Devblog: Security Update - Q1 2019

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467

You said ‘non-faction’, I figured that covered. I’m not asking about your distinctions. I’m asking about the mechanics.

The only access control for VNIs is ‘Gallente Cruiser’. What things Alphas can and can’t use isn’t going to change from ‘can you train the skill for it?’ because doing that introduces a whole secondary system that CCP has to keep track of for every little change. Right now, if they want to say ‘alphas can’t use Battleships’, they just put those skills behind Omega. They don’t have to fiddle with the battleship. They don’t have to make sure that the hulls can’t be used but the guns can because Attack BCs.

They’re not going to introduce a whole second system of access control that’s completely redundant. It’s extra work that serves only to introduce a game-wide layer of ‘ways this can break’. SO:

How would you keep alphas from getting into a VNI? The only access control is ‘Gallente Cruiser’. Should that be Omega-only or no? Because if ‘no’, then… Alphas can use faction hulls.

How much money can I offer you to cut a month off of your life?

Or is your time more of an investment than your money?

468

Too hard for CCP to introduce new skill “Navy Ship” and place it behind the Omega wall while requiring it for all Navy version ships? I’m beginning that some simple coding may be too complicated for the current CCP crew., especially following the Guardian’s Gala fiasco.
Like I stated, since alphas , botting or not, are sometimes directly influencing my gameplay and rewards, it is upsetting that they are afforded this opportunity at no cost to them. If they were simply spinning missions with T1 Battleships, I wouldn’t care. I’m in a relatively quiet part of New Eden, some nights I’m left alone in system for some minutes. However, when Alpha locust come in and strip exploration sites and their possible escalations over constellation after constellation, I’m getting far less for my Omega account than before.
If CCP is going to offer the majority of my gameplay to the Alphas, then I want the company to expand my Omega exclusive options to fairly compensate and maintain my past experiences/abilities in EVE. Offering Alphas more options to improve server population isn’t wrong, to do so at the expense of Omegas is.

1 Like
469

Well, now you’re talking about adding a skill.

I’m not saying that’s a bad idea, but follow it through to its ramifications.

I’m a new Omega player. I train up my skills to Gallente Cruiser V. I can’t fly a VNI?
How much extra time is the skill train for the ‘Navy Ships’ skill book?
What about the ‘Pirate Ships’ skill book? Does that have to be trained in addition to both racial frigate/cruiser/battleship skills? Does it replace them both?

What are the prerequisites? Do I have to have cruisers trained to a certain level? Or can I train ‘Navy Ships’ as soon as I hit III on one of the racial frigate skills (because Navy/Fleet frigates exist)? Is there a separate skill for each Navy? Each Pirate faction?

How much extra time are we asking for the Omegas to go through in order to limit the Alphas?

Is it worth it? Personally, I don’t know. S’why I’m asking your opinion.

Edit to add: And remember, right now a lot of the ‘balance’ around these ships is that their bonuses are balanced based on the number of skills you need and the time multiplier those skills have. So this would mean rebalancing all of the Navy/Pirate hulls.

470

Simply put the 2 new skills (Navy and Pirate) at very low cost (100k?) and at a tier 1 SP cost (train in 15 minutes). Other pre requirements stay the same. No problems for any Omegas I know.

471

So you’d only need them to level 1? What does level 5 get you?

472

Either a Pirate or Navy Friendship…:wink:

It would be an either all out or all in type of thing; only 1 level available.

473

Not sure they’d go for that, since literally no other skill works that way.

474

Ok, then at level 1, you get the use of the specified type of ship.
For every level you get a 1% increase in ship’s stats.
At level 5, you get final total +5% and unique ship skin :
" Pirate Flagship" or " Navy Flagship"
Offers a skin that Alphas cannot buy on a ship Alphas cannot pilot, therefore promoting Omega sales and status.
…and this particular forum facet is considered completed for me.

1 Like
475

That could work, yeah.

476

Could do ship class by tier.

  1. Frigs
  2. Cruisers
  3. Battleships
  4. Capitals.
  5. Supercaps

It doesn’t really need to be tier 1 either.
The low tiers are going to be relatively fast to train anyway. And we probably don’t need to add more power to pirate ships for another skill, they have enough already.

477

No, it doesn’t need to be Tier 1, but if it’s declared T2, that changes the expectations on ship balance again, and introduces more problems.

Right now, the faction ships already represent a problem CCP’s giving themselves in terms of parallel advancement from ‘Cruisers’. I mean, yes, there are the ‘specialized’ hulls, which fill specific roles (Recons, Logstics, etc), but when it comes to actual ‘combat value’? Well, that’s where you run into some trouble.

What’s better than a Cruiser?
A Faction Cruiser!
And a Battlecruiser!
And a HAC!

