Kind of funny that the same people that will happliy blob an ishtar in a haven complain when a nullbloc blobs their crappy little fleet. You reap what you sow.
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Your comment just proves the point. You simply have no clue what the difference is to catch a ratter in an Anomaly and blob someone via Cyno.
Catching a ratter that hasn’t paid attention to local and Dscan with a roaming gang is earned. It’s achieved by skill (quick Dscan location in which ano he is), reaction speed (instantly send a tackler that can get a point before the target warps out) and requires several mistakes on the ratters end (not aligning once an unknown char enters local, not Dscanning for incoming tackle, not warping out once a hostile enters the grid). As a hunting gang, you literally have seconds to make the right decisions and have skilled people do their job. And if the target just isn’t afk or braindead, he will still escape.
Cynoblobbing a small gang with a standing fleet doesn’t require any skill at all. It is a mechanical win by default via a magic portal blob. And should be nerfed/removed for exactly that reason. It has hurt the game over decades and lead to the exactly skeletized power structures we can see today.
A very smart FC once said “the problem with power projection is, that you can only see the engagements that happen because of it, but you can never see all the engagements that were prevented by it”. And thats true. Cynos hurt the game by actively preventing fights on a local level. Hundreds. Thousands. Fights that could have been fun, Fights that could challenge the power structures. Fights that could force the huge empires to shrink and concentrate in smaller areas that they could actually protect efficiently, so other areas get free for new rivals and challengers to move in, grow and later provide all the big content on alliance level.
Anyone who thinks Cynos in their current form are a good idea simply has no clue how much gameplay and long-term political entertainment they destroy by allowing alliances to remote-control huge areas of space, forcing smaller groups either directly into their blocks (aka “under their rule”) or into renting empires (further milking the small for the power of the big) and preventing smaller groups to challenge large ones at their borders efficiently if they simply grew too big to effectively defend their areas locally.
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You sure about that? If ratter does not pay attention to local and d-scan then why you need skill/speed/fast reaction and all such stuff? 
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That’s the biggest load of elephant turd I’ve ever heard. 
I could also use your argument against you and say everytime you kill a ratter they have to refarm that isk to replace the pve ship, so you are destroying their ability to buy pvp ships by making them spend their isk on pve ships. So think of all the fights that never happened because of that.
Because it isn’t just black or white. It’s not like everyone is either 100% on his toes or 100% afk. Some people react late, some people make mistakes (wanting to pull back their drones, having wrong Dscan settings, struggeling to find the right aling target etc. pp… those mistakes add up in seconds). You have to bet that he reacts late and use every fraction of a second you can. Each second later your tackler lands on him makes it less probable that you can catch him. It’s not that hard to understand. Unless you want to intentionally misunderstand it of course. And in the end, you simply only get those who made enough mistakes.
Thats nonsense because everytime someone kills a PvP ship that ship also needs to be replaced. A ship in space is just a ship. It’s content for anyone who can catch it. This also applies for the hunter of course. Nobody says you shouldn’t be able to kill him. Go do a good bait, reinforce the bait with more ships coming in from the nearby systems and earn your victory. That is a whole different story than just dropping 50 people on them with “Cyno up, Jump Jump, spread tackle, kill them all!”. And that in a possible 50-100 systems which are in bridge-range from the staging system.
Because that has turned large parts of the map into barren grindlands, totally empty except a lonely Isthar(bot -_-)that warps off automatically, in some cases a real human who might mess up and get killed or some Massmultiboxminer every here and there, protected by the always-waiting magic teleporter fleet. That crap design simply has to end, because it hurts the gameplay.
I don’t play to give you content. I play to give myself content. If I have to PvE to buy pvp ships then why would I want to waste hours and hours hoping to bait 1 ship. It makes zero sense. The reality is I just want to get the ISK so I can go do other stuff. Haivng players like you constantly buzzing around thinking you are a hot shot because you can kill a pve ship is nothing other than annoying. That’s why nobody wants to fight you, thats why you get blobbed. Go and find the players pvp ships that can actually fight back and fight those. If you want to keep killing ships that cant fight back then whatever, but you have no right to complain when nobody wants a fair fight with you.
True but not 100%. It looks like you aren’t experienced enough, sorry for that.
Personally I’ve been tacker for small roams, I totally can relay to what you are saying about tackling. Yes, it requires fast reaction and some luck. Then you need to be careful and lucky. Only after gang lands on grid and places points on target you can warp out to catch some breath. And then get some reps because it is totally possible that the ship is in hull already.
