Abbot Jackson
Puppies and Christmas
7
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Posted - 2015.11.22 09:10:58 -
[1] - Quote
Just finished reading thread.
+1 +1 +1 +1 +1
Mechanics
I think as for the mechanics of it, it should be treated as a big, titan sized rat.
The Comet Rat can move 500-2000m/s, and it should slowly accelerate from 500m-2km as its life runs through. It'll have a pretty new icon, and the icon won't be red, so it isn't obviously just a rat that you mine lol. I think you should be able to web it down, but only to an extent; a venture with a web shouldn't be able to slow it down 58%.
There's no reason for the actual anomaly (that you should definitely have to scan down) to move, for two reasons. 1, immersion-wise, comets move fast, but they don't travel from the oort cloud to the sun in a matter of hours or days; that would be silly. For this reason, 2, it's unnecessary to add pointless complex code. However, I suppose it could be like those deadspace pockets where you can't leave a bookmark, and for people who warp away from it to come back they should have to scan it again. But maybe that would be too tedious.
It's life should be the span of a couple days at most. The purpose of this gameplay should be to get nomadic miners/indie/explorers to converge on single point, and, given their defenseless nature, they should be given a fair chance to ninja mine the comet.
I agree completely with the outer shell of ice, middle husk of ore, and inner core of moon goo with a tail for gas huffers.
I also agree completely that the comet should inflict considerable damage to those around it in a not completely random, but hard to predict, manner. I think that manual piloting should be essential to survival for those who are within a certain distance of it.
Profit
One thing that hasn't really been discussed is how much these things should net, and that really depends on how common they should be.
As an ex-miner, the most intriguing thing about this idea for me is that it would cause miners to leave their home systems and go chasing comets. If they're too common, nobody will mine normally any more. If they're too rare, it'll be gimmicky and a player system won't develop around them.
I think a solution to this problem would be to make it so that mining these things really is difficult. A lot of people won't like this idea, but I think that chewing through the whole comet during its lifespan should require Orca boosts (with say a mining fleet of 10 macks, not really sure what the numbers are anymore). That's just an idea. But I think that these comets should provide interesting gameplay for Orca/Rorq pilots as well as barges and exhumers.
Risk vs Reward. If you want to just bring your prospect in and huff some gas, fine, you'll make some isk. If you bring in an Orca, 20+ miners, logistics to repair damage that the comet does to ships, DST's or even Freighters to transport huge quantities of materials, and a support fleet to protect against gankers, you should be rewarded with A LOT of isk.
The problem with that is that if it's too profitable, then nullsec empires/cartels might monopolize it, which I believe is counter to what we're trying to do here.
I suppose CCP would be the highest authority when it comes to determining how much these things should be worth.
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