Very well thought out and interesting idea, just not an NPC contract beyond Beta. +1

It's the substance that would make the difference. In order to keep people from disengaging in the "One Universe, One War" foundation, it would need to be a contested barge that actually belongs to someone/ some corp and have an effect on that corps ability to wage war somewhere. In that way it would give the infantry only people a playground and still be a contribution to the overall gameplay, lore, roleplay, whatever.

This may also lead into an interesting mesh of Eve and Dust, as an Eve corp would first have to disable the barge in space before it could be contested. Borrowing from existing sov mechanics, it might not be terribly difficult to modify to apply to war barges. It would also answer a ton of questions people have asked about whether war barges would be attackable, and if so, conquerable or destructable.

This is a way better idea you have here than some map generated out of thin air for people to play on that has no lasting effect beyond stats.

Very good Idea. I hope CCP takes this into consideration.

Thanks for the input.
I agree with you that in the future, it would be interested to have fights for player owned ships in Dust 514. But it would need a lot more thoughts and balance than any planetary fight. Also, we have no real idea how war barge will work within EVE. Will they be "attackable" (sorry), EVE player driven etc.. Regarding other player owned ships, it's even more complicated. First they are the tools for eve players to actually play the game. Having those ship being destroyed by mercs without them having any real involvement could make a lot of people angry. To make it simple, it could take years to reach that kind of interactions.

Thus why i suggest to have this as a NPC contracted type of fight for starter. Would already set in-space fights as something that exists and leave plenty of time to think for further interactions. Would also contend many infantry players. Two birds one stone.

After all, no NPC contracted fights will have any impact on the overall EVE universe and wether we like or not, they will probably the most played battles for a while. So, doesnt matter if we have War Barge fights in those high-sec battles at first.

But in the end, anyone will probably agree that infantry battles on player owned spaceships would be the ultimate step for the EVE universe.

I hear ya. As much fun as it would be to have Eve ships (f.ex. a Titan) able to be tackled and overrun with mercs, yes it's a long way off. War Barges do not currently exist in Eve, it's a Dust based asset. It is also an asset that corporations will eventually need to build/buy and defend (with Eve fleet support). I'm probably thinking a year or more in advance. For now the NPC contract is probably a good way to go. For now. Until the mechanics are in place for grander things.

I dont see how it would work

Ther is no mention of how the attackers would board the warbarge to start with, its just attackers turn up out of thin air and attack

So its a no

The idea is that one NPC corp manages to hack one of the enemy War Barge CRUs, allowing it to deploy its own mercs inside. Purpose could then be to either capture the War Barge for their own use, or to aim for its destruction. Honestly, i always have slight preference for destruction Lol. Now, gameplay details.

Still how do they get up ther to the warbarge which is orbiting around the planet?

How do you initiate said hack on an internally contained CRU in the War Barge in the first place? (Lore wise) Is there a prerequisite gameplay moment or ingame object that initiates it? Such as some kind of large infrastructure/installation on the planet below that has a high power communications node to remotely hack into the enemy MCC above?

You overlook a main point. Reality.

In reality I am not playing this game all the time. I play it maybe once to twice a week now. So how could that work? If half a corp is on East coast time and asleep while the other corp is full of West Coast time zone people, the West Coast team would overwhelm the other because half the players aren't playing a video game. Even if you could have it be scheduled, it's likely that people would not show up on the East Coast because it would interfere with work or sleep or any other aspect of a LIFE. So before proposing all these corporation specific maps, think about the people involved. Dust shouldn't be a religion. It should be a video-game. It can have all the cool features like EVE integration that would make it more fun and unique, but don't have it demand more than the average person wants to put in.

You seem to be ignoring the fact that this suggestion is about assaulting War Barges controlled by NPCs.

You seem to be ignoring that I don't know what an NPC is. I play this game once a week. I have very little knowledge of EVE other than a first glance at their site.

The Mighty - out