Monthly Archives: March 2013

Possible new contract types

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This isn’t a CSM post. Though if I do get in, I’d certainly be suggesting them.

There’s been a suggestion in past CSM minutes that they’re going to be looking at the contract system, adding new contract types into it. I’ve had a few thoughts on this, in part spurred on by a discussion with someone over a mineral compression service.

So, exercising my hopefully well-known ego, a few thoughts:

Manufacturing Contract:

A fairly simple one this. The person putting up the contract puts a bunch of materials into the contract, with a requirement for the delivery of specific set of items at the end of it. Modules, rigs, ships, etc.

The person accepting the contract has to put up a collateral. If they fail to deliver at the end, it’s forfeit. This way, both the buyer, and the manufacturer have some sort of guarantee that the other will follow through.

Of course, there’s nothing to say that the person putting it up has to put in enough materials.

Supply Contract:

Almost identical to the one above. In fact, it’s the same, except no materials are added. It’s a WTB Contract, that the supplier can know won’t go away before they deliver (as long as they stay within the time limit).

Reverse Auctions:

These are common in the real world for supply contracts. People will bid against each other, reducing the price they will accept, to get the business. This is more a modifier for the other contracts. It would need a short duration for the contract itself. Works well for courier contracts too. Want to avoid dead heading? How low are you willing to go to get that work?

Mercenary Contracts:

Destroy a specific thing. Do a specific quantity of damage to the opposing corporation. Ideally with some kind of sliding payscale.

 

Loan Contracts:

Put up collateral, get ISK (from another player). Don’t repay the ISK, lose the collateral.

Lowsec – CSM8 trail

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The question a lot of people who start EVE ask is, what’s low sec?

And once they’ve heard the answer, they ask ‘Why in gods name would I want to go there?’

Right now, unless you’re in Faction Warfare, I don’t have a particularly good answer for you. And that’s not a good thing. Lowsec /should/ be an engaging place. Where people want to go, for reasons other than ‘I want to shoot people’. Because without those people, the number of people to shoot is pretty damn low.

Right now, Lowsec (outside of faction warfare) is like NPC nullsec, but with sec hits and gate guns.

While it’s not the focus of my campaign, I don’t like that. I have a few ideas, mostly spit balling as I’ve not talked with many denizens of Low.

Step one: Limited Cyno Jamming. Carriers and Dreads are fine. Supercaps are less so. Adding a blapable structure (Probably in a size limited plex) to turn it off a limited jammer for a while, would make this less of an issue, while not totally crippling logistics. When I say limited Jamming, it’s bad terminology. Light all the Cynos you want, but only ships below a certain size can jump in.

Step two: Local. As an intel source, it’s too powerful. So it needs replaced with something more flexible, were you have to take an action to check if there’s anyone else in system. Or, perhaps, making it delayed. So you have to be in system for a while, before it picks you up. Maintenance is a bitch, after all. and who cares about funding lowsec? 😉

Step 3: POS anchored somewhere other than moons. A POS at a moon is asking to be reinforced, then blapped, with minimal effort in locating it. Shifting them off moons makes it harder to find them. Though I’m thinking a new scan method will be needed. Something a little more time intensive than combat probing.

Step 4: Even out the restrictions on lowsec space. Lowsec is lowsec. 0.4 shouldn’t be special.

Step 5: Station ‘ownership’. I’m not entirely sure how to take this forward, but a kind of mini sov. you don’t own the system, and can’t block people out of the station, but you can get some fees from it, if you take it. Anchored modules near the station, perhaps. Something to ‘Take it hostage’. Or taking out specific NPCs. ‘Protection’ missions?

Step 6: Something to draw people in. Needs to be profitable enough to pay for lost ships. Industry won’t do it, which means resource gathering. Ring mining would be good. More exploration sites (which are easier to find) too.

There are other options. And I’d love to hear your opinions.

Highsec PvP – CSM8 trail

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Non-Consensual PvP is part of Eve, and I would not see it gone. While I prefer not to have people do violence unto me, they have the right to try. Just as I have the right to make myself as unappealing as is viable.

If you check my Corp’s war history, you’ll see one war on it (As the time of writing). No deaths on it, but not because I didn’t log on for a week. I was waiting. They didn’t undock. Probably because there was no benefit for them doing so. One guy in a BC isn’t exactly a great incentive, after all. And the war had already paid for itself by then. Next time, the POS stays up and becomes a dickstar, rather than being stolen when it unanchored. Well played. A learning experience.

Ganking is doing fine and well too, it would seem. Plenty of people who don’t follow the simple ‘No more than a Billion or so in a freighter’ guideline. And plenty of people who mine in high risk regions of Highsec, without even the most rudimentary tank. No, a small shield booster is not a tank. If you’ve been ganked, and are offended, the close tab button is up there. HTFU.

Some candidates appear to want to make high-sec less safe. I don’t agree with them there. But I /certainly/ agree it shouldn’t be made any safer.

That’s not to say changes aren’t needed, however.

A war where one side stays docked up, or doesn’t bother logging on, is no fun for anyone.

You can’t /force/ someone to fight. They just wouldn’t bother logging on. What that leaves is making them /want/ to fight. Now that’s harder to do.

Anything that can adjust the cost of a war has the potential to be gamed, leading to a new dec shield. One thought that rattles round my head is having, depending on the size of the corporation, various bandings of kills and losses adjusting either the cost of the next inbound war, or the duration of a ‘safe’ time.

So a 3 man corp losing a billion isk in ships, is then safe for, say, a month (from the end of the last war. Wars are automatically ended. Maybe. This seems gameable. Maybe just a cost boost, for that period of time.)

A corp the size of Eve University has no changes.

So small corps then have a reason to go lose isk in a fight. And maybe even kill the enemy.

Hard caps are, of course, required to stop it from being hideously gamed.

I’d want to see statistics on high-sec wars, to be able to flesh out numbers to something that makes sense. There’s a suggestion I saw on Poetic’s site about bounties and warfare, which looked interesting, but I’m not sure it speaks to the people who would hide away. A benefit, even if they lose, is another matter.

Another thing to do is make it easier to swap into a clone without expensive implants. Maybe just in the station you’re in (with or without a medical station, no standings). No jumping across the cluster. This might be a step too far, however.

tl;dr:

  • Fighting is good
  • Ganking isn’t evil
  • Hiding in stations is bad
  • Giving people reasons not to hide might fix it
  • Stuff blowing up is good for my bottom line.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Heckling?

My first lie, on the CSM8 Trail

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Well, I’ve done it. Thrown my hat in, for the elections for CSM 8

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=215204

And the lie?

It’s not a particularly nice hat. It’s one of those caps known as a train drivers cap. Not a big floofy one, just one which looks a bit like a baseball cap, but not so hemispherical. Similar to cap

Please don’t trample it anyway? It keeps the top of my head from getting sunburnt, here in sunny Scotland.