Assembly Hall

So this is an idea that I had seeded from a reddit post concerning the Iapetan class of titans. The post was not concerning gameplay; it was simply fun concerning their scale and size. But it made me want to see one. Not necessarily make them available to capsuleers, but I wanted to see one. I then molded an idea for how they could be brought into the game, which I proposed in that reddit thread and got decent positive feeback on.

Currently, incursions are kinda stale. Sure, the drifter incursions are new, but they are crazy difficult and broken due to the Amarrian navy not participating in the fight. The only way I have seen them done so far is by whelping thrashers into them until they are all dead. Not the hottest of gameplay. On the other side, Sansha incursions are so stable that losing a ship in one is very rare, and they feel more like a grind than level 4 missions.

Out of this I gained the concept for a new incursion, possibly replacing the unsuccessful drifter incursions. It was brought up in that reddit thread that one of these super titans is owned by the Serpentis. Now would any self respecting pirate organization own the largest and strongest mobile battle station so to ship it while it is docked? Of course not! Thus I reached the idea of the Serpentis Incursion. These incursion sites and scales would greatly trump that of the current sansha incursions, as the Serpentis are looking to carve out a piece of Empire space to join in with the big 4. Since this is more than just a little power struggle that is the sansha incursions, the smallest Serpentis incursion sites would be equivalent to the current sansha HQs in difficulty. From there it scales up.

Now getting more than 40 people in a fleet with the sole purpose of earning ISK is difficult enough as it is, so I don't expect the sites to demand a much larger fleet to run them. Mayhaps 50 for the medium sites and 60 for the strongest sites. More of a focus would be put on proper use of fleet tactics, such as Electronic warfare (damps for sniping ships that will boat closer when their lock range is reduced) or requiring Bhaalgorns to neut out the triage carriers that the serpentis would be using.

Oh, didn't I mention? there has to be a Mom site. The big one. After 2-4 ish weeks of the incursion (duration TBD), the mom shows up. And that Iapetan class titan? That is the mothership of the site. That would be the reason why capitals would be allowed back into highsec. I think that a simple balance solution of forcing capitals to not be allowed to shoot at players and player owned structures, even it safety green allows it (wardecs), and allowing high sec cynos only in the sites, for the purpose of getting the caps onto the battlefield. To take down the Iapetan class titan, I would guesstimate that 200K-250K dps would be needed just to break its tank. Meanwhile you have it literally trying to use a slightly weaker but faster firing doomsday (maybe 750K damage instead of 2 mil on a 2 minute cooldown, but it does not like to choose the same target twice). In addition you also have a perpetually spawning wave of serpentis ships coming to defend their Titan.

Now for an incursion this difficult, and this resource-intensive, there needs to be a payout. Naturally you get isk and concord LP for the normal sites, maybe also with other goodies like serpentis faction loot and BPCs. But for the Mom, whatever fleet gets top damage, gets a XL citadel BPO. (dropped in a secure container so it can't get shot or stolen, specifically for the fleet boss) That kind of a prize is sure to get people chomping at the bit to try and get top damage.

Naturally a proposal this large and expansive will not happen right away, and maybe its too late for a XL citadel BPO to be the best prize for the last site. There would also need work to be done to actually model Serpentis capital ships and the Iapetan class titan. Also to create the sites and add special code for cynos to be allowed in the sites. I have no idea is this will get anywhere beyond a dream, but I want the lore to live, and I think this is a good way for it to breathe the air of New Eden once more.