I know. And I appreciate that. But while you work with what you’ve got, let them know that what they’re doing is being found wanting, hey?
Oh, hey… is the ‘No Sions’ rule still in effect?
I respect this, the thoughtful converation both you and @Brisc_Rubal show, that unlike the rest of the csm; you care. no we dont always agree but atleast we can all agree that this balance patch is ill thought.
i dont think I can remember us talking about this in greater detail, and surly dont remember anyone from ccp or the csm giving a word about it.
No idea.
It really sounds like your issue is with Sov mechanics and Entosis links, not with Claw Fleets having Interdiction Immunity.
I’m glad you came out and said you don’t think combat ships deserve interdiction immunity. It explains why there hasn’t been a direct response about the consideration of suppression of said immunity (once the target has been Intercepted). It works the same way that blops fleets work once their cloak is turned off. the same way Combat Recon’s work once you are on grid with them (not being visible on Dcan is irrelevant when you show up on an overview).
It is quite sad the CSM can get behind keeping Interdiction Immunity for some purposes (like taxi shuttles) but not for others; the antithesis of sandbox design. Even T3Cruisers gained a steep cost for their Interdiction Immunity with the rebalance.
If you don’t feel that Combat Interceptors (specifically the Claw, since that is the smoking gun in every reference that has been made this thread) have a steep enough cost associated with their Interdiction Immunity, then rebalance it, across all Interdiction Immunity. If you feel that Interdiction Immunity fundamentally breaks the game, then remove it entirely.
On the topic of EWAR:
Other EWAR types does something partial that stacks: slower targeting, shorter target range, slower tracking or shorter weapon ranges. Stacking modules on a single target may put that particular ship out of order for the duration, like borking his guns so he can’t track anyone, or makes him unable to target his buddies due to range.
ECM is different. It does all of the above, but based on chance. You can’t attack, you can’t repair, you can’t use your EWAR. Basically useless. And the chance scales with a weird factor called sensor strength. All other EWAR doesn’t get better or worse based on sensor strength, but ECM does. ECM works better the smaller the ship you attack - I don’t think this is a good mechanic to build such a strong concept on.
ECM specifically targets people’s ability to, well, target. You lose all targets, then denied locking. You are to be considered dead in the period you are jammed unless you have drones or smartbombs. So how does we get away from that? Definitely not by allowing the jammed target to fight back. That does nothing for jamming enemy logistics and other similarly important situations.
I think there are a couple of ways to think about ECM. It should tamper with sensors and locking ability of the ship. It JAMS. It scrambles your ship computers. So how can they do that?
Just to throw around some ideas, ECM could:
Break all active locks with no lockout period.
Break one/few locks with a small lockout for new locks (2-5 seconds), keep remaining locks.
Break X amount of locks and give a short scan resolution debuff to the jammed target. Lost targets, slower retargeting.
Based on the above ideas, changing by scripts deciding how it behaves. High chance, cooldown based perhaps. Other EWAR are 100% effective always, only limited by range.
In addition to these, ECM could also:
Be limited to one jam attempt per ship. (After one jam attempt, 100% ECM resist locking out other jammers from activating against it). You ran the chance, try again soon.
Be limited to 1 or 2 installed modules per ship. This is to prevent full racks of ECM modules, making weird fits like the armor/hull tanked blackbird. A shield ship should be shield tanked.
ECM could work in tandem with one of the above suggestions, then simply drop your locks and immediately starts relocking the targets you had, with a scan res penalty for that RELOCK only, so literally a one second penalty. If you get jammed while still in the process of targeting, that doesn’t do anything because targeting still underway. Only current targets are affected.
These ideas are based on the reduction of mass-fitting modules of the same kind, and preventing the RNG/gamble style gameplay they are based on. I think it is a more fair way of viewing this type of EWAR, as a type of EWAR that doesn’t completely nullify any and all ships. EWAR should be nuisances, not your RNG based chance to win the fight. ECM can be that just like the rest, but it needs to be dependable when activated, and NOT lock out targeting for more than 5-10 seconds.
