BB 62 – There has been a catastrophic accident in the CCP Offices and you have found your player account has been upgraded to a senior CCP staffer! You are now CCP Hermit and have a team of developers eagerly awaiting your commands. So what are you going to have your team work on?
For obvious reasons if you follow this blog, I am going to focus on the niche of solo or small group exploration and nomadic movement.
I would like to dramatically increase the available exploration content, starting with the ideas in this list which are relatively easy and quick to implement before moving onto the harder options. They should fall into the category of sites or cosmic anomalies as appropriate.
The idea is to increase variety and mix up the ship hull and fitting options people might use or carry around during exploration. It is not to homogenise space or making Hi-Sec so interesting that you don’t want to move. The rewards from these sites and the frequency they can be found should be balanced and scaled.
Now the site ideas:
. Upsized Rats – on occasion find a solo NPC Battleship with a bounty of 500K in High-Sec, 1000K in Low-Sec, or 1500K in Null Sec. Mix it up with occasional doubles or triples (more commonly out of Hi-Sec), and small support wings.
. Out of place Rats – on occasion find a small group of NPC ships out of their usual Regions, such as Guristas in Sansha space, or Serpentis in Blood Raider. You might just use their version of the standard cosmic anomaly.
. Entirely out of place Rats – on occasion find a small group of Sleepers or Incursion rats. The later would just give a small number of LP as reward. (I wouldn’t mind seeing solo options added to Incursions – for simplicity maybe just having clearing Incursion rats from belts giving you minor LP rewards when the incursion is finished. The rewards would only be a small fraction of running the proper sites – this is more just for variety.)
. Out of place resources – on occasion find 1-3 Asteroids in a mini-field in an area where you would not normally find them – so a single Mercoxit or a couple small Arkonor asteroids in High Sec. Consider mini Gas sites. These sites should be small and not worth a great deal – it is more for variety.
. NPC Convoy Ambushes – you warp in on an NPC hauler with a number of guards. Consider these to be like Hauler spawns but they carry a much wider range of goods. The difference here is that these Convoys will warp away. You need to quickly lock a ship and warp disrupt it, then force the guards off before you find what loot it might be carrying. This mechanism (having to scramble rats) could be implemented in multiple areas.
. Burner NPC sites – in effect small exploration sites that mimic Burner Missions with very difficult rats.
. Hidden NPC structures doing moon harvesting or reactions which you can place siphon units on to steal small volumes of goods. You possibly need to remove defenders or defensive weaponry. Have them only last a day or two before they are pulled down by the NPCs.
. Hidden NPC structures that you need to use Entosis links on. I’m not sure on the specifics of these – maybe listening or scanning arrays that you need to put through a number of defended reinforcement stages and get a bounty from Concord if you destroy them.
. Have a rare COSMOS type site which drops COSMOS type ingredients
. Have a rare COSMOS agent. They offer up 3 or 4 quests to any pilot who asks. However only the first to hand in a quest gets the reward and that quest is dropped as an option from the agent. The Agent disappears once all their missions are done or completed. These could be tied into the current COSMOS sites or be new / different ingredients.
I expect there would be many more viable options. It think the feeling of exploration would be increased if you had a lot more different sites to come across.
Next are movement ideas:
. Smuggler Gates – an old topic for me. These are temporary NPC gates you have to scan down. These should last longer than normal locations – a week give or take a day. Generally Hi-Sec Smuggler Gates will go to neighbouring Low Sec areas, and Low Sec to Null Sec. They will reliably only connect to bordering zones or regions – so if you search Derelik Low Sec you might find Smuggler gates into Great Wildlands, Curse or Providence. This is one way of bypassing normal Gate bottlenecks. Either you need to pay the pirates operating these gates to pass, or destroy the guards and sentries to pass, or use Hacking or Entosis modules. In addition – these Gates can also be destroyed via DPS. Find a Smuggler Gate into your Null Sec constellation? Drop a small fleet on it and blow it up.
. Introduce a new class of ships somewhere between a Nestor and Orca. These would be Mobile Exploration bases you take with you on long roams. I’m thinking a Ship Maintenance bay of around 150,000m3, a Fleet Hanger of 10,000m3, an Ore hold, no offensive modules aside a couple flights of drones, and remote repair bonuses. Maybe even a bonus to movement under cloak. An Explorer would move around with a small selection of ships they can swap in and out of to run different sites.
. Allow jump clones to be moved in ships and stored in the same locations. Either move them in a new class of ships, or simply have a container they can be stored in and carried as cargo. Allow a much shorter jump clone timer if you swap within the same station. Maybe give the Mobile exploration base above a clone hold and reduction bonuses to the time you have to wait between clone changes.
I expect that should keep my development team busy for a while.
Other posts can be found here.
