With the faction warzone being given some love, there’s an opportunity for players to control some of the npc ships in the warzone.
With that said, I dub this feature WARZONE.
What this feature would achieve:
- Fast paced action
- Worry free gameplay for new players without them having to be concerned about fitting the ship they are flying. These ships would use base t1 modules, and no capsuleer skills.
- The fits used for the warzone pre-fit ships would be in the community fittings, so players could grab them later to fit their own capsuleer ships if they grow comfortable with it.
- New players getting practice flying their ships in an environment where they don’t have to grind for resources to replace the ships.
- Onboarding into factional warfare and pvp
- Liven up fw systems, far more than would be possible with the current EVE environment
- A way to integrate Valkyrie into the wider EVE universe
- A path for friends who enjoy different genres to play together.
(A friend of mine says EVE isn’t for him, but he does seem to be open to playing Star Conflict with me, which is a f2p game that’s similar to Valkyrie. I think it would be fantastic to be able to fly an “npc” carrier into the warzone, and have him, as a fighter pilot, spawn on me. Or, for us to both spawn on the same carrier, flown by someone else or an npc, and fly as each other’s wingmen.)
The Implementation:
From a station friendly to the faction warfare pilot’s militia, they may enter the warzone using the warzone tab in the militia window. The lore for this will be something like a captain with remote control over an npc navy ship. Or even a fully automated drone ship at first, since it’s likely they wouldn’t trust the lives of their personnel to a novice.
Specific solar systems along the fw front line would house faction fobs from each contesting faction in the systems that ai generals select. From these fobs, after the player has selected a warzone fob to deploy from, the player would spawn in a pre-fit t1 ship, with base t1 modules (or named if the balance team prefers.) Without capsuleer skills to help the warzone pilot, the ships will be relatively weak, even compared to the newest of capsuleer pilots.
Warzone players will not receive LP rewards, wont be able to leave the system (either by gate, wormhole, or any other means,) wont be able to jettison cargo, wont be able to leave their ship without it self destructing (since they don’t actually have a capsule,) and the warzone player will only be able to dock in the Warzone fob. They will also be locked out of trading with non-Warzone pilots.
For the rewards, I propose using something similar to the economy Infinity Battlescape uses. Destroying enemy structures, ships (bonus points if they’re flown by a capsuleer and / or have advanced modules fit to the ship,) or completing militia objectives would award players using the feature with feature specific credits (hereafter to be called warzone credits) to be used for purchasing these Warzone ships.
If a Warzone ship explodes, in addition to the cheap t1 loot the ship was fit with, the loot table will also have the potential to drop: commanding officer (rank based on ship type,) surviving faction navy crew (the amount depending on ship size,) and a faction navy tag that matches the class of ship they were commanding (if the commanding officer died.) This will be balanced based on the amount of effort it will cost the Warzone pilot to requisition the ship to prevent exploitation.
Loot collected from wrecks by Warzone pilots can be be turned into the Warzone agent in the fob for warzone credits. Loot that is not available to be requisitioned by the agent for warzone credits (namely, ammo, and t1 fittings) will be auctioned off from the fob agent to militia members.
To rearm with ammo or drones, the player will have to dock at their faction’s fob in the system, and requisition supplies from the Warzone agent in the fob.
In the overview, capsuleers viewing Warzone players, would see their ship icons displaying the same color the viewing player has set for their militia and the enemy militia (purple and orange are the defaults.)
Neutral players seeing these ships would see the icons as gray (with a faction colored outline) when not engaged, and then red if engaged. A neutral capsuleer engaging a warzone pilot will follow the normal flagging rules for players.
Warzone pilots shooting friendlies, or neutral ships would not be allowed, as Warzone pilots would be forced to use green safety (this is to prevent suicide ganking or awoxing abuse. I would prefer yellow safety here, but I’m not sure how to do that without causing problems for capsuleers.) The lore reason for this, would just be that the navy officers aboard would refuse to fire on those vessels.
If the feature is popular, and the technical limitations are worked out, Valkyrie could be added to the feature. Any physics simulation related to Valkyrie would be handled on it’s server, and then the damage calculations would be served to the EVE server in the manner it understands. And likewise, EVE damage calculations would be handled on the EVE server, and then served to Valkyrie’s server in a manner it understands.
I would prefer if the Valkyrie pilots could fly all over the system, with free fire between all individuals involved (using the ROE as discussed above,) but I understand if that’s too much for the server and networking code to handle.
An alternative would be to allow Valkyrie pilots of each contesting faction to spawn in fw complexes that host an npc carrier or on fw pilots with the proper ships (whether they be capsuleers or Warzone pilots.) Eve ships that show up in these complexes would then show up in the Valkyrie match. The complex would be finished when one of the complex npc carriers was destroyed or another objective was completed. (For an assault themed complex, there may only be one carrier in the complex, with the other faction having a fighter base that’s a structure.)
If the Warzone player disconnects or exits the client while not docked in the fob, an npc will take over the ship and attempt to flee back to the fob. If the fob in the system is destroyed, the player will “lose signal” to the Warzone ship and find themselves back in their station looking at the warzone screen in the fw window. The npc taking over the former Warzone ship, will then group up all of the ships in the system, and either harass the opposing faction or flee to the nearest friendly fob system.
Warzone Ship Classes:
All T1 Fittings
Corvette:
fully automated with no crew.
requisition cost: 0 WC
reward for killing: 5 WC
Attack Frigate:
requisition cost: 10 WC
reward for killing:
- npc: 5 WC
- Warzone: 20 WC
- Capsuleer: t1 fit: 40 WC
- Capsuleer: t2 fit: 80 WC
- Capsuleer: faction fit: 160 WC
Support Frigate:
requisition cost: 15 WC
reward for killing:
- npc: 5 WC
- Warzone: 20 WC
- Capsuleer: t1 fit: 40 WC
- Capsuleer: t2 fit: 80 WC
- Capsuleer: faction fit: 160 WC
Combat Frigate:
requisition cost: 20 WC
reward for killing:
- npc: 10 WC
- Warzone: 30 WC
- Capsuleer: t1 fit: 60 WC
- Capsuleer: t2 fit: 120 WC
- Capsuleer: faction fit: 240 WC
Disruption Frigate:
requisition cost: 30 WC
reward for killing:
- npc: 10 WC
- Warzone: 40 WC
- Capsuleer: t1 fit: 80 WC
- Capsuleer: t2 fit: 160 WC
- Capsuleer: faction fit: 320 WC
The higher grades of ships will follow the same philosophy. Destroyers being around 100 WC to requisition, Cruisers 1,000 - 3,000, battle cruisers in the 5,000 range, Battleships in the 50,000 range.
And finally …
Carriers:
Can create spawn zone for a Valkyrie match.
Only damage output is: 5 light drones, 5 medium drones, or 5 heavy drones.
Comes with cap warfare or logistics modules in the high slots.
requisition cost: 1,000,000 WC
reward for killing: 1,000 per person on the killmark.
Destruction serves as a completed objective in the faction warfare system.
As for what other militia members would receive upon killing Warzone ships, I suggest roughtly 10 -30% the LP reward of a capsuleer ship.
Take all those numbers with a grain of salt, I’m just tossing some stuff out to give people an idea of what it would look like.