Nobody would love to lose their progress, but what if there were benefits strong enough to take the risk? Allow me to introduce my vision on a capsuleer that will die permanently after losing their pod instead of transferring consciousness into a new clone.
Backstory:
Years of research within the Serpentis Inquest R&D Department have led to unexpected results — a couple of modifications made to the transneural burning scanner provide the capsuleer with vastly increased training speed, compared even to the Omega Pilots. After some initial tests, Sigma Pilots, as named by their creators, proved to be most effective in combat operations after demonstrating enormous perception and willpower. However, the modifications made to the transneural burning scanner bear some irreversible results — Sigma Pilots are unable to transfer their consciousness into a fresh clone. Whatever the reasons behind this malfunction are, they did not prevent the Serpentis Corporation from making a patent on the invention.
My vision on Sigma Pilot in-game:
Vastly increased training speed for combat-related skills. We do not want to see trading and industrial alts abusing the training speed, don’t we?
Unable to use skill injectors/extractors.
Unable to fly capital ships.
Once a Sigma Pilot, always a Sigma Pilot. You can’t change your clone state no matter what.
Time to rev up four dozen “Sigma” pilots so they can jump straight into a Dominix and start krabbing in nullsec combat sites. Since there’s an “inheritance contracts” (whatever that means) all of my stuff will be safe since it’ll just be “inherited” by my main account on the off chance they get ganked!
It’s hard to imagine there would be much interest in something like this - you’re investing $130 USD or more each year in training - why would you want to throw that investment away.
People might be interested in gambling the investment but, what’s the reward to justify the risk? If you give these characters enhanced ability to earn income, you’ve basically created botter paradise - permadeath is the consequence for getting caught anyway so no downside!
I’m sure there will be a few who do it simply for the Adrenalin rush but will there be enough to justify the development effort?
Let’s make it a special event! For one week, all pod kills will result in permadeath for the victim. It should be a lot of fun - basically the same thing they did with that Forsaken Fortress thing.
There are too many downsides for your average player to make this a popular thing (it certainly wouldn’t be used in PVP outside of extraordinary/idiotic circumstances).
However, there are too many upsides for people who bot and/or play in such a way that they can just about guarantee their safety.