Talk:Erik Finnegan (Character)

My ideas section...

Contents 1 Low-sec policing discussion 1.1 Interested pilots: 2 Live Events Feedback 2.1 Interested Pilots 3 Mercenary Contracts Toolbox 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Mission Objective Toolbox 3.3 Rewards 3.3.1 Financial Rewards 3.3.2 Persistent Rewards 3.4 Scam Discussion 3.5 Exploit Discussion 3.6 Further Expansions 3.7 Summary 4 Attached and related comments

Low-sec policing discussion

Interested pilots:

• Crownsith
• Lucjan
• Tom Hanks
• Saxum Frangere (already contributed in a discussion)
• Zorok (already contributed in a discussion)
• Ruze Ahkor'Murkon (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1061355 - Apr 2009)
• kongking wang (http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1058225 - Apr 2009)
• Alsyth (PvP corp CEO, where ex Pygallean is now working)

Potentially interested in further discussion

• Suraklin (small scale merc CEO)
• Zamile (small scale merc CEO)
• Fille Balle (commented on Ruze and Kongking)
• RedSplat (commented on Ruze)
• Mithfindel (commented on Ruze)
• Katarlia Simov (commented on Ruze)
• MatrixSkye Mk2 (commented on Ruze)
• spinarax (commented on Ruze)
• Serious Rikk (commented on Kongking)

Live Events Feedback

Interested Pilots

• Nyphur (blogged on Massively about it : http://www.massively.com/2010/05/16/eve-evolved-sansha-abduction-live-event/ )

Potentially Interested

• Optimus Sai (mildly RP-oriented)
• Ché Biko (RP-oriented)

Mercenary Contracts Toolbox

This page shall be used as a collaboration platform to work on a feature idea, which shall eventually be submitted to the CSM. Feel free to contribute ! Please keep discussion positive and restricted to the discussion sub-page.

Behave !

Do not substantially change this page prior to publishing your idea on the discussion sub-page. If you are not in favour of the idea spread out here, please give some concise feedback on the discussion page only if you see conceptual back-draws, which can be corrected. A simple "me not likey" will not add anything of benefit. You will be able to express your opposition on the Assembly Hall, as soon as this idea will have been posted there. Posting to the Assembly Hall is mandatory for all CSM submissions.

Introduction

We think this can be used as an effective tool to ensure mercenaries actually do their job for you when you hire them. At this time, there is no way to guarantee that when you hire mercenaries (for which you often have to pay an outrageous starting fee) they will actually perform their duties and / or kill something for you. As you will see in the rest of this document, performance and rewards can be guaranteed more easily with player generated missions.

When it comes to providing players with the ability to create missions of their own, the free text thing has the potential to kill off the entire idea. A player generated mission has to have entirely SMART (Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time bound) objectives and rewards. Nothing else ! Every involved party needs to view the mission in the exact same way in order for it to work. Otherwise there is no way to determine whether a mission has been accomplished or whether it even can be.

Mission Objective Toolbox

• Between <date A> and <date B> destroy at least <amount> ships of any class of pilots from <corporation or alliance name>
• Between <date A> and <date B> destroy at least <amount> ships of class <ship class> or above of pilots that have a security rating of <number> or more/less in the system called <system name>
• Between <date A> and <date B> spend at least <amount of time> within (distance) of gate <x> in the system called <system name> AND destroy at least <amount> ships of any type within this area, except ships of <ship type A>, <ship type B> and <ship type C>

All of the above aspects can be measured, free text need not be involved. Although to measure the presence of a pilot somewhere, CCP will probably have to come up with some sort of new trick, if not the alliance tournament mechanics for detecting play-field exit (leads to ship destruction) can be reused.

Rewards

Issuing of rewards for player generated missions should be strictly regulated as well. Isk would be one part of the rewards, of course, and they are presented in the following. But in addition to that, for a regulatory bias, we also see the opportunity for permanent rewards as explained further down.

Financial Rewards

We suggest each mission to have three types of reward:

• basic reward
• variable reward
• bonus reward

The basic reward only applies whenever the objectives of the mission involve for a player to be at one location (be it a system or a specific location within a system) and should depend on:

• the system's security rating
• percentage of the time spent by the mission runner in the mission's area

Needless to say that rewards are paid from the pocket of the issuer. The creation wizzard might make suggestions, or this may as well entirely lay in the hands of the market forces.

The variable reward involves the destruction of ship types during the mission. There should be some sort of basic reward for that per ship type with the possibility for the issuer to increase (but not decrease) the rewards for certain ship-type kills.

A bonus reward could be handed out for completing the entire mission and should be completely adaptable (no minimum nor maximum) by the issuer.

Persistent Rewards

Additionally, more persistent rewards could be established, which would allow good pilots to show off their abilities, and would at the same time allow the bad guys to lose reputation (see also the Scam Discussion further down). For this, the existing medal and the standing system could be reused. Visible rewards might be given to successful issuers as well, not only to contractors, based on the total amount of isk paid out in relation to number of missions issued.

