This has probably been pitched or thought of before, but I’ll try anyway.
It would be cool if you could hijack another player’s ship. The way I’d implement it is if for example you aggress another ship, it would become vulnerable at some point (say after structure hp is run through). The character who got the “killmail” gets to decide if the ship is destroyed or goes into vulnerability, in the latter case, the pod is ejected you or others are able board the ship and fly it in some sort of limp mode (reduced warp speed and maybe other stats reduced.) If the character chooses to destroy, then regular killmail is generated and life (with added salt) continues.
Edit: I’m not saying ‘make it easy to hijack a ship’. Does hijacking cars in the real world ruin the economy?
This is what I trained hacking for back in the day of a spanking pink and innocently clueless newbie.
Today I understand the potential for abuse, although I would entertain the idea of cores being hack-able so long as the possessing entity has the ability to actively oppose the intrusion using the same board.
I sure null has reasons to void such technical specialisation.
ooh yes please, make building ships useless, cus you can just steal ships :')
Are you aware what game forum your posting on? This game has a ECONOMY. this would completly ruin that ECONOMY more than CCP already has.
How dumb would it be if you can just drop a super, Kill it and then steal it. Literally no point buying ships for alliances, Just drop everyone and steal the ships
I don’t like it simply because most “wins” in EVE already are curbstomps, why should the winners be rewarded with a free ship on top of the killmail and the loot?
And the few wins that are really earned like true solos or outnumbered smallscale cannot profit from the mechanic because being on the move is their primary way of survival. They usually neither have the time to hack nor an Alt to fly the ship away.
So, this “ship hacking” would be another mechanic that helps the blob and punishes the smaller entities in most cases.
The idea has merit, it is logical that hijacking should be possible, it is something I would expect to be possible plus I am just reading a space LitRPG where MC did this so yeah would be cool.
Theoretically it is possible already, however there are certain factors that makes it highly unlikely to happen.
if there isn’t bubble, the pilot can easily save his pod no matter what so you can’t really offer him anything more than “your ship won’t appear on killboard” - which isn’t enough motivation for majority of the players
if there is a bubble, pilot has no guarantee you don’t kill his pod either
Basically the same issues like with ransoming.
So what is really needed is something that would make the pilot more likely to agree with giving his ship to you. As much as it makes sense, I don’t really think it would be any good to allow hijack ships without target player’s permission. Too easy to abuse - might create a new form of griefing and it bypasses loot fairy.
The way to do this right, is to implement it with the fps CCP is working on. Once you get a ship into structure, you launch an fps match by dropping resources into the target ships cargohold (in the EVE client.)
Then anyone you allow (through standings) can enter that match on your side. The defenders would have the option to defend in fps mode as well… or just let the automated defense drones handle the task.
The attackers would have to hack several locations in the ship (the larger the ship, the more objectives the player(s) would have to secure. If any of you remember battlefield 2142, you could actually go into the enemy team’s ship to hack / blow it up.
I am actually leaving the ship if I get caught without any chance of escaping. But that only happened to me once in 3 months and the guy destroyed it anyway…
…and everyone ships just sit in space not doing anything, becoming great easy targets, because they are all playing FPS in someones cargo hold.
and dont suggest their ships become invunrable or are removed from the universe by magic during this FPS match, because im suuuuure that wont be abused at all.
Why would they be removed or be invulnerable? Who needs that artificial crap?
If you want big rewards, you get to take the big risks (this is specifically talking about taking an intact ship instead of being left with a smoking wreck.) Also, no one says the dude in the eve ship and the one playing the fps match need to be the same person.
Yeah, why not. If it ruins someone’s day it should definitely be in EVE.
Should also be possible to highhack player-owned structures as well. Mechanics: if no one is docked in the structure then anyone can dock and claim ownership.
I really think you are looking at this from the view of “how cool would it be if”, rather than how it would actually work as a game.
If the attacking ship pilot (player) isnt the one doing the FPS because he wants to stay piloting his ship in space, then you have to have a FPS gamer friend (that you trust to fight for you) sitting at home waiting for the chance that you attack and defete a ship, action the boarding party and beging the takeover battle.
Sounds like a lot of waiting for not much gaming.
not trying to be negative, but i’m just seeing problems with how this would all work.
(CCP does not have a good record of merging Spaceships with FPS)
all “mobile” structures (MTUs, Depots, Bubbles etc.) that don’t require fuel to operate (1 security layer = aka 1 successful hack required)
→ these can be completely taken over via hacking. so on a successful hack, they can be emptied and scooped in by the hacker
offline POS (3 security layers = aka 3 successfuly hacks in a row required)
→ automatically begins unanchoring on successful hack
unfueled Upwell Structures (5 security layers = aka 5 successful hacks in a row required)
→ on successfuly hack, the hacker can dock and take out fitting, service modules and core. If there is no core present, he can initiate the unanchoring process.
You realize EVE is an mmo yeah? That has a player base that’s used to waiting around for fleets to form up or to deal with other objectives. At any given time, there are tons of people sitting around in stations doing various tasks, or mining, or doing other low intensity activity.
There would be plenty of players in the vast majority of organizations who would be able to help with an activity like this, even for an impromptu defense. As soon as a player hits panic the button, everyone in his corp and alliance has the ability to come to his aid instantaneously (once the game assets / client are loaded up.) In other words, there’s no waiting around necessary.
Also, consider the types of ships that would be targeted using this type of activity. Even ships caught by gate camps would have to have a lot of wealth on board for the attackers to spend the time necessary to capture the ship.
Where I see the mechanic being the most interesting, is in dealing with caps and stations. Those are objectives that are valuable enough to plan an operation around.
On top of this, its not like this is all an fps game would have in it, it’s just one aspect to the interaction.
Past failure is not a good excuse to never try again. You’d be living in a cave if that were the case.
You should keep the combat the same up to the loss of the ship. That way there is no change to how the kill mails work.
At the point a ship’s structure reaches 0, the hull could be considered the same an NPC wreck for access purposes. Whether or not the hull is salvageable could be calculated the same as a loot drop with percentage chances based on ship type, damage, etc.
With a hull drop, it should require the attacker/salvager to both hack the electronics and have a mobile depot to fit the hull so make it space worthy. There should be a time limit for this to be done or it’s lost.