Evehermit 
Damn you Hermit. Was looking at covering an exploration expansion as well, though my ideas are less of the (relatively) quick insta-travel ones. Areas of space not only hard to get to, but have a significantly increased risk/reward and where preparedness is a key element.
Really do like the idea of the new explorer ships. however either your above mentioned can work in a pinch. I’d tend to favor the orca due to POS/fuel/command links if you’re going to range out. Unsure what advantage citadels may bring or if it will be possible to transport in quite the same way.
The more ideas the better. I like the notion of new hard to get to space. Maybe it could be through wormholes that only accept one ship before closing.
I like the idea of roaming from one system to another, just seeing where you end up. The problem with that is you need a support ship for ammo, spares and carrying loot. You could do it with a Transport ship and a mobile depot. The Nestor could work at a pinch although cargo space is lacking, and it costs 1B ISK just for the hull. The Orca is ideal – but you wouldn’t use it roaming far and wide through Low or Null or Wormhole space. That is where something like a mini Orca that moves faster would be nice.
The Citadels might be ok if you set up shop in some out of the way location for a week, but doesn’t work for when you just want to constantly be on the move.
OK – riffing on for a second… a exploration ship capable of low end manufacturing. Blueprints are small, and with a bit of mining, you should be able to… (oooh, automated mining drones)… park up and build what you need for T1 kit. T2 kit would likely be reliant on a citadel or other deployable, and take a longer period of time.
In a perfect world, an exploration frigate might be a seed ship or pathfinder, setting up and laying down the groundwork or base infrastructure before the rest of the corp (slower warping ships) arrives.
I’m talking space that is not immediately available by gate or wormhole, more that which may take a significant investment in time to both scan and travel to, such that taking even a one way trip is a serious consideration.
I understand from the lore that stargates are placed in binary systems at a la grange point… and here’s the 64 million dollar question – how does one get there to build a stargate in the first place….?
I do like the idea of a hull with minor refining and manufacturing options. I’m not sure CCP would give us something like that. I expect they will be pushing us towards Citadels.
I think I can see the sort of thing you are after in my minds eye – but I am not sure how CCP would give it. Once players can create their own gates, I’ve assumed they will be monopolised by the super powers.
A small hull might be only able to use 1 to five manufacturing slots, or take much longer dependent on the size of the item. There are plenty of ways to ensure it’s not over powered.
As far as gates go, a self destruct mechanism, hacking/disabling mini-game, and hitpoints/invul timers are all possibilities. Should a stargate be configurable corp or alliance use only, hitpoints/timers similar to the proposed citadel mechanism are all possibilities.
I suspect CCP would consider most things if it could provide content and, more specifically, a point of engagement between players and groups.
🙂 nice new content. I don’t play the explorer game of EVE but I love that you are creating new and updated content. Thank you for your Visions
You can move clones in titans/rorq. Your smuggler gate idea is basically k-space to k-space WHs.
Moving Clones via Titan or Rorqual does not provide the availability or flexibility I would like to see.
Similarly with K-Space to K-Space wormholes – which are not area/region specific, don’t provide longevity or options to interact with, although can be closed through mass instead of the DPS suggested.
Hey Mate, like your blog and read a lot. I like your thoughts above. How about adding some finer details for a little more immersion.
1. Space is a big place, lots and lots of it, but it seems really easy to find people and things.
I would like to see:
a. Some Ore Sight Anomalies being scanned only again. Only some not all similar to how they use to be.
b. I like being isolated, like living in a WH, but I found that they increased the number of connections, therefore it was like living in K-space again with traffic. So either return to WH only having the designated connections, ie in my case a static Low and C2. then maybe one no static that I like the thought that closes with less mass.
c. Have more NPC buzzing around, have ships mining in belts and indies warping back dropping off ore and even rats protecting these miners. It gives space a used feeling.
d. Have pirate bases being scanned down and just like any other citadel, you can attach and they launch counter attacks.
e. When doing missions, have the silos and habitation modules actually contain stuff when you blow them up. Even if the habitation modules spew out a few bodies. At the moment it just seems empty.
f. Ship yards that you come across in mission, have a chance of finding a ship to steal.
Yes I have mentioned a lot of PVE stuff. But EVE is more than just PvP.
I like your suggestions – I had the view out of place resources should be scanned down as you suggest.
I am also in a similar mindset over such things as NPC Citadels or equivalent. Some of my suggestions are aimed at making those Null Sec type mechanisms available in Empire to expose pilots to them and make a transition easier.
Some of the silos and such in missions do drop trade goods, but only a small number of them. Even when you know they do you generally don’t bother as the value in the drops in minimal. The body spewing is disturbing, but might add something to the game.
I like the idea of occasional ship drops from NPS ship yards. I doubt we will see it, but it would add interest. Maybe they can drop on occasion skins instead.