Local Comms Blackout - Discussion Thread - Part Deux!

[Litsea_Reticulata]

@Mizhara_Del_thul

Everything else was good but this is a hard pass. All this adds is tedium and annoyance, unless it’s so limiting that it actually stops fun and engaging gameplay from even happening in the first place. This is something that can’t be balanced towards both having interesting gameplay effects and not being complete cancer.

Operating costs are tedium? So you don’t already spend much for fuel, drones or ammunition? Is that someone else’s job in your corporation/alliance?

The concept of supply lines could add some room for alternative strategies. If an opponent can be cut off from support, they could be easier to confront in battle.

I understand why the current system is preferred, that stack of 1000 dreadnoughts doesn’t cost a dime to keep in the warehouse, not until one is assembled and needs to be fit.

Put it another way.

Structures should be able to charge corporations ISK per M^3 they use, like a storage service.

Convince me I’m wrong.

[Sana_Yamada]

Your right I can see 2 idiots shooting each other to raise the bounty and make isk bad idea on my part.

[Arrendis]

@Litsea_Reticulata

False? I think the real reason Delve got so upset about the Drifter NPC’s reinforcing stuff isn’t just that an active PvP campaign had to be recalled to the homeland, but it meant a bunch of players who’s main gameplay aspiration isn’t PvE getting forced to play Firemen.

You know that in the end, we covered all of it with less than 20 people, right? That within 48h, we’d figured out how to handle it, had the ACLs set up for the gunning group, and that was it?

Nobody had to ‘play fireman’. What annoyed the piss out of us was that we didn’t know what the hell was going on, and we had to make a decision of ‘pursue or go home?’ immediately, because of how long it takes us to mobilize in any direction.

By the time we did have a handle on things, we’d already started moving. At that point, you really can’t just grind the wheels to a halt and say ‘ok, no, keep assaulting’. Too many pieces were already moving. Stopping them all and reversing course would’ve been an incredibly arduous undertaking, especially immediately on the hells of getting them moving in the first place. This goes back to the ‘do you think we just wave our hands and things happen?’ point.

Actually moving the coalition the way we did is an effort of about a hundred people¹, not including the line pilots. Massive amounts of materiel need to be moved completely apart from the line’s assets and the supercapital fleet. Just the fuel supplies—the four racial isotopes which we provide to capital/supercapital pilots for free on strategic ops so that the alliance, not the individual pilot, bears the cost of waging war—that alone is half a dozen JFs. To say nothing of moving the structures we’ll need in-theater, the modules, services, ammunition, and fuel blocks for them, FC hangar stockpiles, capital ammunition (also provided to the line) stockpiles, the stockpiles of ships, fuel, and other materiel that GSOL uses to do all their stuff, the Recon stockpiles (having a dozen or so cyno Mallers in each of our standard mid-point forts in case one pops is kinda a requirement during a war), etc etc.

So… no. No, it wasn’t about the less than two dozen people who ‘were forced to play Fireman’. Not even close.

As for itchy trigger fingers… that’s what roams are for. We send out a dozen or so fleets a day when we’re not at war. We’re not trying to kill people off, you know? Just looking for some action. And we’re not dumb enough to go hunting little groups into the ground. Even our roaming fleets tend to use WHs to go to where the other large groups are.

@Litsea_Reticulata

How can you dock a 8k bounty?

Cruelly!

@Litsea_Reticulata

To do what? I thought the VNI drone nerf was going to make it unsuitable for ratting?

Wow. The VNI is the only thing you’re looking at?
Myrmidon - even cheaper, makes a profit faster than the VNI, 100% afk-friendly.
Dominix - about the same price, makes money at about the same rate as the VNI, also 100% afk-friendly.

Using civilian guns for triggers would still not be auto-aggression, would it?

@Mizhara_Del_thul

All this adds is tedium and annoyance

Having to pay X ISK every 30 days or the ship takes a performance hit adds tedium?

