Personal stations. but for PI

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
41

Well, I doubt we find a common ground here. Mostly because I am a fan of KISS design and your idea would violate that on almost all levels. You want special rules for anchoring (solo instead of corp-owned, but still being able to dock there, have services running etc, but not needing a core that would drop for the attackers if they win…), special rules for engagement (making you not wardeccable, fighting back like a POS, a “special suspect mode”…), special rules for jobs (keep running while in RF) and so on. Sorry, but all that sounds like a wishlist and not a reasonable design idea.

Just in case you don’t know about it: CCP once announced there would be an S-version of the Citadels for small- and solo- operations, like a FOB (Forward Operation Base), cheap, easy to anchor and maintain but also weak and offering only basic services (storage, dock, repair, refit). They haven’t implemented it yet. And that was years ago. Also they announced that Vanguard Gameplay might somehow interact with PI in Ground Operations (no clear concept yet), I highly doubt they will implement any new space-interaction structures for PI until they have thought out how this should work. And to be honest, I can’t see them moving PI-industry away from planets as well, because explicitly the balancing between imports, exports, facilities vs extraction and storage is what makes the “PI minigame” in it’s core.

I am out now, sorry you couldn’t get me on board.

1 Like
42

i get what your are saying, but thats also the argument against everying in eve after frigates., poses, outposts, ctadels, drednaughts, carriers, motherships, mobile fitting, even containers at one point where all rule changes on the existing systems (damn i miss throwing out 25 drones at the one time from my moros! So you are right that i dissagree with your resoning here, but thats because that reasoning could be applied to every improvement in eve and isint a good enough reason not to do something.

you may not know this but the concept for citadels was mentioned when the first outpost was built by iss back in 2006, citadels didnt happen until an actual decade later. I dont mind waiting :stuck_out_tongue: ive been playing a while

no worries, im glad for the input, its always good to hav your ideas challenged, it makes you think about them more! fly safe!

43

Highsec poses require a wardec to remove, if the proposed structure follows mobile depot mechanics, a lot more people will be willing to shoot them, because a suspect timer isn’t much of a demerit.

I agree here. Not only do you want to keep it simple in terms of design principles so it’s easier to create, you want to keep it simple enough so the player base can understand it.

44

Im thinking a 3rd option is better, wardecing invites steamrolling, and the system behind mobildepos is just can flipping with a step removed, neither suit this sort of application so i think a different idea is needed (same as when they added the mechanic for mobile depos then changed the can flip rules, or befoe that when they added the can flip rules, damn ive been playing a while).

im thinking because its solo geared, the station can be armed with a slot mechanic, maybe using bs weaponary, but the pi is also in the same modules, or maybe a 4rth set like tier 3 ships. it uses fuel and stront like a POS, and you can set the reenforement timer like a citadel, upto 1 week so its friendly to casual players. the person reinforcing it is globally flagged for the time of the attack and 15 minutes after. but once base is reinforced that person has kill rights against them from the base owner using the current mechanic, so thorse rights could be sold, etc.

In reinforced it still performs any actions inside it but you cant withdraw or submit anything, maybe even you can dock but not get access to the second ship. once you get to the timer, the owner can repair it, but is flagged to the attacker while this is happening. And the attacker cant recieve remote repair while they are doing the reinforcing or attacking, sort of duel rules.

so its building on existing mechanics, from a dev point of view for the combat to keep it simpler ofr them, and its fairly straight foward for the players. ‘you can take this out but itll make you vunerable’

what do you think?

im also thinking a limit on attacking, so if its been reinforced once it cant happen again for a wile, again because i want it more newbie friendly and to limit greifing.

45

You’re not going to be able to convince people that’s a good idea. Kill rights are for criminal timers, not suspect flags.

If having the structure be wardecable or using mobile depot style reinforcement timers is a no-go, another possibility, could be to just use the MTU mechanics. (ie: attackers get suspect flagged, it has no reinforcement timer but make the structure really cheap and spammable, less than a mil per unit (maybe even less than 100k for base model,) and no fuel cost.)