Blocking targeting is just an unfun mechanic for everyone. Its too powerful, chance based, so it can only be “not a factor” or mind numbingly outrageous. The fact it is chance based is not a balancing factor.
So my main suggestion is: Don’t lock out targets. Raise the chance of successful jams, with fewer modules / EWAR resist after each attempt. And make the jams do something annoying but not gamebreaking - such as losing targets, scan res reduction and other SENSOR related problems.
As for interceptors: Nullified ceptors gets no guns. Problem solved 
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Turning off your MWD… wait.
Featuring the prop mod jammer: Makes your ship go in reverse for 10 seconds because why not
I feel the need to edit this post:
CCP its a joke and not something to be done. Just to be clear
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Hahahahaha…
This is what you get with democracy. Nothing says the representation has to be to your liking. In fact, when people write what you did they usually mean the following: The current representation does not comport with my preferences so it should be changed to match my preferences. Or more concisely, “I want to be a dictator.”
I noted this before and you had zero response to it…but could it be that Delve is producing more in terms of ISK and minerals, etc. because of the high population? If so, not really as much of a problem is it?
I don’t understand if that is an argument against or for Claws.
If specifically Claws are necessary and needed to introduce a bit of risk, that means Claws (as a subpart of interceptors) are too powerful.
But that means the other mechanics of such warfare is in a bad state, if it takes an overpowered/niche ship to viably pose a risk in nullsec warfare.
So do we need Claws or do we need better entosis warfare? Entosis nullsec warfare can only be fixed when certain ships are breaking the current meta. So naturally ship rebalances happen before the big stuff. Else the meta breaking ships will keep breaking the new meta
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Not only is that exactly why Delve is producing so much more, it’s a big part of why Delve is so defensible. Sure, the strategic chokepoints help, but really, it’s all about population density. When we lost all our space in the north, we re-organized. Anyone who wanted to move into GSF could, but no allies were forced to merge. Still, we put most of the Imperium (Goonswarm, Bastion, LAWN, TNT) into one region. Up north, those groups, CO2, FCON, RZR, and SMA had been sprawled out across… somewhere between 5 and 8 regions (Fade, Pure Blind, Deklein, Branch, Tribute, and parts of Venal, Tenal, and Cloud Ring).
We’d actually tried consolidating before the war, but some of the allied groups didn’t want to give up the idea of holding ‘their own’ space, as a matter of pride. So there was the old-style patchwork of who has mining rights where, who has ratting rights where, etc etc.
And nobody could really defend anyone else’s space, in entosis warfare.
When we came south, nobody wanted to do entosising, so it was really easy to say ‘hey, guys, let us carry the weight of all the entosising, we’ll give you some TCUs so everyone has their name on the map, but… really, this is gonna work best if we all rat and mine all through the region as one big happy coalition’.
And it does. Up north, PanFam, Dead Coalition (formerly GotG) etc all follow the old model. They all jealously guard their ratting and mining space. They spread out over those same 5-7 regions. And the difference in defensibility is stark. Someone tries a dreadbomb in Delve, everyone is in range to counter-drop. Everyone’s in range to have faxes bounce in. Everyone contributes to everyone’s ADMs (including the indexes that allow IHUB upgrades so people can make more money from better sites).
Population density is absolutely the driver of everything else in Delve. And we estimate we could probably double the population in Delve without really straining what the region’ll produce.
Edit to add: I’m not saying the guys following the old model are dumb, or anything like that. The old model is familiar. Everyone knows how it works. You have your space, and your space is yours. Good fences make good neighbors, and all that. It’s hard to convince people to adopt a new way of doing things when the old way looks like it’s still working. So I don’t think the leadership of those groups is dumb, at all. I just think they’re behind the curve, and struggling to catch up, because of the model they adopted when they took over the space we’d held.
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Very nice explanation.
We need no entosis warfare. Entosis warfare, even in the vastly-improved current version, is still a hateful exercise in self-abuse. The ADM system is great and wonderful, but it really needs to be expanded and iterated upon to fulfill the promise @CCP_Fozzie held up before Aegis went in: every activity in the system is tracked. Everything you do contributes to control over the system.’ (note: promise, as in the potential of, not as in ‘he promised’.)
