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...they would simply be camped/farmed to death, where a simple time zone difference can mean that you wonÆt ever be able to enjoy specific content if itÆs known by the Sir Farm Alot corporation.

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Originally by: Abdalion

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Originally by: Jebidus Skari

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What, in EVE, is a Tyrant?

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Me. Especially when it comes to troll threads.

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Originally by: Hllaxiu

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Scanning changes FTW.

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Originally by: Oveur

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This is not the conspiracy you are looking for.

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Originally by: Marlenus

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Two suggestions.

First, please make some of this explorer-found content paltry and insignificant -- from the perspective of players who've been in the game for a month. I'm talking about some little hidden mini-belt consisting of a Gurista structure of some kind, two Gurista harvesters, and six dinky fiery kernite asteroids. Something I could have looked for in my first Badger-with-a-probe-launcher and conquered/mined in a frigate. The trick is to make it seem like wild wealth to a newbie, but not worth warping to for more experienced players.

Second suggestion: don't go overboard with the temporary/transient nature of explored-for content. Obviously it's got to vanish or be consumed eventually to avoid farming, but it would be neat if some of the content (again, I'm thinking minable stuff) could last long enough to support the "crusty-old-prospector-with-a-mining-laser-and-a-burro" character -- the guy who finds modest wealth in the hidden depth of space, works it secretly and assiduously until it's gone, and then goes looking for the next bonanza. It would suck if there was a use-it-or-lose it dynamic; "I found all these nifty asteroids but all I can do is sell the coordinates to a strip mining corps because they'll be gone tomorrow."

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Originally by: kieron

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If this isn't in the design plan for Exploration, I think it should be and will see what I can do about its addition. Great ideas!

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Originally by: DigitalCommunist

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Naturally, these locations also serve as tactical environments, not for their potential resources but the ability to hide reinforcements in a system..

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Originally by: Joerd Toastius

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The way to accommodate "lone prospector"-type characters is probably to have resources (eg roids) which will either give say a reasonable amount of wealth if you hit them all in one go but if carefully managed can keep on giving and giving moderate amounts on a regular basis. The key there though is "carefully managed" - you'd have to be careful not to overuse the resource or it wouldn't "regenerate", but equally if you left it too long without using it it'd expire and disappear. For example, you have a roid which you can find (through whatever method) which:
-Has a huge theoretical ore capacity, say 10k units (of random ore type z for which this is an awful lot; I don't mine)
-Mining rate such that a large barge can pull 100 units an hour and make a very decent profit
-Will disappear within 3 hours once you start mining it
-Can be "stabilised" (with appropriate skill and/or module) provided you mine less than 100 units in one go; every unit over 100 you mine makes it stabilise 10 units lower.
-At skill level 1 you lose say half the amount you mined from the roid in stabilising it; at skill level 3 you lose no units; at skill level 5 you actually add half the units you mined back on to the total.
-Stabilisation lasts for say 72h, after which time it needs restabilising or it'll disappear

Upshot is as follows:
-If you can pull 30 or so large barges together for a six-hour op, you can mine the roid dry. Bonanza.
-If you're on your own, at skill level 1 and assuming you only mine 100 units a go, you can milk it for about two months at 100 units/night
-If you have skill 3, you can do it for 3 months
-If you have skill 5 and you mine every night, you're looking at nearer 6 months
-If you don't keep checking back to keep it stable at least, you'll lose it. Yes, this means they'll never last for ever due to RL commitments, but they'll be plenty out there. The idea is that you could have three or four on the go and "do the rounds" every night to milk your cash cows

Could quite possibly alter this and make use of existing Mercoxit mechanics to keep it more in line with current stuff; the basic model should also be able to apply to non-roid resources.

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Originally by: Daedalus Maxwell

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Only problem I see with your idea is the stabilization at the random number of say 100 units per hour thing. I'm gonna assume every unit is equal to one ore for this, so lets say you take ark ore. One miner I per hour will nail in 120 units with virtually no other skills applying. Unless of course this is some new ore with a volume per unit thats larger than even merc you're going to run into problems like that.

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Originally by: Bob Niac

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also orbiting planets would be AWESOME....

imaginetriing to warp to your enemies safespot; only to forget that between 1700 and 2200 on that day your BM is actually ..

