CCP changes the shape of the nulsectors without changing their essence

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 :money_mouth_face:)
  • 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 :rofl:

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.

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At this point you can bury your suggestion. Sorry for you having wasted your precious time, but that will never happen, CCP does remember what the last “Blackout” experiment did cost them.

Have a nice day.

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I understand this, but the current situation is extremely sad. It is impossible to change it without a comprehensive change in mechanics.
An attempt to open the Overton window seems like a good way out.

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I didn’t even try. It’s nice that you’re thinking of ways to (in your opinion), improve EVE. However these forums aren’t the best place for that (try Reddit) and long posts written in medium quality English and choppy, fragmented ideas isn’t the way to do it.

However, the gist of your post - “make Nullsec more friendly to random solo or small fleet raiders dropping in to look for kills” - was nonetheless clear.

To which I reply: do you think EVE has more random solo/small fleet players filament-roaming to look for Null kills? Or do you think EVE has more Nullbloc owners, renters and farmers looking to go about their business in Null?

Which of those groups do you think has more subs and sends more money to CCP?

CCP is a business. Numbers matter.

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There is some sense in your words.

I have to note that CCP spent a long time building a system in which dozens of “non-bots” on absolutely identical ships filled most of the content. Yes, it brings in money. I can assume that CCP is fighting against bots, especially those who do not have Omega.

We do not know what potential there is for solo pilots and small teams.
I am sure that the general statistics on games will show the ratio of solo play, with several friends, and how many are organized into a group of several dozen people.
I believe that it turned out to be a self-dependent system. The more CCP listened to large teams, the more they refused alternatives.

Regarding Reddit.
I think that for most developers, including CCP, both this forum and Reddit will look like post-mortem noise.
Only on the forum you write to your “home address”, and not on the fence opposite the company’s office.

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No, it won’t solve a thing. It will only make it harder for you, not for the residents. That’s what Blackout showed. After a while, all the gates to valuable farming space were full of intel reporting bots, some you could see, others you could not. In the end, even dumbo PVPers and hunters started to complain that they would not be able to find any targets.

Local is not the problem.

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You’re welcome.
I agree with you a thousand percent :+1:

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I hope you read not only about disabling D-sacn. Then I wrote about how to create conditions for PVP. And for distributing farmers across systems.

If you can constantly pass through combat complexes in one system in 10+ ships, then these are one set of conditions.

If there are 2-3 complexes in a system and the next one will appear in a couple of hours and you need to move around the region, then these are completely different conditions.

You will have to place hundreds of scouts so that you can be sufficiently informed. Here is the question. How advisable is this? Keeping such surveillance outside of key systems, if according to the farming conditions (no PVP modules - no loot) it is much easier to give battle.

And yes, I agree, the problem is not in the local. The problem is in a dozen different mechanics (a set of mechanics for moving between systems, ambushes, cyno, electronic warfare systems, farming mechanics, etc.), which together led to such a situation.
My option is probably not ideal, but it can work. What the CCP does makes me cry.

Points of interest don’t work. The fact that a dozen more notifications will appear that someone is robbing something in the system won’t change anything. It will be ignored, no one will fly directly from Haven on their Ishtar to protect Skyhook. An assembled fleet will fly to you, which rules out solo play or small groups on simple ships.

Look at high-security systems, there is a huge variety of ships and equipment options. Why hasn’t the same swamp blossomed in relatively safe space?
There are all the conditions for this. Perhaps if you remove or change some input data for null systems, there will be changes there?

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These conditions make it even easier to place scouts to secure valuable space. If you only have a handful of places where you can farm, it’s easy to place the scouts. The dynamic, non-static nature does not change anything in that regard. See Poochven as a prime example. It is easy to figure out where the good stuff appeared, it is easy to secure, and it is easy to run it to make ridiculous amounts of ISK.

That’s a frustrating experience for anyone outside a major timezone. If the major anom of the day was already run before you could log in, you have no way to make ISK or do so while being protected by the intel network. This forces even more concentration of people.

A major anom per day or every few hours sounds fun in theory, but just as Blackout, it’s only fun on the surface and only for the most organized groups.

No local only makes the game worse, regardless how you try to sugarcoat it.

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Give me blackout but the whales would quit.

Every.Single.One of your posts is a boast.
You’re nothing but a braggart.
You’re probably the biggest whale in EVE Online.

