FOB belt rats? Ridiculous

PvE Gameplay Center Missions
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Ok, I’m going to have a little whine now, so feel free to add your ‘HTFU!’ comments as you will.

Right, I’ve been out of the game for a few years, but I’d heard about the FOBs and how their rats can raid belts. We have an FOB in our local hi-sec system but I’d been doing a bit of mining there, keeping an eye on warp ins and generally being careful. So today I send one character into a belt while I’m dicking around on another character, and notice too late his cov is being eaten by about 10 pretty tough rats. Fair enough, I wasn’t paying enough attention, I knew the FOB was around, so hey ho, that’s Eve.

So I re-ship into a BC, and head back to the belt to pick up any loot my cov dropped. No worries right, its like 10 NPC frigates in hi-sec. So what happens? Pointed, webbed, disrupted, neuted. No prob, drop drones to take out the points and off we go. Except no, drones are targeted and start getting chewed. Ok still, just micro-manage the drones right? Except no, the drones start getting eaten alive, faster than I can move them. So now I’m floating in space with no capacitor, guns disrupted, no drones and webbed and pointed. A 56m sp character in a BC couldn’t even kill a single damn NPC frigate. In an asteroid belt in Hi-sec.

Now CCP, could you just explain to me how this qualifies as worthwhile gameplay? I don’t mind losing ships, its part of the game, but this is utterly ridiculous. Oh and the FOB has been sitting in system for what seems like weeks now, because no-one local has a 30 man fleet to throw at it, and the people who can raise those fleets can’t be bothered because the rewards are trash.

Who thought this nonsense was a good idea?

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Brought to you by the same folks behind Resource Wars…

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Link a fit seems to me your ship wasn’t fit to deal with tackle and you counted on drones to bail you out…and that is fine if you are dealing with one rat using advanced AI but ten of them…well you learned.

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I wasn’t fitted for PVE at all, it was a buffer tanked Cane. If I’d walked it into a mission and lost it, I’d have deserved everything I got. Having rats in hi-sec belts with an AI that can rip apart a well skilled BC before I can even take out a single NPC frigate though is just stupid. The same ship can take out a couple of NPC BSs and escorts in a null belt without a scratch, but suddenly its worthless against some hi-sec NPC frigates?

If they’re going to do it at all, then there should be big flashing ‘This system is wildly dangerous!’ messages when you enter sys, but realistically it shouldn’t be happening at all. If they have fancy new NPC AI that genuinely poses a threat to players, then that belongs in the higher level missions or lower security systems, not in hi-sec asteroid belts where new players are most likely to be.

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In fairness, the FOB NPCs are really tough from what I understand.

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Your cane wasn’t fit for fighting frigates. It had no web and was using a microwarp drive, hence the smaller faster ships with warp scramblers had all the advantage in the world. The real issue here is that you were away for 2 years and expected belt rats to be the same when you got back. Think of the new FOB rats a little more like poorly skilled human players. Would you have engaged a 10 man player frigate gang in that Hurricane? or even a 3 man?

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I’ll be honest. It sounds a lot more like you ran face first into the frigate version of the miner defense fleet which is a couple steps above the basic FOB patrol rats which mostly don’t scram. Those you can blap with a pvp blaster Brutix with some finesse. The defense fleets you really need at least a few guys or well fit alts to pry apart properly.

Basically the FOBs also deploy mining fleets which against people with low standings warp out and call in the miner defense fleets.

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I don’t think fob rats do scramble. They neut, web and point you though.

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No, the issue is game balance. As I said, I have no problem losing ships. I’ve lost plenty of them over the years, and fully expect to lose plenty more. However if you have a game system where the least dangerous area of the game where newer players congregate can suddenly be vastly more dangerous with very little warning and where even a much more experienced player can suddenly find themselves helpless against enemies that normally they could demolish with barely a thought, that is a problem.

If CCP implemented this new AI for all NPC ships, then ok we’d have to adapt and CCP would have to balance that carefully. Having it happen only in very specific instances and in areas where normally the threat level would be practically zero however is just very poor game balancing.

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wherever they implement this, people will complain.

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Ah maybe that’s it then, maybe someone had already triggered the defense fleet before I arrived, or maybe my cov triggered it while I wasn’t paying enough attention. I warped the cov to belt, and alt tabbed for maybe 30 seconds before tabbing back.

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High sec doesn’t mean “safe space.” There are consequences to unprovoked pvp in high sec, but no safeguards.
If you are an industrial character in an industrial ship, you should keep an eye on your overview. FOB npcs are a few orders of magnitude less dangerous than players; the only advantage they really get over you is not showing up in local.

