Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I had an idea. Looking through the forum section, it is obviously not a new one, and boy am I "shocked". But I thought I'd offer my iteration on the Wormhole Stabilizer idea. Note that the entire post is written as if wormhole stabilizers were a new idea.... I know they are not.

Basically, the general view seems to be that null-sec is getting generic, domesticated. It is no longer the wild and untamed frontier that it was during the younger days of EVE, and even the political situation is getting a bit dull. I don't know from personal experience, I'm not saying I do, but this is simply the way I see other people perceiving it. To the high-sec "carebears" null is the place where the "elitist jerks" hang out and play politics.

In other words, EVE needs a bit of a change up, a shift in focus. My thoughts when I thought of "exciting and untamed" were wormholes, and my idea was that both null and wormhole space could be livened up by drawing the two closer together...

Now, I'm sure we all know the backstory of EVE; humans need new place to expand, they find a wormhole, stabilize it and start colonizing the galaxy beyond, but it turns out that their stabilization of the wormhole suffered from a serious case of flawed construction and the wormhole collapses, cutting off the colonists. We also know that the Sansha have developed a way to control wormholes, allowing them to strike deep within Empire space or the heart of nullsec Empires, where they thought themselves safe behind cyno-jammers.

My idea is that CCP harness these lore elements, and introduce a new invention; a structure similar to a jump gate, that can be built by players, requiring the amount of resources that only a large, nullsec alliance could stockpile. This structure captures and stabilizes wormholes, forcing them to remain where they are, but allowing them to change their destinations; to remove the destination changes, the structure would have to be placed on the other side of the wormhole. Therefore, allowing for highly expensive invasions of wormhole space, in order to capture, with greater ease, wormhole systems.

These structures would be relatively weak, especially when compared with, say, a POS or an outpost. This allows a wormhole corporation to defend themselves against a nullsec invasion by destroying the bridge. The structure would also require fuel, and maintenance of some sort, and without maintenance will self-destruct after some time instead of simply off-lining. Therefore, nullsec alliances could extend their greedy hands into wormhole space with capital fleets, etc, but wormhole corporations still have ways to defend themselves.

This would also allow the proper creation of wormhole-spanning alliances, using the "jump" structure to permanently connect two, three, five or even more wormhole systems.

It could also tie into Incursions, with the nations of Empire space finally being able to strike back against the Sansha and carry the fight back through the wormholes being used as invasion points. Ambitious nullsec alliances could also do the same. I'm not very up-to-date on the whole Sansha storyline, so not sure how it would fit in, but I imagine it would be an excellent opportunity to advance the story and open up some new loot with valuable wormholes suddenly became such a more hotly contested area.

Now, if you're concerned about this leading to supercap or capital blobs in wormholes, a way to balance that could be to simply instate a mass limit on the structure, either a hard-cap of simply not allowing big ships through, or a soft-cap of having the structure potentially rip itself apart when a ship of sufficient mass passes through it or too many large ships (even battleships) pass through it in too quick succession, making the system easier to defend for wormhole corporations.

In another effort to nerf the stabilizer, wormholes could given a modifier, perhaps distance covered, instability, whatever, it doesn't really matter too much. This modifiers value is easily viewable, randomly generated (with lower numbers more common the lower the class of wormhole, higher the higher the class) and has a drastic effect on the wormhole stabilizer. Simply put, the higher the number, the lower the mass limit, the higher the fuel costs and maintenance, and also, in extreme cases (say, on a scale of 1 to 10, a 9 or 10) lends a random chance for the stabilizer to simply destroy, damage or incapacitate itself. Possibly preventable by the addition of another, expensive, module, or maybe not. So as not to disadvantage corporations when the stabilizer is implemented, the modifier could be generated so that it favours heavily populated wormholes with higher numbers.

To wrap it up; wormhole stabilizers would have to be on both sides of the wormhole to work; would be EXTREMELY expensive; would be fragile and easy to destroy compared to player-operated structures, outposts, etc; could have a mass limit to prevent jumping capitals through or to dissuade the idea of jumping capitals through, with a lower mass limit based on some factors; would require lots of fuel and some form of maintenance to simply keep online, more fuel the more jumps are being made through it; and of course, all this would have to be carefully balanced, but could turn out to be quite fun if implemented correctly.

Would this work? I wrote all this at 3 in the morning, so please, blame any stupidity on that Feel free to shoot down the idea, but do so in a constructive way, please, or add your support to somebody who has already done so, rather than just posting "I don't want wormhole stabilizers, go away". I highly doubt CCP will ever introduce wormhole stabilizers, but if they do, I believe that this will be the way to do it.