Drone infestations... that means they are a danger to something... does that mean our districts will have to have members dedicated to pest control to prevent our defenses from being weakened? Because that would mean every corp would either have to maintain a certain level of PvE players, or hire other corps to come in and handle pest control.... which, if the proper mechanics were implemented, could also be used to ambush them when they are not paying attention and sabotage their operations. Possibly set bombs or traps to damage their structures, installations, vehicles, etc. during the next attack on that district to aid the attackers... that would be WICKED! Total subterfuge!

Every planet that has no previous occupants would have to be cleared via PvE before you could build in that district. Then, you would have to keep up with the pest control or the drones could eventually destroy things you build in a district, thereby weakening your defenses if you were to be attacked. I also think it would be cool if you attack a poorly kept district if the drones would help the attackers during battle.

So, will PvE effect PvP CCP?

Having PvE negatively impact PC and FW would be a positive thing. It would force the PvE and PvP communities to intermingle which is good for the overall health of the game.

Having PvE negatively impact PC and FW would be a positive thing. It would force the PvE and PvP communities to intermingle which is good for the overall health of the game.

I don't see a point... Drone Infestations, unless they occurred extremely frequently would just get cleared out by the owning corporation. I mean they would literally have to spawn every 4 hours or so with high penalties if they weren't cleared within like an hour. Otherwise I don't see why my corp would need your corp to clear them out. We would just collect who was ever online pubbing anyways and go clear them out.

It would become content only available to owners of PC districts? Excluding a large portion of the player base? Or you mean, the drone infestation would essentially be a Level 1 or 2 mission that owners are forced to run a couple times per day?

All I see is that its either a headache or exclusive content. I really don't see how this would help the game at all, and it certainly wouldn't promote inter-corporation social interaction.

My Scenario fixes that
Due to a lack of tacnet, your corp will be unable to deal with the infestations themselves. This at the very least will require assistance from another corp insode your alliance.
This would then facilitate the creation of Corps specialised in infestation removal. These Corps would then earn reputations and be hired by other alliances. Just like some people are hired to participate in PC battles.

I would expect low-level infestations to be rather frequent once or twice a week, only infects one district at a time, relatively simple to clear out. Enough to mean you can't abuse the the benifits from PC quite as much.

But you would also get serious infestations that could infest upto 6 adjacent districts. Some low-level, some much more serious. These would probably happen at least once a month. It would also require swift action as infestations can grow, you would need to hire multiple corps to deal with the threat, lest your planet be entirely overun by the infestation.

I don't see a point... Drone Infestations, unless they occurred extremely frequently would just get cleared out by the owning corporation. I mean they would literally have to spawn every 4 hours or so with high penalties if they weren't cleared within like an hour. Otherwise I don't see why my corp would need your corp to clear them out. We would just collect who was ever online pubbing anyways and go clear them out.

It would become content only available to owners of PC districts? Excluding a large portion of the player base? Or you mean, the drone infestation would essentially be a Level 1 or 2 mission that owners are forced to run a couple times per day?

All I see is that its either a headache or exclusive content. I really don't see how this would help the game at all, and it certainly wouldn't promote inter-corporation social interaction.

What i want to see is a drone infestation mechanic that scales geometrically with # of districts held & amount of infrastucture development(not even a variable now, i know). Maybe this would apply to adjacent districts only, not sure right now tbh.

So what we'd get is that if a corp is holding 4 districts, defense contracts are 16 times more frequent/harder than when they held only one. The effect of an unfilled Drone contract would be to 'damage' the district and reduce profit and incur a repair expense.

Just sounds like more headaches then... Certainly doesn't require a corporation dedication to it. Your alliance just takes each others districts and wonder why CCP made it so you can't go on your own district but someone else can.

Just sounds like PC starts spawning free SP as well as ISK. How long would these infestations take to clear out? 12-14 hours or so? (Of continuous playtime with 16 people)

All I see here is that owning x+1 districts is exponentially more difficult than owning x districts. This is a mechanic that I've been against since day 1... and is present in the current PC with a lack of a frontline mechanic. It makes PC largely irrelevant just like the current system. With a system like you propose, there would be no incentive to take more districts, and you would just hold 3-4 districts and that's it. You would take district defenses as they come and otherwise you would never bother attacking other than 'just for fun' as you don't have the resources to hold more districts. This is the same reason why the now-DNS alliance was able to take MH. No incentive to hold districts for most corps and no incentive to go after more.

No, I'm sorry guys. I think this whole thread is just a bunch of terrible ideas. Leave PC as a PvP focused game mode. No need for drones.

If owning more districts is not considerably harder then holding 1 district, you'd ge a monopoly very very quickly. How do you not see that. PC itself needs a rework anyway, there needs to be more focus on owning adjacemt districts.

Owning more districts should be organically more difficult, as you have more PvP to contend with. But if it becomes exponentially harder to hold more districts, the no one wants to participate with the level of difficulty required to hold one. It becomes more expensive to hold a district than the district is worth. That's why no one is in PC atm, except those skilled few who can win almost every match. But those couple corps got tired of fighting the same people every day and now it's more profitable to just blue up.

PC is totally broken, agreed. However, it's already slated for its next iteration sometime relatively soon from what blue posts are saying.

I'm not against some sort of persistence with PvE, I think a lot of the ideas in here are great on their own, I just don't think they have a place in PC at all. I think eve side, having PI affected by drones, where eve players could spawn contracts is a great idea for example. Maybe PC 2.0 or 3.0 will have a means to better integrate PvE but certainly not PC 1.0.