IN THE MIDDLE OF A FREAKING PLANET!!!

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Originally by: TomB

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[...]
What will we get?
At first we will use this system to deploy ônormalö scenarios such as; complexes, ice/asteroid fields, agents and other things into the world. As the system matures, we will be able to make some locations or encounters rarer and harder to find. We might also use exploration as a new way to distribute resources and there are some other areas where the Exploration system looks promising for future ultra hot stuff, really ultra hot, did I mention something really really ultra hot? [...]

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Originally by: Oron

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I am a litle bit disappointed. As i heared Eve get a exploration system yea great! gimme, gimme!

I always ask myself who in the the heck put all those belts and complexes and stations and stuff into my navcomputer in regions i never visited before!

I thought you will give us the posibility to explore all this stuff and some more - but as it seems to me - all you give us new "missions places" whitch we dont get from an agent but need to find our self

Why not make a real step ahead? Give us solarsystems that looks empty and need to explored! Where are the Planets? Where are the Moons? Witch Minerals do the Moons have? Witch belts? Witch rods floating around in the Belts? Are there Rat Bases(complexes/stations) we need to take care about? Witch tactical advantages are hidden in this system? Are there special locations? Wreakfields? What ever!

Thats exploration - not finding a spawned complex or a mission point or something like this.

I would like to see all eve systems as sutch "empty" solarsystems. I would give the newbs the "Map" for their start regions. I would allow NPCs to sell "Map" from all empire regions. Thats it! The rest need to be done by our self.

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Originally by: Commander Criton

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Edited by: Commander Criton on 26/05/2006 20:27:44
Sounds great if this is going to used for astroid belts too will this put an end to macro's?

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Originally by: Deoneandonly

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I guess all of those morons who said that ccp did not believe in solo play feel pretty stupid right about now, hunh.

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Originally by: Chiralos

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Yes yes yes. I think the thing that EVE lacks the most is meaningful exploration, your plans sound good.

Random thoughts:

Scanning in an empty area will presumably "create" the content. Would scanning also find stuff other people have "created" ? That would encourage explorers to spread out - once you have a few explorers regularly scanning a system, they're only going to find scraps until all the created content is used up.

There should be some structure to the exploration process (something like "escalating paths"), so that if I find location A, then scan from A and find B, then scan from B and find C, no-one else can do a big scan from A and find C - so you have some concept of "exploration depth". "Deep" locations would have bigger rewards, more danger, and of course would take longer for other people to find.

Don't be afraid to restructure mining. Make all ice and asteroids (and complexes, for that matter) resources that don't simply respawn - they have to be found by scanning. Of course, you want to make sure some "shallow" small, low-quality rocks can be found by new/solo players who don't want to explore or buy charts from prospectors; but for serious mining ops, having a good charts should be a must.

There should be lots of different stuff to find when exploring, so you never know what you might find (although weighted by region, presumably) ... asteroids, ice, wreaks, rogue drones, NPCs, mini-complexes, modules, single-run BPCs, ships, trade goods, mineral and materials caches, limited-use jumpgates (need to find a compatible pair of these), maps to other locations, parts of maps, encryption keys, dead bodies, cultural artifacts, clues to future events, stranded people ...

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Originally by: Lorth

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Originally by: Deoneandonly

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I guess all of those morons who said that ccp did not believe in solo play feel pretty stupid right about now, hunh.

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The only person I ever remember saying that was you... So how's it feel to be a self proclaimed moron?

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Originally by: Umbriele

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What about an errating random string of energy wich pulls all the poor carebears from oursulart to a random system 75 jumps away? Then all the poor ppl would have to work togheter to find a safe way to return home

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Originally by: Kentucky Smith

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Could we get a little aways from just the bang bang blow everything up and add some puzzle content.

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1. Drone behaviour or lack thereof


2. "What are my drones' actual stats?"


3. How scan probes actually work


4. Did the designers of Deimos and Ares (and stealth bomber) power grids ever stop to consider the ships would need to fit something else in addition to weapons?


