Everyone seems weirdly focused on trying to make me seem like a noob whoâs crying over a lost ship. Bittervets? Anyway, it seems to me you donât do much exploring - especially in stain. Loads like what I was carrying are perfectly normal cargo after 30m-1h of exploring, nothing special, the good loads are between 400-600m. This particular ship pulled over 3b in loot from stain before this happened. The amount of ISK lost is a drop in the ocean in my wallet, a very small portion of my daily profits, and my primary thoughts afterwards were âhow did they do it so fast? how can that even be countered?â rather than âomg zomg cry ragequitâ.
After asking around and figuring that smartbombing cloaked ships are all acting like they were stealth bombers or blops and that there is no real hard counter, I came to the conclusion that this kind of behaviour is specifically meant for stealth bombers and blops, not every ship out there. Wanna keep doing it? Do it in a stealth bomber or blops - nothing is preventing people from doing just that, but if you want the capability, you gotta get the ship thatâs capable of it.
Letâs also keep smartbombs functional the way they are
Sure, lets do that. But lets keep decloaking limitations on ships that have them. Iâm guessing this oversight has not been corrected because it has not had much bearing on the big picture of the game. Balancing them keeps them perfectly functional, it would just prevent you from making any ship have the ability to start blowing stuff up immediately after decloaking (based on every other mechanic of the game, that was not really intended). The devs can correct this if they know better.
Their range is very limited by comparison to any other weapon, well within scram range, so skill does come into play.
In the problematic use cases, no. Skill has nothing to do with it. Unless the user is a complete blockhead, itâs a free kill with nothing the opposing side can do aside from only playing when the game looks like a single player game, with zero danger anywhere - whatâs the fun in that? I switched from WH exploration to nullsec exploration for exactly this reason; WHs are very empty and there are so little PVPers there that it isnât dangerous at all (unless holing 5 jumps from jita >_>).
No other PVP situation works like this - pretty much every strategy requires the opponent to make a mistake of some kind that you take advantage of if you want an easy kill. I assume we both agree that is the way it should be: No free meals, you gotta work for it.
Youâll be surprised. Want to become good at avoiding being hunted ?
Donât worry, Iâve learned my lessons from being blown up and Iâm very good at avoiding being caught - I use tactics that are more advanced than in any of the guides or sites I read on nullsec/WH survival. The problem in this case is, that the only way to not get caught, is to become the kind of a scaredybear who doesnât plays the game in single player mode. Only hack in systems with no players? No MMO content for either side then, I donât think thatâs a good direction for the game to take.
From this experience I changed my stain-fit to be able to tank multiple cruisers smartbombing, but it doesnât remove the underlying problems: This can be countered by simply adding more ships (and the only counter is âdonât play the gameâ, plus it still makes every ship behave like a stealth bomber or a blop, when it comes to smartbombing.
By the way, some of the most memorable mass killings in EvE have been possible with smartbombs, but only when the right people were using them. The tactic of the pipe bomb is still possible, but rarely used because it is so involving on many different levels. Itâs an excuse to give you a link to one of the most beloved player made EvE videos: RnK Clarion Call IV. You wouldnât want to make that impossible, would you ?
Thatâs a long video. From the parts I looked at, there were none that required smartbombs to be available immeditely after decloaking - in some of them, a few ships mightâve managed to escape in the very beginning, but thatâs all. All of the things in the video that I saw would be perfectly doable even with a delay on the smartbombs. Blops also still exist, and obviously they would not have the delay, just like they donât have a targeting delay (doh).
To summarize: Nothing of value would be lost with a delay (to those who have a targeting delay after decloaking) and null/wh hacking would remain a cat and mouse game, not a âi can catch you 100% of the timeâ boring dice game. I have not heard a single argument that would hold under scrutiny for why this change would be bad;
âDonât play the game if other people are presentâ is not an argument, itâs an MMO for crying out loud;
âYou canât do this and that fun thing anymoreâ doesnât hold, as they can still be done.
âYouâre a noob cryingâ doesnât hold, Iâm very good at exploring and I havenât lost anything of value.
This argument has basis in the philosophy of the game itself - itâs a PvP MMO, it shouldnât have 100% certain tactics that cannot be prepared or guarded against (both stealth bombers and blops have their weaknesses and do not have a 100% chance to kill the exploring frig), but rather an ever evolving competition of coming up with counters to each other. There is no counter to âImma sit here with my 5 smartbomb ships and just wait until you come in, then you deadâ. Every death in that video caused by smartbombs were caused by mistakes made by the fleet - sloppy mistakes that even I donât make when I run around -, not because the tactic had a 100% success rate.
Hypthetically, what will happen once smartbombs are nerfed and next time your Cheetah gets killed by the exact same guy without targeting delay using a different strategy ?
Thatâs perfectly fine, that kill has nothing to do with what Iâm talking about and if you do not understand that, maybe you should lose the attitude and actually try to understand what Iâm saying.
Please, learn to play instead of asking CCP to nerf people who can kill you.
I kept my personal opinions of you just that, personal and outside of the suggestion discussion. You seem incapable of separating your personal feelings from the discussion of the issue - are you perhaps in high-school (see how constructive this is)? Whatâs next, you try to hide behind some ridiculous argument that since I have antipathy towards you, the arguments I brought up around the issue are moot? Think again. If you think this discussion is about getting other people to join in on your derision instead of discussing the matter, that says more about you than the matter at hand. If you wish to continue down that line, please do so somewher else than this topic.
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