tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post3722052796282674071..comments2022-12-13T10:23:52.009-05:00Comments on Deep in EVE: Rules for Individual MercenariesVon Keigaihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14469707993470718130noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-66626086924398200602014-06-18T18:06:18.244-04:002014-06-18T18:06:18.244-04:00Von Keigai,
I’m coming around on this specificall...Von Keigai,<br /><br />I’m coming around on this specifically because the option for corporations to enable/disallow solo mercing reframes the idea to one of promoting more corporation options rather than being a game mechanic enabling players a way to evade the very important limitations joining a player corp should rightly impose given the massive benefits joing a player corporation hands out. In other words, I’d say you’re approaching the idea at the right level.<br /><br />To clarify, what I meant by “light status” was not one’s affiliation status but rather the very option to affiliate in the first place. “Light status” was meant to compare to the current “Heavy status” situation where corporations alone declare, “We, and we only, decide who you get to go to war with.” Your instantiation allows individual corps to choose between being a “light status” corp or a “heavy status” corp. On a conceptual level I’m much more comfortable with this since it allows corps to keep strict control of their player’s combat options if they wish.<br /><br />To reframe the matter once again, you’re instantiation of the initial idea could be seen/utilized as a way to create a Defense Division within a corporation. Accordingly, when your Industrial/Mining corp isn’t being attacked you needn’t let your defense division go idle. No, you merc them out. “Gotta keep our bloodthirsty battle pilots murder happy and combat sharp.” This I find appealing.<br /><br />>>><<<<br /><br />Sugar,<br /><br />Appears I’m a devotee of the “Fail Fast” approach to innovation. (I did not know this about myself.) Also kindly forgive me for confusing origin with purpose. T’was presumptuous of me to suppose that when you explained how the idea came about I was to infer that might provide some clue as to it's purpose. (“I liked this idea because I could see someone in an environment such as my own breaking off to go and occupy themselves by white knighting.”)<br /><br />>>><<<<br /><br />Little Idea,<br /><br />With Von Keigai’s addition of an enable/disallow solo mercing role I’m unable to strangle you in crib. From White Knight origin you’ve moved on to something much richer. Welcome to the big leagues Little Idea. It’s a big scary world out there. Good luck.<br /><br />DireNecessity<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-16233509326179445462014-06-18T10:29:14.535-04:002014-06-18T10:29:14.535-04:00Regarding "light status", one thing I su...Regarding "light status", one thing I suppose could be explicitly stated is that affiliates don't get any of the normal corp privileges of their affiliated corp. This is how things currently are, so it requires no work. But still, maybe it should be clearer. That is, they don't have roles, can't use POSes (except force fields, via password), hangars, etc. If it were important I suppose such access could be added. But I don't think it is.<br /><br />I appreciate you thinking of "devious ways to use/exploit/bust it". Any new rules need such hard scrutiny from people who like breaking stuff. Hopefully anything you think of is either (a) not really a problem, or (b) can be fixed by rule patch. <br /><br />In the specific case of your "front corporation", I don't really see the problem. Do recall that the "victim" corp is in a war, by assumption; it does not need a wardec of its own to fight the mercs. Now, it <i>would</i> need a wardec if it wants to fight the home corp of the mercs, presumably with the intent of forcing that corp to stop allowing mercenary activity. And yes, this may well be prohibitive. (You cannot reasonably wardec Goonswarm, for example, to force them to stop allowing mercenaries.) Is it a <i>problem</i> that small corps cannot wardec large ones and force them to bend to their will? No. It's the current design, and it should not change. <br /><br />I would note, though, that the rules do tend to prevent this sort of thing. They disallow affiliation when the home corp is at war. (You can keep an existing affiliation, but not form a new one.) As such, "hiding" as it were in any large corp is unlikely to be very effective, since most such large corps have wardecs on them fairly often. Goonswarm, for example, is now continually wardecced thanks to Gevlon Goblin. So all members of Goonswarm would not be allowed to be adjuncts. At least until Gevlon gets bored of his crusade, and/or Goonswarm surrenders to Gevlon. Von Keigaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14469707993470718130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-65240927911139432612014-06-18T09:34:08.389-04:002014-06-18T09:34:08.389-04:00When I dream, Dire, I'm not going to clip the ...When I dream, Dire, I'm not going to clip the wings of my idea before it even takes flight by predeciding CCP resources.<br /><br />No one can be forced to be a white knight, Dire. That is why there are tools. To assume that a mechanic is only meant to be used in one way and for one moral goal would be a ridiculous underestimation of the average Eve player.<br /><br />That exact same behavior can and does exist today with people from war deccing groups leaving corp and rejoining constantly. The goal is not to make the people who already do fun complex things with mechanics lives harder but to give people who do not have that ability (yet) the a more clear path to obtaining it.Sugar Kylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15437978687639772023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-50707294248445254462014-06-18T09:13:26.422-04:002014-06-18T09:13:26.422-04:00Von Keigai,
