Ran the only guy in losec local thru zkill, interestingly one of his last losses was to an Autosythian lancer, while barge mining a losec belt. Shot a mail just for hell of it, local chat would have broke my single player immersion zen, he answered he had no idea why it attacked.
Combined with my both hunting and avoiding the diamond rats in both hisec/losec, and all lore, storyline stuff aside, I came up with the theory that groundwork is being laid to eventually handle even complex botting activity in a very creative manner. With active npc pvp.
Ive witnessed both autosythians and diamond gangs engage in fairly complex behavior which could easily develop into complex situations only an active player could respond to.
Or maybe he lied to hide an embarrassing fact that he thought they are normal rats or even more important to hide that he was botting and the bot auto-attacked the rats. Just dropping this as another possibility.
That is the most likely explanation. It increases perceived activity in the game and it allows CCP to āprobeā players to figure out if theyāre botters. Muuuuch better than popup captchas.
Thereās more, though. Fighting against botters is always an arms race, which would mean that the bot programmers would eventually teach their ships to flee or fight. Bots fighting NPCs (which are just bots too) sounds interesting!
Killmail was ānpc onlyā with autosythian and listed the belt he was in. Doubt someone would bot mine losec belts, drones set to aggressive only attack when pilot is aggressed.
My main interest is the observation that the npcās are actively canvassing systems, warping between stations, player structures, customs offices, belts, etc. Doingā¦ something.
Isnāt there the old caveat of having a body in cargo also pisses them off? If you donāt poke them that and being too close to an observation point are the usual triggers.
Then the first part of what I wrote may apply and he was lazy to look at their names or didnāt know them outright and just attacked them himself to get rid of them quicker but then learned they are no ordinary rats. But again this is just an idea, not claiming this surely happened, just something to consider.
Btw they are looking for corpses, if you eject corpses into space they most cases eventually find them and scoop them, though sometimes they seem glitched and wonāt do it for some reason. This is what the lancers are scanning for, capsuleer frozen corpses.
First thing. Link the kill.
Second thing. Lancers tend to hunt you down when you piss them of at gate or something. They like corpses so they tend to attack if you have one in cargo or even something else. But I donāt thing that CCP use lancers to hunt bots.
Actually, it would be better to simply just require them to move, and to apply more skill.
I think the best option is to move the mining ships into smaller ships, like the expedition frigates. I would advocate for one that can us strip miners, and have equal or higher mining rates to all barges/exhumers. Iād then make the endurance, and freedom (the new frigate) have bonusās to allow for near instant relock time after decloaking.
then iād wipe out barges and exhumes out right.
From here iād make the following charges to mining
convert all asteroids from things like āveldspar smallā to āsmall asteroidā āmedium asteroidā ālarge asteroidā, āhuge asteroidā
iād then make the values of the types of minerals in it, totally random and rng. This would equalize mining rates across all of new eden. Then weād get huge buffs to ore scanners, with out actually buffing them.
from here, the fast frigates would have to search around the asteroid belt, looking for the most valuable ores, cause them to become active etc. Rats would now also provide a significantly higher threat, which would deal with afk ratting.
after 6 months iād evaluate if there was need for a expedition-cruise classed ship.
I strongly believe all freighter/haulers and mining ships should be āoreā based.
You seem to lack understanding of the bigpicture of industry in eve. We older players know, that some minerals are needed more than others, like trit and pyre. If you were to equalize the drop rates of all minerals, by making them all rng, it would result in a situation where morphite, megacyte and every other non-tritanium mineral would be worthless, while trits price would skyrocket. In short, the reason why mineral drop rates are not rng, is that building stuff requires minerals in non equal amounts.
It would not be mathematically difficult to randomize across a range of minerals with suitable proportions of each one.
Though given the eccentric (but arithmetically simple) physics applied to bumping, it would probably worth reminding CCP to get somebody who can count to do the work.
Whatās really funny is that, if your wish were granted, thereād be tons of complaints about it being too hard, unfair and whatever else the Scrublordās prayer has to offer.
I see your point there. I think that is one direction to go.
For the years I have opined on the opposite direction:
Make ALL mining ships NPC ships, and let players purchase these ships, hire crews, and send them off to go mining.
But these ships would be fair game for any player to attack, anywhere, and at any time. Much like we can attack the NPC convoys we see at stations for example. Instead of being a āminerā you have to be a PVP in order to mine rocks.
Imagine that twist.
And of course, these rats would also need to be defended against such that those in less populous nullsec need not get a break.
You see in my opinion I think the miner-PVP relationship is a failure. Nobody wants to pay to play a game where they get to be somebodyās victim. I understand that may CCP intended that all miners would āhave friendsā. Perhaps so - until people started AWOX safaris just for the lols and kills. Sandbox and litterbox were never the same thing regardless of how much the forum brigands waiting for their criminal flags to time out try to gaslight us otherwise.
Besides, NPC miners would have been going way back to the āRobot Roundupā concept and has been popular before in games.
Two likely explanations.
They engaged Lancers earlier in the day. Lancers have long memories.
Or their warp took them on grid with a JO or UIWH at close range and they triggered agression that way.
Hi balos.
More pvp is actually good. But it needs to be the right pvp. high sec should be full of small conflicts over semi desirable moons, industrial locations and other such resources. Low should be a veritable treasure trove of sigs and other wandering content. (flip low and null sigs and anoms and watch low come to life, null still gets belt ratting, mining and other things)
More to the point, if youād actually read and comprehended the thread as opposed to trolling, itās NPCs attacking the player, aka PVEā¦ which is exactly what you seem to be advocating for.
< shakes head > How is it the stupid on the forums keeps getting buffed?
