This is fantastic, made better by the fact that it is almost a carbon copy of what I have done myself.

Now, someone mentioned changing clonepacks into MCC which is kind of cool when you think about it. A warbarge flying around dropping MCC's the have clones in them to establlish a beachhead.

I also want to have a strict range limit on cp attacks from the Warbarge, and not clone mortality, just to make the initial attack simpler /you know I prefer the initial attack to be launched from a list of districts in the client.

If I get really edgy, what if you have a capacity of X MCC's. The MCC's could be manufactured in some way, such as reprocessingsalvaged gear into Nanites and Materials, and Clone packs from Biomass. I agree with the system being self sustaining but augmentable if you have districts, but the capacity of the warbarge inhibits established corps from using only CP's.

What about District Timers, or do you prefer a whole different section for that?

How do we define corporate Rank such as that they help keep players together, not corp jump to exploit a system, can not be exploited via new alts, yet require corporations to build their ranks by recruiting and training new players.

What about Surface Infrastructure, do we go back to properly punish far attacks, and make the SIs neceessary, not the way we have it now where cargo hubs rule.

Rewards, the CPM and I agree that the main motivator of fighting cannot be clones for the sake of clones, nor ISK. There needs to be rarity that is only collected on districts. However, we have discussed going to a "you get what you kill" in PC. That would allow lower level and new corporations to use their free clonepack, use adv gear and try to "do their best", possibly eeking out a profit and valuable experience.

Just some stuff written from bed. Again, really like what I am seeing. Maybe I will break out special sections for subcomponents of PC; but I feel they need to be all a part of the bigger context.

I thought of something, what if we have 2 types of clonepacks, one that can not be used to win a district, and is more manageable to new corps, and initiates only 8v8 or 12v12 attacks? And the other one is the 16v16 and is needed to claim a district. just a thought.

The issue I see with a raid being the first stage of a district takeover is that it means the stakes for the smaller, quicker fights are still high and will lead to the same pressures we have now in PC fights to always field your best.

Actually, would it be possible to do something similar to clone packs to what sovereignty bills do in EVE?

For example:

A new corporation with no districts: 1 million ISK Clone Packs
A more established corporation with 1 district: 5 million ISK Clone Packs
An even more established corporation with 10 districts: 50 million ISK Clone Packs

The numbers are randomly thought up but the idea is to allow corporations who want to enter PC the ability to do so. Meanwhile more established corporations still have the option to, but are guided to using already available resources, instead of what used to be easy-to-buy Clone Packs.

What do you guys think?

There needs to be at least a 24 hour heads-up before a PC. I know it's sandbox, and as far as EVE goes, almost anything is allowed, but what would completely kill PC for a lot of corps would be the ability to launch a battle that starts in 5 min. If a corp has 5 people and maybe 4 more in a chat, and the attacking corp already has 16 ready to go, then it'll get really bad for those 9 people if they try to defend, and Dust will leave them feeling really sour that they're not in their corp's prime time.

If the game was as big as Planetside 2, then that would work because there would always be a ton of people on. But with 16 v 16 and timed battles, a 5 minute launcher just isn't right. We need at least the 24 hour heads-up.

Raider MCC (8v8) and Invader MCC (12v12)?

Some spit-balled idea I had hidden away in my Imgur account that I thought of. Really high-level idea that probably isn't feasible at current but, yanno.

http://i.imgur.com/h3bWsy7.png

Great stuff fox, I particularly like the three stage fight for districts.

Only problem I see in the whole proposal is the no timer for raids. This could leave small corps at a disadvantage if another corp simply raided their district repeatedly while no one was on and claimed all their clones.

Simple fixes for this would be to exclude the option for a simple raid. In other words when you win a raid it would force a timer for the second phase as opposed to letting the squad leader simply claim the remaining clones from the defender or having raid timers which would enable battles for 3 hours a day.

Then recruit. The raids should be persistent. I think it would provide big corps that used numbers and smaller more elite corps that rely on near perfection.

Just a minor thing: You have Production Facility twice in your Districts post. Was that intended?

EDIT: Also, great work by the way! I'm loving all of this.

Stuff

Not really been involved in PC but enjoyed the read.

With the Raids is there a possibility that they could be tied into the mercenary aspect of the game? i.e the attackers initiate the raid and the defenders are unprepared for it without enough members online to mount a defence.

If a high enough ranking member of the defenders corporation is online they can put out a general call for mercenaries currently online whom they have to pay x amount, either negotiated on a per individual basis or based on stats etc to join the defence team for that raid only.

It means that they'd be able to field a full team, at an additional cost, BUT also adds in the risk of either a) getting a bullet sponge such as myself or maybe even a ringer that will sabotage the defences from within....... maybe because the attackers offered them more or maybe striking lucky and temporarily recruiting the clone that turns the tide.

Would be a way to get other people involved and introduced to PC matches, possibly help with recruitment if you find a good un.

Again though not sure if this is workable, viable or what is and isn't possible.

As to the raiding, I had some ideas on how they would unfold myself.

Main Points:

-Corps can set a district to be vulnerable to raiding for a 1 hour period on the fly (aka, they can set it to be the next hour, so long as it doesn't overlap their normal vulnerability period) They may do this multiple times, potentially chaining them together for long periods of being "raid-able"

-Districts that are open to raiding receive some sort of bonus. Fluff-wise it's the district diverting power from the normal defenses that make it invulnerable to super-charge production. During this 1 hour period, the district produces something useful.

-Raiders can attack (as you proposed, Fox) to attempt to steal Biomass / Other Productions from the District. To counterbalance things they can only steal production up to 110% of what the district would normally produce during this 1-hr "supercharged" period.

-After the first successful raid on a district, it "locks" for the rest of that 1-hr vulnerable period. If the District Owners enter another vulnerable period (of their choosing) then this unlocks the district for further raiding.

-The outcome of a raid isn't a binary "all or nothing" outcome, with the potential for the attacker to gain some to all of the potential pool of supply / biomass that is at stake. (50 - 110% of the boosted output) Note all of these outcomes count as a "successful" raid.

-Since the District Owners -CHOSE- to unlock the district during this time, battles start 10-15 min after the Attackers declare their attack.

The overall idea with this raiding structure is to provide a method for both defenders and attackers to gain something by allowing a district to be raid-able, such that both sides have incentive to do so. The 1-hr period is small enough that the Defenders should be expected to be able to field a full raid-sized team on short notice. (The choice of a defender to chain together multiple of these sessions is their own, each 1-hr session is treated as separate from the others)

Raiding should cost some funds on the Raiders part (in costs of clones, and the equipment that needs to be deployed) It is very important that this cost be less than ~50% of an "average" win's earnings. (Clones not included) In this way a raider can be profitable with only a 50% win rate, and more than that allows additional earnings.

On the Defenders side, the production boost should be such that it is worthwhile to hold at least one battle with reasonable clone losses and still turn a profit. If the average successful defense costs MORE than what would be earned by the production boost, then nobody will do it.

How do you think about a matter of using many ringers?
I think that at least a corp should have their 12 members .(16 vs 16)

Edit: How is this NOT stickied?

If the battle begins and no enemy shows up one minute after the hack points are controlled the enemy MCC is captured intact and claimed.

If neither shows up CONCORD destroys both MCCs and ejects both corps from the district.