Retrofitting

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
1

idea is to allow some kind of swapability for high slot weapons between racial ship groups.
take a ship, say an minmitar ship which doesn’t use missiles (i don’t think any minmitar ship does use missiles), take it to the repair shop and pay for a retrofit service, swap out the hybrid turrets for missiles and job done.

the idea here is to take the “cool looking ship i want to fly” but then equally fly a fit to your skill set which you’re most comfortable with.

obviously things would have to be the right size category, you couldn’t fit HAMS onto a frigate for example, but light missiles, sure.

this would open up a whole aspect of not just making counter fits based on min maxed ship stats, your battle between pilots becomes much more individualized based off the pilots skills and ship type.

just a thought.

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2

This big issue i see here is in hull bonuses. That 5% bonus to tracking doesnt help much if Im using missiles

3

No. Then there wouldnt be anything special about each ship. Each race focusing on certain types for a reason.

Figured it was about time for your monthly shitty ideas again

4

each ship would still have its role bonuses and bonuses to specific weapon types.

further more you could individualist each ship via retrofitting making each ship entirely unique as each ship would be sculpted to the pilots tastes and play style.

true but these ships give bonuses to specific weapon groups based off of skill sets.

to be honest there is too much “fly this” “train that” within eve, which I understand is some necessary part of the game in terms of skills progression, even with the game having evermarks and heraldry, the game still lacks a basic ability of personalisation of ships.

sure you can FIT your ship anyway you like, but this is usually within a set boundary and because of that people will minmax which forces the combat element of the game to be examined and rebalanced.

idgaf about stats or min maxing, i want to fly a ship i think is cool with the weapons i know how to use, providing the weapons and size catagory of ships line up, i don’t see why this shouldn’t be permitted.

I’m tired of playing the game everyone else’s way, corp fits this, alliance fits that, min max this, ccp says no for that.

I would like the ability to pick any hull and pick what weapons i can slap to it, racial factors restrict this, I’d like to be able to retrofit my ship to get around this and have complete unrestricted access of what weapons i can and cannot put onto my ship.
I don’t care about min maxing, i’m not looking to build something completely OP and broken so i press F1 and be awesome, what i want is the ability to fly my way and tailor the cosmetic aspects of combat such as lasers, missiles or turrets to my own preference of ships i think look freaking awesome.

if someone wants to make an min maxed / OP build, great, good for them, that’s usually for fleet fights which require crap tons of training as well as causing CCP to go and re balance the games combat mechanics.

we need a purpose for the repair shop and attachments were announced like 2 years ago and still not in the game yet (yes i know these things take time), so in the mean time why not give us retrofitting.

a lot of changes have been about game play being profitable to the game company over time, some things i agree with like building capitals/titans should take huge effort from thousands of players and not some spoiled brat who can afford 30-50 accounts.

EVE is a game about community (which is cool)
however everyone is hustling and grinding to make that isk.

I fully understand that as a business there needs to be profit and sustainability as well as repeat customers and new customers especially in the area of customer/ player retention (Which needs massive work still from what i understand)

what ever happened to rule 0?
why can’t we just make it fun and allow the shinanigans to happen as they do

if i want to retrofit my ship and damn the consequences, why not?

theres always going to be optimal builds, minmaxers, Power gamers and the best you can do is nerf or curve that level of ability within the game

the inevitable nerd: “but eve online is a game where you create your own journey reeeeee!”

yes, player driven content exists, but that only goes so far, these new opportunities are good, but corp projects have been around for years and high level work needs to go into them for API pulling and such.

but instead of new mechanics, why not simply allow people to do things which are fun, these things don’t have to break the bank either. not everything needs to be high stakes. why not have a simple event for a new variant of a racial faction ship to come out and ask people of that race what to name it.

something happened here in the UK a while ago, some battleship was named left to public and it was literally called (and i swear to god i’m not making this up) “boatyMcboatface”

need I remind people that the triglavian vs edencomm battle as well as the recent ship caster events and FW revamps caused a spike in player numbers, because CCP was like “hey, do this thing, its important and is a critical moment in the games history, it will likely effect you in the future” very similar to the jove gates event, but even then didn’t someone find the gate within the first 72 hours or something?

aren’t people tired of logging into the game “hey guys what you up to?” “oh just grinding rn / just ratting right now” lots of people still sitting around doing their own thing just together

aren’t people tired of logging in, to grind and bsing with people on comms and having to suffer through the grind when there could be somethin to do which is… damn, whats the word again, oh yeah, FUN

5

I think that this is a tough sell. Besides we already have the custom hotrods, T3 Cruisers and they are fantastic ships

6

The way I see it CCP gives you the parts you either make a pig’s ear or a purse out of it

7

Most Minmatar ships have option to fit both Missile Launchers and Gun Turrets. Some of those ships have more Missile Launchers and others have more Gun Turrets. While those with more Missile Launcher hardpoints have Hull Bonus for Launchers, they can still fit some Gun Turrets and vice-versa for the other ships.

