How to make the game more real-world friendly

[anton_stezhkin]

Problem 1 (real-world): we live in the real world. We have families, pets, kids, leaking pipes e.t.c. That's why sometimes we just have to stop a 12-hour mining trip to do something in the real world. But leaving a 10 000 000$ ship full of treasures in the cold unforgiving void, crawling with loot-hungry pirates, feels wrong.
So i suggest an emergency-despawn (ED) device.
And we have Problem 2 (ingame). The problem is "why not use this in a middle of a fight".
The solution of problem 2 is resitictions, that the ED should have.
1. ED requires zero ship speed to start charging
2. It takes 5 minutes to cherge the ED.
3. Moving the ship or taking damage discharges the ED to zero.
4. After despawning with ED the ship can be respawned not sooner than 1 hour after despawn.

 

[shado20]

this idea is ripe for abuse
your saying despawn a ship 100% out of game anywhere.

look your getting the (i hate this idea) indestructible capital ships soon.

 

[XenoCow]

I understand the problem you're looking to solve. I'd like to propose a counter solution. Instead of de-spawning ships into the aether, perhaps there could be some sort of cloaking device, like a camouflage. You could mask your radiation signature and maybe be invisible at long range so that only those lucky enough to get close could actually find your ship.

I think that could be a good compromise and could have interesting tactical uses too.

Balancing would probably revolve around the visual detection range, possible radiation leakage [so detectable from a distance (maybe the signal is scattered over a wide area or grows dimmer over time rather than instantaneously)], power/size, start/stop delays, and potential consumables to use it.

As a side note, if you're in the belt, a thick patch of fog might do the trick just fine for the time being.

 

[shado20]

as it is, i have a ship i made that has a power down option. i 100% shutdown all systems and go cold/dark. if you park in a thick patch of fog, power down, someone would half to almost run into you to find you.

 

[pavvvel]

1. ED requires zero ship speed to start charging
2. It takes 5 minutes to cherge the ED.
3. Moving the ship or taking damage discharges the ED to zero.
4. After despawning with ED the ship can be respawned not sooner than 1 hour after despawn.

No, no and no.
There should be nothing in the game that brings players any closer to "combat logging" and there should be no mechanics that allow the game to secure your ship anywhere and in any conditions.
As practice shows, ALL such game mechanics degrade the online component of the online game and are abused in every possible way.

If you have a family and leaky pipes, build your game route around that. For example, when I'm at work, I only play in the safe zone because I'm often distracted from the game.

Finding a place to park your ship and searching for carelessly abandoned ships is part of the gameplay. and you want to cut it out of the game just by some mechanic?? again: no, no and no!

 

[casgaf]

Smells like a nub flying around with a transponder outside the safe zone. As written above, it's your problem that you can't hide your ship in the asteroid fog, where enemies can only find your ship by sheer chance. This element of the game must be present because flying out of the safe zone means you can cover the cost of losing your ship.

The golden rule of EVE Online: if you can't buy the ship you left the dock on, don't leave the dock.

 

[Toomboost]

if you're afraid of losing the ship. turn off the transponder and put the ship in the fog, the whole solution to the problem, there is no way to find you, where you are, it's impossible.

 

[aGa (Qlkey)]

You did get out of safezone mean PvP confirmed, so prepare for the worst. No private bs, no combat logging! There is enought with ur own station that has safezone, and fog where u can hide

 

[BlackAndWhiteBird]

You can fly into the fog and safely leave your ship there for an hour, two, a week. The size of the world is so colossal, and the chances of meeting another player outside the points of interest are so small, that it is almost as safe as leaving the ship in a safe zone.

In addition, as the endo indicated above: you deliberately left the safe area, which means that you are aware of the possible risks.

 

[anton_stezhkin]

You can fly into the fog and safely leave your ship there for an hour, two, a week.

Maybe I'm just too paranoic scince I found someone's ship in the fog and took some T3 stuff to upgrade my ship.

 

[Askannon]

It really depends.
Leaving your ship just outside the safezone, cloud or not, is just begging to be robbed.
Leaving your ship 50km outside the safezone and getting robbed? Unless you parked in the main route towards other zones (close to x and y equal to 0) you have just won the misfortune lottery or someone saw you when he tabbed back into the game as the clouds get reloaded then and can show hidden objects though in most cases this isn't really used when mining and more in transit (if even) though you have to be close to be able to even render the thing (I think 5km is the max render distance and even then some things aren't loaded immediately).

