TLDR: An open discussion for suggestions on how to expand criminal activities in high-sec. Including (but not limited to): Suicide attacks, theft, hijacking, ransoms, etc.)
Ground rules: No ‘personas’/role-playing, nix the images/clutter and keep it on-point. All suggestions should be taken as constructive. If you can’t - get thicker skin. Fair warning: along with these suggestions, there may be ideas to overhaul certain game mechanics.
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I’m keeping this first post short and to the point so I can update with the best suggestions from everyone.
War Decs
• @CCP_Okami has acknowledged that there’s a few (?) loopholes or exploits that they’re looking to fix. Possibly as soon as June 24th. So it might be advisable to wait for the patch to see what’s changed.
Suicide Attacks
Theft
• @Uriel_the_Flame Increased value for mission rewards.
• @Arthur_Aihaken Increased NPC salvage in wrecks.
• @Gerard_Amatin Suspect ships cannot access the fleet hangars of non-suspect ships (Orca, DST, etc.)
Just some random ideas to be put up for discussion…
Theft and Ransoming:
Make loot worth fighting for?
Make all / most missions have mission items associated with them that can be stolen and make the missions pay more for them so the items are worth fighting for. (Note: the mission loot should always drop as owned by the mission owner not most damage dealt nor final blow, to ensure the thief always have to become suspect.)
Ransoming:
A new type of contract that if paid for by a capsuleer any limited engagement timer with the person issuing the contract is broken (and possibly also grant combat immunity towards the same capsuleer for 5 minutes or such).
Suicide Attacks:
A 5 (or more?) second long Miner Barge (only) Invulnerability Core with a 5 or 15 (or whatever) minute cooldown. This will grant miners who are not AFK a good chance for survival, rewarding their active gameplay habits (gankers can ship scan the target to see if one is fitted and if yes it is up to them to decide if they think it is just a bluff and attempt the gank anyway or find a different target).
Increase salvage on mission NPCs (wouldn’t mind seeing every wreck have salvage; drones - looking at you!)
Mission sites spawn a warpable salvage beacon 60min after first entering (beacons last for 1 hour). These beacons have a new type and can be filtered out. No scanning! (changed to 60min based on @Gerard_Amatin’s feedback)
Players can still manually scan down ships to find mission pockets.
Ninja salvaging anyone? Stealing salvage becomes a career. Loot as you go or risk someone else coming in to cleanup.
More suspect flags, easier to find engagements, more interaction.
Small buffs to Noctis: higher inertia, +1 mid slot, ability to use medium micro jump drive.
While an interesting idea, I fear it would patch ‘honour’ out of the game if players can no longer be a dishonourable pirate when it is enforced with game mechanics.
Without ability to be dishonourable, honour won’t mean anything.
It’s like the ability to trust fellow capsuleers: if scams weren’t allowed it would be much less meaningful to know some others you can trust. The ability to break someones trust makes trustworthy players far more meaningful.
No thanks.
Some sites take longer to do than 15 minutes and even if I were to take a break of an hour in the middle I would not want a warpable beacon to spawn on my ship while I’m running a site.
I really miss the old days when people with bounties had their mugs posted on the billboards. I know the bounty system was easily gamed, but it was fun and gave a bit of notoriety to would be criminals. It would be nice to see something like it again, with wanted criminals faces on the billboards.
I think it’s a good idea to add more options for interaction in HS, but maybe I’m biased with a mostly NS background where there are no rules of engagement.
Some possible improvements I see (but please give feedback if you think it unreasonable):
Theft: Accessing the fleet hangar of a non-suspect ship as suspect ship should not be possible. It shouldn’t be possible to ‘steal loot’ and immediately put it in a friendly non-suspect DST or Orca. People should be able to fight a suspect looter for the loot.
Suicide attacks: should be less of a predictable math equation. Add some randomness to the CONCORD reaction time: increase the default time a bit to give more opportunities for anti-gank actions to have impact and also reduce it a bit if the victim recently paid CONCORD ISK for temporary protection, with faster arrival time scaling with higher security status.
These are all fair points - hence the discussion. The beacon should spawn before the wrecks expire (offhand I’m not sure how long that is). Would 60-minutes be a happy medium?
Personally I’m of the opinion that until the site despawns it should be mine, and for whoever takes the effort of scanning the site (me) down.
And if people wish to get salvage they have plenty of opportunities to either create their own salvage, find battles with salvage or work together with others to get their salvage, or steal ninja the salvage of others by combat probing their location or simply saving active anomaly locations for later.
There even are sites that spawn in space if you don’t want to do any of all that and just want to warp to a site with salvage in cans… only then you need a relic anlyzer rather than a salvager.
I think salvage is in a decent spot already and don’t really know why it is part of this HS criminal thread.