I’ve seen a few guys salt farming on here and claiming that null bears are crying because they can’t fill their systems with every possible upgrade anymore. I hadn’t seen the numbers pop up yet, so I ran the numbers through the spreadsheet to see how true it was. Here are the different upgrades, their power costs and the number/percentage of systems which can fit them, along with some commonly expected combos.
Fully half of the systems in null can’t fit a prospecting array.
Less than 4% can fit two prospecting arrays
Only ~25% can fit both a cyno inhibitor and a level three combat upgrade, which is presumably the only way you would ever try to run the new sanctums if their difficulty is on par with some of the new escalations. Particularly at the current risk:reward ratio.
Around 60% of the systems in the game can hold an anciblex, but less than 10% can also hold a level three major threat detection or a prospecting upgrade.
I’m not necessarily opposed to the changes – I can see how CCP thinks nerfing null income and projection would be good for the game. I think it’s definitely fair to call this a hard nerf, though. Still waiting to see just how hard, depending on the long-term value of the reagents that blocs are getting near-exclusive control of, plus the profit margins of the moon drills.
(Edited image for clarity, numbers remain the same)
I’d be all for completely removing inhibs and ansis even if the rewards were actually meaningful, but:
New cap escalation took 160b in supers to break shield and rewarded 134m
New mining anoms have tiny rocks and are worth considerably less than current anoms (which null will be losing as I understand it)
Ratting cannot be performed in nearly as many systems meaning with the pop of null sec, people will either wait their turn for sites or just leave
By all means ramp up the risk, game was best when def pings flowed all evening for content to respond to rorqs/super ratters getting dunked on, but back then the key diff was you had a reason to put rorqs/supers and titans on field as rewards were meaningful. Null will continue to have no carrots.
Null has been nerfed when the expansion was sold as the opposite. This isn’t going to spring up new conflict and pvp opportunities imo.
Take your first row; 997 systems. A quick search says there are 7800 systems and so even this would be 12.7%.
Obviously we’re only taking about null-sec here, so the system count will be less than 7800 and thus increase the %.
So are you either saying that there’s ~267,000 systems in Eve? Which is how you get the 0.367%. Or have you forgotten to multiply the % value by 100? In other words it should 36.7%.
EDIT: Re-reading your body of text I can see you refer to 25%, 60%, 10% etc. So it’s clearly the latter. I would advise you change your % column to better reflect the actual values instead of 2 decimal places short. It’s misleading.
My apologies! Edited for clarity. The total number of systems I’m basing the math off is 2,712. I referenced that from the spreadsheet itself, I didn’t go counting
These cannot be concluded yet, despite the popular knee jerk outcry.
It’ll probably take a few months of MER to assess the economic („income“) impact. Projection likely won’t be an issue since despite there being incentives for fewer ansiblexes there are now also incentives for leadership to have multiple stagings spread out near a backbone network of them (and still with zero fatigue). Letting big groups retain control and maintain low response fleet times. It just means 1-DQ dogpile of everyone living there is no longer the optimal play. This is a step in a good direction but falls short of a „projection nerf“.
The escalation mentioned is, I think, the starbase version. It’s been patched a couple times already, and should be completable with a single dread now. 134m is the guaranteed overseers drop value, on top of that the starbase yields a 75m bounty and possibly some faction/deadspace drop chances, though I haven’t heard for sure of anyone getting these yet. The actual (newly adjusted) HP and rep value of the starbase is in today’s patch notes, you could napkin math from there how long it would take a given ship to clear. I heard one siege cycle was doable at the old value.
In line with his original point on risk v reward, it’s an ungated site, which means people scanning you down can land on you extremely quickly. I don’t personally think a couple hundred mil is worth the risk of a dread on an ungated site in an unknown system at current cap prices, but others may find it worth their while.