That’s specifically for pi.

In your op, you seemed to specifically want a pos style structure. So if CCP implemented that Small Citadel Syz mentioned (with storage, dock, repair, refit services,) you could probably get away with longer reinforcement timers, and having it be a personal structure rather than a corp asset.

Perhaps you could do a hybrid of both. Any of the mtu style pi structures that are within a certain range of the small citadel while the player was docked would allow the player to hit a “deliver” button, and the materials would move into the citadel. That way the entire production chain isn’t entirely protected but the more important assets are harder to destroy.

That said, since we don’t want a situation where there’s a bunch of dead structures in space, I’d say this type of structure (the small citadel that is a personal structure) would require fuel blocks to stay online, and if it ever went offline, someone could shoot it and remove it that way. Or maybe even hack it and pack it up themselves.

46

its been a while sisce i used them, but wasent it just the case that a kill right, was the abliity for 1 person to activate a suspect frag on someone for 15 minutes.

i thing it would be fine if they are suspect to you until the end of the reinforcement, but that is another change in mechanic, and i was trying to think in the lines of current mechanics to make it easier to implament.

now that is a brilliant idea, espically because casuals take alot of breaks, so there would be a morket for recovering them! I love this!

my thoughts at the moment are mini station similar to a pos, and as you say, configurable, maybe not even PI based, thats just an modual. harder to hit when online, and limited to more solo attacking some how ( lets be honest, thats more of a ccp balence issue, im sure they would look at all suggestions then tweak it) but once if goes off line, it would be cheap for other players to recover / salvage.

but when you are mentioning the mobile refitting, maybe that could be a different version, small cheap ‘poptent’ that you could place down and dock up to for some refuge or something. id use one for 0.0 ratting, so i immaging someone else would like that ‘man portable’ idea.

47

why ? eve is a MMO ? you want to play alone then you have ten thousends of singleplayer games ou there you can play and you dot destroy the whole MMO part or the game itself …

all your nice little words dont improve anything ! a player only citadell will be extremly bad for this game !
and its sad that you cant see all the problems you are creating if this got implementet …

48

New members can’t block anyone for a couple of weeks, in the forum of one of the most toxic games online… some more of that CCP’s big brain at work.

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49

oof, that sounds like something that should change.

2 Likes
50

[ forum bug ]

51

…

…Yea but getting anything changed is like pulling teeth.

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52

yeah i cant block him at all, the most if silencing notifications and reporting any comments that break the terms of the forum, which is most of them. Ironically this accoutn has been going since 2006

53

thats not fair!, i was in at the dentists a few year ago, 2 injections, some scary noise in my skull and the tooth was out. thats no nrearly as bad as getting a change in eve :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes
54

on the general idea of this, the biggest every player increase after an update came in 2016 with the citadel release. i think that shows how interested older players where with the release. but it tapered off after a few months back to the origional levels. I personally think this is because the more content for solos always attracts people back, but its very seldom that they are catered for. e.g. the faction warfare updates in 2012 brought a 15% player increas in the months after, and close to this level was the first abyssal patches. jsut have a look at the eve status monitor and releate that to the patches that happened and you can see more solo activity brings in an increase in numbers. whereas this years ‘festive activity’ has been more group based, and that uptick hasent happened.

we are all aging as we play this. , i stated playing in my 20’s and am now in my forties, that means with family and other stuff i dont have the time to play for an allience, or even the corps that ‘require a set commitment’. As you can see above some of the player base dosent like solos, that happens in all multiplayer games, but solos make up a segnifican portiuon of the player base, a quick google search shows that. but also eve isint attracting many new players, a perfect example fo this is how eve number went down during the lockdowns, when the majority of online games saw their player base expand.

this is why i think things like this are important, because we all start as solos, so more solo content hooks into the game more and could help retention. I can also understant the bias from the devs, because most of them have been working and lliving this for years, so they are going to be more group focused.