A few months ago I watched four blood raider FOB punishers popping autopiloting ships left and right a few jumps from Amarr. I was laughing my ass off.

Personally, I’m glad CCP added some competent NPCs to high sec to remind people to keep their pants up.

Protip: if you’ve been gone from eve for a while and see an npc that is new to you, do some research, no matter how secure you feel in your skills and fit. I felt pretty good with my 80+ mil subcap focused SP sitting in my vargur.

Turns out the DD on a drifter battleship don’t give a ■■■■.

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I’m certainly not arguing for hi-sec to be totally safe, but game balance is still a thing. I didn’t care about losing a cov, I was only mining to pass a spare half hour, but having stuff in the game with no real in game warning and that is totally out of sync difficulty wise with everything else is just poor game design. That stuff just bugs me, because after 15 years CCP should be doing better.

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On the other hand, when you kill a pirate BS in NS, you get a neat 1M+ bounty.
When you kill a way more powerful pirate BS in HS with advanced IA and response fleet that tackle/web/neut you, you get nuts.

It’s not about HS being safe ; it’s about risk vs reward, as in HS those BS don’t even have a mission’s BS bounty.

I know that giving those rats adequate bounties would lead to huge bounty farming. However I don’t see why it’s an issue when it’s possible in supercap, in NS.

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the entire point of the FOBs is for them to become so disruptive that you need to work together with other people in the area (your corp or otherwise) to remove them this could mean getting together and taking them out or pitching in to hire another group. its why they have such low rewards. the reward is they are no longer there.

overall particularly in more isolated or rural regions of HS it has be great at pushing more player interaction from some of the most isolationist players

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I don’t care how much SP you have, if you just throw a ship at content without doing any research, there’s a chance you lose it, and there’s still a chance even if you do check. Heck I have 200m+ sp and I still look at eve survival to check a few of the rarer storylines before accepting.

And people have gotten pretty efficient at killing FOBs, I would guess most groups are under 10 players. Also it’s possible that more have been killed by people that aren’t on zkill. You can see kills here: https://zkillboard.com/group/1924/

ah the classic but the newbs defense. Well for newbs now it’s been the reality, so hopefully they’ve learned to keep d-scan open, and not stick around and try to mine in a system full of pirate :diamonds:NPCs.

if it was would it have mattered? I can see a cane wining or losing a 10v1 depending on a bunch of factors. Also if you do start killing the frigs do they call for reinforcements? I haven’t fought any of them so I don’t know where the difficulty is at.

and yea getting the reward structure right is something CCP seems to have struggled with lately. Although for FOBs maybe it’s fixed as players are clearing them pretty regularly now.

With the faction sotiyos in null not having bounties might make sense, as you could farm them with caps and get pretty insane bounty ticks, but that would also involve putting a lot of assets on the table. Maybe being able to bounty farm the :diamonds:NPCs would be more interesting game play than spreading it out over 100s of systems with one person per site?

In highsec with the FOBs I think it’s less of an issue as you can only use subcaps, but would it be better to get people teaming up and working together rather than being a bunch of solo players? Of course there could be ways to abuse that too, also with concord protection maybe it would be too abusable?

I’m a huge fan of solo content as sometimes you just want to log in and screw around for an hour, or might have to log out suddenly, and can’t really join a fleet. These days I mostly stay solo as there isn’t much group content that interests me enough to want to join with a group. It’s fun to play with other people, IDLE GUNS had a slogan “we play with our members” I used it in my forum signature for years
Nerfabaddon

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They are the reinforcements and they don’t call any other. Difficulty is quite high although, unless you get caught pants down at the belt, there are few tactics to mitigate that difficulty. The difficulty itself comes from the fact that they’re like a well organised gang with logis, dps, and ewar. You need a strong tank and high dps to fight frigates close range, not to mention cruisers or battleships.

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No one should tell you to HTFU. You have been gone a few years. New things that you couldn’t have expected happened.

The fob can be taken out with a 5 man fleet.
The problem is the fitting and ship costs for the low reward. There is a couple groups that do them as a hobby. But tbh it is best to move to another system until it is handled.

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So have we moved from FOB rats to the mining defence rats here? The mining defence ones scram.

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I talked with people doing them, and it can lead to a 400M/h for each of a 4-man gang, including travel.

I know that’s not huge, but it seems good enough if you already have the fit ready.