Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A Clansworth White-Paper Proposal

Introduction


With the introduction of W-Space to New Eden, there has been a sharp increase in a nomadic play-style. The problems with this, though, is that the ships/systems of New Eden are not designed around this. All manufacturing needs to be done at a stationary facility, either a POS, or an Outpost/Station. Basically, this means that there is a huge effort a nomadic group has to go through to stop moving, 'set up camp', and manufacture their replacement ships/ammo. Well, that's what they WOULD do, if it wasn't such a pain. Instead, they have to go through resupply runs back to K-Space, breaking the whole long-lost nomadic tribe immersion. I'm proposing mobile industrial facilities, to be fit to, get this, industrial ships. These would be limited in capability and efficiency, but they would be enough to keep a nomadic group, well, nomadic.
Proposed Changes


New Modules:

Mobile Factory - Ammo/Drones (3 slots) - removes 1500m³ from cargo hold
Mobile Factory - Equipment (2 slots) - removes 2000m³ from cargo hold
Mobile Factory - Small Ship (2 slots) - removes 3000m³ from cargo hold
Mobile Factory - Medium Ship (1 slot) - removes 10000m³ from cargo hold
High Slot
Can only be fit to ships with the Industrial Platform property
Adds listed Manufacturing Slot(s) to ship
Material Multiplier: 1.4
Time Multiplier: 0.8

MOBILE FACTORY NOTES:

Mobile Factories behave much like the Rorqual's Compression lines, in that the slots are there and only active and producing when the module is activated. When it is deactivated, the jobs are paused. Only one Mobile Factory module can be activated at a time, much like the warfare links on BC's. Unfitting a Mobile Factory module should trigger a check to see if any jobs are in progress, and provide a warning. Repackaging the ship would do this as well.

Mobile Refinery
Mid Slot:
Ship Speed: -75%
Uses Charge Type: ORE
Capacity: 1,000m³
Cycle Time: 60 sec
Base Refining Efficiency: 20%
Can only be fit to ships with the Industrial Platform property

MOBILE REFINERY NOTES:

Refining Batch sizes would have to be reduced to make this work. I could have made the Mobile Refinery 10,000m³, which would allow at least one batch of any existing ore (mercoxit having a 10,000m³ batch size), but that would mean this module would end up being a 10,000m³ cargohold expansion. Not a good thing. As such, Batch sizes could be dropped by a factor of 10 (with proportional drop in yields as well). I don't really see a problem with this change, so we'll just assume CCP's good to go with that. As for how the refining module would work, you 'load' it with ore from the cargohold, treating the Ore like ammo. Each cycle, it burns the ore and deposits the minerals in the hold. Each refining module would handle 400m³/min, which, considering the number of mid slot son some barges, could keep up with a single barge in most cases. The ammo Idea is nice, because it would have an autoload capability to it (of the same ore type, at least). The 20% base ensures this won't really be THAT overused, as with 5/5/5 skills, this would have a yield of 81.875%
Summary

As I said, I am targeting this towards the nomadic wanderers, providing them with a method of resupplying on the move. However, there is also the potential for some ammo runs done behind enemy lines. I thought about implementing mobile labs, but I feel this is something that doesn't really jive with the mobile mentality.