Bullcrap. That is not an argument against the hull itself because it is just generic limitations that apply to ALL ships available to alpha.
+5 virus strength over T1 frigates is a HUGE improvement in hacking capabilities. And gnosis does not have better scanning bonuses. It is also a battlecruiser so cannot enter 3/10 for those tasty a-type frig sized modules.
Since the main point of sansha ships is ab speed its the best argument against its use.
My bad, gnosis has the same scaning bonuses. +5 virus strenght is a significant improvment but its wasted because alphas wont even be able to scan down those hard sites because of scaning skill limitations. Like i said, hisec combat exploration is an option if you can make it cap stable but even then gila is a better option.
Please dont tell alpha newbros they should explore in SOE ships, you are not doing them a favor.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha… sorry, couldn’t contain myself. You, sir, know nothing (about Alpha scanning capabilities) then.
No it is you who has misconceptions about alpha capabilities.
And rightfully so.
Idk man I’m an alpha and I use the hell out of succubus for farming Lowsec clone soldiers. Seems pretty good to me even with the skill limitations.
Try fighting other players with it.
For what you are using it any ship with 150dps(?) will do.
Not mediums, pirate ships are on the radar. Alphas will soon be kissing the Gila goodbye.
Do you have a source for this or is it just wishful thinking?
This thread is still going on, I gave nuubs the solution and since I am feeling helpful I will repeat it.
Let Alphas PILOT Heavy Drones 
If CCP is smart they’ll gonna do what they should have done since the beginning and let them fly cross faction but NOT faction/pirate hulls. That simple change keeps actual powerful ships behind the paywall as it should be while allowing them to explore the different types of ships and weapon systems that exist within EVE.
As far as I’m concerned let them keep heavy drones, I’m on the fence as far as them using battleships, but considering the SP requirements to properly fly them combined with the existing restrictions I really see no harm in it. But the faction/pirate ships need to go, far too much power and abuse cases have risen from giving alphas that much access.
Falcon said they are looking at pirate ships in some other thread, but I’m not taking the time to find it for you.
That was the last i heard i think. Then they nerfed gila drone hp.
So… you got any data to back up this ‘far too much power and abuse cases’ statement?
Because, you know, the login numbers, the mission payouts, the bounties, the LP store numbers, the trade figures… basically all the actual data we have, shows that Alphas have had one effect only on the game - they stabilized the bleeding population numbers from declining as rapidly as they were, and they increased the number of people trying out the game.
So one wonders just where all these vets complaining about Alpha bots and Alpha mission runners and Alpha VNI nullsec farmers and Alpha Gilas with their ‘far too much power and abuse’ are getting their data? Because it’s not in anything CCP publishes… if anything, most of those numbers are down after the initial Alpha peak two and a half years ago.
I’m guessing the actual issue here is, vets who’ve paid a sub over the years, and then hating that someone else is getting for free what they paid for… are making up all the ‘bad Alpha’ stories they can, hoping to get Alphas trimmed back to nothing.
I mean, if a low SP Alpha with his rank 4 drone skills is really out there ‘abusing his far too much power’ against you… maybe you need to shake out the wallet and buy some more win?
[Removed first sentence, no need to start so negative] It’s not power or abuse towards any other given player. Any vet worth their salt will tell you battles are determined largely by skill and who get their shot off first far more than any 2% given by a skill being 4 rather than 5. Only eve-ignorant people think these low values actually determine the outcome of a fight more than who got the jump on who and came prepared.
It’s the power these specific hulls gain over your typical T1 hull and their effectiveness in certain passive activities that’s the problem. A simple example would be to just look at the more popular faction hull, the VNI, compared to it’s base hull. Before skills you gain 1k structure, 1k armor, and 550 shield. For fitting you gain 10 cpu and 100 pg, that makes a huge difference for those alpha skills on a cruiser hull. And the kicker, this hull goes from 75 with to 125 drone bandwidth and that’s ignoring the free tracking bonus on the VNI also gains as well as a small number of lesser gains.
