Just brainstorming here, but I think the following idea could add depth to both gameplay and the in-game economy. Currently, when ships are repaired after battle, they return to a pristine, like-new condition, regardless of how many times they’ve seen combat or endured wear and tear.
Instead, consider introducing a new mechanic where ships accumulate long-term wear over time. Rather than being fully restored to factory condition, ships would require repair and maintenance material packages to recover from damage. These packages could be manufactured by players using refined materials sourced from ore processing, thus stimulating industrial activity and market demand.
Additionally, as ships age and undergo repeated repairs, they could gradually suffer performance degradation—a small percentage reduction in key attributes like speed, armor, or targeting range. Eventually, older ships would become classified as Used Hulls, which could either be sold at a discount or scrapped for materials once the negative modifiers outweigh their utility. This would create a natural lifecycle for ships and enhance demand for newly manufactured hulls.
This system would:
Encourage ship turnover and create a secondary market for used or aging ships
Increase demand for mined ores and refined materials
Add realism and immersion to the EVE universe
Provide industrialists with new manufacturing opportunities
Good luck selling this idea, especially to new players. Now, not only can you lose your ship to other players and unlucky encounters with NPC’s, you’re also going to lose it just through general use and wear and tear…
Ships do accumulate grime until you deploy the squeegee BOBs.
It’s an interesting idea, but it’s basically DOA. As @QuakeGod alluded to, anyone with large numbers of ships would literally riot over such a proposal. And this is before we even consider supercapitals, rare capitals or AT prize ships.
If anything, this would probably disincentivize players from undocking even more - since the more you use said ship(s) the faster they deteriorate.
There are some games where your weapons and armor degrade over time and I assume this is part of the inspiration behind this idea.
I could see this for something like a ship that’s been left logged out for ages in the void somewhere - but not when in a packaged state or docked in a hangar.
Maybe, and just spit balling. But as a long term game, give an atvantage to old hulls? Yrs long, but just a thought to overcome the short term CC players?
This is a mechanic that could come straight from delusional Hilmar. He also wants to add more frustration by limiting station hangar space.
Preventing alliances and corporations from having ships for replacements or handouts, preventing players from having assets in many different locations, preventing pre-staging of assets in a new target of operations and many other preventing results from such a dumb and toxic feature is not going to make the game better in any way.
but my 17 yr old ships should be rust buckets or covered in pigeon guano?