I like this idea. Especially in lowsec. There's millions of rats floating about but never any concord or navy in sight, even though it is part of the empire. They should be of similar strength as the NPC rats, of course, and only respond to PvP activity if its on the same grid as them (basically mobile sentry guns). It might actually help encourage more player activity in lowsec.

NPC mining ops would be cool too (although maybe make sure they only happen in the less crowded systems).

I once thought about a whole revamp to Missions. Simply put it would make npc corporations grow/impoverish depending on the players doing missions for them or against them.

We want the sandbox, but we need the shovel and more sand. We can all say that eve should be focused on PvP only because it's a sandbox, but there are more to PvP and sandbox that direct confrontation in gate camps.

Now you probably think that this has nothing to do with the topic, which probably doesn't, but just wanted to say that eve would be way more shinny and fun if I could help pirates or the navies in space, or discover a small pirate outpost that actually has ties to the rest of space, instead of pocket grind areas for farmers.

A suggestion I put forth about 3 and a half years ago was a bit different, based more on how space mining worked in SWG.

The more you mine, the more "noise" you make, the more rats it attracts - a top end mining ship would find itself in scramble mode from mining at top performance and more than 1 such ship could easily be destroyed by the swarms of rats they'd summon. Rats don't spawn at all without mining. It's the mining that attracts them and they keep coming the more "noise" you make blasting chunks off of asteroids.

Either tone it back or bring escorts to deal with the rats and escorts would be kept very busy by a decently skilled mining ship. (let's see you "rat your sec status up" if it requires mining ships to get rats to the belts. - fit a mining laser? ...)

So you take a fleet of mining ships out with an orca and go high-speed. You'd best bring an escort group that watches you and rats the area while you do that but getting an escort shouldn't be too hard being as that's the primary attraction for rats.

This avoids the only task in the game more boring than shooting rocks with lasers - watching someone shoot rocks with lasers. Instead they'd spend their time running around popping and looting rats and 4 exhumers with a fleet bosting orca could keep a couple or so combat pilots very busy just clearing the rats out.

Such a method would also gut multi-box style botting and high-yield mining being as they'd pull so much ore so quickly, the rats would destroy their mining fleet if it didn't have enough of a protective escort.

The idea wasn't so much to mess with botters and miners. It was more to find a way to encourage combat pilots to seek out miners and defend them. Not by forcing players to defend other players but to encourage it with a higher potential income stream than they could get doing missions - keep the miners safe = profits from ratting.

With swarms of NPC's coming in, that's a solid income source across all areas of space and having a sufficient escort for a gang of miners makes mining in low and null far more doable than these days with the combat type pilots off doing missions or such while miners are off doing their own thing.

Again, not by forcing players to go along but by providing a different income stream that grows as you guard more miners. They get popped, there goes the rats because rats don't spawn at all -- only when miners are mining.

Just picture it in local "anyone miners need an escort right now?" -- now that would be a question few, if anyone, in EVE has probably heard and one that most vets would probably smile at in the future - especially if that local were lowsec with a ganker needing their sec status brought back up quickly... A ganker guarding miners. One hell of a twisted situation but quite possible if the need is there.

Good idea.

I have my own addition that I think fits in here: tie this NPC activity to player activity. The more missioning, ratting, trading, mining etc that players do in an area, the more NPC forces are drawn there. Even add NPC corp security forces to stations, so high-activity stations become safer to operate out of. This would be a great opportunity to improve the highsec>lowsec transition, and it involves players themselves in the world shaping.

some of OPs ideas are good, others not so much. for example, I would strongly agree that disregarding capsuleers, EVE is extremely underpopulated. where are the trading vessels in low and null? it can't be THAT dangerous as to completely deter trade unless you are immortal...?

on the other hand, this is a very hot iron to forge. last year, the goons demonstrated very explicitly how changes to the sandbox can disrupt the EVE economy. if the newly introduced NPCs are supposed to be worth shooting at, you also want to ensure that they cannot be exploited (aside from the usual bug testing of course). i can already see 23/7 mock mining ops with an escort of tach oracles raking in billions in rat spawn bounties without having to move an inch.

Contradictions.

Oddly I spoke with my brother about that, he had similar ideas and thought that maybe player set up anomalies/signatures to manafacture or provide some sort of service/goods, which players currently don't create, like mission items, npc's, meta level items (level 4 and under) or bpc's, maybe research instead of using a pos (like a cheap alternative provided your 'pool' of anoms/sigs arent wiped out) , was a strange idea but sounded like it could be fun, could be corporate anom's/sigs so if anyone attacked them you'd get limited engagement timers or suspect flags to them, hell there tonnes of ideas out there, just odd theres so few in game