If you think the power this gives with very little skill investment is warranted to a f2p player then that’s obviously your opinion and nothing can really be done to change that tbh. I’d love for CCP to release information on how many of those accounts banned were alpha vs omega. And of those that were Omega how many were also being used as skill farms. I’d be willing to bet the answer to that is almost all of them. If you think I’m wrong, then I question how you came to your own conclusion. Logically, if a person is going to go to the extent to bot for their income to either use personally or sell they are likely goings to try to get every bit of isk that account can yield before it’s banned.
All I can do for data is to point to the same data you say shows nothing and the specific groups that are seeing the bulk of these bans. I have no “evidence” that these are alphas outside of the hulls these players are using and the low skillpoint requirements to effectively fly them. If you were a botter, ask yourself, would you put any more on the line than you absolutely had to knowing full well it will eventually be banned? I’d think not. There are many reports that exist showing an abundance of people going against the agreed terms multiboxing these alpha accounts for the same and other activities, I see little evidence to go against the idea that botters wouldn’t do the same.
So while direct evidence may be lacking (CCP holds all the cards and only recently started being more transparent in the matter to even let us say with any certainty that this is the case), straight common sense tells us that botters will make use of the tools CCP gives them just as any other player. That includes abusing the powers given to Alpha accounts. The same alpha accounts that were meant to be an extended trial to allow a player to experience the different aspects of EVE before subscribing. Not offer a free meal ticket to botters and those who would simply abuse the system. I’ve said a dozen times by now that Alphas should have always been given cross faction hulls so they can get a taste of the variety within EVE, but faction and pirate hulls were always a step too far and should have been the initial carrot dangled in front of them to subscribe. Instead we’ve found ourselves with a mess with some trying to defend it ignoring the can of worms it actually opened all because a handful of people don’t want to pay $15 a month to get that power bump and access to the whole game.
Security team for CCP been giving updates of thousands of bot bans every quarter of the year alot of players roaming nullsec for fights reported and recorded entire constellations filled with bots in VNI .All these bots do is damage the economy for everyone and they are alphas because it’s super cheap to just make new bots now with alpha being free .If there was no botting in the game through the use of alphas we’d have no issue
It doesn’t but whatever.
First hand experience and its has been recognised by ccp. Hence the level4’s block.
The issue is with certain hulls as well. Like the gila getting full drone dps from level 1 cruiser making alphas too effective/attractive for making free semi-afk ratting alts. Again recognised by ccp hence the nerfs.
Well thank you @Nasar Vyron, @Dread_Saboteur and @Daichi_Yamato for showing us the unvalidated opinions of the reactionary vet crowd, panicking because they have to compete now with free, low SP Alpha players.
Please note that babbling opinions that make giant assumptions with no actual connection to the data involved does not constitute ‘evidence’ about Alphas.
You can’t point at the same data, since it proves my position and disproves yours. Actually look at the MERs since Alpha. Mission rewards? Small bump when Alpha came in, flat to down ever since. LP Store activity? Same. Commodities/bounties farmed (mostly in null sec)? Super high, but roughly the same trend as before Alphas. Destruction up a bit, Production heading down. The primary major economic effect that has gone up since Alpha introduction is mining numbers, but those have pretty much always gone up. So far it hasn’t gone up more since Alpha intro, and lately have taken a fairly sharp downturn. Market trading activity, insurance payouts, Incursion payouts, all these indicators show flat to down trends since Alphas.
Player population? Trending down. Account creation? Improved since Alpha introduction, but staying relatively stable since then.
If Alphas were ‘powerfully abusing’ their super-Gila and super-VNIs, farming all the ISKies, botting their faces off and vacuuming up the ISK, one would expect actual data indicators showing a change in the activity levels or trend lines of these key statistics. The trends are down.
