I was going to put this in PvE but it didn’t seem to fit under either subcategory. My question is:
Are diamond rats too powerful? Please state why you think they are or are not.
I lost two Covetors to them last night in a short time span, so my opinion is likely as obvious as it is biased at the moment, but I’d like to read your opinions and reasons for them.
UPDATE: See my comments here, as I’ve come to a different conclusion than my initial (and emotionally biased) opinion.
First of all sorry for the loss of your ships, I would advise you to check for them first and going out with the second Covetor was not a good move unless you had never come across them before.
You need to check for them with the Agency, go to Encounters and check for Pirate Strongholds.
In terms of your question they are definitely too strong for your covetor, but most things are. I got tackled by a fleet of them with a Skiff and an Orca and I had to remove the ships that pointed me before getting out and they made a fair dent in my ships. So that should answer your question, if you know what you are doing, have decent drone skills and a good tank they are not too powerful.
I used to blow up the FOB’s, but after the resistance nerf it became an issue in terms of the cruiser spawn. I have played with them a bit with combat ships and it can be fun and challenging, especially challenging is the ability to warp to you which is better than players can do in the main.
I think they add to the game, but I am well aware that the inability for most players to gather a fleet to remove the FOB’s makes them a problem.
Not quite the answer you were looking for but please check the Agency before warping to the belts.
I agree, going out with the second Covetor was a bonehead move on my part. I didn’t know I could check for them with The Agency, so I’ll do that from now on. I’ve run into Diamonds before, but I’m not well educated on their abilities. I learned last night (the hard way) they can warp scramble their targets.
I’m of the opinion that perhaps their ability to warp to targets is over the top, though I’m not against the concept of “super rats” that require a group effort to deal with them. I was a bit alarmed at how quickly they scrambled me, though thankfully I was able to eject and warp to safety.
But yes, going back for a second serving–especially in a nearly identical ship–was definitely an ID-10-T user error.
the entire point is for local groups to get together and kill the fob. CCP already nerfed them by making them despawn after just a few days.
The original iteration had them slowly becoming stronger and stronger the longer the FOB stuck around in system from something that could be ignored to a problem that would start camping gates in the local area and min large amounts of the ore, now they just start at about the mid scale and stay that way.
I want FOB rats to be the baseline for all rats in the game. Right now, rats in highsec and lowsec are laughable.
There should be some real NPC danger to undocking in highsec.
It is possible to use ECM drones to jam the tackle frigates so you can warp off. ECM works differently on NPC’s to players, ECM drones have saved my Orca when I undocked without checking for FOB’s.
Diamond rats act as efficient killers of miners sitting in asteroid belts in afk mode. They generate ISK losses, and that looks good in CCP economic statistics.
I always explain to every miner player in my corporation that before they fly to the belt, it is imperative that they check with the Agency for FOBs.
However, there is one aspect about FOBs and diamond rats that I feel is unfair to those players who are careful of their surroundings and may lose a mining ship anyway.
Well, the Agency refreshes at odd time intervals. This makes it so you can fly out into the asteroid belt and there will be no FOB info in the Agency, so you feel “safe”. A quarter of an hour later there may be a FOB in the system and… for hours there may be no info in the Agency about a FOB in the system, even though the diamond rats will be patrolling the asteroid belts. So unless you are 100% of the time at the screen and notice that diamond rats have suddenly appeared on the grid and initiate warp drive, you are most likely dead.
And a little bar of some sort stating that increased pirate activity has been noticed in the system would suffice. Not as obvious threat info as the systems being targeted by Sansha (you know, the whole suite of icons that make it clear that SOMETHING is wrong with the system). Any conscious player-miner, after seeing such minimalistic information, would guess that there is a FOB in the system and you need to run away to the station, and most likely change the system.
They are powerful. A small tip would be to use dscan with the mining preset if you have one, with a filter for diamond rats
Does anyone have the SoundCloud link to Grath Telkin’s first encounter with diamond rats?
There should be more things like diamond rats around. The problem with normal rats is that even a completely brain-dead person can avoid any risk.
They arent because you can either run away or kill them and if you kill them they arent worth enough to be considered a powerful entity.
Just run away from them, its easy, quick and fairly effortless.
They are powerful but unlike normal rats you can also gain blue standings to them by doing pirate missions. Then they won’t attack you. Being blue to pirate diamond rats may affect your standings to empire factions though.
I would agree if the drops match the difficulty
I appreciate the tips and discussion here. I certainly don’t expect NPCs to be easy, even in highsec. Maybe in 1.0 space, they should be little more than “free loot drops,” but the less secure the space, the more difficult they should probably be.
I’m also not against the concept of diamond rats, but before I knew you could essentially discover them before warping to a belt, I was frustrated with how quickly they seemed to overwhelm me. Now that I have some ideas about how to take them on, I’m inclined to think they’re not too overpowered.
Diamond Rats, that term covers a few different types. NPC Mining Fleets are Diamond Rats which consist of either Empire or Pirate NPC’s. Having those in High Sec systems presents both a problem and a challenge.
Problem is they can easily mine out all Asteroid Belts in a system within a few hours. Challenge is surviving or defeating their Attack Battle Fleets which spawn when attacked or due to bad Faction standings.
In my opinion the main issue that breaks immersion is having Pirate Mining Fleets active in High Sec systems. Same with the Pirate Forward Operating Base’s in High Sec systems. Those should be in Low Sec systems since Pirate NPC’s are located in Null Sec space.
Pirate FOB’s, Triglavian Invasions, Sleepers, Roaming Triglavian / Drifter Gangs, etc should not be in High Sec space, that is high level content which is suited for Low, Null and w-hole space. That advanced content is being forced on High Sec space in an attempt to force players to leave High Sec, all because a couple of Dev’s decided the game should be played a certain way.
Disregarding the fact that the content breaks immersion, after adding that crap to High Sec space, CCP then removed low to mid level combat sites, not to mention implementing their hairbrained Scarcity and Ore Redistribution crap. Basically CCP will implement whatever they can in an attempt to force players out of High Sec space.
The question they should be asking is why do majority of players choose to remain in High Sec space?
dMC, you are being disingenuous. You know perfectly well the reasons for Highsec’s popularity. And I’m sure you have - directly or otherwise - told CCP your views, via these forums.
But I was stopped short by your comment about immersion and its breaking by certain forms of content. What an interesting topic! - Not for this thread, of course, but might be worth putting out there in some form.
Thanks for that thought-generator…
Pirate FOB’s are great content for new players in hi-sec. A handful of pilots in Myrms can run them as long as a couple of the pilots know what they are doing and control people warping onto grid.
For many guys in our corp it was they first time they did any fleet ops. Loved every minute and now its common for folk to log in and ask “any FOB today?”. New players actively looking for them.
So I really don’t see how they are so bad.
The majority of people who reside in high sec aren’t really the grouping bunch. Not a bad thing, just an observation.
Beyond that most high sec corps lack the knowledge, structure, drive, active and participating members to set up something like that.
You can use ECM drones against players as well to get them to stop targeting you. Just not ECM modules.
The way ECM works is that it limits the target’s targets to the source of the ECM on a succesful jam: the ECM drones in this case, which allows your Orca to warp off.
