Oh that's really cool! I like to imagine the possibilities that teams in planetary conquest might come up with for deploying harvesters when a battle commander has the ability to pick deploy spots.

I do have a question. What happens when node collection areas overlap?

Suiciding yourself to make a hack?! Damn, that's wicked. I really like that idea, however I have feeling it won't go over well at all with the KDR Bros.

Still, are terminal going to be exposed for snipers to pick off approaching players, regardless it the end goal is death of the clone?

Alrighty, I can work with the shield bubble idea.

I am glad you added in that bit about the additional reward. I wonder if it should be a percentage of the biomass price of all clones collected by that harvester.

This would also be a cool look for the sphere.

Ouch, that's some major risk vs. reward right there. I wouldn't want to risk having to terminate a protosuit fit in order to clear the area around a harvester. However, a part of me thinks that's what it might take if you're rushing a heavy siege of that point.
The big thing I am wondering is how much of a payout a heavily stocked harvester would grant.

Seems like that would favor clever scouts who speedily sneak up and change the alignment of the sphere last second before a match ends. Sounds fine to me.

A problem I see it stupid militia fit blueberries eating up clone reinforcements by constantly throwing themselves at the sphere.

You can make it work in a way where , once the harvester excepts your DNA , so to speak , you can't "hack it" anymore , to prevent any double dipping. You have already registered your DNA , so to speak , so your entry has been excepted into the database. One time and that's it. And the planetary conquest issue would be good for starters to test and see how players react to this. Then if it goes over they can move it to the factional warfare because like the clones this tec has to spread through out the system.

This will make it all the more important too because now there is something at stake and a personal interest as well. As long as the
"CUT" is split among the collective.

I can alredy see the feed:
"daaoaod suicides... x 50"

How are we gonna prevent people from suiciding to make the thing more valuable? I think suicides shouldnt count towards the biomass rewards

You also have to take the clone limit to account. The harvester doesn't grant the limit a stay , if I'm correct , it just recycles the clones. So I can't see people running in droves to sacrifice themselves , because there is still a team limit and if you don't win the game then it doesn't matter. So in introducing this new tec , there must be lessons , so to say so that people won't misunderstand this new tec and what their goals should be in accordance. But with this being said the limit should be increased by ten to compensate for the adjustment. Ten should be enough for a whole game duration.

So how many clones are we talking about for this siphoned transport container business?

As cool as this sounds, I don't think it makes sense. Why does this machine arbitrarily decide to payout after one team has retreated/been killed off? Wouldn't the surviving team "rehack" it after the enemies have been defeated and thus collect the end match reward?

I think it would make more sense if it gave the controlling team the ISK as it collected each body. In other words, the machine collected the remains as they appeared and was wired to give the controlling team a "recycling refund" and hacking it would be changing where the money was being routed to.

But the biomass can't be sent to the MCC. Or at least not if tankers are going to be able to run biomass from the harvester to the CRUs.

Also, it's realistic for there to be an instant refund because the machine is paying you for what the biomass will be worth. I think of the harvester as a recycling center for the workers who are normally at the areas we fight at. Considering that, think of how real world recycling works. If I take a bag of glass bottles to a recycling center, they pay me for the bottles then and there. They then take those bottles and recycle it later.

Normally biomass will be transported to the MCC, however when a vehicle or foot solider is in range with the correct transport module the Harvester's protocols change and divert incomming biomass to that player.
The harvester does not hold reverse biomass, so a player must wait near the harvester while soliders are dying within its range.

IWhile the isk idea is nice, i think ultimately the play we could get from making clones a second front in battles would prove to be far more interesting in the long run. Plus from just a logistics standpoint, I don't think mercs would have a need to recycle biomass mid battle for isk when they could just do it afterwards.

I really like the idea of mid-battle clone harvesting, being able to effect clone reserves using this. Have you considered just focusing on that aspect (ignoring the isk for now). I think the additional dynamic of clone warfare sounds very appealing. They could decrease clone count in battles to account for biomass being recycled, and now we have a very interesting two aspect war, focusing on both control points and clones.

Normally biomass will be transported to the MCC, however when a vehicle or foot solider is in range with the correct transport module the Harvester's protocols change and divert incoming biomass to that player.
The harvester does not hold reverse biomass, so a player must wait near the harvester while soldiers are dying within its range.

Well ****, I read the title and thought I was going to read about an idea for a match played inside a Dyson Sphere, as in a sphere encompassing a sun. This is a well thought out idea, +1 for that...but **** you for getting my hopes up...

Neat idea but seems like an extreme amount of coding
Shouldn't be a priority till atleast all weapons are implemented

I couldn't understand the OP very well, but I got the gist of it. When the person goes up and hack the thing, and starts the suicide process, what is the clones killed in the "harvest" were transferred to the friendly team?

Example: TeammateLover123 hacks the thingy. 6 people die. And now 6 clones are added to the friendly team. It would prolong battles, and if you're able to get in behind a team and activate one, it would be a game-changer in gamemodes like Ambush, and even Skirmish, it'd be quick to clear an objective.

Also, maybe afterwards, there'd be a "Radiation Period", where enemies that enter the area start losing a set amount of HP per second, and the HP/s decreases per second?

Hey, how does a suicide hacks and their potential greifing play into a player team kill counter? That might end particularly badly in the new factional warfare if you kill a bunch of friendlies in the initial blast wave while trying to capture that harvester.

There's some good points there, but I guess I'm still torn about this license to TK in this context.
Anyhow, going back to Ghost's post on the radiation period, I could see it being set anywhere between 20 and 30 seconds. Catching that theorycrafting bug from Jadek, I'd like to play around with the idea of radiation buildup. This means that if an enemy player rehacks a harvester while in the radiation period, and subsequently another friendly player rehacks the harvester the gamma blast and radiation fallout damage increases exponentially. Also each hack adds an additional 5m - 10m to the radiation fallout zone and 20 to 30 seconds while the radiation damage cools down to zero.

With this mechanic teams involved in a violent rally of switching control of a harvester would temporarily make a section of the map no mans land.

Lore wise it makes a bit of sense that you're getting all of this radiation when fluxing around with a micro wormhole generator.

You guys have been at work since the last time I seen this post . I love it when a plan comes together and I loved Mass Effect. You guys have been at work with great ideals might I add and I hope that CCP will roll with this. This could be the " Other " game mode that people have been asking for. It could be the training ground , a place to work on one's tactics because this sounds like that type of mode with all you have to think about and the strategic importance of the Biomass Sphere coupled with the fact that now YOU HAVE TO WORK AS A TEAM to achieve a goal because everyone has an interest. You guys are on to something !!!!

I have to catch up and read more.

Woah that last bit, so you're saying radiation only damages armor then? Not shields? That might be more unfortunate for Gallente armor tankers.