I had two primary concerns with Sugar...Von Keigai,<br /><br />I had two primary concerns with Sugar’s Individual Mercenary idea.<br /><br />My primary concern derived out of the mechanic enabling a player to join a corporation with, for lack of a better set of words, “light status”. Individual Mercenaries would be “light” members in the sense that they’d joined a corporation but without accepting the limitations (like individual control to dabble in other's wars) joining a corporation imposes. Your particular instantiation of the idea greatly reduces this concern since the decision to allow light members is decided at the corp level not the individual level.<br /><br />My secondary concern was difficulty of implementation which greatly affects whether CCP resources will be directed towards something. We could argue whether 7 goals and 18 specific rules is too resource intensive to be worth the bother but that’s connected to how popular the mechanic would be which I have no way to measure.<br /><br />As is my style, whenever I examine a mechanic I look for devious ways to use/exploit/bust it to my benefit. One curious aspect of your proposal is the ability to set up well nigh impregnable “secret societies” backed up by huge corporations within massive alliances. A player sets up a front corporation, dozens of players from different corporations (many within large alliances) affiliate with that front corporation. Front corporation declares war. Victim faces an astoundingly difficult retaliation situation since declaring war back at the affiliate members means declaring war on dozens of corporations (many members of large alliances). Being a devious player, I actually kind of like this feature but point out that it’s not very white knighty.<br /><br />DireNecessity<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-90812339968134173342014-06-18T08:08:14.766-04:002014-06-18T08:08:14.766-04:00I did not know that RvB did intra-corp scrimmaging...I did not know that RvB did intra-corp scrimmaging with the two corps. I guess that is a problem, then. So yeah, you might allow attacking corp mates via a checkbox, or a via a role. I tend to like roles because they are fine-grained. <br /><br />As for the level of detail, this is a "take this and program it" level, i.e. something akin to a functional spec. But the end-user does not need that. He or she just uses the thing, and as long as it acts more or less in accordance with expectations, it's fine. But maybe you can sell the list of seven goals as easier to understand. If you really need to sell something.Von Keigaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14469707993470718130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-3214568355974014552014-06-18T00:11:07.028-04:002014-06-18T00:11:07.028-04:00Firstly, I think the 'no attacking corp mates&...Firstly, I think the 'no attacking corp mates' breaks part of RVB; Red fights red, blue fights blue. This can be worked around by a CEO elected 'tick' stating whether corp members are allowed to attack each other; changing this setting should send out a corp wide evemail. Or do we merely move RVB to sisi and/or wormholes.<br /><br />18 rules to work out what you can/can't do will be a hard sell. Can the rules be re-worded so that there are less rules? This is not necessarily a change to what you are trying to achieve; merely making it palatable to a wider audience.<br />Foohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02444693774790165427noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-12442445570068111192014-06-17T22:41:26.943-04:002014-06-17T22:41:26.943-04:00There needs to be a limit beyond which you ought t...There needs to be a limit beyond which you ought to hire mercs, not take in freelancers. I think affiliates should count against the corp employee limit. Or maybe have a new skill for that? We need charisma skills. But yeah, I kind of also feel the more the merrier. <br /><br />The whole need for friendly fire is something I don't know about. I can see that it might be useful. I don't need it personally; I practically never do it myself (EFT is most of what you need), and when I do I can practice in my wormhole when zipped just fine, or more likely do it on sisi. So, I don't really know. That's where I'd want to have someone stand in for me, who is smart and clued into the game, who talks to a lot of players from all over the map. Or maybe a council of such players. Yeah.Von Keigaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14469707993470718130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-18618554785497642512014-06-17T22:34:30.702-04:002014-06-17T22:34:30.702-04:00People should not be able to hide in a wardec proo...People should not be able to hide in a wardec proof NPC corp and join wars, escaping any retaliation. Realism-wise (oooh, the r-word!) it seems reasonable that a corp should be able to rule its members, and also that anything an NPC corp can do a PC corp can do. Do note that I did it as a role, so that it can be assigned to individuals on a per-character basis, if desired.Von Keigaihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14469707993470718130noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-55038987437691108422014-06-17T22:18:58.846-04:002014-06-17T22:18:58.846-04:00I like the 'you can solo merc' check box t...I like the 'you can solo merc' check box that the corp has in this.Sugar Kylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15437978687639772023noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7656651603131896852.post-30941206857584629572014-06-17T21:37:43.404-04:002014-06-17T21:37:43.404-04:00I love this idea. It preserves your corporate iden...I love this idea. It preserves your corporate identity but also lets you freelance -- with your home corp's approval, of course. And I absolutely agree that a corporation's members' side affiliations should be discoverable by API and UI. I think you're right about the restriction on NPC corp members' ability to affiliate, as well.<br /><br />And yes, totally, to the idea of dropping the shoot-your-corpmates loophole. That has never made sense to me. For friendly fire dueling practice, I like the idea of a within-fleet PVP flag that's set at fleet creation time. There are people I'd like to practice with who aren't in my corp, and it'd be cool if we could fleet up just for that.<br /><br />Would you set a limit on how many affiliates a wardecced corp could have, or should that be open-ended? I'd lean toward the latter, since that sounds like big-time fun 'n games if a newbie corp with tough veteran friends puts out a distress call. Suzariel Kel-Patenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09141394814063525048noreply@blogger.com