An idea that I’ve had for a while is a module to recover implants from a Corpse floating in space.
I’d want to make it quite difficult to do with a fair number of restrictions so that people couldn’t just farm this sort of thing and that the risk/reward ratio is more toward the risk side but the rewards could obviously be very high indeed.
Some of the restrictions I have though of already are listed below, let me know what you think and feel free to add ideas or tell me why you think it’s a stupid idea if I’ve missed something obvious.
Will only work on certain types of ship, i…e Nestor or Bhalgorn for fairly obvious reasons.
Has to happen either in a certain place or even type of space, i.e. not within 2A.U. of a planet or even only in WH space.
Has to be freshly killed - can’t be more than 36 hours old.
In addition to the above or as a modifier can’t have spent much time in a Structure or inside a Force Field of any kind.
Have two modules necessary for the complete process - a “Cold Storage Locker”, possibly requiring one type of slot - possibly a Low and another “Operating Theatre” which would need a Mid or High Slot.
Ship could not move/warp whilst process is taking place, Bastion type module required as well - time that it takes would obviously be one way to “balance” the whole thing as would skills required along with cost.
This is only the first run through in my head so as I said feel free to chime in with more thoughts and comments.
Suggesting that when engaged produces:
damaged implants, and containerised biomass,
but takes a similar time to process a corpse as a t1 drone does a wreck.
salvage drone specialisation is expensive but expertise could increase chance of a reusable implant to the extent such a custom fit item can be.
Implants, when plugged in, cannot be taken out again. They’re gone, consumables.
If we can recover implants from corpses I could get the implants out of my clone (by destruction + salvage/whateveritisyousuggest) and sell them on the market again.
I mean, I think it’s fine if we could plug in implants and take them out again, but your suggestion makes that possible in a very complicated way.
Either don’t make it possible to recover implants, or allow us to just plug them out like we can plug them in.
I agree with Gerard: making it needlessly complicated doesn’t actually benefit anyone. Either make them recoverable by anyone in a straightforward manner (such as having an extraction fee) or don’t do it at all. Especially as making them corpse-recoverable like this idea would make corpses far more complicated objects than they are currently. Better to have them as a loot roll on the actual kill (as is done during certain events) or have pod wrecks that can be salvaged, than have the corpses be reworked and end up with two entire classes of the things - one legacy set and one new salvageable set.
I was thinking similar to that. Maybe some sort of “burnt” implant that after so many are found can be reprocessed into a new implant (with some cost so its also a isk faucet)
Well, the ability to recover implants (through any means) would have an effect on LP value, exploration income, the NPC clone bay isk sink, and upwell clone bay income for structure owners. And the ability recover implants from corpses would have the additional effect of increasing the incentives to pod (which would do things like encourage fits/comps that were good at podding and make ganking more profitable). Thus, changing implant recovery will certainly have wide ranging consequences that would need to be considered.
I will say this though -I am opposed to the idea of people just being able to unplug implants at will. It carries no risk or cost, and would have the most dramatic effect on the income of people who derive income from implants. At least with podding, there would be some tradeoffs (i.e. there is the chance that implants will be destroyed, and the ability to recover implants would be balanced [to some degree] by the increased risk associated with incentivizing podding).
Of course, like Gerard said, I don’t think we need any ridiculously convoluted rules like, “a 2x percent chance for implants to drop on prime days of every month, where X is the weight in ounces of CCP Hilmar’s last bowel movement…”
Wasnt there an event were implants dropped , i seem to remember, so CCP already have the code , just a matter of whether they want to apply it i suppose .
/edit perhaps to address some of the problems presented by others , self extraction could be available at a percentage cost of the relevant implant shrug