R F Gyro
ZionTCD
Legacy Rising
315
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Posted - 2013.02.08 12:12:00 -
[1] - Quote
I was thinking about this post and realised that I needed to clearly articulate my ideas before I could respond properly to it, so here goes...
I think most Dust players like the idea of capturing ships from Eve players, but we have to accept that it would need to be introduced very carefully. CCP know how vocal their Eve players can be, and won't do anything that risks seriously upsetting them. Whatever gets implemented therefore needs to be done step-by-step to give lots of opportunities to tune it as it develops. For example...
** Phase 1 - Starship "maps"
Just a standard ambush style battle, but using ships from the Eve universe as the battlefield. Close quarters, possibly with limited weapons choices (don't go using that forge gun in here mate).
Phase 1 is focussed on getting the shipboard battle mechanics right.
** Phase 2 - NPC ship capture (faction warfare)
Eve already has Faction Navy NPC ships in the game. You can now capture them!
We start with special Dust lobbies for mercs to wait in, one for each empire faction. You can only go into the lobbies in pre-built squads, and you have to put up some ISK to do so. Each squad can choose how much ISK to post.
An Eve pilot equips a cruiser with a boarding module; he flys to the NPC ship, tackles it, gets within 1000m and activates the boarding module, paying some ISK to do so: he can choose how much ISK to pay. A contract is put up in the two lobbies, one for attack, one for defence. The payout for the contracts is a proportion of the ISK the Eve pilot payed; whether this is 5%, 95% or something in between is set by CCP to maintain balance between the economies.
Two teams are picked for the contract and battle it out; the team with the highest ISK posted from each lobby is picked. The battle is again a simple ambush. The winner gets the full contract ISK, the looser a lesser amount. If the attacking team wins then the Eve player gets the loot from the NPC ship which is hopefully enough to cover the boarding cost.
The boarding module requires one unit of ammo, and the ammo is too large to fit in a cruiser's hold. To try again the pilot needs to dock in a station.
Phase 2 is focussed on getting basic Dust/Eve integration mechanics right.
** Phase 3 - Eve pilot ship capture (FW)
This builds on the NPC ship capture. Phase 2 will have tuned/adjusted the ship capture mechanic so it probably looks nothing like I've suggested, but most people are fairly happy with it.
You now move on to capturing Eve pilot's ships. In this phase this is limited to faction warfare again, so the lobbies from phase 2 can still be used. The Eve pilot needs to tackle his target and tank whatever damage it can do for as long as the battle takes to complete. If the attacking ship is destroyed, or the target warps away, the battle ends immediately and the Dust mercs on the attacking team all lose their clones (the boarding module was surpressing the target's onboard anti-personnel defences, which are instant death to the attackers once they are used). If the attacking team wins the battle then its Eve pilot is forcibly ejected from his ship; hopefully the attacker has a buddy waiting nearby in a pod. If the defenders win then the attacker's target lock is broken - the target should be aligned at this point and can just warp off.
** Phase 4 - non-FW ship capture
The main change in phase 4 is implemeting a more flexible lobby system that can cope without clearly defined sides. I have no idea how to do this, but hopefully by the time phase 3 is working smoothly someone will have figured it out.
I'm sure that there would be phases beyond 4 as well, but things will have changed so dramatically by then that it is pointless speculating about them now. |