On the other hand, I don’t remember us cyno-blobbed once. There was no defense fleets at all. There was kitchensink fleets. There was big defense fleets. We even used to catch carriers and call other group with like 40-50 members to kill it (our group usually consisted of 4-5 people with alts, up to 10 small-medium sized ships in total).
And I really do not remember getting cynoed once.
(btw: I’ve experienced Blackout roaming in full scale as a tackler. It sucked big time. We moved to another activity after 1 month of such time waster).
And I’ve been on receiving end of this too. Lost ships because nobody would defend some Ishtar. Barely escaped with my supercarrier from whale-hunters.
Participated in defense fleets saving supercarriers who got caught.
It is never 100% sure process.
That’s why most players dock immediately when there’s anything worrying in Intel chat.
So yeah, at least some here can see that your story is very one-sided and experience is limited. You’ve never been null-sec carebear, were You? I’d advise to try it. To get caught, to lead defense fleet and save some poor soul from roamers, etc…
Nobody cares. You undock, you are a possible target. Everywhere. And rightly so, EVE is a PvP game to the core and by doing PvE, you always expose yourself to PvP. Always has been this way, and hopefully always will be this way. Like the roamer that might kill you, he also exposes himself to PvP, there is always a bigger (or smarter) fish. The question is: Does the already bigger fish should have a magic teleporter that can beam him right on top of the smaller fish, so the can risklessly and effortlessly stomp him? I’d say no, it’s a crazy broken and unnessessary game mechanic that does way more harm than it benefits the game. You can disagree, feel free. Doesn’t change my opinion, that is: Big Groups already have the manpower, intel and orga-level to make sure they can protect several systems for their PvE people. Several. Thats okay. Dozens? A hundred? With a single staging fleet all teleportable through a cyno? Thats not okay.
The story is one-sided because the example of the lonley Ishtar that “the roamers kill” wasn’t from me. It was an accusation that what roamers do would be the same (10 ships vs 1 ratting Ishtar) that the cynoblobbers do (50 ships vs a 10 men roaming gang). But it isn’t, as explained. One requires skill, knowledge and luck. The other doesn’t.
So: Roaming around killing lonely Isthars isn’t what I am talking about. Small roaming gangs would like to find other small roaming gangs or local residents that would then form a local defense gang of equal or slightly superior (but still fightable) size. But that doesn’t happen any more. Because of Cynos. Nobody even needs a “local defense”. Because the lonely guys are told to simply “warp instantly if someone enters the local” (and if they don’t, screw them for being bad…). The organized massmultibox alts bring a cloaked Cynoship to their Mining Rorqual and whatever and just call in the big fleet whenever someone wants to engage them. And THAT is the problem. There are no small-scale brawlings any more. You either catch a lonely ratter or stupid traveller but you cannot engage any similar sized gang, because either you simply find none OR they have a cyno with them 100% and just blob you. The blob having a 100-system wide Teleporter simply is hurting the game. Any alliance wanting to “secure” a 100 systems should be forced to split up into several smaller local defense-squads that each can secure a constellation or so. And only unite in case some very big fleet enters their homeland to then drive them out.
Boo hoo. I don’t care if you don’t like the teleporter. Ships die too quick to defend without cyno’s. That’s the reality. That’s the real reason why you don’t like cyno’s, you don’t like PVP. Admit it.
It isn’t. People are living in and doing all sorts of PvE in HighSec, LowSec, Pochven and WH-Space. All without “defense cynos”. Works absolutely fine. Nobody needs cynos to do PvE. You have a local and a Dscanner, use it and you are almost a 100% safe already.
Sure bro.
and nobody defends. That’s the point clown.
You should stop the insults, else I might rapidly lose interest in this already very one-sided discussion (meaning: you bring no arguments).
First, you still mix up “the solo ratter” (which is a 100% self responsible if he lives or dies) and smallscale engagements which are simply supressed by the ever-present cyno-threat. Which is bad for the game, since especially those smallscale engagements are the situations where skill and tactics shine the most.
Second, people “defend” all the time in WH Space for example, because catching a ratter (even rage-rolling to find some) and then have them pinned down, hoping for an escalation is one of the major ways to create smallscale-engagements. And you know why those engagements can happen? Exactly: Because both sides know, neither side can just open a Cyno and blob the other to death. Both sides reinforcements have to come from nearby systems (and thus can be scouted, one can react to what is on the way, they are limited in numbers), both sides reinforcements have to warp to the scene which means they can be ambushed, delayed, dragged out of position with bubbles. It opens room for tactical gameplay. This is where the really nice fights happen. And this is why Nullsec is a boring grind area that seriously needs to become less blobby and more focused on local residents having their small zones of influence and protection (but working togehter once a bigger threat appears), instead of huge alliances remote-controlling huge areas with a magic teleporter from a staging system that can reach dozens or even a hundred via Cyno in the blink of an eye.
