Because I find Eve extremely boring at the moment. I’m struggling to keep myself interested, although I’m subbed on 2 accounts.
Having more player-controlled features would be a nice way to improve player interest? It’s just an idea.
If you’re feeling burnout the don’t force yourself to feel like you need to keep playing. It’s not going anywhere yet, and there’s a lot out there that could possibly catch your interest until you have that itch to revisit EVE.
Yes, it’d probably improve player interest but at the same time you need to look at the larger picture when suggesting something for a specific group of players. Unless there are very specific requirements for it’s use, it will be used in an exploitative manner. That’s just how it is in every game.
Which is why I suggested it be faction police patrols instead. It could still be gamed yes, but it’d allow for something more natural for the game.
A few of you have made this sweeping comment: please clarify. How will it be exploited?
Many thanks.
OP’s killboard exposes the reason why OP wants NPC protection services.
Prove me wrong.
That’s easily explainable. I’m a mostly-solo industrialist/PVE player based in highsec.
I just proved you wrong 
How is that proving me wrong, when what you’re saying further underlines your desire for protection?
You even lost haulers. You might not have lost these haulers if you had had protection. You might not have lost any of these ships with protection. You can not tell me that you’re not perfectly aware of that.
I understand that your “killboard” (aka losses) might not be the reason for this thread, but it sure as ■■■■ looks like it!
@Daichi_Yamato contruted excellent points that I really enjoyed reading and thinking about.
This is a discussion. Nobody wins. Nobody’s right or wrong.
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- My gameplay doesn’t rely heavily on pvp mechanics.
- This isn’t a thread about my zkillboard record: I’m shocked that you would even look it up and mention that here.
- Nothing is guaranteed in Eve, so saying that I might not have lost haulers is redundant to this discussion.
Let’s take the mining problem we have with bots and highsec.
As it currently is, those are skiffs with the operator in some battleship moving with them as a guard in case anyone attempts hostile action on top of CONCORD. They are all treated as individual players, and as such have access to their own limited Merc pool when aggressed.
Let’s go back to your situation you suggested to show how they would work.
You enter warp but are caught in a warp disruption bubble or a dictor/heavy dictor. No aggression. Ship B and C uses drones to attack first while ships A, B, and C use webs and scrams. There’s a severe prioritization problem presented as you have now thirteen different targets. Fourteen if there’s a disruption bubble to destroy.
Remember - my idea doesn’t involve nullsec. It’s for high and low only
I completely agree that having mercs in nullsec would be problematic or would not help the game in the very least.
I accept that. It’s not my unwillingness to discuss things that makes me do this. It’s my unwillingness to accept when a topic is already beyond repair thanks to arguments brought up, combined with an OPs unwillingness of learning understanding why the arguments are being brought up and why they matter.
Not to forget those who are deliberately dishonest just because they have an agenda.
Anyhow, because I’m going to get flagged for being off-topic:
Let’s take another example. Not NPC mercenaries.
The “Truckers” who pick up a miners ore to deliver it to the station.
It would be required that these Truckers could be shot down like regular NPCs. The inevitable consequence will be people literally stealing the ore for what will be, at worst, a suspect timer and even suspect would be extremely unlikely to happen due to the consequences of that.
So, given that NPCs, who transport your ore, can and will be farmed heavily (because why should i mine when you do it for me?), the feature would not see usage among a big part of the population, because it will be widely known that they suck.
In my above post I’ve written that the problem is you, because you made it pretty apparent that you suck at making friends or simply don’t want to. If you want to take this as an insult, feel free, but it doesn’t change that you’re making it pretty apparent nonetheless.
If you don’t want to make friends, sure. It’s not my problem. It only begins to be my problem when you want support for this from CCP. You making a bad decision for whatever reason is not my problem. You making a bad decision, wanting that everyone can more easily make the same bad decision (promoting isolationistic behaviour), again is going to be a problem for me.