While introducing mission medals and some tweakable heuristics for their attribution is straight forward, the standing system is a more tricky. As of today, standing settings are only visible to the issuer, not to the receiver let alone to a third party. Such visibility would have to be introduced - and possible negative side effects (influenced mass standing edit to ruin enemies) discussed separately. Still, automated standing reward / penalty to mission issuer and contractor would be a highly adaptive, tweakable and self-repairing system. Needless to say that a successful Caldari mercenary mission runner would lose standing towards all Gallente Capsuleers...

Scam Discussion

Each new feature comes with the possibility of being exploited or used to grief naive pilots. The exploitability of this feature shall be discussed further down.

Imagine a situation like:

• Pilot A (issuer) generates a mission and pilot B (contractor) accepts. Pilot A warns his corporation mates once the mission has been accepted by pilot B and they all head towards the appropriate mission area to finish off pilot B (and his buddies).

Possible solutions:

• First, a mission must be accomplished within at least one day. We recommend not using exact times at which missions would have to be accomplished. This however rules out the possibility of hiring a pilot (and / or his corporation) to guard a warp gate at the exact time of your choosing, but only a time window (1-x hours during a given day)[/*]
• Secondly, you do not notify the issuer when the mission has been accepted; only when the mission has either been (partly) accomplished (for this to work, a player must be able to choose to end a mission prematurely, receiving the appropriate rewards for whatever services were provided) or when the alotted time in which the mission was available has run out.
• If the issuer decides to play the waiting game and attack his contractor, we could imagine a "black list" that lists all players who have attacked ships of people running their missions (i.e. they opened fire).

However, a "black list" presents corporation-saboteurs with a wonderful opportunity to permanently scar the reputation of their current corporation; so maybe black list entries should be bound to the issuer (personally) and time out after a month or maybe one week.

As mentioned in the Rewards section of this article, negative permanent rewards could be used as a visible means to deteriorate the reputation of bad guys.

Exploit Discussion

With financial rewards being taken from the issuer's pocket, the lack of isk-injection of this feature limits exploits. Only (automated) permanent rewards might be subject to exploitation. This needs further discussion.

Further Expansions

By creating issuer pools, this feature could be expanded to include player-policing aspects : a corporation might choose to "subscribe" to a CONCORD mission type, which would add money to the fund. The contractors, accepting such missions, would receive bonus for shooting down fending off (keep out of a given system Capsuleers with negative security rating (CONCORD standing); either below -5 or even higher. Fending off could be done, of course, by communication, too, not only by weapons.

Summary

Creating a toolbox for mercenary services, a highly controversial and non-regulated profession of New Eden could be lifted to a new level. If would increase the amount of "content" created by players for players. It could potentially be expanded to include player-policing aspects. It would further promote medals, and open the gate to public Capsuleer standing, as discussed in the permanent rewards section.

Attached and related comments

Comments from a colleague

1) Did you talk to mercenary corps/players (Noir, ex-MC, etc) about what they feel should be changed/added to the game, and how they feel about this proposal? Trying to change 'their' part of the game without their input is a recipe for disaster. Plus, being able to show the support of major mercenary organisations gives the proposal more weight.

2) I submitted a similar idea in CSM, along with my bounty hunter idea (but the topics were discussed/voted on seperately). You may take a look at my document http://dl.eve-files.com/media/0808/Nil_mortifi_sine_lucre%5B2%5D.pdf

If you find a lot of similarities between the two ideas, you dont technically need to vote on this. You can just ask for it to be re-examined in iceland, since it was already passed in CSM1. If you choose to do this I would recommend trying to gain some addition info from mercenaries on what they want (see points 1 and 3).

3) Your idea has the same weakness that mercenaries pointed out in my idea: the conditions are too restrictive. You do not take into account (specific) POS destructions, sovereignity loss/gain, etc. I found that the biggest challenge was to provide enough conditions to fit (almost) all mercenary contracts. Input from real mercenaries may help a lot to solve this problem.

4) it is unclear if this is a contract between 2 players, or between 2 corps/alliances.

5) How do the mercenaries obtain kill rights. Is this up to them (conventional war dec system) or is that part of this system?

6) Rewards (medals?), are these actually desired by mercenaries (or is this a suggestion from a certain medal-happy ex-CSM member)? Good mercenary corps will establish their reputation through the existing diplomatic channels. Is this feature required?

7) Scam discussion - it doesnt sound like a real scam to me. It just sounds like another day in Eve. Yes it is a harsh world. "Caveat emptor", buyer beware - the mercenaries should be responsible for their own safety. So make sure that if you want implement certain guard features - are they really necessary in the cut-throat world of pew pew for hire?

Overall, perhaps due to the wording ("mission area", etc), it reads a lot like an attempt to steer a players gameplay/behaviour. I can guarantee you now that that is going to cause a lot of resistance as a lot of players will vehemently defend Eve's sandbox nature. Again, it could just be the wording. I would suggest avoding the term mission and using 'contract' instead.