Sorry if tis was asked but how does this work with the reinforcement timers that they talked about in the Foxfour thread?

Yes, CCP would do the best table-top RP games if they ever do them, they create great setting, print a book and let you dream. When it comes to software it takes them years and years to shape things. But it's good and with no real alternative.

So I haven't seen this referenced yet, but have you guys seen the DUST 514 PS Home station video that looks like it is previewing the district conflict interface? It shows command nodes and a whole planet covered in hexagonal tiles. Its like a 5 second clip though...?

I love these ideas. They fit very well into an idea I posted in a thread a while back about getting rid of "game modes" and making the objectives of each battle vary with the installations present. For example:

An empty district would simply require winning an ambush battle (or series of ambush battles) to gain control of it.

But:

A refinery might require itself to be captured to flip a district. The refinery might have several stages of objectives a la Skirm 1.0 before victory is acheived.

However, this allows a alternate take on objectives; sabotage or hit and run missions.

The same refinery has an alternate set of objectives that if pursued instead of the capture objectives, would destroy the installation permanently, or at least damage it requiring a cooldown of a varyig amount of time before it is operational and productive again, depending on the amount of damage dealt to the facility.

This would allow dynamic campaigns. Tactics like actual raids on enemy territory to disable key infrastructure without taking and holding territory would become available, or scorched earth campaigns were defenders destroy their own installations before they leave.

And of course, installation based game modes would make it more variety with the game.

For instance imagine the possible objectives for a skyfire battery compared to a supply dump, or a surface command center compared to those of a war factory... The possibilities are endless.

The scale or importance of objectives would depend on installation size, with main objectives being the large installations, side objectives medium, and minor objecives small installations.

I must type up a thread on this.

Your proposed district systems would work seamlessly wiith my ideas, making a very real and organic connection between PI and DUST battles.

In total agrrement with you on the crux of the merc experience being driven by resource geopolitics + territory investment - there so much good that comes from working fro

I'm thinking the interplay of the right attack/defense mechanics with a resource/territorial conflict driver like yours is what will give us the richest experience gaming has ever seen.

As a working model to iterate on, A'RealFury/Free Beers attack/defense mechanics with Vaerana Myshtana resource/territory conflict drivers are well on the way to giving this merc the full-clonebody-nerdgasm that online gaming promised 20+ years ago.

This goes against many posts I've made on how I don't want to see "walking in stations" implemented anytime soon, but that's because I want other things to be fixed well before that occurs.

But...(WARNING)

What if for pure aesthetics, you could move your Mercenary Quarters planetside/moonside and have a window view of the district?

I'm sure people in EVE have barrels of ISK to throw, and I'm sure it would occur in real life if legal, but basically storm mansions so you can live there.

You got this beautiful view of a mighty fine planet, on occasion, you hold LAV races around the district for fun. You use your beautiful but resource devoid as a firing range and just for your occasional drug deal.

But then Richy Rich shows up and starts a heated battle over your killer vista.

Thoughts?

This goes against many posts I've made on how I don't want to see "walking in stations" implemented anytime soon, but that's because I want other things to be fixed well before that occurs.

But...(WARNING)

What if for pure aesthetics, you could move your Mercenary Quarters planetside/moonside and have a window view of the district?

I'm sure people in EVE have barrels of ISK to throw, and I'm sure it would occur in real life if legal, but basically storm mansions so you can live there.

You got this beautiful view of a mighty fine planet, on occasion, you hold LAV races around the district for fun. You use your beautiful but resource devoid as a firing range and just for your occasional drug deal.

But then Richy Rich shows up and starts a heated battle over your killer vista.

Thoughts?

Well, I gotta disagree with you on Walking in Stations, so I'm loving this. I wants my killer pad on a Plasma planet!

I'm thinking CCP should add a player-designed architecture module to DUST and allow publishing like Spore did - we could then sell our designs for ISK or trade them for officer weapons ^^

I'd love it, but I doubt they'd go there.

Have you looked a Player Owned Station (POS) in EVE?

A POS looks like a phallic symbol floating inside a soap bubble surrounded by a scrapyard.

Still, people will pay stupidly huge amounts of RL money for custom stuff. Remember Second Life? No gameplay at all, but it was like Gallente Central - all glitz, sex, and marketing.

You're right of course - the intelligence of the New Eden playerbase not withstanding, time-to-*****(ttp) has a natural unit measured in minutes from the release of any player-controlled graphical tool, so to speak.

It would add a lot to the appeal of the game to a larger(i.e. the sims crowd) playerbase who would luv to $pend-to-create and personalize.

+ 1
Great idea man, and some great discussion in this thread, if CCP managed to implement the system you described, i could imagine a massive draw to this game because it would involve a good mix of strategy for the RTS guys to fawn over and the fast paced action of the FPS guys.

Personally i'd be interested to see the dynamic of the interaction between EVE and Dust if this became reality as the control of the districts that are heavily built upon would be of strategic importance to the power blocs in eve.

Thats where the we the mercs would come in as the "first strike" as it were, to take the planets while the capsuleers fight above to take the system, would be a great opening move in a sov war and make it more interesting too.

Also a idea just throwing it out there, to have the sov mechanic have both a space TCU and a planet TCU per system , would definitely shake things up if as an alternative to using SBU's a merc corp could hack the planet side one to allow the strike of the space counterpart.

Like you said the power blocs have way too much control ,with the OTEC agreement for the tech moons the isk flow is streaming towards the big blocs as it is. But i divert, keep it up :)

Do you know if the moon mineral rebalancing ever had an impact on OTEC?

But, yeah, I think that planets may affect nullsec sov in some way, like they do now in FW systems? I know that in the Seening the Universe talk, they mentioned orbital defense stations. I wonder if those would affect it...

Of course, then we get back to the question of the biggies zerging all the planets in their space.

The biggest result of the rebalancing was that Tech became even moreso the be-all and end-all for moongoo. Hence the Goon/Test Pax Technia.

There are still other huge supercap fleets out there, but the stark reality is the Goons and TEST, because they're the primary Techholders, are really the only alliances that can recover quickly from large supercap losses.

I hear you re: the very real fear that the alliances will find a way to sew up planets.

We really need to keep hammering away at these terrestrial resource models and battle mechanics until we know we've got a system that's very resistant to planetary stagnation and domination through overwhelming wealth.

The complementary TCU's is an attractive idea for adding much-needed dynamics to SOV. Just as attractive, it separates land-holding from affecting SOV, and leads to more interesting dynamics. Taking districts/planets but not installing a terrestrial TCU might keep you off the mega-blob radar for a little while.

i feel like CCP reads all the terribad threads and skips the good ones.

Well, except for that one on FW Economics. CCP FoxFour spent a bunch of time in that one.

Oh well, I guess I got my hopes up.

Then again, maybe I got too close to the Truth(TM) that is coming Soon (TM) and they are taking out a merc contract to have me eliminated...