I understand what you’re saying about not knowing effects for sure until the MER comes in. I should have been a little more specific, and said that this is nerfing null income/projection potential. This is nerfing the income potential of null in conjunction with the blocs’ ability to project. With the old system, they could have an anci in every system, along with full mining and ratting upgrades. Whether or not those were fully used, they had a potential amount of isk.
Now, 40% of systems can’t use an anciblex. Fully half can’t install a mining upgrade, and very few can host both a mining upgrade and a level three major threat detection array. The potential isk in null has been nerfed significantly, and their potential max projection ability has also been nerfed.
Your argument, as best I understand it, is that null groups are so far below fully utilizing their peak potential that this won’t matter. That they’ll just spread out more and make the same amount of isk. This doesn’t really make sense to me, as the creation of “isk pockets” with the valuable ores and the fastest anom respawns sounds like it will encourage even more clumping, not less. On top of that, your argument sounds like the rationale of scarcity, and of the dynamic bounty modifier. I didn’t see a significant spreading out of forces from those changes, and I don’t see a reason for this to be different. I think people would rather find a different way to play, or a different game to play, than keep doing the same thing but worse every couple years.
I still don’t have an opinion on whether this nerf to null is good or bad, but it’s hard to see how you can say it’s not a nerf of the current potential. Of the sixty percent of systems that can fit an anci, only a third can also install even a tier one major detection array; null blocs will definitely have to make choices on where they’re going to make isk and where they’ll make highways.
Across the board this is a direct nerf to active player activities to do, with 1 new form of content in the new haven and its escalation.
Ironically despite this being about ‘colonizing nulsec’ the reality of this is that you have less ability to build up your space how you want than before.
And the only tangible benefits to all this is that bloc leaders get passive income again in the form of 2 new forms of goo and the return of moon drills. Meanwhile the indrect, profitable rewards for doing anom ratting, such as faction rat drops like BPCs and implants are being completely tanked by incrusion LP stores offering the same rewards in bulk for AFKing in a plex with a rifter for 15 minutes and the rest of the profits being eaten up by Pirate NET components (Previously neurolinks)
Now here me out, nerfs to old, tired content is fine in my book, but you need to replace it with new, interesting content to replace it, and 1 new anom and its escalations just ain’t it when most people will still just be isthar ratting, just with less viable systems to do it in.
While true, this is a useless distinction. It is not valuable nor worthy of enshrining on a pedestal because no bloc today has min/max‘d every system to contain every upgrade possible over their huge (multi) regional control. The potential can be lowered and still not actually have limiting effects. Hence why I was suggesting the MER needs to provide concrete data. That is actually a valuable distinction.
Possibly, it will take time to see how the meta changes. Hence waiting for the actual numbers instead of getting riled up about some unachievable theoretical ceiling.
Uh, what? The „clumping“ or „spreading“ is a red herring. I don’t know why you identified that and ran away with it to think it’s a counter argument. My point is there will be some kind of player behavior („clumping“, „spreading“, doesn’t matter) and the effective, real ISK generation is TBD whether it is the same or not (so ignore all the whining of line members talking about unachievable theoretical maximums). So await the meta shift and MER data to back it up.
Same thing with projection. It doesn’t matter what total percent of systems can have an ansiblex plus other gear. The percentage doesn’t weigh the fact that no two systems are strategically equivalent.
Yeah, who cares about the percents? It could be 1% of all systems and as long as it’s the specific systems null leaders care about most for strategic reasons (between the „you’re getting robbed“ multi-pings and the fatigue-less response times able to be achieved), they will be happy with their alliance and coalitions ability to defend themselves regardless what a line members thinks should „theoretically“ be possible (an ansi in every system? Again who cares about the unachievable theoretical max — it’s not a nerf).
So once again time will tell here — and given the lack of negative feedback from null leaders (they would certainly create a big forum stink, see Dark Shines past behavior and forum thread on 50% DBM) I’m currently of the opinion it is not a nerf.
