TLDR: Certain ship classes have the ability to “imbue” a ship hull with one or more modules (subject to powergrid, CPU and any other current requirements.
. . . . . . . . . .
Imbuing Ship Hulls
• Certain classes of ships have the ability to unlock additional slots (low/medium) wherein they can assign one or more modules (subject to any existing module restrictions). Modules can only be passive (not active).
• Once “imbued” to a hull, these modules can never be removed - only destroyed (similar to rigs) - but after destruction they can be replaced with different modules (as with rigs).
• Imbued modules still consume powergrid and CPU (as applicable) and have the same performance (±) or stacking penalties to a ship.
• Imbued slots take the place of existing ship slots in the ship overview (with an outline on the slot), subject to a maximum of 8 low/medium slots (ie: if a ship already has 8 low slots open, it cannot imbue a 9th).
• Ships can be sold/traded with one or more imbued slots unlocked.
• There is a one-time associated PLEX cost to unlock one or more imbue slots on a hull: Battlecruisers - 50 PLEX, Battleships - 100 PLEX/slot, Capital Ships - 250 PLEX/slot
• All Battlecruisers: Unlock one (1) imbue slot; 50 PLEX total
• All Battleships: Unlock up to two (2) imbue slots; 200 PLEX total
• All Capital Ships: Unlock up to three (3) imbue slots; 750 PLEX total
. . . . . . . . . .
Addendum: In lieu of PLEX, substitute: • Battlecruisers - 250m ISK (250m ISK imbue per slot) • Battleships - 1.00b ISK (500m ISK per imbue slot) • Capital ships - 3.75b ISK (1.25b ISK per imbue slot)
A few reasons:
• Mixes up the meta (armor vs. shield fits, nano fits, etc.)
• Allows one to custom-tailor a ship to (more) specific needs
• Offsets (minimizes) any future nerfs (for a fee)
• Provides for an additional ISK sink (PLEX and modules)
An isk sink is something that removes isk from the game. It’s opposite is an isk faucet that generates new isk into the game.
Things like service fees and npc seeded items are isk sinks. Like the 25b bpcs for pirate capitals. They remove 25b isk from the game each time a player buys one
Per above, I think I mis-read your question. So yes, what I’m proposing is an ISK (PLEX) sink in that sense. The only faucet would be players buying more ISK (PLEX).
We already have PLEX sinks in the forms of SKINR or anything you buy in the NES store. I could just as easily revise the suggestion as “ISK” (PLEX is a lot shorter than xx million per slot). But see “addendum” above in the first post (now it’s directly an ISK sink without conversion).
The idea with PLEX was to somewhat tie it to inflation (whether good or bad), so a fixed ISK cost wouldn’t necessarily achieve this.
Meta is Most Effective Tactic Avaliable. An extra slot is always going to be more effective.
No, but we’re still trying to figure out why this idea is good. You said it would let ships be “outside the meta” we pointed that they wouldn’t be outside anything they would just be the meta.
Your other reason was that they would be resistant to nerfs. Let’s pretend that’s true. That ccp fired everyone with a basic concept of balance and completely ignored this system when balancing. How is that a good thing for well… balance?
Effective, maybe - but not necessarily cost effective. For instance, you probably wouldn’t want to implement this on most T1 hulls since it’s not cost effective.
It allows one to address shortcomings in certain hulls (adding more cargo space, agility, etc.) In a lot of instances 1 or 2 slots isn’t going to make or break a fit.
While I said “resistant” I didn’t say “completely offset”. Which means best case scenario you minimize (but not completely reverse) any major nerfs.