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Dust Mercenaries and Regions: a proposed method for mercenary travel

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Klivve Cussler Ransoms Incorporated 49	Posted - 2013.02.01 20:44:00 - [1] - Quote At the moment, the location of a mercenary within New Eden when not fighting is fixed. In the long term, this poses a number of difficulties, since a large number of transactions and systems within the shared infrastuctures of New Eden are Region specific. These include, but aren't limited to: The Market, Contract Visibility Skybox Empyrean Sovereignty If a merc can see data from all regions, this has the potential to affect Eve Online and potentially allow exploits. A potential solution would be to limit a mercenary's view to the region he/she is in. In order to do that, though, a system of regional travel would need to exist. At first, this should be a background event, not something visible in Eve Online. You could create an invulverable NPC ship and have it travel from a regional hub to another, but I don't think you'd need to do it at first. It could work like this: A mercenary is presented with a map or list of regions in which there is mercenary work (so for now, just where the factional warfare is, and possibly another region or two for quick battles only). The merc chooses the region to travel to, pays a fee, and he and his gear are transported to the selected region, possibly instantly, or possibly after a period of time. Each region would have a particular station designated as a mercenary hub. This simplifies travel and concentrates the mercs in local. In addition, the merc quarters would reflect the manufacture of that station, not the race of the merc. Once a merc is in a region, he would be able to see all contracts within that region (which has the effect of focusing a merc to a particular set of factions), and be able to enter any battle within the region. A map of that region would be much simpler than a whole universe map, giving the merc better context for the faction battles. Once the markets begin to merge, a mercenary could more easily interact with the regional market for the region he is in. Little things, like the skybox in the war room view, are easier if they can be loaded as part of the move, instead of dynamically. In any case, allowing the merc to move from region to region solves a large number of problems both current (context and immersion, as well as factional loyalty incentives), and future (market integration), and should be relatively easy to do, as long as you don't feel the nee
Klivve Cussler Ransoms Incorporated 49	Posted - 2013.02.01 21:08:00 - [2] - Quote Quote: You are sitting there, watching your TV screen which shows a ship full of mercenaries on their way to a conflict. As they wait in real time to arrive on sight your screen turns black with a very non climatic text box that informs you your transport has been ganked.... you are now space dust. New clone! Lol. And then Dust mercs would hire eve pilots to destroy their opponents before they even get to the battle. That would force the transports to move with escorts, which could lead to large battles in Eve to decide the fate of battles in Dust. Next thing you know, Dust mercs are screaming "Nerf Battlecruisers! Battlecruisers are OP!"
Klivve Cussler Ransoms Incorporated 49	Posted - 2013.02.01 21:48:00 - [3] - Quote Quote: dust mercs can clone jump anywhere in new eden. Ok, what about his gear? Anyway, the point is to make the dust merc's visibilty limited to his region, the way Eve Pilots are, for things like contracts and the market.
Klivve Cussler Ransoms Incorporated 49	Posted - 2013.02.01 22:06:00 - [4] - Quote Fair enough. That solves the question of how to travel, but I think the idea of a merc hub for each region has merit, at least until dust corps start renting offices. That just leaves the limited visibility. This feature is getting easier by the minute!
Klivve Cussler Ransoms Incorporated 49	Posted - 2013.02.01 23:31:00 - [5] - Quote I can't seem to quit Eve. I've stopped for months and years and I always come back.
Klivve Cussler Ransoms Incorporated 49	Posted - 2013.02.02 17:23:00 - [6] - Quote Yeah the cluster means all of Known space. The problem is, Eve players can't access all of the cluster at once for things like contracts and market transactions. They're limited to several dozen star systems in what is called a region. List of Regional Maps For things like market integrations, the question arises: Which market to connect to? There is a market for each region, so if the merc can see the whole cluster, he should be able to connect to all the markets, which could cause issues, especially if the merc is allowed to purchase anything, not just Dust gear. In addition, CCP has stated that they want to encourage Dust players participating in Factional warfare to stick with a given faction without forcing them to do so. Limiting a merc's view to a specific region will also limit them to a specific conflict (Ammar vs Minmattar or Gallente vs Caldari) unless they moved to a different region. It also sets the stage for later lowsec and nullsec battles. Another thing CCP has stated that they want to improve is battle context (I agree, since that's the whole premise of the game, that battles have a context and a purpose within the New Eden universe). When playing Eve, it was rare that I looked at the whole map. There are too many systems, too many conflicts, to pay attention to all of them at once. Mostly the region I was active in was the map I was interested in, and possibly the adjacent ones. By limiting a merc's view to a single region, the focus of the conflict becomes much clearer. You can more easily display the status of the factional conflict, for example, in a single region, than you can for the universe as a whole. Think a region as a country or province. When fighting there, a merc would be focused on the fighting in that country, maybe the neighboring ones, but not the status of district 6 on a planet in a region on the other side of the map.
Klivve Cussler Ransoms Incorporated 49	Posted - 2013.02.02 17:45:00 - [7] - Quote Quote: a merc needs to know what's happening EVERYWHERE, they arn't limited to just one region. lol. good luck: Eve News 24 The Mittani News Even CCP can't keep track of what's going on everywhere in New Eden. They are constantly surprised by the events that unfold in the space that exists inside of their servers. Take the battle of Asakai, which involved more than 10% of New Eden's capsuleers logged in at the time. The battle was a complete accident and surprised everyone involved. While I enjoy reading about these, if they are happening 6 regions away, it would be over long before I got there. Battle Report: Battle of Asakai I'm not suggesting that a merc shouldn't be able to find out what is going on all over the cluster. But focusing his view of detailed info to a single region will increase his understanding and focus on the conflict in that region, as well as bringing Dust in line with the way the markets and contracts work in Eve.

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