Ok, so what’s the difference? What should be the difference?

Faction cruisers… what role do they really fill? Other than ‘I want to AFK rat’, what use is a VNI that a Myrmidon doesn’t achieve? What’s an Osprey Navy really got that defines it as a stand-out in its niche?

Battlecruisers… bang-for-buck, these seem to be the sweet-spot. Feroxes are like Eagles, but you can throw hundreds thousands of them away in a fight in Perimeter without feeling any pain. Performance is a little weaker, but again, use up them like popcorn.

HACs… sure, they’ve got the most power individually… but do they scale? Not well. Certainly not well enough to justify actually spending money on them for anything larger than maybe a 50-man fleet, tops.

Let’s look at just the Caldari options for ‘better than a vanilla cruiser’ in Medium Hull dps. This won’t even include the ‘Pirate’ ships:

Caracal Navy Issue
Osprey Navy Issue
Drake
Ferox
Naga
Cerberus
Eagle

7 ships whose job is all fundamentally the same role: main-line dps. Which means you’re looking at, again, without the pirate hulls, almost 30 hulls in this role, among the 4 races.

If we take the ‘fleet’ and/or ‘pirate’ to T2… yeah, they’ll need rebalancing… but more: how does that make them different than the HACs? Aren’t they basically just another type of pre-ADC HAC then?

478

I was meaning *1, *2 etc, not tech 1 or 2.

479

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.

You mean like the T1 hulls used to work, where Minmatar Battleship I got you the Typhoon, II got you the Tempest, and III got you the Maelstrom?

So like ‘Navy Ships’ could get you (in the Caldari line):

I: Griffin Navy Issue
II: Caldari Navy Hookbill
III: Caracal Navy Issue
IV: Osprey Navy Issue, Raven Navy Issue
V: Scorpion Navy Issue
?

480

Yes, exactly like that. Obviously the pirate skills you could include pirate capitals in the skill as well, or you could have a separate pirate capital skill (& by extension if there ever become navy caps they would work the same way).

So since it gives frigates/cruisers so early, it wouldn’t really matter if it was something like *10 training speed even, because it still wouldn’t take long to get into those small navy ships, but would make the larger navy ships and pirate caps a decent investment in training. You can also obviously have pirate ships require more training.

Personally I’d split them into separate factions/pirate groups for lore reasons, as it makes a bit of sense that Gurista’s & Mordus ships might need some different training. But I wouldn’t be hung up on that as a thing, and would be fine with just ‘Navy’ & ‘Pirate’ ships.

481

The idea’s definitely got some legs. I dunno if CCP’d go for it after they specifically nuked that in the old racial skills, but there’s some serious potential there (and really, I did like that granularity before, too).

482

An alternative if CCP don’t like it would just be to actually make all the pirate and navy ships a unique skill line.
‘Gurista’s Frigate’ etc. (Prereq, Cal Frig III, Gal Frig III, Omega)
‘Imperial Navy Frigate’ (pre req Amarr Frig III, Omega)
But that ends up adding a shedload of new skills to the system. When there are already 140 Mil SP of ship skills to train, we don’t want to keep bumping that number up and making the wall higher for the more competitive small gang type PvP (Because lets be honest, T1 ships aren’t going to cut it unless you have overwhelming numbers vs small groups of pirate/t2 ships that are highly skilled, and a lot of groups can’t just drop 5 times as many people, or reach critical mass to instipop enemy ships)

483

Bots >>>> injectors. This will hurt only only real players who don’t inject everything.

484

I think you have wandered off the point here.
The point is how to restrict alpha’s from pirate & navy ships without requiring CCP to recode how alpha’s work.

Bots are believed to make a lot of use of alpha’s to farm, and some of the known ships which are used to farm anoms in null are VNI’s & Gila’s. Aka Navy & Pirate ships.
This belief matches with CCPs comments about looking further at access to pirate ships.

Therefore we are discussing ways in which this could be achieved if CCP wanted to go ahead with it, and the downsides of said ways.

2 Likes
485

I have seen a rash of Gila pilots in Yehnifi docking and undocking, not using the gate. They are apparently doing abyssal sites, scanned down their traces and put a mobile depot off the trace about 10km. You cannot go into abyssal space within 1000km of a mobile depot. all the traces have ceased and the gilas just warp to and from citadel, and to the mobile depots. If anyone else is having this issue please do the same tactic. The Gilas are in a corp that is not eligible for war dec so if anyone wants a few Gila ganks come to Yehnifi and hang out at one of the mobile depots.

486

I like the idea of putting the Navy/Pirate ships behind skills Granted with the 20 mil upgrade, they did release the pirate factions to alphas, but they shouldn’t have had access to pirate factions to begin with.