Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This will only happen in Null/Low, unless the aggressors perma dec the victims until they eventually log in to try to obtain their loot. Personally i'm not excited at the prospect of keeping each victim perma dec'd waiting for them to eventualy try to get their stuff. Which they likely won't do while the dec is still active and the aggressors are online and nearby.

There NEEDS to be a better looting system for those of us who follow very inactive players (research/indy alts) and their POS's to get nice loots. As it stands we would lose the incentive to grind through the structure in the first place.

I think you misunderstood me, friend. Let me explain. I'm talking about the XL housing structure and possibly also the market structure but I'm waiting for CCP clarification on that so for the time being, assume only the housing structure. All other structures should be destructible. The reason for this is because for the most part, CCP are not changing anything, we'll still have moon miners, we'll still have manufacturing services, we'll still have laboratories and all of these structures be they on a POS or a service on an Outpost can be killed or 'incapped'. So nothing should change. The only structure that should not be destructible is (for now) housing structure.

OPTIONS is the key thing imo.

Whether through use of fittable modules, dedicated rigs or something else, players/corporations/alliances should be able to CHOOSE the result of destruction of their station, and have bonuses or debuffs as a result of that choice.

In order of protection, from least to most.

0) Everything is destroyed, gone. I rate this option 0 as it gives no one anything, so doesn't serve a good mechanic.

1) Starbase style wreck - total access for everyone to loot freely. This option would be the least protection for your assets, but would come with no cost in terms of fitting, upkeep or whatever other metric. (In terms of cost, one that cannot scale infinitely is required. Powergrid is limited, as would be a new "fitting" such as personnel. Money is not limited, so an ISK cost would not suffice in terms of limitations). As it'd have next to no fitting cost, this would leave room for additional benefits like better defenses or better utility etc.

2) One wreck - limited access for everyone. This option means the station or container becomes a lootable container of whatever diameter for anyone to retrieve their stuff. Additionally, thieves can use salvaging modules or some other extraction means to begin siphoning off stored loot. Such an option would be perhaps reinforced warehouses, with little cost.

3) One wreck - individual access only. Only those who own the items can access them. Being in one spot, getting there can be an issue. Such an option would be perhaps strontium activated warehouses, with moderate cost.

4) Multiple journal locations - individual access. Gives very high means of securely re-obtaining one's assets as they are distributed across the system. Such an escape-pod deployment perhaps would come with moderate cost to fitting.

5) NPC export - NPC ships begin retrieving the items to accessible locations. Their delivery would be to the character's current clone location unless otherwise specified. Such exports could be made targetable by various means, such as on wrekc appearance (low security design) or as random cosmic signatures with spawning weighted towards the wreck system area, the signatures only lasting an hour each and randomly spawning across the next X time period (high security design).

6) Instant delivery to new station - single most secure option, would require extreme cost to install (and spool up time I guess to prevent abuse). Such would use perhaps compact jump gates and require pairing with another such station. Some contents may get lost in the emergency jump tunnel.

ALL options should include some form of loss for subscribed players (the cost of failure), with the ability to determine the level of that loss or risk of loss through player choice. Each option can come with bonuses, debuffs or fitting requirements of some kind in order to make each preferable to a group of a certain persuasion.

For example, those with the instant delivery to new station (6) may come with significant fitting issues, but then may also allow for reduced jump clone cooldown between paired stations. Option (3) could come with reduction costs for industry, as the very private warehouses means the owner can hide their jobs in bureaucracy to reduce the apparent value (and thus fee). Option (1) could mean the lack of asset-defense modules lead to more space for mooring options.

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In instances where someone chooses to be subscribed, but cannot play (aka skill training online for our deployed friends etc), an option to put one's account into protected mode would be nice.

Choosing such an option would have a 48 hour spool up (to help prevent abuse). Once activated, any assets the player personally owns in structures with asset protection (ie, the structures in question for this discussion) would become entirely invulnerable, but also inaccessible. Any location under attack at the time (eg a station going to stage 2 of a contest) would not be protected until back to the safe idle state. Coming back out of the protected mode would have a 24 hour spool down (again, to help prevent abuse) and result in the unlocking of the player's assets. Any which would be located in no longer extant locations would be transferred to the character's medical clone location (if storage provides), or a random low sec station proximal to the destroyed storage location.

**This is designed to help skirt the problem of differentiating between someone who has just been logged off for a couple days and someone who is utterly incapable of defending their assets, but wishes to remain subscribed**

How about it's not retrievable until a new structure is build to replace it.

Edit: this will save on the sever load when it goes pop

Here's another alternative that you might not have considered. Just throwing it out there...

• Make it a wreck
• Any jobs in progress have a chance to spawn as loot, all others are lost (and on the killmail)
• Allow anyone to dock at it and retrieve their items
• After 14 days, interbus comes and moves remaining items (securely) to a secure facility in highsec and the wreck despawns.
• Anyone that was still docked in station is ejected randomly in the solar system.
• Items are put into Probate at 30% market value. If you want those items back, you need to pay off the tax.
• After an additional 30 days, Probate taxes drop to 20%
• After an additional 30 days, Probate taxes drop to 10% until they are retrieved by the owner.

