump constellations for you. You'll have to contract out to someone to go get it, or go get it yourself.

Small microjumps within your constellation.. I'm ok with.

Anything BEYOND that constellation, that's the job for you, your friends, external services, etc.

To make it a bit more clear. You would be able to ship from Jita to Urlen which is 3 jumps away because they are in the same constellation. You would not be able to ship from Jita to Itamo because its in a different constellation. You would not be able to ship from Jita to Sobaseki, even thought they are next door, because they are in a different region.

In addition, the shipments must be SMALL. No shipping entire battleship fits, cap it at something really small like 30 to 50 M3 per shipment.

That is literally the only way I can see this being even considered to be implemented that would not completely screw over in-game transit corporations like red frog, brave logistics, Push x, etc, but permits people to be at least a little decentralized from 1 central system in a constellation.

Making these micro deliveries region wide could potentially screw over a lot of freight services, and one of the most basic jobs in the game. Shipment.

If this wants to turn into some massive automated trading route concept, I would completely scrap it. People already have decent setups of transit already. Let them work it out.