Move the ADMs over to Upwell structures. High ADM increases minimum damage needed to pause a timer, lowers the damage cap so it takes longer to win the assault. Low enough ADMs make it possible for 1-2 frigates to knock down uncontested Astrahusen. And god, get rid of asset safety when it blows up. Loot it like they do in J-space. Make attacking these things worth the work.
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I agree ADMs could be more meaningful, and entosis could be something else entirely.
I don’t know about asset safety, that means someone out of the game for a week can lose all his his in any and all structures. I believe player assets and the structures they live in should be separated. It’s an attack on the structure that was deployed, not on every player choosing to live out of that structure. If that was the case, lots of people would lose much of their stuff and never return to the game.
While there are issues with Astrahus/structure spam etc, I don’t think that is adressed by screwing up people who choose to live out of a staging Fortizar or Keepstar
Right. I was there in the north. EXE had a nice home in Branch. So did several other alliances as well. I noted that there are over 41,000 pilots in all of the alliances in Delve. Thus the number of players living there is probably between 8,000-10,000. Even if we reduce that due to people who are no longer actively playing there could be as many as 5,000-6,000 people. So lets say that there were 135,000 “ratting hours” last month in Delve. Is that crazy? Not when one thinks about 3,000 pilots doing the ratting. Even if they rat every other day for 3 hours on average, you get 135,000 ratting hours. How much ISK can one make ratting in NS for an hour?
In short, what we have seen is innovation. And the old school guys (@Rivr_Luzade) sound like grump old men complaining about these new fangled phone-calculator thingies all these youngsters are playing with.
Sorry for not replying yet. This reddit thread belongs here too …
… and fits very well to my post above.
The issue of ‘what about how that screws inactive players’ is definitely a thing. If I were CCP, I’d do what they do in wormholes: 6 months, then you get punted to a lowsec station. My old corp lived in a C4 for a few years, but we fell below critical mass in #s to keep going, so we decided to pull out. Only one hiccup: we’d built a Rorqual in there.
Now, Rorqs are capitals. They can’t get in and out through a C4’s connections. We decided to make this work for us. We loaded him up with everything he’d need to re-establish a base of operations, in case we all got active again, and left a scanning alt in the hole with him.
6 months later, that Rorqual was in Korasen. So was my prober’s Buzzard. No muss, no fuss. Same principle could apply: you’re inactive X amount of time, your belongings get moved out of whatever cit they’re in, into the nearest NPC station. People who are playing still risk their assets, people who aren’t still have their stuff when they come back. (So they’re more inclined to be willing to come back.)
Another thing I was thinking re: ADMs was: if they want to preserve the idea of the distributed conflict system that command nodes (kinda) provide, that can be done, too: just move the TCU’s functions over to a multi-component ‘System Defense Grid’. The first module you can put down would be the TCU itself. When you hit Sov 1, you can put down the second structure, which duplicates the functions of the IHUB (with rigs/service modules in place of upgrades). Sov 2 allows Upwell Stargate connections within the constellation. Sov 3 allows wider stargate connections, and the addition of Beacons and Jammers.
And all of that, together: TCU/IHUB/JB/CynoGen/CynoJam get assaulted together. Each one that’s safe and secure gives a boost to the minimum dps needed to pause any of the others. Now, that’s all in 1 system, so it’s not as distributed as the command nodes are… but given the way tidi works, right now you can have one side of a fight stuck in heavy tidi, just trying to get into other systems where their opponents, free of tidi, are spooling up node after node.
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Y’all never heard of 5k ehp 100 dps light missile crows? Honestly they’re better than claws even now idk why it’s not a thing. They can orbit much further out and still do full dps. Almost just as fast too with 4.2km/s compared to 4.3 standard meta claw…
Brilliant, you just made my day : )
Because a) missile flight time means targets can warp out between firing and damage applying, b) firewalling is a thing, and c) Crows don’t insta-align without sacrificing about a third of their DPS. A Rocket crow, btw, comes in around 124 dps with only 1 BCS. (Rockets being shorter range have less trouble with the flight time issue.)