 

[shado20]

well if they leave the stations as stupid as they are now, just carry a station cube with you, if you need to run, deploy the station cube and in 10 minutes you have a forever safe zone for almost free! ( i hate this station concept)

 

[pavvvel]

well if they leave the stations as stupid as they are now, just carry a station cube with you, if you need to run, deploy the station cube and in 10 minutes you have a forever safe zone for almost free! ( i hate this station concept)

I think something needs to be done about this so that players don't abort this method.
The safe zone around the new station should be activated after a minimum of 24 hours.

The problem is that when players abuse this method, they overload the server with their stations and deprive other players of a whole layer of gameplay - searching for ships

 

[Haladin]

Players can only have 3 stations each, and they cost 250k+ in materials. I don't see this as a big problem.

 

[HardworkingSlacker]

Well, I really dislike this idea because the safe zone is big enough already as it is (~10,000,000 cubic kilometers, at least a third of it intersecting with the belt) so there is not really a need to cater to players in terms of safety even more.
Also, the odds of being found in a cloud are negligible, at least if you take the time to fly more than 50 kilometers along the belt away from the origin ring.
However, I can agree with the notion that this game is not very real world friendly especially if radiation mechanics get introduced when you have to fly 2+ hours while constantly having to check for energy signatures.
150 m/s is just so painfully slow...

Players can only have 3 stations each, and they cost 250k+ in materials. I don't see this as a big problem.

If you are flying a 2+ million ship with ores worth 5+ million you can probably afford these mobile safe zones for the rare cases where you actually need them. It's not like you have to throw them out like candy since radiation mechanics do not exist and will not enter the game in the forseeable future.
And in fact, I always have a spare cube when I am flying the big ladies...

 

[shado20]

I think something needs to be done about this so that players don't abort this method.
The safe zone around the new station should be activated after a minimum of 24 hours.

The problem is that when players abuse this method, they overload the server with their stations and deprive other players of a whole layer of gameplay - searching for ships

o i totally agree
i strong HATE the current station block thing!
the station core needs to be something you build on site, then power up
but until then
abuse the mechanics you have !

 

[Venombrew]

this game is strongly based on risk versus reward, there are way more players interested in this function that originally drove them to the game. they gave those not looking for conflicts a way more than needed safezone area. and if you can't find time for the game, that is a YOU problem and doesn't speak for every player out there who also have extremely busy schedules and families. There are a lot of games out there that are designed to take months to progress in and not meant to be conquered in a week. so this is like buying into EA and complaining about the low content and bugs as the core is being designed, except this is where people pay for a game knowing they don't have that kind of time to spend on it and then complain that it isn't designed for their schedule. then an idea is presented as a solution but the solution seems to be one sided for small minority of players. so how does that work as a solution to make the game better? drive out the majority of players who literally bought the game for these exact kind of gameplay mechanics?

 

[pavvvel]

o i totally agree
i strong HATE the current station block thing!
the station core needs to be something you build on site, then power up
but until then
abuse the mechanics you have !

I agree 100%. Players can just carry around a station block and park in it. it cuts the gameplay apart, destroying it. i've come across a lot of ships like that. i think we should make a new topic about it. These mechanics are too abusive

 

[mikan]

The reason many people turn off the power of the station is that there are few buildings that can be built at the station and it can only be used as a place to put or replenish ore. Why don't you wait until the number of buildings built at the station increases and you can't easily erase them?

 

[XenoCow]

this game is strongly based on risk versus reward, there are way more players interested in this function that originally drove them to the game

I'd like to see some more data on this. I suspect it's not as clear cut as you think or perhaps I misunderstand your stance. I found that when polled, players would overwhelmingly prefer ships to have only moderate value as opposed to being cheap or heirlooms. To me, it sounds as though you like the idea of high risk and high reward. @anton_stezhkin sounds like he or she is more interested in a low risk environment.

Instead of trying to discredit the argument for being at odds with the risk versus reward tradeoffs of the rest of the game. Perhaps it would be more constructive to offer suggestions on how to lower the reward for players that want to enjoy flying out far into the belt but do so safely.

For example, maybe a radiation damper that requires an expensive fuel to run. That way longer and more lucrative trips, done safely, are very expensive, offsetting the lower risk of discovery.