Edit:
Of course… this is how every change in Eve Online goes. People adapt, leave, take the place of someone who left, or stay the course suboptimally. So it’s kind of a useless non-sequitor.
I don’t pay much attention to nullspace, it’s pretty much the opposite of the way I game. And I’m totally on-board with checking the numbers in advance to see if CCP is pulling another “Hey guys, we’re super-excited to deliver this massive nerf to you but we’re calling it a buff anyway.”
Very good points made by the OP and others. That said, I’d ask if the problem here is inherent in the structure of the changes, or just a matter of tweaking the numbers? From what I can tell from the devblogs, the power/resources provided, and the costs of various upgrades, are easily changed. I’m not seeing a hard limit to these (please correct me if I’m wrong).
If that’s accurate, then it makes sense for CCP to introduce the system with the numbers somewhat tight, see what corps and alliances are going to do with them (because players find ways to squeeze unexpected results out of new systems), and then up the numbers to something workable later as “new technology” is developed.
That’s better than introducing another “hey, new Rorqual, let’s exploit the hell out of this” issue and then spend years dealing with the imbalances. Tweaking a new system upwards goes over a lot better than nerfing it in half.
Assuming the numbers eventually get balanced to a workable range (a big assumption, but let’s try it), is the system good overall? Does it give CCP various ways to set some areas as ‘more valuable’ and worth fighting over, or does it simply cause alliance blocs to turtle up more and concentrate on farming a smaller number of systems?
This is what I was trying to do, provide actual numbers for a background to a discussion. You bring up some very solid theoretical points, but waiting six to nine months for the null blocs to make the changes and then for the changes to be reflected in the MER after hype dies down isn’t offering much to the conversation now. If you have some more numbers that we can talk about, they’ll only be good for the discussion.
The point about null leaders’ social media activity is a good one. I don’t read a lot of posts here or on reddit beyond the official patch threads and the Linux threads here on the forum, and I rarely visit reddit or the official Discord, so I have no idea what is or isn’t being said by them. If null leaders aren’t raising a racket, they must think this is a lot more manageable at a coalition level than it looks to be at a small alliance or corp level. Or, less likely, they could be waiting to see how things actually play out.
Even with the items ingame, a lot of info is missing until we can try the new system out and deduce the numbers that CCP isn’t disclosing. For example, what is the site count that the new threat detection arrays add? What sort of respawn time buff are we looking at? What will the major source of mercoxit be once the deprecated mining upgrades’ anoms go away? How hard will it be to keep reagents farming if someone wants to timezone burn you? What sort of net value will the reagents and moon drills provide?
At the level of my small alliance, depending on the answers to those questions, our few systems almost certainly won’t yield for us the same level of activity or profit as they did. We don’t have the manpower/finances to claim more, or do more, than we already are. To us it definitely feels like a nerf, but perhaps across the board it will be a net buff to the wallets of the coalition leaders. Some line members will leave, others come in to enjoy the new content, at least temporarily keeping the MER and player login numbers up until the next expansion.
A lot of these can’t be answered with certainty until the system is fully in place. Sov hub conversion can’t even be started until next week, so we won’t see the upgrade effects until then at the very earliest.
Moon Drills aren’t in effect yet either, and I don’t know of anyone who has started officially harvesting reagents yet to have a perspective on that.
From a general standpoint, the new structures designed to provide pvp content seem to be fleet-oriented and vulnerable to timezone camping. The new upgrade system seems like it will cause more turtling, as the ability to spawn the most desirable anomalies in quantity will be more restricted at the current rate of upgrade potential. This also seems to indicate a push for more fleet content, less solo/smallgang content.
Yes, and they are nice numbers for overall statistics about the universe. Thank you! But the narrative you are trying to craft is “this is a nerf”. That is dubious. And I want to be sure to say that it is worth acknowledging that to your small alliance it could certainly actually be a change that does not “just give the same rewards out of the box” for the space you occupy!