5. Why did that idiot use a Scorp's 8 mid slots to... shield tank?


6. What does it take to get certain alliance members to understand what NAP means?

Originally by: Alex Harumichi

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Edited by: Alex Harumichi on 29/05/2006 15:13:32

Originally by: Kentucky Smith

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Could we get a little aways from just the bang bang blow everything up and add some puzzle content.

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The game already has lots of puzzle content

1. Drone behaviour or lack thereof


2. "What are my drones' actual stats?"


3. How scan probes actually work


4. Did the designers of Deimos and Ares (and stealth bomber) power grids ever stop to consider the ships would need to fit something else in addition to weapons?


5. Why did that idiot use a Scorp's 8 mid slots to... shield tank?


6. What does it take to get certain alliance members to understand what NAP means?

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Originally by: Deoneandonly

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Originally by: Lorth

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Originally by: Deoneandonly

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I guess all of those morons who said that ccp did not believe in solo play feel pretty stupid right about now, hunh.

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The only person I ever remember saying that was you... So how's it feel to be a self proclaimed moron?

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Everyone and their mother screamed "this is a group based game" when I raised various raven being hopelessly underpowered issues, in multifarious threads.

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Originally by: Alaire Dunsane

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I think this is overall a great idea.

But it throws a bandaid over the entire farm/camp problem you tend to run into in every mmorpg. I think the real key would be to make resources more dynamic. And that means they have to run dry.

I know that the big corps wouldn't like this, but if asteroid fields would run out for a few days after depletion it would force the campers to move on somewhere else kinda of like a horde of hungry ants and force them to resituate a bit.

Tie this in with survey and scanners and you end up with a need for some professional surveyors (probably on of the more redeeming things in SWG). It would allow the opportunity for the solo players to grab a piece of the pie before some mega corp comes in and nabs it all. As a result there becomes more of a need for constant exploration in all systems.

While it may seem disruptive to some corporate tactics, those corporations that excel at communication and organization rather than static camping would do much better.

Another result would be that the economy would become more dynamic, as I think maybe the dev's intent in part of this.

This can also be applied to complexes and such as well. As the various political factions expand into new areas ... possibly shifting some of the low security zones because players keep killing off the pirates the various political entities move and take more control creating a more dynamic political situation. Which would force some of the PvP gate campers to revise their situation as well.

Of course pirate bases might for a lowering of security ratings as well ...

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Originally by: Karazaan

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Edited by: Karazaan on 30/05/2006 05:03:09
Edited by: Karazaan on 30/05/2006 05:01:50
Well, I strongly feel that bookmark should be removed from 100km around the gate. Not that I want to swing the topic somewhere else, but on the contrary, they are, in this case, the root of your problem.

Surely anything that last would be camped. Anything that instance would be used again and again until it does'nt instance anymore.

The exploration thing is nice IF scanning take some time and you cannot use BM to move around a couple of systems really fast because we would have the alt of each members of an alliance having a constellation assigned to them with bm to move around them, meaning that in 20 min each day, they would have scanned and moved around the 10 systems assigned to them scanning the whole universe in 20 min. Sad really, travel HAS to be slow or you are god, be everywhere, know everything. Then everything become pointless, exploring become pointless.

If the exploration stuff is useful for tech 3 or unique stuff as was said before, there is a 110% chance that many corps and alliances will have theses 'scanning squad'.

Only way to prevent them is to forbid bm near gate...

How far can you work around a bug with patchs adressing the side-effects and not the root problem?

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Originally by: Eight Ace

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Morning all.

Just to throw my 2isk into the mix I think the thing that defines 'exploration' is the feeling that 'it's a long, long way home'

I don't quite know how you could capture and bottle this feeling with the game mechanics but as an explorer I would want to feel that it was just me and my ship, out there, nobody could get to me and I could not get out easily.

If you tie this in with the deployable mini-pos idea thats floating about exploring could be really, really rewarding for the people who would like to play the game efectivley in single-player mode returning only to the big smoke to trade their goods before setting off into the remoteness of space once more.

A dedicated explorer ship would rock. Here's a famous design you could work with.

-8-

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Originally by: Oveur

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[...] but they aren't on schedule yet.

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Originally by: ZzeusS

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My own hidden personal roid belt? With low to no yarry attention?

Wonder if NPCs will spawn there too.

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