However these Minmatar ships are strictly set as Missile platforms:

Breacher
Probe Fleet Issue
Bifrost (Command Destroyer)
Bellicose

EDIT:
Talwar

I think that’s about it for strictly Missile Boats.

As for the OP of this thread, I would definitely like to have the option of turning my Jaguar, Rapier, Muninn and Cyclone back into glorious Gun Boats like they use to be before CCP decided to make their hull bonus and weapon hardpoints mainly for missiles.

As a result of that, I no longer fly those ships, they now just sit in station collecting dust. If I had wanted to pilot Missile Boats when I was first cloned, I would have gone as Caldari…

8

but not for alphas

true but I should be able to add a funky lining if i want.

this

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9

Well, there’s always the CONCORD and Society Of Concious Thought ships.

Sounds like a huge amount of dev work for an incredibly niche use that just winds up gimping a ship.

So, how about: NO?

Breacher, Talwar, Bifrost, Munnin, Cyclone, Claymore, Typhoon…

10

Ahh yeah, I forgot about the Talwar… and I always use it as my holiday Fireworks boat…

Even though they have hull bonus for missiles, Munnin, Cyclone, Claymore, Typhoon and other Minmatar ships aren’t strictly Missile Platforms since they can still fit Gun Turrets.

11

valid points on those ships, however the race I used was purely an example, but I appreciate the factual correctness of your post.

however your argument about it being niche is entirely subjective, a lot of people who love to fit and build ships, people with the achiever and explorer mindsets (using bartles taxonomy) would get a huge kick out of this, this also doesn’t have to apply to combat ships, why not slap mining lasers onto a combat ship, or weapons onto a mining ship instead of rebalancing stats for more tank, at least this way there is a base line but you can still tweak things further.

further more retrofitted ships could add possible devices to use in NPC combat or perhaps for the purposes of Lore Building and plot, when suddenly [insert group here] does shiny political thing using retrofitted ships with new unseen fits which grants a slight edge in combat being the tipping point of a political battle between two groups.

why should highly skilled and competent devs be afraid of doing work to bring fun and entertainment to people for a game and company they’re clearly passionate about and skilled in

so no fun?

i think you’re missing the point that this can and will naturally effect PVP, as well as creates something to actively talk about with a very large scale of possibilities, so in terms of social gaming it creates something to talk about and gives killers new ways to explore unique killing styles for combat

all in the name of simple fun, you think it wouldn’t be awesome to see people challenge themselves and each other, FC’s taking out a retrofit yeet fleet because its cheap and for the lols and to yolo it at the enemy in good spirited firey death eve online.

as the song goes “new eden is a world where dying is an art”
and right now we’re using crayons, lets break out the oil paints

hmmm so how about yes?

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12

there was a time, before mining ships, when mining was done in ‘combat’ ships.

as for adding weapons to mining ships, this already happens. bait Procurers have been A Thing™ for a good long while.

you take a ship with bonuses to, for example, hybrid weapons. you replace those with missiles, for which the hull has no bonuses? you are not getting an edge in combat. you’re gimping the ship.

that said, there have been examples in the past to use different weapon systems on a hull not bonused for them. Artillery Abaddons for example. There is a reason you don’t see fleets of Arty’baddons regularly. You’re giving away a lot of damage potential.

because these highly skilled devs have a long laundry list of bugs and other stuff they need to get squared away? new content to work up? the next expansion to get ready? looking through the meta and seeing if it’s stale?

your retrofit ships will cost the same as just fitting them making use of their hull bonuses. i’m all in favour of one-way fleets to Valhalla, but it’s nice to take a few down with you along the way.

meme fleets are all well and good and they certainly have their place. but i see no reason to use up dev resources for a mechanic that might see a bit of use early after release, but would quickly fade into obscurity and cease being used except on rare occasions.

there’s plenty of opportunity to create stupid meme fleet ideas already in the game. One example is the Laser Hurricane. It kind of looks like a Star Destroyer from Star Wars. Occasionally, you’ll get a fleet of them on May 4.

for the reasons stated above, how about no?