I think the leap from to “this is a nerf” is absolutely unsupported by your numbers. Your numbers are an interesting geographical statistic about the universe now – but are not numbers in support of that conclusion.
That’s what I’m trying to tell you. If you want the numbers to support your “this is a nerf” conclusion, I’m telling you to be patient. Not all data can be available at Day 0, Hour 0 of the expansion to support a belief. It’s great you put together the numbers, and thank you for sharing them. But I will push back against “this is a nerf” narrative.
That sucks. I am very sympathetic to that.
However, the reality is that CCP Games has only ever been catering to the larger and larger alliances and coalitions. Their CEO has always valued news articles talking about “the largest video game battle” (and it has to be Eve Online) and has spent the last decade designing game systems that rewards the larger groups with more people (and more alts) and upgrading server hardware and designing TiDi to facilitate that. This is why Uprising incentivized group play over solo play and then Havoc brought in nullsec blobs into FW space (see: Frat).
The patch is making groups of any size make meaningful tradeoffs and completely reassess their income base. Your group might make one kind of decision, a different small group might do another. I think that is why we have to wait to see what changes happen in overall, and it’s almost certainly not going to fit cleanly into a “nerf” or “buff” category.
Hence, why I think the general outcry about it being a “nerf” to just be knee-jerk baseless panicking.
(For another example of baseless knee-jerk panicking, see The Havoc content, in it’s current form will physically and mentally hurt players if continued where one of the big “this is unfair Dammalin is going to burn us all out”, but not the OP, voices in that thread just the other day was bored saying “golly gosh, Dammalin hasn’t been hit by Angel Cartel in forever” in one of the cross-faction Discord servers)
Not really. The only decision this patch is making you take is where to put your ansiblexes. And there arent really that many options. Systems really have enough energy just for 1 PvE upgrade or nothing with some having enough for an ansi.
Basically If your system has 1750 power or higher, you put a mining upgrade, if it has 1000 you put a PvE upgrade… if it has less you put nothing.
There’s not much to be decided its just scarcity 2.0
You have some more great comments, thank you for the perspective. When I’ve been calling it a nerf, I’ve been looking at it through the lens of how it will directly affect my group, not how it affects null as a whole, since I don’t have a strong practical experience with how bloc directors run their space.
In using the spreadsheet, I fell into the classic mistake of assuming I knew what the numbers meant Projecting based on how my own group utilizes our space, and how we have in the past, isn’t a strong indicator of how this will affect the health of the largest groups in the game.
A lot of the questions I mentioned before still make me unwilling to call this a win or even break-even for NS as a whole, but at this point you’re definitely right in that we won’t be able to do more than speculate until it rolls in.
Are you the one making these decisions? I suspect not.
If indeed not, then @Hyperionus_Iapetorii 's numbers are actually useful in debunking your unsupported statements. Half of nullsec can have a mining upgrade. Two-thirds of nullsec can have any of the Threat Detection Arrays (1 to 3, Major or Minor). So, respectfully, you are wrong: Just shy of a majority of systems can have a mining upgrade. Most systems (beyond a majority) can have any PvE upgrade. 99.8% of systems can have at least the smallest PvE upgrade.
As discussed upthread, you can no longer purposefully fat-stack 1 single system to have everything from cyno suppressors to ansis to a grid full of citadels on-grid with the TCU / IHUB / whatever. And as has been discussed upthread, “I can’t have an ansiblex PLUS X/Y/Z in my choosing” does not automatically mean it is “a nerf”.
Idk why you got so upset here. I’m just saying there’s not that many things to chose from. You fit what power allows you in your system and that’s it. When people say there’s a lot of choice, there actually isnt. You put the more expensive upgrades in the systems that have more power and the least expensive upgrades in the systems that have the least power. The only thing you really have to
plan is how to build your Ansi network. How is that the 3D chess move that everybody is making it out to be?
