Julia Venatrix
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Posted - 2010.09.04 14:51:00 -
[4]
Sure.
TL:DR - you don't need to add revolutionary stuff, just evolve hisec content to make it of shorter duration, and constrain how much you can grind it.
Lowsec is an explicitly environmental definition - things that only happen in the lowsec environment are pretty much guaranteed to be in the PvE paradigm. We can look at PvPesque iterations of the PvP paradigm, but basically the more PvPlike your PvE is, the more effort it takes to code it and the less likely CCP will want to take on the development burden.
That pessimism aside:
Things like corp agents (so you have to have something of a positive standing) with missions that are different - maybe, go and blow up a "ratting" (NPC) Raven which is being shot at by Serp rats as well, or go and produce some drugs (this might need quite a lot more thought than I am giving it here!). We'd want lowsec rats to respond properly to EW and cap warfare - that's an AI question which is, like all AI questions, tricky to come up with good answers to, and not fun to play with any of the easy answers.
I'd like to see missions to run contraband to hisec, and to gank NPC haulers with realistic loads. "Yay, we've ganked a Providence! Boo, we're all in cruisers!" I'd also like to see missions demanding 0.0 ores in serious volumes, but that might be an unwarrantable ISK source.
Lowsec mission agents require some concept of a mechanic that means that grinding them is not more profitable than 0.0 effort, and probably not more than hisec L4s. We could have some kind of timer that prevents an agent from giving you a mission more than once a day, even if they only take 4 minutes and produce 25m ISK assuming you live, I guess - there are probably better solutions.
We'd like content whose profitability does not scale up if you control access to the space - e.g. "missions" of short duration, so that the risk of gankage is small, for instance, thus securing the system doesn't mitigate that risk very much. Similarly, focus on things which are more affected by bringing a mate along than having deadspace modules fitted instead of T2.
Mining is really tough to riff off without a "nebula" that makes the ships in it unscannable, barring a major alteration to the probe & scan mechanic. Some kind of anchorable jamming device that acts as an ECCM bonus would probably work, as long as it affected the grav site you were in as well. Actually that's not a half bad idea, but I am fearful of unintended consequences without a lot more consideration.
Exploration... certainly we could seek to have additional sites added in lowsec only, but the key is to constrain their profitability. The biggest draw to lowsec exploration would not be the huge sacks of cash generated, but the fact that most of lowsec is unpopulated so you should be able to find your kind of site without competition. To be honest, I don't think lowsec is lacking for exploration, only that mining sites are often uneconomic to exploit and so are ignored.
PI, moons, and drugs - I reckon they're pretty fully catered for in lowsec already.
I'd like to see quasi-permanent dungeons based around NPC POSes in deep space (so not at moons) where governments and corporations do the things they are not meant to do. Give them NPC Navy security and sentry guns. Take them down after a while if they are attacked. Make them destructible if attacked properly. Add Warp Stabiliser Anchorables to allow you to anchor POSes away from moons. The only advantage is that they are not at a moon to drive around to find. The disadvantages are that they use grid and CPU, and you can still scan them out, as well as not being at a moon to generate goo. Probably we should revisit ECCM batteries as well to allow players to have less-scannable (but not unscannable) POSes, but that's a different question for now.
Lots of that may be wrong. Caveat lector.
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