Weighing In On Indy Ships

There have been several recent posts about the state of the Industrial ships and their complete lack of defenses.

I think it was best summed up here:

http://letrangeeve.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-reflections.html

Now there are a few things I hate more then flying paper mache in a rain storm, but one of them is macro miners.  Another is the person who never takes risks. 

The first type is the laughable excuse people use to justify a career in suicide bombing, but really it is the second that should be the reason.  Should there be a place in tha game for people who just want to log on their three (or more) accounts, get their Orca into a belt with boosters on, have their Hulks be able to hit the whole belt and basically Alt-Tab mine all day while at work, watching TV, eating dinner, etc.  Cause while this is not "botting" it is about as close as you can get when really you need to be at the keyboard every 9 minutes for 30 seconds.

In regards to transporting, should it be essentially zero risk to transport stuff around in High Sec?  Would creating an environment where all risk was eliminated not just add to the number that set autopilot, walk away and return 40 minutes later hovering off a safe gate where they want to be?

So how do you balance out the desire to make the game "better" for us "active" carebears (are we still carebears if we mainly live in w-space?), versus the "passive" carebears?  Make the ships way more "ganker" proof and we drasticially add to the ranks of AFK miners.  Make "Trade Lanes" where gates have ECM and guns that alpha strike a battleship, and add to the ranks of the autopilot hordes.

Unfortunetly in EVE, as with real life, every action is a double edged sword with the ability to cut in a direction we don't intend.  While being an active carebear, I do appreciate the frustration of many at the shear paper mache build of the Industrial Ships.  I agree there is no counter at this point to the tactics being used to make life miserable for Indy ships.  And yes there is always going to be a segment of the gamers who, dare I say, enjoy the abiltity to cause misery in game (do they all kick puppies outside game too, or are they just our accountants and we dont know that side of them).

Now for my suggestions.  Again, all of these suggestions are based on the desire to "reward" people for ... well, actually "playing" the game.

1) Within range of a station or gate in High Sec, like 25km, there should be a module that allows a one time, 10 second, infinite strength ecm burst.  The equal of a ECM Bomb.  Should be instant activation and would allow indy ships targeted while aligning away from a gate (prime gank time) to have a window to get away.  Make the cost relativelky high so it would make it worthwhile when transporting high value stuff, but not while running the cigarettes you got while popping NPC haulers off stations.  Justify this as a device that "calls" the gate to send a massive ECM burst to that location.

2) Add NPC haulers to the game.  The ability to bring your goods to any station in High Sec, contract an NPC hauler to take it to Jita (or where ever), and pay based on skills, standings, and cargo worth.  Would make running those damned courier missions for an NPC corp have a little more value.  Would also take away from some of the "down time" of hauling crap around.  This option should cost a boat load.  And I am not talking 1%, much closer to 10% base with top notch skills and standings getting it down to like 5%.  And it should take a day, but be absolutely fool proof.

3) For the miners, there needs to be a "Super Damage Control" module, call it the "Armadillo" module, that makes you damn near invulerable for 30 seconds, but leaves you without the ability to move.  Has to be a low slot so you have to sacrifice mining yield to use it.  Wrecks you capacitor and leaves you with only enough available to cap to make a short warp jump (1AU) for a couple of minutes (5 minutes?).  Basicially all you are trying to do is give the Calvary time to show up, be it Concord, or Friendlies.  This would make it much more feasible also to have escorts, since they would then have time to fight back against the aggressors.(hell give it to haulers to and make it a low slot to sacrifice cargo room for safety.)  Also like everything else CCP does to limit it to certain ships, give only certain higher industrials (read Mammoths, Inty V's,  all tech 2 transports, the orca, mining barges, exhaumers) the 99.9% reduction in CPU to use them.

None of these ideas are going to help the AFK miner, or the auto pilot hauler, and that is good.  But they all will help the active player and balance the game play to where at least a player as the option of trying to defend himself, or make escorts a legitimate opiton.  In the end all these options would allow a player options to sacrifice profit, by paying a NPC company, sacrifice cargo or yield, or hiring escorts, in the name of safety.

In the end, balancing game play must be a very difficult thing to do as any added defenses only adds to the saftey of the passive players, to the detriment of all us active industrials.

As an aside, is this ability to suicide, going to carry over into the "walking in station" portion of the game?  Am I going to have to worry about getting mugged on the way to the market with my 50 melted nano ribbons?  Am I going have to worry about my 100M isk I have on the poker table if a suicide bomber comes into the station?

Fly Safe and tell CCP about my Armadillo module.
Mick