Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yep, a good reason not to take that 6 month hiatus... lol.

Seriously, though, it would not matter if you took the hiatus or not. Ships would age, irregardless if you kept them in the hanger or use them in missions or null sec fleets. The point being that players would no longer keep hangers full of old, unused ships - better to take them out for a spin, have some fun and get them destroyed.

This would make ships more of a disposable asset, and hopefully players would become a bit less afraid of losing them.

The thing is...

Ok. Lets do this the hard way:

Thing age because they interact with a surrounding that attempts to return them to their original, lower energitic forms. Thusly, steel rusts, like iron does, because its more energetically stable in the presence of Oxygen. So Steel need maintenance du to the presence of a Reduction agent in its surrouding atmosphere. In space, there's no atmosphere, so things shouldn't rust. But inside ships they do, and they'll rust from the inside to the ouside. However, with proper treatment, materials can last a long time without displaying structural integrity flaws. Thats why Bridges, especially steel-ones, are painted in anti-oxydizing paints. Thats also why most of them are red (its the anti-rust 's natural colouring so its cheaper on a grander scale to not use a pigment).

Thing is, if your ship has no maintenance, it should indeed rust away. Except we are assuming that when its assembled/unpackaged, it also comes with the necessary protection paints, or whatever. Further, you have Nanobots, that can just go around and obey a blueprint and apply their repair pastes wherever thy want and whre the ship needs, thusly providing maintenance.

But even if it rusted, the materials themselves might not be susceptible to rusting at all. Should your ships be made out of alluminium, they will rust, but unlike iron-derivates (which steel is), for alluminuim rust actually -protects- it (iron-rust tends to flake and fall off, alumium instead bonds with the existing layers and strenghtens it).

Then of couse you have the fact that these things take time. A long time really. Sure if you dip a nail in a glass of water, it'll rust in days or weeks. But if you dip the nail -completly- in the water, it'll just sit there. So even if your ships did rusted, without any maintenance at all, they'd take years to actually show any signs. You might have a ship that is there for years, and it might actually be rusted somewhere. But guess what... its probably along the internal corridor walls or in those hard to reach corners. its not likely to be alongside a beam that supports your ship's inertial loads.

But even in that case, where localized rust can indeed be located, the resust, should it rust to a point where it actually affected your ship, would be imediate catasthrophic fatigue failure, meaning your ship would break in two. like this: http://matdl.org/failurecases/images/thumb/9/91/SchenectadyShip.png/500px-SchenectadyShip.png

So, in a universe with nanite paste, that can repair anything including overheated, warped guns (overheating would indeed cause structural defects capable of performance-affecting problems), its not a strech to see that ships would go on for ever. especially if, when nobody was inside, the air was just either sucked in, or vented into space.

Even if your materials did suffersolar-related damage (thermal expansions can't really be fought against), we'll just wve the magic wand on that, since they can also resist a direct impact of a antimatter charge.

I can understand where you are coming from and yes, your argument was based on science; mine was fantasy.

However, I can add a fictional spin to it as well if you would like to me stick within the science-fiction genre that EVE is ascribed to and not go into the goblins and gnomes fantasy analogy:

It would be arguable that in a fictional world many years from now where we have different ores, alloys, metals, minerals; there would have been enough technological breakthroughs and propulsion advances that would obsolete a nuclear reactor and/or invent nano-bots which were resilient to the effect of radiation corrosion or any other types of corrosives in space - therefore being able to maintain our ships in their perfect condition at all times.

You can see how this can keep going in a fictional environment. My original point was attempting to establish that arguing for a game feature based on its relativity to realism in a science fiction game, can always and quite successfully be countered by an entirely fictional, yet still logical argument.

But this can just keep going around in circles and argued every which way, which is why it’s best for it not to be done in the first place.

No, a refit does not make a ship better than it was. It is just a patch job, to try to extend the useful life of the ship, rather than spend the money necessary to replace it. If you gave the choice to the military, they would never refit old ships.

At one time, there was serious consideration to refit older nuclear missile submarines as cruise missile platforms. The proposal failed because of the deterioration of the the reactors, as I stated earlier. There simply was no way to "refit" these ships and they have since been scrapped.

Chemical oxidation is only one form of degradation. Degradation also occurs from erosion, thermal variances, radiation, and vibration/shock, for example. The rate of degradation is variable, depending on the conditions in which the machinery is operating. And, under load, metal and machinery degenerates faster - just a couple laws of physics and thermodynamics at work.

Space is actually a very harsh environment. The thermal variances are extreme, as well as exposure to hard radiation, unfiltered by miles of atmosphere. In addition, you get damage from space junk - even from dust specks which are travelling at thousands of miles per hour. NASA and the US Air Force have sent up a number of experiments to evaluate these sorts of problems.

Maintenance can address some problems, and will indeed slow the degradation process. But, it will not halt it. Even with anti-rust paints and stainless steel construction, all large structures and vehicles will eventually degrade to the point of diminished capabilities. There is not a single man-made item which is not subject to this reality, even with the most thorough maintenance.

Nanobots - in fiction - are amusing, since they are ofttimes portrayed as a techno-magical way to fix everything, from human bodies to buildings, to its original perfect state. But, think about it. Do you really believe that immortality and eternal youth is only as far away as being able to invest your body with a million or so repair nanobots? If so, don't you think that a lot more money would be spent on developing this technology, esp. by the uber-rich old farts like Bill Gates?

So, nah. I do believe that nanobots will be able to do many amazing things, but they will not be able to reverse entropy.

And, just for the record, I think that nano-paste is a ridiculous game mechanic. Might as well call it "Rust-eze".... lol.


Well, this is the best argument I've heard thus far. Yeah, any physical material which can stand up to an antimatter charge is probably nigh-invulnerable. :)

Have you seen the interior of a Minmatar hanger?

I'm not going to take my expensive T3 ships on a suicide roam. I doubt anyone else will either.

So in other words my first ever rifter from back in 04 is now just a slightly smaller pile of scrap that i can do nothing with.

And with that i give this idea a HUGE NO

Theres a difference between realism and fun just because they do deteriorate IRL dosnt mean they should.

I'd like to see the reverse of this. Technology advances, and all the present ship designs are ages-old in the game, updated with capsuleer technology to become even better. Capsuleer Megathron > Pre-Capsuleer Megathron. There is no reason this cannot be an ongoing process.

Think of this from a gameplay-mechanics perspective. If it is skill-based (and there's no reason it shouldn't be), then having high laser skills for a while could give minor bonuses to laser damage. Better shield or armor skills could subtly improve tanking capabilities. Of course, diminishing returns would apply after a few months, so that a two-year-old battleship doesn't end up becoming nearly invincible. Repackaging the ship would effectively reset the clock, so to speak.

You can't say that knowing how a ship works inside and out wouldn't make it perform better in combat, given the mind-to-ship link that goes on between a capsuleer and the spacecraft.

On a more exotic note, actually flying the ship and using it in combat could further improve it, since this would familiarize the capsuleer MUCH faster with the systems, rather than just having it sit in a station idly for a year or so. This would effectively create an incentive for people to not go through ships like toilet paper.

I wouldn't have even the faintest clue how CCP would go about implementing this. It would be nightmarishly complicated. Then again, CCP does the nightmarishly complicated, sometimes for no reason whatsoever (see: Incarna).