Rysith
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Posted - 2008.09.07 20:28:00 -
[1]
One of the largest problems that I see with FW is that it is expensive without actually providing any way to make up for those losses. CCP has already said that they don't want FW to be a lucrative business, but when all people are willing to bring out is t1 cruisers the experienced PvPers get fed up with the inability to form a well-coordinated fleet and the new PvPers get fed up with the losses that they rack up to small gangs of expensive ships.
In 0.0 alliances, the solution to this is industrial corporations and players. But there is no incentive for an industrial corporation to join FW, since FW is really just about combat. As such, I have the following proposal to try to provide the industrial backbone that any group needs to engage in sustained PvP for FW: NPC industialists.
The idea is that the Empires, wanting to promote the development of competent militias, would deploy their own miners into occupied systems and use the minerals to manufacture ships and modules for the members of their militia. They should sell the items, but for around or even below mineral costs, to reduce the cost of fitting a ship, as well as providing all of the needed modules in a single centralized location. To prevent reprocessing/selling these cheap modules, they could be unsellable and unrefineable. To provide a reward for having rank, your rank could determine what was available for purchase. A rank 1 could purchase frigates and t1 modules, a rank 10 could purchase a fully tech 2 fitted battleship. Or something like that.
Then, to tie it into capturing systems, there could be "mining complexes" that could be scanned down, just like the current complexes, with a few barges and escort ships in it. They would spawn, stay in space for a few hours, and then despawn. Every mining plex that successfully despawned would reduce the prices of modules for that militia. Every mining plex that was wiped out would slightly raise the prices in the militia store. The more systems you have captured, the more mining plexes are able to complete per day, and the better your faction's industrial base would be.
And, to generate combat inside those plexes, when a plex was attacked it could broadcast in the appropriate militia channel with its location and the number of enemy militia members. Something like "Tama mining operation under attack, 10 hostiles in system". Naturally, this would mean that the mining operations would need to be hard enough that a fleet could be assembled to defend them, something on the order of half an hour or something like that.
With this implemented, you have a way for people to (more easily) afford the equipment required for FW, a new avenue to attack your enemies with, a reason to try to gain rank within the militia, and a reason to try to take and hold systems. I can't really see any downsides to it, either, as long as the militia-produced goods were unsellable and unrefineable.
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