Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Blog Banter - Bribe the Docking Bay Manager

This month's topic comes to us from Ga'len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: "What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a 'nerf this, boost my game play' post like we see on the EVE forums"

Simple.

I want to be able to bribe the docking bay manager to toss you and all your corpmates that I'm at war with out of a station.

The fee would be on a per ship basis and would create a 1 hour cooldown where OPFOR couldn't dock at the same station, but my corp can't kick OPFOR out from any station until the cooldown lapses.

Thirty seconds of warning time to the kickee.

Would put a crimp in station hugging & ship spinning.

10 comments:

Kirith Kodachi said...

I do hate docking games. If they do make this kind of change, they really need to add pre-undocking windows to see what we're undocking into.

Also: please change your layout to colour your font using the CSS as the RSS feed is sending the white font colour down the feed and makes it impossible to see in Google Reader :)

Dee Carson said...

Grrr... I thought I had fixed the font issue...

DC

John Holt said...

Not just 30 seconds of warning time, but an opportunity to out bid your bribe!

Altaree said...

Talk about evil to people that are AFK. I think of some unintended consequences to this:
1) less people online at any one time because they can't afk.
2) aliances/corp conversations wither and die for the same reason.
3) I am not telling you but there are certian modules that I will be buying if I get even a sniff that this might be implemented :)

Unknown said...

The idea needs more thought, imo.

Docking is the one safe way to press "pause" in the game. Bio break, answer the door/phone. Being able to eject someone removes that safe pause.

So the player to be ejected jumps into a noob ship, or just leaves his ship and is ejected in his pod. Is the bribe worth a noob ship kill? You might not even catch a pod.

30 seconds warning = logoffski. I can't see how you could prevent that. I doubt CCP would force an eject of someone who has logged off, even if they've seen a warning.

It also breaks the whole model of the NPC stations being a trusted neutral third party.

I appreciate that you want to engage your targets at your convenience, but I think that your targets need to have some kind of counter. Hiding in station would be it.

Anonymous said...

Interesting idea, but something similar was proposed by Istvaan in his CSM platform and later picked up by Lark IIRC. Basically, you could bribe Scotty to increase the length of the session change timer when you dock/undock.

Dee Carson said...

Not really aimed at increasing/decreasing the session timer as a way to gain ganks on the undock point...

Rather a way to force an engagement. Particularly by those that dec you, but then play 'sit & spin'.

Anonymous said...

Should only be available as an option to the decc'd side in a war, then. Otherwise a bit problematic with regards to griefing potential.

Anonymous said...

I like your Idea. Obviously the intended consequence is only applicable to 0.0? or Low sec and 0.0? If done elsewhere there could be many unintended consequences to be sure. good idea none the less

Anonymous said...

They could require that the corp doing the bribing has an office at that station, and that corp being kicked out does not.

Would make station camping in home systems for enemy corps risky if you don't do your homework but still allow safe havens. Also how would they work this in with the ability to walk around the station one day?

I can just imagine walking around talking with people and me getting a message that my battleship just got shot up in space...