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55

If you’re thinking of the player spike around that time, that was due to alphas being introduced to the game. There was a slow gradual pcu increase right before ascension, and then when ascension hit you’ve got a vertical wall of increased players.

The ideal scenario, is to have content that is solable, and easily scaled into casual group activity.

For example, if some homefronts were added that could be run by solos, but pay out more with a group. CCP would incentivize people to come together in an organic way.

One of the best examples of this in my gaming experience is from a game called Firefall (that’s no longer operating.) The mining mechanic in that game was done by devices called “Thumpers” that would run for a certain duration and then when it was done you could interact with it and send it away and the minerals would be delivered to your player’s storehouse.

But, the thumper would also act as an EVE crab beacon. That is, it would attract local mobs the player would have to kill to protect the mining equipment. And of course, there were several versions of these mining machines, so it could scale from a low level operation to high level squad operation.

But the best thing about this mechanic, is the rewards weren’t limited to people in a party with the owner. So if a person happened upon a thumper being run, they could kill mobs and be rewarded for it. This is a mechanic that would be really easy to do in EVE as well.

A similar thing could be done with your pi / pos replacement concept. The base features would be entirely for a solo player, but potential additions could allow it to be used for a small group of people, or as a market trading post, or any number of small group activities.

This is also why I personally believe open world faction based mmos have the best pvp experiences, because of the casual way players can group together. While I’ve certainly had some fun with non-militia pvp in EVE, it still doesn’t beat the feeling of running around with a friend of mine in swtor or archeage, seeing some people fighting and joining in on it in an organic way. And all that is accomplished without having to deal with awkward social stuff in finding a group to play with.

So the general game design is to design items for solo players, and allow them to scale organically into casual group content. Then if the players want a greater challenge, they can do something more involved together.

1 Like
56

They’re not interested in Solo “single-player” development for EvE, it isn’t lucrative. Some parts of the careers and missions can be done solo many other things up to a point, but it isn’t by design.

I gree. Unfortunately that isn’t what EvE is.

57

could anyone understand why theyre not interested in solo player content ? because its not a single player game ! its a multiplayer game … thats why this idea is that bad …

58

Because it isn’t lucrative? :smiling_face:

But…but lots of activities can be done single!

I agree, only multiplayer is bad idea. Better idea is Sanbox Multiplayer Solo PvEvP.

59

thats also a reason … solo player would kill the game with all their “brilliant” ideas and this isnt lucrative !

and in every multiplayer game there is content you can do solo … doesnt mean its a singleplayer game oO

sandbox multiplayer … multiplayer … all the same ! youre play this game with a lot of other ppl ! you cant do the main content solo and the main content is PvP ! … but you can also pvp as solo player … and you will die as solo player much more then in a group !
solo players only hinder themselves in every way and can never achieve great success.

60

They’re specially interested in the “friendship machine.” But in order to get people to that point, people need to actually be interacting in a cooperative manner with other people. Some people are fine with the social aspect and have no issues with talking to people and forming groups, but that’s not for everyone.

So what you want to do, in order to capture the introverts, is to design activities around solo play that can easily scale in a casual manner. The easy on boarding process is what is important, not the “solo” or the “group” aspect of it.

Not in it’s entirety, but EVE also has faction based content. And for highsec pve, it wouldn’t be too hard to curate some homefront activities (as I mentioned above) to work toward onboarding people. (Keep the rewards lower than current homefronts, but allow them to be run solo or in groups - and you’ll find people going there to find groups to run the other content - especially if the game pushes people toward that goal by letting them know it’s an option.) CCP already has the tools to do it in game, they just need to put them together.

EVE isn’t just one game, it’s like 30 games smashed into one.

(Not trying to derail the thread here, just using that as a concept in how the op’s idea can be used to bring players together. Many players are more comfortable with solo play, but developers can use various tools to bring people together to have a better experience.)