13

you make a lot of valid points, however by the seems of it, it comes across as we should simply foresake all content which is not optimized or minmaxed.

flying a retrofit ship could further more be about simple prowess as a pilot, and create new ways for people to challenge themselves and open up new ideas for new fits, which in turn could lead to fading out of old ships and possibly new ships entering the game.

to some extent we have to go backward and retrofit or crossfit to create something new based on demand, if we use the current balance of ships as a template, caldari missile boats will always do the max damage, but a gallente missile boat might have more combat utility to it, if there is more demand, something could be phased out and something new in.

i understand that a lot of people don’t like change, but this concept also allows people to play around and instead of creating their own ships with modules and slots, the community can band together and further agree what they can cobble together for themselves and perhaps see as i said before about rolling out new ships for that purpose, while some lesser ships simply become obsolete.

this would also bring some possible game play to the much demanded salvage area of game play too where instead of simply voiding all BPO’s or switching them out, the obsolete ones become scrap, used and basically like second hand ships, found in junkyards across the universe squirreled away here and there, restored or kept as trophies or marks of the games history.

i think it creates a great way for the devs to assess where the player base is and what they want in terms of new ships.

further more, this also feeds into the idea of new ships being rolled out and achieved via faction warfare.

so someones cobbled together fit, could become a huge success, become a community standard and then rolled out into a new ship with a arguably better looking model and fresh lick of paint, further injecting more colour, comradery as well as all out fun in a almost perpetual cycle into the game.

jolly gosh its like minmaxing everything actually removes from fun and becomes an analytical game of stats. where a rifter could have a bomb launcher but then loose all cap after a few shots due to cap drain, no one would see it coming and be a factor of chaos ensuing on the battlefield.

the harder something is the more noteworthy the achievement.
players then get to floof around and have fun in their own weird ways and maybe something new comes of it while being a benefit to all playstyle aspects.

but yes, totally “stupid” and “meme worthy” sure. in a living game thats always changing and requires fresh ideas, its almost as if instead of relying on the forums CCP could take this idea and really learn much more about their community.

maybe some things need to go, maybe somethings need improvement, maybe something new entirely will bloom from it, but you won’t know until you try, if you follow the meta and the minmax approach the game is going to become further grindy and further stale, inject some fun back into the game and allow the players to create something new entirely and maybe create some content around that.

isn’t eve’s future suppose to be written by the players anyway, it would make sense that we should have a further say in what content we want by slapping our own ships together, sure we have assigned weapons and ammo types across various races, but if retrofitting becomes a thing, you might knock something loose, or find a literal diamond in the rough, it could even be cycled where NPC corporations and factions could have retrofit design competitions in return for LP or even ISK, this way after a ship is revealed in FW and fought over, give it an appropriate cool down and have these groups go “hey we need ship designs!” and rinse and repeat.

seems pretty friggin fun to me.

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14

there’s plenty of scope to do this within current mechanics.

Take the Hookbill as but one example. There are numerous viable fits for this ship that have seen use in specific and more general situations. I’ve seen dual ancillary shield booster mega tank fits. dual web rocket faction warfare fits. long range light missile fleet fits. Sensor Damp light missile Hookbills. Even armour fits have been known to work.

Then there’s the Song Of The Armour Raven as sung to wonderful effect by the great Baltec1.

If you want to deliberately gimp a ship for a meme, there are already a great many ways for you to do it. Being able to use unbonused missiles on a hull designed for turrets or vice-versa just strikes me as “why?”. What does this bring to the table that’s going to be better than what’s already available? Meme fleets are fine, making drastic, fundamental changes to the game in the name of generating memes doesn’t strike me as a particularly good concept.

How about coming up with a revolutionary new fit under the current mechanics? Have a go, see how it works out. Maybe you’ll be the next Baltec1 who had an entire fleet doctrine named after him.

15

A point raised in another very similar suggestion, this also makes ship balance much more difficult for CCP.

