I was thinking, ever since singularity became non existent to players, new players have been having a rough time learning how to jump a jump freighter, or navigate low sec, or do krab beacons, etc, without clear instructions. I have an idea that could be very easy to do.
Allow people to tag along on other player’s ships, with nearly the same viewpoint as the pilot, but without the ability to do anything but pay attention. The only difference is the player copilot sees himself just in a seat, and which modules are activated, and what ships are targeted and they can, whatever the pilot sees, and learn through watching. He can never do anything to control the ship, but watch. That is all. Then people that are new can go anywhere the pilot and owner of the ship want, with no way of controlling anything. Just watching it through their own screen with a copilot chair or something so it is known that he is a copilot.
All you have to do is duplicate the code that is normal for a pilot in a dread doing a krab beacons, and let the copilot converse with the pilot as he sees everything the pilot is doing; clicking buttons, targeting etc. Then instead of singularity, all corps could teach people this way.
Here is a list of all things a player can learn by being a co pilot to get their feet wet in the world of Eve Online.
PvP lowsec. Incursions, Faction Warfare, Krabb beacons, Krabb WH, Gas huffing, Exploration, Planetary Industry, basically anything the game has to offer.
This could even lead to ships that require more than one pilot.
1: Sneaky people can literally use this as a tool with which to gank you; they simply use an inexperienced alt co-piloting with an experienced player, and feed back the information to their main and the rest of their fleet to simply hot drop you whever is convenient.
2: (specifically the “more than one pilot per ship idea”): It could, quite simply, lead to a CatDog scenario, where neither pilot can agree on anything and therefore nothing gets done. Pretty useless imo. Especially if a dedicated ship (or ship class) is introduced for this. Those ships become effectively useless, save for multiboxers, who can just as easily fly two ships.
If multiple people piloting one ship works for the military…? …Then it can be done in a video game.
Responding to issue #1
And fleets are at risk anyways if there is a rotten apple in the fleet. And nobody if they were suspicious would allow a copilot on certain excursions. There would be trust there and a vetting process.
Responding to Lesican:
A lot easier and new player friendly to do it in game. No one has to be a techy except friends in the corp or alliance. Looking at it on discord leaves trust issues. And it is a low resolution.
Ok, an example. Main titan pilot has all options he has right now. Copilot’s job is to manage which ammo to use against which frig/cruiser/BS, based on a scan of their resists. 3 positions for this. Another copilot, spends his time plotting the forward movement of the ship to where it is safest or most lethal. Now what? That would be fun, right? Another co pilot manages drones.
Would it? Most of the time these people would just idle or have nothing to do because you are not switching targets or target classes that often. Plus, it would take an annoying amount of time to relay the ammo switch command to the people while it is much faster to do it yourself right now.
We already have the ability to stream on all but the most potato of computers today. Just like the In Game Browser, I see nothing but security issues with no actual service that isn’t better provided by Discord, Twitch, or any of a number of existing services.
Considering the average Titan battle is in very heavy Tidi it sounds like a very boring experience, its not particularly exciting with a ship to yourself and every action taking 5mins+, let alone dividing that activity between 2/3.
So how many people are unhappy that the test server was shutdown before they could learn abyssals or some such.
Without the test server people have to learn on their own and it can be dangerous. This is exactly how pilots train co pilots. If singularity doesn’t come back I want to be a co pilot in things
This is why we have tiers and levels of content, and why we have tutorial videos and use available streaming tech.
As opposed to the dozens of current methods actively being used, a couple already nearly identical to your idea?
Singularity isn’t gone, they just closed it because idiots abused it, and it’s not coming back.
If you’re afraid to do content because you can’t practice it in a 100% risk free manner, good. You won’t drive the value of the loot in the dangerous content down, and those of us willing to take the risk to learn will make more money. Welcome to Eve working as intended.
The test server really needs to stay shutdown. It was being used for too much free theory crafting as well as an exploit to find targets on the test sever that could then be attacked on Tranquility.