Crap, I thought I was the biggest arsehole. Just goes to show, you can’t win them all in EVE. :joy:

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I don’t consider you as being one so you’re not on our watch list.

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I thought I already was on the watch list?

Just because I’m old at the game does not mean I know everything.

Half the crap I say is just to get a good fight in the forums! Something we all miss in the game since that’s why we all joined it to begin with! :sunglasses:

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Comparing null systems with an ISK printer is certainly a bit of a stretch.
Poochven is an endless source of ISK, for one anomaly the fleet gets 3B, in an hour the fleet can make 3-4 such anomalies, which gives 12B per hour for the fleet :money_mouth_face: :money_mouth_face: :money_mouth_face:.
Poochven is a limited space, placing scouts in each system with such high earnings is advisable.

Now the question. What number of Ishtars will provide you with a similar income level of 12B/60M, let’s have 200…
Don’t you think that with the farming system that I described, it is not advisable to ensure constant surveillance?

These 200 Itrars will clearly need more than 200 systems to maintain a constant income. Which further increases the required investment in intelligence. I think that there will be scouts only in the border and main systems.

Now about different time zones.
When scanning archaeological anomalies, do you notice that someone has already taken everything and there is nothing left for you? Yes, this means that you gently fly to neighboring systems and start searching there.
The main idea is that in the system the recovery time of anomalies is 2-3 hours, you went to the anomalies and you have a choice, wait a few hours or go on a journey.
If you enter outside the main time, then the same situation is repeated for you. A small number of anomalies appeared in the system and after you pass them, you fly to search for new ones.

If you travel a distance of several dozen systems and your ship is ready for PVP, then PVP becomes commonplace. You do not run at the first sign of a threat. If the message in the intel “Deimos is pleased at the entrance to the region” makes the entire region run to the citadels, then my ideas are over.

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Well the way it looks you are currently in the lead vs that Aiko on the forum.

If you don’t give high rewards when you take away local chat, your system is doomed to fail. Just as Blackout demonstrated. What the systems without local have in common is the ridiculous income potential. Both wormholes and Poochven allow you to earn a boatload of ISK in a short amount of time as compensation for not having local chat to tell you who’s around. Your proposed signatures with hours of respawn time cannot offer only the same meager rewards that they offer today. That’s simply not how anything works to create a good, productive and rewarding experience.

However, paired with your hours long downtime, you will create even more empty space.

That’s a misconception. Just because you are fitted for PVP doesn’t mean you will take fights. Only the most clueless and obtuse people do, and they will come crying to the forums and reddit and discord very quickly because they keep getting hazed. A single ship fitted for combat is still no match for an actual PVP experienced player.

Look, that isn’t how it works. You always have two kinds of people: Those who want to shoot others, and those who don’t want to shoot others.

The first group will always try to seek any advantage they can gain, buy grouping up, blobbing and completely obliterating any possible target. They aren’t looking for a “good fight” or a “challenge”, they want just kills. The more and the easier, the better. They think killing a Vexor with 60 Command Ships is a “Victory”. As long as EVE mechanics allow these people to all sit in a large fleet at a single “Staging System” and still reach the entire region within minutes by magic teleporters, they simply have absolutely zero reason to do anything else.

The second group will never take a fight they can avoid. They would dock up their 20 Mackinaws if just an Ibis enters the local or is reported at the intel channels. You can’t give them any motivation to fight, because they simply don’t want to. No matter what you try to change and do, they rather quit the game than to pick up a gun.

And as long as Instatravel aka CynoHotdropping/Bridging stays in the game, absolutely nothing will change. Because those actually roaming around and trying to find a good fight, are simply prey for those who spot them and send the blob after them, because said blob can just be teleported anywhere with ease. You only will see a change if this isn’t possible, so sitting with 300 people in your staging system will achieve exactly one thing: You won’t get any content, because no one will come close to you, so you have to split up into 10 gangs of 30 people and patrol the borders of your empire, and anyone will know you can’t get the other 270 guys as instant cyno-support - THEN you will get fights again, with the neighboring empire that has to do the same if it wants to have content. Blobbing up has to be punished, splitting up has to be rewarded, and you can only achive that by massively nerfing cynowarfare.

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That’s right. It’s like comparing a robbery at a liquor store to taking down Fort Knox.

Exactly right.

This is so true yet I am not sure which side am I on?