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Good Morning Eve World!  A new blog banter has arrived:

“With the Winter expansion possibly being named ‘Crucible’, it certainly is a melting pot of refinements and tweaks aimed at making the EVE experience smoother and more wholesome. If the developers suddenly found themselves some spare resources and approached you for an additional feature to include before release, what single concept would you pitch them and how would you implement it?

For bonus points, the one thing lacking from this “patchwork” of iterations is a cohesive storyline to package “The Crucible” together. How could this expansion be marketed to potential new customers?”

Hmmm.. this is a tough one.

I had to choose between more (and different) incrusions and an updated bounty hunting system.

I decided that, if they asked me, I would say the addition of new NPC pirate themed “Incursions”.  The overall premise would be that as the Sansha Incrursions have disrupted the major nation states and that despite the ongoing support of friendly capsuleers, the disruption has allowed other pirate factions to harass those nation states.

The Breakdown:

Gurista “Blockades” – Guritas are the only “real” pirates of Eve.  The whole point of their existence is to raid and steal supplies.  In like manner, a system under a Gurista “Raid” will lose a portion (approx. 10%) of anything in their cargo if they jump out of system.  Locations to jump to will be similar to incursions, where you do have to fight but also have secondary objectives to win.  Other things that could happen would be a random NPC pirate fleet would land on the gate and scramble ships and rob them of 50% of their cargo.  The number of ships scrammed would be proportional to the number of frigates in the NPC fleet at the time of landing.

Supertechnology:  Armed Freighter

Serpentis “Enterprise” – As the Serpentis are the premier manufacturers of illegal drugs, this incursion will actually have a positive effect on all manufacturing, especially any involving drugs legal or otherwise (less resources needed as well as quicker build times).  However, all nearby level 3 and 4 mission agents will not be able to give you an accurate location to where you run the mission.  You instead will be given a random number of locations that you will need to look in before you find the mission.  There is a random chance (the chance decreases depending the higher your agent standing is), that you will run into a Serpentis trap, where you will need to fight a number of NPC pirates before you can leave.

New supertechnology:  Serpentis Capital Industrial Ship (Similar to Rorqual or Orca)

Angel Cartel “Influence” – The Angel Cartel operates in all spheres of criminal activity and operates much like today’s Mafia (Russian, American, or Italian..).  As such it does not do anything direct, but can show a level of force as well.  When a system is under a Cartel “Influence”, nothing changes.  However, every time you repair, dock, or try to leave the system you are given the option to pay “protection money”.  If you choose not to pay the protection money, you can still do those actions, but it gives a random chance of a causing your sec status to be listed as -10 in their controlled systems, irregardless of what your previous sec status was.  This would also allow players to fire upon you.

New supertechnology:  POS Ship – Essentially a mobile POS, able to keep a ship or two in the hold, have two or three pos modules installed.. and efficiently for three or four hours at a time.

Blood Raider “Blood Raids” – The Blood Raiders are feared by all because they care not for the losses they incur, nor do they need anything.. except pure capsuleer blood.  The means that if your ship gets destroyed by Blood Raiders, they will also go after your pod as well.  This will be handled by automatically warp scrambling all pods until the rest of the player fleet is destroyed.  If the player fleet wins, then the pods can leave the mission area.  Missions will involve rescuing hapless peoples and timed missions where one must save a dignitary before he is sacrificed.

New supertechnology:  Blood Raider Carrier – Massive bonuses to large vamps (effectively making them equal to what capital vamps might be).

Yes, that is what I want.  Variety.. and lore.

Now, as far as how we bring this all together… that is easy.  The lore would be simple:  During the two years, while the Sansha Incursions have been going on, each empire began to work on technology to counter the Sansha, realizing that they could also use this technology against enemy states.  And thus, out of the fires of the Incursions, the fires for the Crucible were formed.  The massive battles in 0.0 also provided the realization that they needed ships able to counter the continually growing fleets of the capsuleers.  Thus were born the next generation of battlecruisers, able to lay more damage on their targets than ever before.  In addition, the Gallente, with their “free” society and massive economic resources, managed to make a technological leap with Hybrids, after seeing their effectiveness faulter in the face of the other nations’ weapon advances.

CCP Ninveah – Ship Transport, D-Scan Improvements, Exploration Ships
CCP Madhatter – Stalemate Unleashed
CCP FakeDevBlogger – Faction Warfare Redesign
CCP Revenge – Joystick Control, Pirate Factions, Wormhole Changes
CCP Cozmik – Global Criminal Countdown Changes
CCP NinjaHoneyBee – EMP Blasts, New Rigs
CCP BadStudent – Navigation-Linked Market Tools
CCP Haberdasher – War Dec’ Changes, Hi-Sec PvP
CCP Ranter – Launcher and Turret Animation, PI Improvements, Motherships
CCP Anomaly – Incursion Iterations
CCP Veskin – Ammo Revolvers
CCP Margin – Product ‘Heat’ Map
CCP AngryLog – Deep Space Exploration
CCP NastyCop – Zero Tolerance Policing
CCP Mumbles – Good Samaritan Standings Boosts
CCP Cheapshoes – Advanced Camera Controls
CCP Epicentre – Temporary Jumpgate Jamming
CCP Mack – Pirate Faction Rebalancing