Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Three possible things:

Upgrades to station services
-Either by market, ship or agent traffic or periodic player donations I think stations should be able to have their services upgraded or slightly variable. No I don't think they should all start at a base level with a need to work their way up, but having the ability to include one or two additional services above from when they are at a low activity level may promote people to, in a way, own responsibility for them and keep their usage up.

Agent Relocation
-I don't know if some agents should just be capable of randomly moving around or being enticed to relocate or spawn, but currently available agents locations are static which can really make or break a system and shape player activities. If this is truly a sandbox then this is a variable that should be able to be changed.

Station Ownership
-Dedicated to your NPC faction? Want to expand their influence? Well, maybe with a bit of help the Sisters of Eve can acquire that Quafe station, or some other factions. Not sure on mechanics or limitations on how this would work, but maybe buying an epic mission arc with a huge LP donation?

Yes they would all be huge changes, but may be worth it.

Regarding station "investment" and "ownership": That is the whole point behind Citadels. The DEVs are trying their hardest to make Citadels more appealing than NPC stations... your idea kinda runs counter to that.


Regarding missions agents migrating; this has been discussed and more than a few people kinda like it. Unfortunately, hardcore mission runners hate it as it would require them to be "nomadic" and upset their routines (which they fancy as their "playstyle").

This sounds like aperfect service module niche for the "office" style upwell stations CCP was collecting feedback on.

Keep in mind the station types, as planned, are roughly:

Citadels (Fortresses, bonused for combat)
Engineering complexes (Production facilities, bonused for research and production)
Mining complexes/drilling platforms (Resource exploitation facilities, bonused for mining,reprocessing,reactions, etc.)
Offices (Bonused for SOMETHING, but CCP doesn't know quite what yet)
Gates (Special purpose, likely for jump bridging or maybe as actual gates for new space, bonues for... being gates)

We don't need ways to add services to NPC stations because we can already add nearly every NPC service to upwell stations. The missing services are agents.

CCP listed Office Complexes as thematically being diplomatic structures, so natural bonuses for them (as in base bonuses and what modules they get a fuel bonus for) are replacing POCOS and IHUBS but it would be within a reasonable realm for them to also have special access to agent offices.

These service modules would be bought with LP from their associated faction, and require corp standings with that faction to keep online. The mission agent could even be customized by the owner (name and portrait) for fun.

For instance:

Standup [faction] Outreach Office [Type] (All kinds of NPC mission agents.)
Standup [faction] Research Center (Research agents)
Standup [faction] Intelligence Center (Locator Agents)
Standup [faction] Trade Bureau (LP store)

You'd be limited to non-enemy factions in empire offices (so no Minmatar agents in Amarr space) losec offices would allow enemy agents but suffer somewhat decreased payout, and null offices would allow whatever the **** you want. You make the rules. If Johnny Caldari and Gerald Gallente don't like having offices next to each other, tough ****. It's your station and you make the rules in nullsec. In wspace you'd probably want to limit everything but research and mining agents from being slotted, or limit the corps willing to be slotted there to like just pirates and soe or some ****.

Then the standard rig sets for buffing the payout/lowering the cost. The idea being that if you want to do Amarr l4s in backwater nullsec, you can get in good with the Amarr to get corp standings up, then use some Amarr LP or buy an Amarr mission office, install it in your station, and bam, you now have an amarr mission hub. The drawback is that its an upwell structure, so if other players feel like you shouldn't have it they can decide to remove it from space for you.

Further, you can levy a tax on mission rewards (or RP/LP payouts) as the station owner. The idea being that with a rigged office you can have better payouts than an NPC station so that you have the ability to tax without actually paying mission runners worse.

So what's replacing POCOs and IHUBs and such? I was under the impression that end end goal was that everything got moved to upwell style structures with fitting windows, including all the bits and bobs that control sov.

I could get behind this. LP bought service module Offices for each faction. Only one faction office allowed per structure obviously.

I don't know if I would outright ban enemy faction offices, though they would definitely receive detrimental effects, such as limiting from security agent types and level reduction. Also, agent types would be limited to agent types that the specific faction uses.

Also, having multiple office types available for each faction is a little much. I think one would be sufficient and then rigs can expand their functionality. Less rigs being needed to max the functionality and agent levels of the larger structures.
-Rigs to increase agent level
-Rigs to add or expand LP store

I don't agree with limiting it to one per station. Its a capsuleer owned station after all, and requires standings with those organizations to function. Part of the draw would be the ability to house more than one faction with LP stores and all that in a single station if your station is big enough and your corp has the standings. Capsuleer stations aren't owned by NPCs, and as such their offices in them are really more like embassies that you set up.

I do think your approach to rigs is more in line with how structure rigs actually work, yeah, but I think you'd have to let people stack the M and L agent level rigs to avoid needing various tiers of agent modules. i think you'd also want to set these up to have agents for all tiers under the highest one just to keep the fittings from getting too labyrinthine (e.g. if your rigging gets you an L3 agent, it also gets you and l2 and an l1)

M rig: +LP store, OR +payouts, OR + research guy, OR +mission level, etc. Give the structure itself a +1 agent level bonus per sec band (so +1 in HS, and +3 in null) along with the fuel buff and You can put up a small and efficiently trick it our for a very narrow purpose (say as an L4 HS mission hub for 3 types, but with no other services) or you could make it a very attractive payout L2 hub with a little tax that's better than nearby NPC station options.

up to

XL rig: +all that ****, so you could use the 3 rig slots on the XL to have fully tricked out offices for 3 different NPC entities in addition to unbonused other facilities in the other slots, or one entity fully tricked out with rigs left over to buff your POCO or reproc or whatever other service modules.

build a citadel and you can do all this besides the agent thing

And we would care about this why exactly? There is zero reason to alter anything on NPC stations, because everyone but you has already guessed they are NPC as in you can not interact with them, so you have no business with them.

Let's keep them as they are.

no move around space and interact with different agents in different areas, it would be broken if you could simple add pirate and lvl 5 mission agents to stations so you dont have to leave the comfort of your blue donut.

no im not worried about lvl 5 access im more worried about huge sov blocks crashing every lp market in the game with the least amount of risk in the game