This would

1. Provide a way to get some possible benefit from destroying a used structure
2. Provide a way for players to obtain their assets normally
3. Provide a way to safeguard assets for people that are not able to recover assets due to subscription
4. Provide a way to provide a penalty to people who don't come to claim their assets (either because they are unwilling or cannot)
5. Provide a significant penalty to people who want to claim their freely transported items quickly

Yay all 2 million of my bullets survived, oh my dread didn't. I kinda like it, but think it could still use some work. I like the idea of at least a little bit being available as loot though.

there are multiple serious problems with this, and as devs you need to realize that your current goals are mostly mutually exclusive.

first of all, EvE is a game about risk, both taking calculated risks and mitigating those risks.

a HUGE amount of effort is put in every day by players to minimize their risk profile against systemic threats (inherent in the game) and player created threats (caused by player use of game mechanics)

a good example of this is freighter ganking, most freighters usually travel well below full utilization (whatever cargo amount equates to 1bn market value) as a response to the player created threat of suicide ganking freighters for profit.

the above works very well as an analogy to your structure goal, because as a dev team you would like to see full utilization of the assets you are pouring time and effort in to create. but as long as there is any significant risk involved to player assets, they will min/max use of structures to reduce the risk profiles to only what is absolutely necessary to achieve a goal; the rest of the assets will be moved to an NPC station.

additionally, there are several forms of emergent gameplay that currently RELY on having a stable, secure place to store assets, most notably region market trading and seeding. as someone who has done high-level region seeding in the past, I can tell you that in the future I would be extremely wary of ever investing in an outpost/null market ever again unless it was from a true station in the region and not an outpost.

there are quite a few people in here saying "give loot" or "htfu" but I don't think any of them actually realize the consequences of that option for the gameplay they actually want.

currently Null space sees decent utilization, because most people can keep assets close by where they want to live and regardless of the asset pool know that when they log off in station it is secure barring the station being flipped in a war, and even then they still have the option to sit and slow-sell assets in a worst case scenario.

in this new model, with only bare minimum assets and ships being used because "give loot" most people will not keep a full stable of pvp ships to fight with, they will only keep exactly what they need to engage in their preferred style of play and no more. (lots of folks will probably keep only as many ships as a carrier will fit) lots of space will be empty as a result of logistics difficulties and ease of attack (assuming the entosis link plan goes through without change)

currently some of null is a PVP wasteland. that percentage will increase drastically as players do exactly what they have been taught for years to do in EvE: minimize all possible risk.


additionally, this change also risks damaging your subscriber numbers, since many players take long breaks from the game, and 99% of them currently have an expectation from years of gameplay that assets in outposts are 100% safe. changing this without offering some kind of out or alternative risks the goodwill that CCP might hope to have with a returning player to reengage them with the game.


the only winners in this scenario are logistics people who are going to make bank whem people evacuate non-essential assets, and the region maps as you have just turned true station systems into the most valuable real-estate in eve.


as an aside, from all the people I have discussed this change with: should this become a thing 95% of the people talking about these changes are of the opinion that even a risk to 10% assets at random would cause them to move anything not essential, and would likely reduce the ships and modules they currently keep around "just for fun", mostly the shiny stuff that roaming gangs love to find and fight.

edit: for those that might see this as a "please no destructible outposts response" I do actually favor outpost destruction, but only with a method for 100% safe asset retrieval so as to not dampen or reduce the availability of targets and other actual fun things/events in null.

one of the better solutions to the "give loot" argument is to make assets that are being actively used in industry/market tasks at risk, and possibly the isk in market escrow for buy orders (this would bring some acceptable levels of risk to the null trading game)

If youre dead set on having loot drop, a 10-20% of building cost of structure should be incentive enough, which with todays station cost is 2b+ in drops.
The moment you put player assets on that line you will force a N+1 gameplay worse than we are seeing today, as people will be forced into even bigger groups than we are seeing to keep their assets somewhat safe under the new sov mechanics.

For contrast, even a light deployment to get some fights will see personal hangars exceed 1b in assets very fast, and if those assets is not somewhat safe, it wont take long before the new mechanics to be counterproductive as people wont deploy more than a ship or two at most.

Cans, please ccp, sometimes i feel you should force your staff to play.. I was one of those advocating more ships to carry assembled hulls a few years back.. We currently have 6 that can, bowhead, orca, carriers, sc, titans, rorqual(indy), any in that list you'd fancy taking on your own into 0.0 to retrive your ships in a warsone?

Even worse will it be for players logged off and players that cant play 24/7 erryday, logging in to find all that they own floating in deep space, that will kill some motivation to play for sure.

A mechanic to "pay" to get your assets out will be equally counterproductive, because when this comes online 0.0 will be torn a new one just for the fun of it, which in turn will force the 0.0 residents to become fulltime iskfarmers to get new gear rather than fighting..

So this is me, opting for C, have it teleported to next station so the fight can go on. As not all of us can grind isk 24/7 or be online for that matter..

I guess one thing I'm not clear on is the mechanics surround station destruction. I'm assuming that the Entosis Link comes into play for certain sized structures (x-large) for capture, but how (or) would the Entosis Link apply to medium or large structures? Also, is destruction even an option? The new sov proposal seems to allude to capture more than anything else. With respect to the current POS mechanics, it can be attacked 24/7 and then it goes offline into reinforce mode (if strontium is available). I think I would still prefer this mechanic as opposed to a defined 4-hour timeframe - but I really think we need a better idea of how actually combat with structures is going to take place.

I think you should consider making some small percentage of the stuff in the station drop as loot available to anyone. That way, no one person loses that much, but everyone can have a fun reward once the station blows up.

I mean, at say 5% people can't complain that much and I feel like they do deserve to lose something since the thing did blow up. 5% would still mean billions in most cases, plenty enough for looting chaos to ensue.

Also, you better have actual structure killmails that actually show the loot. (unlike most POS modules currently)