Hi all, I am Drake Iddon; former member of CSM 19, avid 1400mm artillery enjoyer and a die hard resident of Pochven
Over the past two years, both on CSM19 and the preceding year after last years elections, I have worked tirelessly to do what I can to make the game that we all love to be the healthiest it can be, from working with FC Rampant on multiple areas of the game, to being an effective intermediary for players from all areas of space to get their bug, ticket, report, or feedback directly to the FC staff that can deal with it the quickest and most effectively, I have strived to do my part in making the game that it deserves to be, so it can continue into its third decade and beyond for all of us.
The majority of CSM threads usually end up with a wishlist of items that they personally want in the game, however not many of them can back it up with evidence of them actually being effective in driving change, which is quite frankly one of the most important traits of a CSM Candidate
For the work that I have done while on CSM19, you can find a condensed list on my CSM 20 thread
Not getting elected to CSM20 was not something that was going to make or break my willingness to work with FC to improve the game, and i’ve also been busy over the past year:
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Fixing the Panther after its “buff”, returning the tracking bonus and giving it a new niche that suits its role as the fastest empire blops
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Input and feedback during the stat design of the command carriers, including getting the original 5%, 3% and 1% to three different command link bonuses changed to a more useful flat 5% bonus per level to two of them
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Significant testing, brainstorming and economic balance input on the Rampant Drone Fabricator sites, both the Election event version and the improved Evergreen version in the game today
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Helping get the Ansiblex changes over the line (thanks to CSM20, CSM19, and multiple years of CSMs before that who put a huge amount of discussions, arguments, and overall passion and effort into finally getting this into the game)
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Input into the Triglavian side of the upcoming Crimson Harvest event
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Getting the Babaroga costs down to something more reasonable (Thank you to Oz for also pushing FC on this at the same time)
Pochven-Specific work this year
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A full overhaul of all Pochven wormholes and the dungeons that spawn on each side of them
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Adding Triglavian salvage to the LP store, both adding a critical ISK sink into the region that previously lacked any meaningful sink, and also adding a relief valve for salvage supply constraints
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in addition to the above, adding a similar isk sink for Wormholes via Rampant Drone Fabricator loot, adding new drone mutaplasmids into the game
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An ongoing project to revamp all Pochven rat AI into the new more deadly versions, more roamers, more chaos, and more importantly they can combat probe you now
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Moving Accelerator Flashpoints to Lowsec, while these are still on the list to be looked at, moving them out of Highsec adds some much needed risk and destruction to the huge amount of ISK it was generating
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Ongoing monitoring of Pochvens impact on the wider game economy, resulting in (as of September MER) 163.7 trillion less isk being injected into the games ISK supply since FC Rampant and I started out on the project to overhaul the region
My goals for the future that I wish to work on
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Nullsec PVE: While it has had bits here and there, a makeover to the anoms, Nullsec PVE is pretty stagnant, the Ansiblex changes do not fundamentally make Nullsec a more enticing place to live or to make money, especially for Line-Members. Now is the perfect time to start thinking about new PVE sites/mechanics for null, that importantly needs to be done in a manner that isnt only simply injecting even more ISK into the game.
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Split weapon bonuses for turrets: This is not a small amount of work for FC and we have known this for a long time, but unlike missiles, ship balancing for turret ships is massively hamstrung by the simple fact that the game does not support separate bonuses for different types of the same size and class of gun (for example, you can only get bonuses for medium hybrid turrets, instead of being able to do bonuses for either blasters OR railguns. The best time for FC to do this work for years ago, but the second best time for FC to do the work is now
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Undersized Artillery rebalance: Right now there is simply no realistic use for smaller calibres of each size of artillery turret (1200mm, 650mm, 250mm), everyone uses the larger ones for a reason, and I think these smaller ones have been neglected for too long
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A push for more data-driven balancing of T3Cs; Right now T3Cs are in a very strange juxtaposition, their most common subsystems and fits are incredibly popular (more so than many other ships), but these overshadow the less often used subsystems and fits, meaning they never actually get looked into and considered for rebalancing, I would like the data team at FC to sit down with the CSM and player focus groups to work on creating data metrics that devs can use for balancing
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More Pochven stuff to come (obviously, i’m going to be working on Pochven with FC either until its done or until they get sick of me), the region is not finished and, while it is far healthier than it was when we started working on it, it still has a ways to go