You’ve posted while I’ve been unnecessarily explaining myself:
- You are obviously going to benefit from the consequences of your idea and there is no way that you did not make this idea up out of gameplay related reasons.
- Your killboard is a part of your personal history telling us something about who you are and what you do.
- Fair argument. My point is that you’re likely seeing a higher chance of survival with NPC protection.
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Can’t doctors or warp bubbles be used in lowsec though? I honestly forget, though I want to remember eve-gatecamp having notifications on systems that use doctors on gates and them being in lowsec.
Either way you still have the problem with target prioritization which will be used against them in every situation, much how that’s done with increasing CONCORD response time.
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Checkout my forum post: Elite Alpha: Project Haven
You are welcome to drop by the Elite Alpha channel anytime
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Okay, so you make a brilliant point.
Firstly, interdiction sphere launchers and their counterpart devices are banned in empire space (can only be used in wormholes or nullsec).
Prioritization will only need to work on one level to be effective:
The player who is targeted and attacked first has the option of responding with the Merc. Whether the opposing side has 1 ship or 20 doesn’t matter. A merc only has so much power/defensive capabilities, and is not meant to repel huge fleets.
There should be an option to choose your merc’s target/prioritize at least.
But none of this guarantees that you/your merc will win or not be destroyed. The idea is to give new/solo players the ‘flavour’ of extra defence/protection while travelling through certain parts of empire, so that there is a chance to counter potentially 1-2/1-3 ships of equal or smaller proportion using the merc if you get harassed. The ability for a merc to outgun more than 3 ships in my opinion would change the game into something different and we’d be going in a very new direction.
If you’re part of a fleet you cannot use a merc.
If you’re a group of ‘out-of-fleet friends’ who are trying to gang up on someone it won’t work either because you still need to be attacked for the merc to respond.
So in a sense, something like fighters or drones but pack more of a punch and aren’t restricted by ship specs?
Well the ship specs limitation might not be avoidable, but I’m thinking something along the lines of a T3 drone that can be modified similar to the strategic cruisers. IE: a deigning and coding nightmare. The issue is the only existing limitation I could see in these would be ship cap, unless they want to increase the drone bay/bandwidth of all ships.
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Would you mind explaining what you mean a bit more?
Thanks for your response, this seems so cool
That sounds even better than my idea. I was thinking ship, but this makes more sense/would feel more fun I think.
To have a limit on how many you could have in space, we have the drone skill (limiting us to five) and drone bandwidth. I’m leaving out fighters as I’ve never used them and not familiar with them, but under the assumption they work the same way.
To act more independently so they aren’t replacing drones entirely, they could be more limited in range and require a portion of your ship’s cap to operate.
The reduction in cap would force you to refit your ship in a way to make use of them and make you more susceptible to neuts and vamps, preventing you from getting away if you decide to risk staying put and tank it out. In exchange, because of their limited range those attacking need to use more expensive ships or longer ranged attacks (which can do less damage per volly depending on the ships), or just refit to tanky amarr neut ships and demand a ransom to let you go.
I could probably think this out better when I have the chance to do so. Kind of busy atm.
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OK here is the problem
Eve is a pvp game and a MMO. You admit that you don’t do pvp and that you don’t want/cannot interact with other players. And you ask some degree of “buff” (merc npcs) to get you stronger, allowing you to keep on doing your SOLO, NON-PVP stuff. In a PVP MMO. ok…
Believe me, instead of asking CCP to change the nature of the game, you should wonder if this game is for you
Taken from Wikipedia:
Eve Online (stylised EVE Online) is a space-based, persistent world massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by CCP Games. Players of Eve Online can participate in a number of in-game professions and activities, including mining, piracy, manufacturing, trading, exploration, and combat (both player versus environment and player versus player). The game contains a total of 7,800 star systems that can be visited by players.[2][3]
Taken from www.eveonline.com
EVE Online is a community-driven spaceship MMO where players can play for free, choosing their own path from countless options. Experience space exploration, immense PvP and PvE battles, mining, industry and a thriving player economy in an ever-expanding sandbox.