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?

In my head I was imagining a Dyson sphere with stabilizing legs to anchor it to the ground. Additionally, I was thinking that once it was either hacked or called it by a particular team, the only way to hack the sphere for the opposing side would be to harvest yourself to the sphere, terminating your clone.

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?

The sacrificial clone would be further rewarded at the end of the match if the friendly team held onto that node in which the player processes themselves to capture.

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.

In my head I was imagining a Dyson sphere with stabilizing legs to anchor it to the ground. Additionally, I was thinking that once it was either hacked or called in by a particular team, the only way to hack the sphere for the opposing side would be to harvest yourself to the sphere, terminating your clone. The sacrificial clone would be further rewarded at the end of the match if the friendly team held onto that node in which the player processes themselves to capture.

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.

I got the impression that if a single player is the team's sole Dyson sacrifice that they would still receive the 15% bonus no mater how many times they entered the spheres. If that works in the context of having to share a sacrifice bonus with other team members who harvest themselves, the lowest your bonus would be is 1/16th of the 15%. Even that example of 35 clones perishing within range of the harvester would net a player about 52,000 isk if all members of team harvested themselves at one point during the game.

Remember, any death, even sphere suicides add to the biomass capacity of a harvester. More deaths around them equate to a more valuable harvester at the time of match extraction.

I think the system should work like this. The first sacrificial clone should take a 15% cut of all clones biomassed by the harvester (again pending that this player's team hold's the harvester at the end of the match). If another player has to harvest themselves to change ownership of the harvester, both players now share a 7.5% cut of biomass sales. Each further player sacrifice reduces the biomass sacrifice bonus by half. This system encourages more end of match offensives on collection nodes in order to keep individual player bonuses high.

It feels like a system like that should only work in planetary conquest. Otherwise, you're turning out too much isk after a match. There would have to be some kind of change to the value of biomassed merc in public contracts and faction warfare versus PC battles.

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 got the impression that if a single player is the team's sole Dyson sacrifice that they would still receive the 15% bonus no mater how many times they entered the spheres. If that works in the context of having to share a sacrifice bonus with other team members who harvest themselves, the lowest your bonus would be is 1/16th of the 15%. Even that example of 35 clones perishing within range of the harvester would net a player about 52,000 isk if all members of team harvested themselves at one point during the game.

Remember, any death, even sphere suicides add to the biomass capacity of a harvester. More deaths around them equate to a more valuable harvester at the time of match extraction.

That adds an interesting bit of strategy to the mix. I know it would certainly make the end of match moments more intense. Players would have to weigh the choices of 1.) do I use a suit to get an additional cut of the harvest, 2.) when do I go about harvesting myself if I only have one opportunity to do so.

In consideration of choice two, if you expend yourself too early in the match you may run the risk of being unable to counter hack the sphere it the opposing team mounts a zerg rush of the spheres in the final moments of the match.

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

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

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

On the contrary, I definitely think suiciding in public areas should count toward the biomass value of the harvester. Technically, hacking the harvester is suicide, however leaving the opportunity for players to chose the location and time of death in the context of adding value to harvester only opens up new ways of thinking about the war economy and value of life in the New Eden universe.

When you go into a battle you still have the ability to choose warpoint-centric options which net you additional experience in matches. On the other hand, you have the choice to boost your bank by securing control of biomass harvesters and adding to their value with your own body (Remember: this action of suicide to the harvester does not net warpoints, and in turn faster skill progression). Sometimes the goals associated with these choices overlap and sometimes they don't. The key point is the choice exists. I see novel potential here. Possibility to warp a lot of the conventions of win states we've come to understand in many first person shooters.

Sure it may subvert public contracts and faction warfare making their outcomes far more volatile. However, if you are concerned with the behavior of the other players on your team, go ahead and join or start a corporation that shares your ideals.

This is a good Idea and supports the creativity of the player base but that fifteen percent is a lot , in comparison to how long the game plays out and how many clones have to sacrifice them selves divided by how many clones die. That would be a great deal of a bonus. If they take your ideal and put it to use they just might cut your percentages in half and increase the division , because now not only are the launch pods important , now this becomes of strategic importance , even more so because you get a cut of the gross , so it's like money in the biomass bank so to say. This is a great idea though and I hope CCP looks into this.

Hack time depends on current shield and health strength at the moment a player connects with the harvester. Attaching to the harvester sphere doesn't immediately kill the sacrificing player. What does occur is the sphere deconstructs the player at a constant rate of 60 hp/sec. A player in a deconstruction phase cannot be 'killed' technically by small arms, as such fire only speeds up their deconstruction process. This includes headshots. The only way to prevent a player from successfully changing control of a harvester is to forceably dislodge their husk from the terminal via a one hit kill concussive explosion. This can be done with remote explosives, grenades, and forge guns for example.

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.

Right, a suicide harvest hack does lower the clone counter, but that clones value is deposited into the machine. Raising the normal clone counter by a marginal amount for public and faction warfare matches is fine.

An extension to the harvester idea came up that I'd like to run by everyone. What if it was possible to siphon off clone biomass into LAV/Dropship transport container modules? These would be used to refill Biomass levels in CRUs, raising clones counts by very small levels per successful transport.

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

I was thinking 4 (small) and 8 (large container) clones per transport.
The powergrid requirement of the large container would relegate it to being used on a logistics based tank for example.

