Player-Invented Ships

I am not really sure what you mean. The way I am seeing it, its like having a high level faction module, or as you say, an extra permanent rig. I see power creep as a unstoppable constant uptick.

In other words, the way I think of power creep is that items are constantly getting even more powerful in aggregate, a bit like they do in the real world. I know game makers currently have difficulty with that, but I think someone will find a way forward. I think par of the trick will be that each successive improvement is exponentially less significant, again, as in the real world, with the added real world pardigm that its going to take literal decades of slow progress to get to the point that progress gets to almost a dead end, like how we are now with rockets, airplanes and cars compared to the early 1900s through to the 1970s or so. HOw to set the algorythyms to do that right, I am not sure.

Of course each benefit coming with a drawback, as per rigs, could also help to slow power creep.

That’s an interesting idea. At least that way you would know you were looking at a special ship immediately rather than think it was ordinary ship X except its behaving unexpectedly. Also, it could relieve player boredom wih the look of current hulls available.

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I think the idea is interesting. I do think however it would have to be limited to BPC’s. Either via an invention style mechanic or mutaplasmids as already discussed.

Given the decade of “tiercide” and ship balancing CCP has done, and still can’t get right, I think having the ability to make all kinds of untested modifications along with the ability to crank them out unrestricted (BPO) would be a balance nightmare. Something like this should be cool, but rare or limited availability kinds of things.

I get what your saying, but CCP has an… interesting history with trying to balance and introduce niche ships.

For example, look a the Monitor. CCP responded to the issue of “FCs getting sniped off the battlefield” by creating a really niche craft. Instead, people could craft a niche craft that behaves a bit like the Monitor without CCP having to try to step in by creating a really hyper-specific ship that plays a very narrow role and affects like 0.1% of all Eve players. It’s democratizing balance and new metas, in a way, without the hand of God (CCP) intervening with some new hull that is supposed to buff or nerf a certain style of play.

Trying to “predict” balance is a fools errand, in my opinion. Let the dogs loose, be thoughtful about the DEMs you put out there with some theory crafting, and tweak slightly as you go. I remember when people spouted doom and gloom about T3 cruisers, and the unpredictability of the fittings would spell the end of EVE and balance as we knew it – but in the end it just became another dimension to gameplay and is now the new normal. I honestly don’t see this being much different.

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I’m sorry, but you cannot simply hand wave away the essential work that CCP puts into balance before and after releasing any ship.

Take your monitor example. Which is an odd one to use as an example. I mean a 400mil ship with about the same fitting options of a freighter (4 slots, limited in what can be fit in them). Given the min/max nature of players I have zero faith anyone would have the care to “invent” a ship that narrowly focused and not be OP.

I mean if this is just fun theorycrafting, then yea it’s a neat idea. If you actually have a goal of refining the idea into anything CCP would ever even consider, that’s a whole different thing.

In the same way that an overwhelming majority of fits are already optimized by the playerbase, this idea would just add unnecessary bloat to the EVE database, 99.99% of which won’t be used because min maxers will find the best configuration and everyone will copy that.

Would be a complete waste of CCP’s time and resources to make something like this.

Doctrines, optimized fits, and new metas change with the wind.

Look, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you don’t speak for CCP. It’s easy to shoot down ideas with blanket statements without providing some constructive criticism.

I disagree with 90% of the posts in this forum, as it attracts a lot of hair-brained ideas. Maybe this is one of them. But some people don’t really seem to want an engaging discussion.

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That’s… wrong, but sure.

It seems like mostly there has been a decent discussion on this.

One difficulty is often people have so much invested in their idea that they have a hard time disconnecting from it and looking at it from an objective position.

Personally I think the most we’d ever see is mutaplasmids for ship hulls. But even then that would be a complex situation given all of the variety of ship hulls/layouts and bonuses on existing assets.

Fair, and I think posting some ideas on a forum is a good way for things to go through the refiner’s fire. There’s no point falling in love with some ideas, as ideas are cheap. But I think the discussion may be able to tease out something that perhaps CCP could eventually work with. It’s a process, not an event.

This idea sounds great but I think it would be nearly impossible to balance properly

Yea, theres lots of ship roles I wish existed but dont, atleast not in the way I want

OK, so now we need to balance both the Muninn and the 128 possible variations of Muninn as well. There’s a reason why T3Cs went from 5 subs and 4 options for each to 4 subs and 3 options.

Second, you just made it incredibly hard to buy and sell ships. The current system says that a packaged ship is identical to any other packaged ship of that make. It’s how you can put stacks on the market. Now we have to keep track of 128 different possible variations of that ship, which means that a) the market will be inundated with various flavors of Muninn and it will be a pain to find the one you want, or b) DEM blueprint outputs will have to be traded exclusively through contracts, which is also a pain.

It sounds like a cool idea, but I think it would also be a huge pain to implement and play.

The original idea was that it would only be for a special line of ships, not all ships.

There are ship fittings that drastically alter the role of a ship – you don’t have to keep track of all the permutations. You accept that the functionality can vary wildly.

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But it doesn’t matter what your “original idea” was.
If it ends up being better than the Muninn or the Ferox, congrats, it’ll become the primary ship hull of nullsec doctrines. It’ll take probably a week before people figure out the min / max capabilities, and it ends up with basically 2 out comes.

  1. a particular configuration ends up being better than Muninns
    result: everyone uses that

  2. the best optimized fit ends up being worse than Muninns
    result: no one uses this ship except for a handful of bad players who don’t know how to play EVE

either way, it introduced a ton of bloat that CCP must constantly pay attention and balance on top of everything else that’s already in the game.

You missed this.

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I think what the troll is trying to say is that you misunderstood what was said. I think that poster’s actual point was that many other ships would “need” to be rebalanced, not just the Munnin.

Of course, ship rebalance is a constant process anyway. Change is going to come whether players like it or not.

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Yeah – I admit that balance is a legitimate concern, but I come from the philosophical camp that you can just make iterative tweaks to balance and you’ll be fine.

In my industry, if you’re paralyzed by not being willing to take risks, then you’ll stagnate. That, and iterative change is the name of the game. Perhaps that has colored my thinking into believing that all this concern over “balance” is really just people dooming over something they feel will have unexpected effects. I mean, that’s the point – emergent gameplay. Invention. Figure out a new meta through your innovation. I think CCP is smart enough to theory craft and figure out how to stack disparate attributes in a way that won’t make things too overpowered or ridiculous.

And if there’s some bonus that’s unexpectedly bad and it’s negatively affecting the game, just nerf that bonus.

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Haha, yeah I basically agree with you. But “just” do X works so much better in theory than in practice. I will give the naysayers that much at least.

Keep at it. I admire your patience and positive thinking.

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Thanks for the kind words, it’s a breath of fresh air. At the end of the day we’re just passionate about this game, right? Like I said earlier, ideas are cheap – I just hope to keep seeing the game evolve and keep engagement high.

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The key thing is that it is hard enough for CCP to make iterative balance tweaks on a statically created set of ships that they created.

It would be a nightmare for them to try and make iterative tweaks on a system where players are making ships with dynamic bonuses daily.