Agents, much like Officers or faction spawns, would regularly shuttle or fly in combat ships or with combat escorts to and from their corporations stations. While upon this route the agent could be assassinated by players.
Either an open world mission through the Agency or a Broadcast or Emergency CTA notice would appear for various capsuleers or all capsuleers. Enemies of the agent, corporation or faction would announce a bounty hit on the agent in question and the agents starting station for their journey.
Tracking down possible routes or the convoy would be entirely up to the player. And with multiple routes always available even into low sec and a time limit of the agent finishing the trip would put a time cap on things.
The mission would have profound agent, corp and faction standings hits and gain depending on who the underlying âanonymousâ bidder of the contract is and due to its anonymous nature the pilot in question would have to weigh the pros and cons of such a mission. Engage and kill the agent and suddenly you might be -10 to Caldari Navy and -5 to the Caldari State but +10 to Federation Navy and +5 to the Gallentes. And because the hit is in Caldari space you have to egress from an entirely hostile faction. And all that after dispatching the escort of new AI AND the agent themselves.
The reward? A tidy sum of LP tags aboard the agents vessel in fully lootable and stolen amounts with multiple loot containers, a large loot sum from the bidder and the standings gains.
The other part of the reward is that this particular agent is no longer available to anyone for a time until they are recloned. It could be a short time for some, or a longer time, even up to a day or more.
The new AI would allow for a very interesting escort fleet for these agents. Able to call in faction security forces or even other escort ships and could make these agent assassination missions some of the hardest to pull off.
Want to disrupt agent missions in any area? Want to make a tidy sum of isk and loot doing it? Want an almost full PvP engagement against NPCs? Want an unknown ending that might set you up for life with a faction or corporation or break everything you built up for months through contacts and time?
Compete or work with those around you or even against each other. Hit accept on the mission and decide if you find your target before they reach their destination or someone else finds them first.
Hence getting a new clone or body for them would be problematic and would mean a significant amount of time to replace them. Reusing them as agents, instead of fully killing them off, is just expeditious seeing as it means we wont have to find all new agent names, etc.
@JUSTIFIED_ARROGANCE aww you really love me you REALLY REALLY DO!! This is like kindergarten, hitting and hating on people is âlovin.â
So basically you want a way to screw over mission runners that they canât defend against at all.
No.
The equivalent to this would be being able to stop null sec anoms spawn in an entire constellation by doing something 10 jumps over,
You want to mess with mission runners, shoot them directly.
@William_shawn âSoft clonesâ are a lore thing, which is cloning without a capsule. Itâs just far more expensive, but it can be done, and agents deal in enough isk to be able to do that most likely.
They can defend against it. They can move to another agent, corporation or faction. They can attack the players attacking their agents if they wish.
Then the cooldown is near or slightly greater than declining a mission and waiting 4 hours. Much like ice spawns and mining anoms in null sec have been nerfed with cool downs. Sure this will affect many players and would create a reason to band together, fight for your agent, defend them somehow through tactics or lose the ability to run for THAT agent only for a short time.
You make it out like a regular mission runner doesnt have many options of agents. There are hundreds of each faction agents around. You mean to tell me that mission runners havent ran enough to gain enough standings with other agents? They never thought to diversify themselves against the potential loss of a SINGLE agent?! There are also multiple agents of the same corporations in other areas of space. Take CNavy L4s. There are 15 high sec agents for them alone. 6 in low sec. And you somehow think that removing one of them for a few hours to a single day is too much?
I would hope that the AI itself and the escort fleets would be advanced and dangerous enough to supply a very hard or impossible fight for only a single pilot and ship. Spreading points, real actual pvp tactics, batphoning reinforcements like the NPC mining ships do. Attacking a factions agent within that factions space or in allied space should invoke a reaction, either suspect status or something similar.
Another way of doing it might be as you suggest tying it to FW status like a LE for the duration of the mission. So upon acceptance the pilot effectively enters FW until the mission is flagged completed or the pilot declines it with subsequent standings punishments.
All of these factors would help contribute to a very dangerous encounter for the rewards. Then the unknown nature of any standings gains or losses would also affect the pilots abilities to fly in certain spaces.
I dont have to look up words to âtalkâ with you. Your ignorance, rather than your arrogance, screams through in your posts. But have fun with yourself there.