I was thinking 4 (small) and 8 (large container) clones per transport.
The powergrid requirement of the large container would relegate it to being used on a logistics based tank for example.

Would you make the canisters explosive, making them more dangerous to carry? Chalk it up to some way in which the container refrigerant works.

I'm not a fan of that. Also, refrigerants are usually inert gasses. Sure you might get a pressure explosion and a toxic vapor cloud, but no flame.

I like the toxic cloud idea from an damaged canister. It's a temporary area of denial after effect.

Snip.

That makes sense. I guess I glossed over the whole logic behind the extraction of harvesters when hammering out these other details.

In terms of lore, the biomass could be transported instantly once collected via localized wormholes to the MCC or a space platform.

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.

I don't think it's entirely realistic to have recycled cloned refuned in real time. Instead, I think it would work better if clones are sent to the MCC as the are much closer to the battlefield for short range uplink tethers to 'feasibly' work. Here on the MCC they exist a bonus isk bank that is rewarded to the victor because they did not lose their ship.

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.

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.

TL:DR Battle Paradigm

Do you risk a lowered defense of the null canons in order to protect harvesters which add high potential isk cargo to your MCC, or do you defend the null canons in order to protect the MCC and the biomass profits on-board?

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.

This also benefits teams that become redlined, and actually encourages teams to lure opposing sides out of the redline into range of the harvester so they can continue to earn bonus money or resupply troop reserves.

The additional 10 clone carrying capacity could be a skill tree investment benefit. You receive +2 clones to overall capacity per level. I would bundle this in with the current mobile CRU operation.

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

Certainly, the weight of additional biomass should slow a player down. I don't think it should slow vehicles down. With vehicles I am thinking that certain classes of vehicles have a certain number of attachment slots to which the containers are affixed to while in transport. Logistics based vehicles would obviously have more open slots.

Containers would be exposed for the most part and have decent level of hit points before being destroyed. With what I talked about with MySpaceTom, destroyed canisters would damage a vehicle over a period of time with corrosive based attributes. That means the more biomass that container the longer contents would leak out and corrode the vehicle's integrity. This could be a 1 to 1 sec relationship, meaning a full 12 clone can would provide a 12 second area burn.

The amount of damage the corrosive burn does is up from discussion.

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.

Hey are you forgetting about spawning in? The smart spawn mechanic might not sit well with players when it's sending them into irradiated regions.

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.

I'd actually be interested in seeing foot solider couriers added into that mix. It would be similar to the Mass Effect Multiplayer retrieval objectives. A merc picks up a vat and it highly diminishes their walking and running speed. Vehicles would most likely be needed to assist mercs in travel time.

Object Retrieval Objective

I would also argue for some type of HUD notification to identify when clone containers are on the move.

Clones are not stored within the harvester themselves. Clones are either diverted to the MCC or if a transport container courier is within range (5m) then the clones are diverted there.

What I love about your idea is the radiation period tied to a hacked harvester. What I would love to see from that is an initial high intensity gamma burst of about 450hp damage that fires out about 10m from a harvester once a hack is complete. There would be an audible rising tone signal that lets players know in the immediate area of a harvester when a suicide hack is about to complete. Opposing players and friendly teammates have the indication to abandon the area or stay and fight. However, in doing so they are likely going to die from the blast and fallout (this fallout damage being equivalent to ~50hp/s damage in the 15m radius zone).

What works about that scenario is you can have a friendly high EHP tanked suit holding the transport container next to harvester scooping up players that die from the gamma burst and the immediate fallout. The reason this tanked suit has the ability to survive the fallout is with the help of a long beam repair tool person on the periphery of the fallout zone healing the courier of most radiation damage.

Not to be late on the issue , but I think you gave the reason that the person survived the blast who was equipped with the transporter container as being helped by a long beam repair tool , but why not have that type of equipment added to the container as an extra incentive to carry such a heavy tool that prohibits movement. It not only transports the mass that is collected but it protects the wearer from the blast.

Is that too far off ???? Bad ideal ????

I'm glad to have you guys here to keep the ball rolling on expanding these ideas. It's amazingly helpful!

Now you just need a Dev or CPM tag to draw some more attention to the topic.

Just be careful with talking about lasers around CCP Mintchip. She can take you off on quite a tangent.

LAZoRZ!!!!

inb4 Mintchip

lol

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.

Yeah, that could be an issue. You could draw a comparison to how friendlies killed in precision strikes count against your friendly fire count. An argument could be made that while both systems give you warning sound before their area of effect damage takes effect, harvesters are stationary objects that you approach at your own risk. You have a better sense of battlefield awareness with a harvester's when a gamma blast is likely to occur. The two main red flags are the solider approaching a terminal and the subsequent sound of a player in deconstruction phase building up to a gamma blast. That should give you enough warning if you are vigilant to get out of the blast area.

So exponential damage growth would looks like this for the radiation fallout.
Hack 1: 30hp/s , 15m radius zone , 30 seconds
Hack 2: 60hp/s , 25m radius zone , current timer + 30 seconds
Hack 3: 120hp/s , 35m radius zone , - -
Hack 4: 240hp/s , 45m radius zone , - -

I think there has to be some type of damage dropoff as you move farther from the harvester. These radiation figures should be representative of the damage a player would take standing right next to the harvester during this radiation period. This would give daisy chained repair healers a better chance of getting a player up to the controls of a harvester while in radiation cool down.

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

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