16

well it should be a simple case of a retrofitted ship shouldn’t be able to out perform the optimization of another which has specific role bonuses too it, so it should be pretty easy to balance in terms of DPS

however i will admit not all ship balance is minmaxed DPS (although this should be a limit)

there is DPS VS Tank while also concerning PC VS CPU.

some people might want to retrofit their ship to get greater utility out of it.

even though there is a huge availability of ships, there is a notable demand for more ships. so, theoretically speaking, retrofitting your ships, might allow a greater or more productive utility.

someone on the forums once did a whole thing about sleeper ships to fly, yet we never got them, its too much effort, what if someone using retrofitting could create examples of them and call them “sleeper ships” maybe after being a thing for a few years CCP will come along and make them official, maybe they won’t.

but it would be nice for people to further explore such ideas and create whole subcommunities discussing unoffical fits to simulate other ships, including skins for cosmetic purposes.

can’t seem to do that under the current mechanics because you can’t retrofit ships.

yes its a lot of work, but it stands to provide a huge level of fun.

maybe there is an easier way to achieve it, rolling it over over the course of several years to keep people interested instead of all at once.
allow retrofitting of certain ship types and modules, then focus on the balance in a 3 month release period then balance over the next 6 months.

the game has technology which restricts certain ship categories and such, doesn’t it open up whole new content areas exploring this part of the lore, again all positives across the board

focus on one ship class first, release a set of modules for 3 months, focus on balance over the next 6, have a specific team focused on retrofitting specifically using the current balance (Which was re-done a few years ago) as a template to appropriate CCP ship standards

then pick another ship group.
then do another set of modules,
then balance
rinse and repeat

like what they did for the current balancing.

so providing your new minmitar laser boat doesn’t out perform an amarr laser boat of the same class, you should be fine, this way each race still has its own niche, but there might be ways to milk the ships for new utilities and unforeseen performance value.

this whole thing is about exploring the unknown and allowing players to create something new and unique based on their own play style.

it has the ability to effect every part of the game and create sub communities on the matter already, presenting the concept of fitted ships more as a forefront of entertainment for players interested in it.

I honestly think this does nothing but provide new aspects of content based on unique play styles which might be overlooked because people don’t post on the forums, its a way of directly reaching players and allowing their creativity to become some how more present in the universe with the whole concept of running it into an official build for FW development creating official limited runs and people making their mark in EVE History that way.

took some group like 72 hours to find the current jove gate.

see in the world when you do something its either going to go bad and make you look very stupid or its going to go very well and make you look courageous and bold
but you don’t know until you try
and trying is where the fun is.

17

You’re suggesting that this will give you more options for poorer ship performance in the first paragraph which is an even tougher sell.

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18

only in terms of DPS its possible that by retrofitting you could get greater utilization out of ships, new designs could be fashioned, some things phased out, new things bought in, game play taken in newer directions, which i think we all agree it needs.

sell it as a research tool and a chance to make your mark on eve history while spicing up new fun ways for pvp pilots to challenge themselves.

a skilled warrior not only knows how to use a sword but usually a variety of weapons and not just that, understand the best times to use them.
find something which fits you more specifically than whats in the game currently, cosmetically and mechanically, optimize in your own way. challenge yourself to be the best.

#retrofitchallenge

could also market it as a widening of eves combat based content but CCP needs you, the awesome player base to minmax the ever loving floof out of everything and find all the broken builds so we can weed them out, earn ISK/ LP or maybe a chance to have a limited run ship named after you.

plenty of good options here.

additional thought, doesn’t retrofitting also by default open up a whole array of game play options for alpha players too? especially with limited skill points.

i can see it being promoted for a player drive to get players into the game
“alpha clones wanted, try our new retrofitting feature, your game, your ship, your way”

might help player retention when people don’t get fed up with limited options and go “what a complete con” at least now people can train some weapon set and fly around in cool ships having fun.

19

give me an example.

please, do up a dummy ‘retrofit’ and ELI5 how it’s either A: viable or B: brings more utility that can’t be done by simply using a different, existing ship?

Hell, this whole concept could implemented by simply bringing in SKiNS that change the ship model. Want a Machariel ship model on your Rokh? Slap on a skin. Want your Golem to look like a missile throwing Vindicator? Slap on a skin.

Otherwise, Space Engineers is A Thing™ where you can literally build any ship in any configuration you can possibly imagine.

20

Are people getting fed up with the limited options? Seems to me theres a hell of a lot of ships available and just about every niche has a vessel to fill it. Some of them have multiple even!