Mobile POBs

[Sand-Viper]

Hi! It me - Sleepy-Viper (One of the guys who insisted that Harcourt post this AWESOME idea on the forum).

I'm gonna help contribute to this by fleshing out the idea.


Picture this: You're flying a Dunlin, Bustard, or a Liner, equipped with an 'Expanded Docking Module' that Harcourt has mentioned above.

This Expanded Docking Module (Let's call it the E.D.M.) is linked to a special POB with crafting capability, and an exotic weapons forge, and you want to advertise that you're a... Let's go with a Daumann Constructions gun smithy.

In order to run this establishment though, you're gonna need some help. At minimum, you're gonna need a friend to log in and help stuff your hold with crafting materials, since you won't be able to transfer cargo from your own hold onto the E.D.M - You HAVE to get someone else to dock with you to do it.

Now, let's say you wanna craft a pair of HOWLER codes, and you've gotten a buddy to help you pack the materials onto your ship via the E.D.M.

Well, a few things need to happen.

• One: You need to be stopped/slowed to less than 10m/s, just like when someone is docking with you.
  
  
• Two: You need to bring your E.D.M. ship to a designated "crafting forge zone." Perhaps a star's corona, or designated shipyard-like frameworks. This prevents us from simply avoiding player interaction during crafting by say.. Flying 200k off-plane, or within a sensor dampening cloud, and going afk. It also creates zones where other players know WHERE to look for potential encounters with E.D.M. Crafting Ship Players.
  
  
• Three: You need to sit there, practically stationary, for the entire crafting process. Moving will pause the timer, and won't resume until you stop again, or is re-initiated by another E.D.M. PoB command input by your buddy docked with you (I like the latter better, as it incentivizes your helper to stay logged in.)
  

This opens up potential for traveling crafting merchant RP.
It would also allow groups who don't want to upkeep a standard PoB a way to engage with the crafting system.

Not only that, but if you've got to sit completely still within a designated "crafting zone," then you're going to want other players around for:

• A: Protection from pirates, or hostile factions that might want to prevent you from crafting these guns that might be used later to shoot them.
  
• B: Company to pass the time.
  

Imagine how many players this would encourage to log into the game!

Especially if this whole alternative method for crafting items aboard an E.D.M. equipped ship gave you a significant material discount on crafting materials needed (Like, 20% less, to incentivize using a system that requires the player to be online for 100% of the crafting process, vs PoB forges allowing you to log out the moment you start crafting).

You'd have:

• Your E.D.M. Ship player,
  
• E.D.M. command typist player,
  
• Allied/Hired Protection/Scout ship players,
  
• Potential customer players,
  
• Pirates seeing sitting-duck prey $_$
  
• Hostile faction players hunting you down!
  

I believe one of the ideas that was tossed around on the Discord is for the initial testing of this system to be limited to a select few SRPs, in order to test the waters and see how positive or negative this could be for the server environment.

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