The big change I want to see is a pipe dream, but it’s changing the base philosophy behind industrials.
Currently we have most of them designed in a Modern era way, giant cargo carriers (haulers) or tools (miners) with basically no defence. This creates an incredibly boring experience for any industrial pilot who is attacked, and because of the short concord timer it’s also over super fast. Gankers get to choose their moment of action so they are prepared, a hauler is not going to be prepared for frantic action all the time, it’s simply not humanly possible, our bodies & minds just don’t work like that. Which means it’s also sometimes over even before the target works out what is going on.
I’d prefer to see a WW2 engineering tanks or spanish main era idea taken. (which you know… was the real era for piracy after all). Where you have full number of slots relative to similar sized combat vessels, (cargo expanders should also have a stacking penalty so you don’t get 50% of your cargo size from the very last expander thereby making a whole rack of expanders basically required for anything but DST or Freighter), base EHP is comparable except hull hp is a class smaller, mobility is a class larger, and turret/launcher slots ‘might’ be one fewer than a normal combat vessel, though the lack of damage bonuses would do that anyway.
Now change Concord to a remote self destruct, plenty of RP reasons you could have that change, and make the timer longer so gankers don’t have to have 10 max DPS ships to get it done in 15 seconds, but instead are only needing to fly one or two combat vessels.
Bonus points for making a ‘drop cargo bay’ mechanic for industrials that drops their ore bay container, or hauling container (large haulers could even have several containers/hangers) and the base ship then gains significant agility/speed (or the lock gets kept on the container and the ship breaks free) to allow for real piracy where they can dump loot to manage to escape.
And further bonus points for removing the industrial skills as separate skills and integrating haulers into the cruiser/bc/battleship line properly, which then also means that haulers have to be able to fly combat hulls as well, further making the point clear to them that they should expect combat. (Decent turrets/launchers on haulers to start with should make this point, but I see no reason they couldn’t be integrated into the standard vessel size line up as that helps manage expectations as well).
A smaller change I’d like to see is making it impossible to lock people down permanently, or for hours, but always be able to lock people down for a few seconds. I.E. remove WCS, and then implement some kind of spool up mechanic for someone loosing a fight to slowly step up their warp core until they are able to escape ‘if’ they can tank for long enough.
Also intel is too binary which also adds to safety.
Would this make them more or less safe? Or is it a sideways step in expectations and to try and apply a simple more or less would be apples to oranges.
Yes, in many cases PvE’ers are probably too safe, but it’s also a terrible experience being targetted because the systems to fight back ‘once you are actually there’ don’t really exist in any kind of practical manner. 99% of the systems for the PvE’er evolve around avoidance, not fighting. All you can do once targetted is twiddle thumbs and wait to die really.
It’s also too safe being a PvP’er because of some of the above though, especially in high sec, which means if you apply nerfs to make PvE less safe in the current meta, you will cause them all to quit. Due to viewpoints.
(And yes yes, there is always the ‘but what about this’, but the reality is that what about this is a 0.1% occurrence and shouldn’t be taken into significant account when designing the system)
(his likkle enyo got away while i was killing his exeq though)