You have to wonder, where is the CSM?
Do they even play EvE Online?
The CSM couldn’t care less, or would be even opposed to changes. The voting- and election-process favours large, organized groups that can coordinate voting to get a massive overrepresentation in the CSM. One that isn’t really reflecting the diversity of the player base.
This leads to a majority of CSMs either directly or indirectly tied to the massive nullsec empires, which all have one primary ability: they can bring massive numbers. Even if those players are often uneducated and unskilled F1 grunts, as long as the mechanics favour blobbing - and teleporting a blob directly on top if a far inferior gang is a massive pro-blob mechanic - they will prefer to keep them in the game.
Should the game favour indeed strategy, tactic and individual skill more, they would lose a huge part of their ability to dominate entire areas of space remotely, they would get tons of smaller but better rivals, gnawing at their borders, forcing them to shrink to a size they could actually defend better. Of course that would be insanely good for the game. But is isn’t in their interest, since they actually are already in power and don’t want any chance that could potentially endanger that position.
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Null is the domain of large scale warfare, small scale pvp is a tiny proportion of the demographic. There’s low sec, WHs and FW for that.
CCP pandered to small scalers in null before and it led to the removal of supercap brawls which provided free advertising through gaming press attention, books (Empires of Eve) and the grand stories.
No way should they listen to such nonsense again! We need cap proliferation back and quickly.
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I’d really like to hear how smallscale engagements would affect supercap brawls. Really.
Any Super has so much eHP, that, in case it gets tackled by a roaming gang, you have all time in the world to rescue it. Shame on you if you can’t. I mean, it’s not like Cynos will be removed completely from the game. They just need to be changed so they cannot be used to jump a counterfleet directly on top of any smallscale roam and basically obliterating that gang because you can bridge Logis, Ewar, Dps, Tackle all at the same time and it will be on grid like 5-7seconds after the cyno is lit.
Originally it took up to one minute after the cyno gone up before the jumped fleet could actuallly fight. Mainly because a system-change took more than 30seconds alone. Almost nobody had Titans, so the usual drop was some carriers that could be easily outmaneuvered or a Dread that simply wouldn’t hit subcaps very well (except Garde-Moros, but that range was very short). And THAT was a good balance, you could use all the capitals for sieging structures or defending them, or for escalating big fights where lots of enemies are on field and/or hostile capitals. But dropping a roaming gang was horrible ineffective. Yes, you could safe their target with a Triage Carrier. But you couldn’t delete them and end their roam with it. Nothing more is asked for.
Hotdropping needs to be slowed down again to the original balance, so it becomes a tactical decision again where and how to do the drop. Closerange? At range? Offgrid? Totally depends on the tank of your cynoship and the DPS/range of the enemies. Right now it really doesn’t matter, any plated Recon will last enough to get more than enough ships through because the jump is alwmost istant.
Is the title of the post not “Is Capital Proliferation Killing Small-Scale Warfare in Nullsec?”?
I’m sure you can connect the dots what this player is lobbying for and how that perspective was listened to by CCP which led to the 2019 debacle where caps were summarily gutted in effectiveness and increased 6x in price.
I think doing anything like that again would be a mistake by CCP and I think recently they have realised these mistakes i.e. we can see them unwinding some of those nerfs; recent resource cost reductions for caps being an example alongside trying to fix the explo part bottlenecks through the new null sec explo upgrades. However for me, those changes were far too timid / conservative, they’re too fearful of properly fixing the situation. Unsure why as MMOs are about aspirational long term goals e.g. becoming full epic geared in some games / mastering trade skills etc imagine if Blizz made epics 6x harder to obtain and far less powerful after half the server had geared up. It punishes the newbro who now has a 6x harder goal than those of us who came before leaving vets in essentially an unassailable position. That isn’t right or fair. Profoundly odd decision making.
Super caps were meant to be alliance assets, not personal ones. Comparing them to gear drops in WOW is like comparing apples to oranges. It should take the effort of an entire corporation to build a super, and several corps (or a large corp) for a titan. Yes only one person will have the actual keys to the ship, but it doesn’t change the fact that it should be a group effort to attain.
That. Nullsec is so safe and so rich (and for decades now…), Supers have been produced inflationary.
CCP should really make public each month how many ships of which type were produced and exist in the different parts of space. I think even the first report would show how ridiculously safe and lucrative Nullsec is. Mostly because all those grinders simply cannot be challenged effectively and the alliances took so much space, that every serious massmultiboxer literally has a solar system for himself, protected by the massive standing fleet lightyears away. And this has to stop.
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