Greetings to all.
There is a lot of text here, not everyone will be able to master it.
I will make a reservation right away, I consider the situation from the point of view of salt or small fleets.
After my flights on zero-security systems, I had one question.
What needs to happen in the game for this swamp to change?
Recently, the ССP has made a “large-scale change to zero sectors.” Metenox Moon Drill, Orbital Skyhook appeared, and appropriate mechanics for the clim were introduced. And recently, the combat anomalies have been changed.
An impressive amount of work. Probably now any pilot will be able to take a PVP ship and hope to see something different from what it was before.
Activate the filament:
We appear in a random system, look for the nearest places on the map where there are ships in space.
-We are flying through empty systems (there are a lot of empty systems).
-We arrive at a system where someone is. Everything is in the dock. Empty space…
-We are flying to the next point. There we see Ishtar on the podium. It takes me several (3-5 on average) seconds to D-scan. We fly to the anomaly, and there Ishtar has already escaped or we see him a second before the escape.
Is there anything other than Ishtars? Oh yes, there are Maraders, Praxis, Vexors, Gila, Edencom ships, mining fleets.
Let’s look at each meeting separately.
- Start with a simple one. Vexor. This is usually an AFK pilot, since most of them simply did not react to the danger in any way.
- Gila are hollow similar to Ishtar. There is an extremely unpleasant feature of these two ships. They have decent protection and it will take 500+ DPS to defeat them.
Their damage is 700+ DPS. And there is a small problem. If you are not fast enough, then you will not have time to catch your targets. If you use a simple ship, then you will not have enough protection and even the AFC pilot will destroy you. We have to use more expensive ships to defeat T2 debris.
And a relentlessly significant proportion of players on such ships are not bots, they never fly from 3+ anomalies to the Citadel at one moment when the local chat changes (CCP ) - Edencom ships, usually these are packs and they will run away from you very successfully, but there are doubts that you can survive the attack of the pack 5+ Thunderchild.
- Praxis are perhaps the most realistic target, but they are usually found in systems where they can be quickly rescued.
- Mining fleets, lol.
- Marauders, see the previous paragraph and usually if you caught a marauder in solo and you are not on another marauder or a specially sharpened fit, then it was not you who caught the marauder, but he caught you )
Well, it is worth mentioning camps/bolob/cyno separately.
I wrote a great article on these “features” of the gameplay. If you don’t mind 5 minutes of your time, you can search the forum.
Now I’m going to try to post my thoughts on what can make people change so that when you arrive in the system, you can meet the target with a high probability, while she did not run away when you appeared in a local chat, and was ready to fight back and your hunt turned into a tug of fight?
I propose to divide my “dreams” into components and figure out what the current situation is and what can be changed to get closer to the result and not break the game.
I will highlight the main points
• Runaway targets when changing the local chat
• Empty systems
• High concentration of pilots in individual systems
• Excess infrastructure
Let’s start in order.
You have reached a zero-security system (in what way it does not matter).
Congratulations, you are already in the Intel channel. Your movements are known in advance. You can easily be caught by setting an ambush along a potential route, which, according to the mechanics of the game, you are not able to overcome or avoid if you entered the system through the gate. All possible targets can hide in the dock in advance.
And so, having overcome dozens of empty systems, or systems where pilots sit in the station, you see the cherished goal on the ramp – Ishtar. Fly to an already empty anomaly… (I had several cases when I guessed the anomaly and 2 seconds after appearing in the system the ship was already starting to fly to Ishtar, the acceleration time for warp was 5 seconds, I usually used a cruiser and this was not enough).
What can be done about it?
Removechats in zero sectors, do the same in wormholes, only pilots from the same alliance/fleet will see each other. That’s all, the problem with the fleeing targets has been solved
I can already see how the residents of the zero sectors dropped the game
There’s no need to rush.
You can change the mechanics of the D-scan.
Your ship has a radiation warning system.
When passing through the gate, the system is not scanned, this can only be done when the invulnerability stops.
You will be able to determine the fact of the search and the mode of operation (scanning angle).
It turns out such a game of minds. If you are not looking, then you are blind; if you are looking, then you are giving yourself away. It is very similar to the mechanics of combat traffic jams.
And yes, until you activate the scan, you won’t see any new anomalies or hidden signals either.
How do I make sure that the pilots are ready for PVP?
The answer is unexpected.
They must perform actions similar to PVP during the course of farm. Your opponents are fully equipped ships (not a set of static targets with random loot), similar to the ships of the players (do you want to get a blueprint for Gila? Ok, you will have to defeat Gila with a fit of fractional modules and already drop these modules will be your loot). They will run away if they take critical damage. You will have to install the appropriate modules to catch and defeat them. No PVP modules – no loot.
Now about high concentration and empty systems.
Gradually running out of resources and then gradually recovering is an extremely difficult mechanic (no). The CCP cannot make it so that the system can provide a certain number of pilots per day with combat anomalies and the appearance of new ones would be delayed, and so that it makes sense to move between systems (no).
Then why not make such a change? The amount of work compared to what was done by the SSR is less, and the result is clearly more visible.
And last, about the infrastructure. Almost all inhabited systems have citadels. There is an abundance of possible hiding places.
The NPCs are not at all against pilots building their empires in their systems and do not have any opposition. Maybe the NPCs will assemble fleets equivalent to the infrastructure in the system and periodically stage incursions with a massive attack on certain regions?
Thank you for your time.
I will be glad to hear what ideas other capsuleers makers have.