Destructible outposts (CSM)

Stats

Raised by: Jade Constantine
Submission Date: 31-05-2008
Issue ID: 0006

Summary

It has now been a couple of years since the first year player-built outposts were assembled in 0.0 space by pioneering Alliances and the enterprising players behind them and much has changed in Eve-online. The 0.0 environment has significantly altered by the defense advantage - enhanced POS tools, cyno-jammers, jump bridges, super capital ships and the ongoing profitability of moon-mining as part of the tech2 supply chain. What was once a bold and thrilling endeavor has become routine business, what was once a supreme investment in time and ISK and manpower is now hardly remarked upon against the balance sheets of the richest powers on the lawless frontier – Outposts today are just the cost of doing business easily offset by 0.0 profits and made all the easier to establish and defend by sovereignty tools and architecture.

We would like to ask CCP if the time to remove the invulnerable status of player-owned outposts has come. We now have a couple of hundred player-outposts in the game and more established each week, the investment has become routine, the advantage of outpost presence completely outweighs the risk of establishment, and 0.0 is seeing an unprecedented program of settlement and taming from the existing alliances.

At the beginning we could understand making outposts invulnerable, CCP clearly wanted to encourage the development of player-built empires in 0.0, and felt that IF outposts had been vulnerable there was a risk that the first few might have been destroyed and discouraged others to try. But that time is long past, we have player built empires and the infrastructure to sustain them. Now we believe we need to consider those other consequences of player-built empires – risk, threat and danger to balance the advantage and profitability.

Let’s discuss the concept and feasibility of destructible Outposts and how that could be introduced in a balanced way that does not (unfairly) support specific play-styles over others.

Potential Solutions

An outpost destruction model could be introduced into the current game by using the territorial conquest system as is. The occupier of an Outpost (for at least 72 hours say) would have the option to set a self destruct countdown in the Outpost management screen. This would show up on the map as a warning, it would op out of sovereignty protection for the system and remove all docking restrictions during the count. The self-destruction could be stopped anytime up to 2 hours to zero hour by re-conquering the outpost and aborting the process.

At the time of destruction the Outpost goes up with the strength of a Doomsday Weapon on grid with snazzy special effects for anyone lucky enough to be watching. The Outpost itself is replaced by a derelict wreck model, all upgrades and services are obviously destroyed. Personal hangers inside the wrecked outpost are still available to their owners however as “salvage” and this in itself will lead to future pvp opportunities around the wreck for some time to come. I would be happy to see the wreck grant a certain discount to rebuilding for people wanting to establish another outpost on the same site.

Also See

• Wreck outposts (CSM)

Relevant Forum Threads

• http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=785568
• http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=779294

Votes

• Ankhesentapemkah - Yes
• Bane Glorious - Yes
• Darius Johnson - Yes
• Dierdra Vaal - Yes
• Hardin - Yes
• Inanna Zuni - No
• Jade Constantine - Yes
• LaVista Vista - Yes
• Serenity Steele - No