Seriously dude, get a grip. CCP has issued lists of bans long before Alpha came along. Many of the ‘roaming players reporting constellations of bots’ in null were reporting ships that Alphas can’t even fly. If these bots are ‘damaging the economy for everyone’ then the activity would show in the MER, right? Please point to the MER changes in the past two years that show heavy new Alpha botting activity.
Bots have been a huge issue in EVE for years. They were a massive problem before Alpha, and if CCP cancelled Alpha tomorrow, they’d still be a massive problem. Some people are surely using Alpha accounts to bot/AFK farm, but the real money is where it’s always been - using subbed accounts to massively botfarm with Rorqs, PI, SP farms, carriers etc - all of which makes 5x the income as Alpha bots and which pay themselves off far faster than CCP bans them. Big business botting is all Omega. The ‘alpha botting’ problem is fake news.
Nor did CCP release any data that I have seen saying which bans were Alpha, or which using which hulls. Vets have largely ‘assumed’ the data they wanted in order to justify their prejudices.
You solve the botting problem by solving botting, something CCP has always been either too incompetent or too afraid to do. Using Alphas as scapegoats doesn’t fix a problem that has been here, and never been dealt with, for over a decade. And the many, many subbed bots/farmers is exactly why CCP doesn’t tackle the issue at the source.
Sorry but no, first hand experience from the vet “cancel Alphas they are freeloading scum” crowd doesn’t mean anything but “I make up unsupported statements because I hate to see someone getting for free what I pay for. Even if it kills the game to try to stick to the sub model I PAID CASH dammit and everyone else has to also!”. Data or gtfo.
'Recognised by CCP"? You mean the way they ‘recognized’ that Brisc was breaking his NDA to leak info to fleet mates for profit? That kind of recognition? CCP doing something doesn’t constitute proof of anything except that ‘CCP chose to do this and make it public to pretend they are taking action’.
Please show the changes in the Mission payouts, LP store activity, or other data before and after Alpha, or before and after the L4 mission changes, that indicate L4 blocking had any effect at all. Because it’s not on the MERs I’m looking at. I’ll take CCP published data (which one assumes they don’t massage) over your ‘first hand experience’ any day. Unless you have proof.
Seriously? The Gila has been recognized for years as being the OP, go-to hull for doing just about any activity efficiently (besides mining or exploration). Every event, every new content, everything that people say “what ship should I use for X?”… 4 times out of 5 the answer is ‘the Gila’. Nerfing Gila drone HP was barely a love tap, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Alphas. It was a long-delayed change to an over-used hull.
If you guys are going to continue to make up crap, use Alphas as scapegoats for everything bad in EVE, pretend botting is an Alpha issue, or even contend that anything has gotten worse since Alpha introduction, show your data.
Without that, all I see is so-called ‘elite’ vets crying that they can’t compete with low SP alphas because those dirty alphas are flying all the good ships. Man up, ffs.
No one can compete with boting armies of alpha vnis/gilas they cost nothing to make and farm 24/7 . If you can’t see why a single alpha VNI bot bringing 10-15 bil a month is a problem then you’re dumber than your arguments for alphas being fine as bot farms.After all anyone running one bot will run another dozen or more cuz it’s good money so get your head out of your ass before claiming alpha bots have no impact
Making up fake news, pulling numbers out of your butt and scaremongering to pander to your ‘Alphas must go’ agenda because you are threatened by low SP players playing for free, is not ‘data’.
Any Alpha farming 10-15 billion a month (proof please!) can easily Plex his account and make 5 times that. Just sayin’. Plus, the account numbers and economic indicators would of course be skyrocketing, right? You know, those things that aren’t happening?
You’re making up unsupported “I hate Alphas” bulls**t. I’m pointing at CCP published economic data. I mean, I could link the charts for you but they are right there on the launcher. People like you ignore real data anyway when it conflicts with their chosen belief.
There is a head up a butt here, but it sure ain’t mine.