@Sana_Yamada

lower those rewards till no risk is worth it

Please. Bounties in nullsec aren’t even looked at in terms of individual bounties, and everyone out here knows it. It’s all ticks. If you dropped the bounties on rats by 10% across the board, the risk/reward curve doesn’t much notice. It’s the effort vs reward issue that’s more likely to be a consideration, and that’s something CCP openly wants to make harder. Because that’s how they’re looking at the bots.

And no, CCP isn’t going to touch Crimewatch. That was one of the issues with the wardec system: to really fix highsec wars, they’d need to fix Crimewatch, and they’re not gonna touch that for a while.

@Litsea_Reticulata

Structures should be able to charge corporations ISK per M^3 they use, like a storage service.

That’d be interesting.

---

¹ That’s 100 people working like madmen on the first day. More had to do additional work on additional days.

[Litsea_Reticulata]

@Sana_Yamada

Your right I can see 2 idiots shooting each other to raise the bounty and make isk bad idea on my part.

That’s pretty much happened with battlefield, a handful of people took turns knifing and resurrecting each other in a corner of the map to progress more easily.

[Milto_Farroads]

@Mark_Marconi

As Null with local is safer than Hi-sec

you keep repeating something that is wrong over and over. It doesnt become correct.

@Mark_Marconi

CCP went for increase the risk

CCP hasnt done any such thing. They havent communicated the reasons and their expected outcomes for the blackout.

[Marcus_Luttrell_Khan]

@Milto_Farroads

affecting every other player

And you imply this change is bad. There are a ton of people I know personally coming back to the game to try it out because nullsec PvP is finally doable outside of blobbing and hotdropping.

There have been for too few isk losses in the game due to the isk faucets, and this is one way CCP is trying to increases losses while also not taking the capability of the isk faucets away.

So many people saying “i won’t undock now” or something similar, it’s rubbish. That just furthers the risk averse argument. They finally made highsec safer than null and now removing safety from null is bad?

[Mark_Marconi]

Just because you keep denying something that does not make it true.
As to CCPs reasons, it seem s fairly clear that they wanted to fix risk vs reward via a method that has been debated for over a decade and want to see the effect before they decide to make it permanent or not.

[Arrendis]

@Mark_Marconi

As to CCPs reasons, it seem s fairly clear that they wanted to fix risk vs reward via a method that has been debated for over a decade and want to see the effect before they decide to make it permanent or not.

I’d still advise caution before ascribing any quite so developed motive to CCP on this. Hilmar’s said he wants to shake things up, and they want to see what impact this has. That’s all there is, right now.

[Mark_Marconi]

Thats a fair cop.

[Ikki_Phoenix]

And if they are dumb enough to make it permanent, say good bye to EVE because EVE wont last longer than 1-2 years

[Mizhara_Del_thul]

@Arrendis

Having to pay X ISK every 30 days or the ship takes a performance hit adds tedium?

Yes? “If you don’t bear often enough, you get punished.” wat? Nonsense idea. That’s not how you isk sink. All it does is punish having assets while playing casually, while adding literally nothing positive to the game.

[Mark_Marconi]

@Marcus_Luttrell_Khan

And you imply this change is bad. There are a ton of people I know personally coming back to the game to try it out because nullsec PvP is finally doable outside of blobbing and hotdropping.

There have been for too few isk losses in the game due to the isk faucets, and this is one way CCP is trying to increases losses while also not taking the capability of the isk faucets away.

So many people saying “i won’t undock now” or something similar, it’s rubbish. That just furthers the risk averse argument. They finally made highsec safer than null and now removing safety from null is bad?

Applause

[Arrendis]

Also far too soon to make that kind of broad assertion. So far the numbers have seemed to indicate more activity, not less. This week will give us the first real ability to look at trend-lines.

@Mizhara_Del_thul

“If you don’t bear often enough, you get punished.”

Kill people. Take their stuff. Sell it.

After all, if you’re going to argue that you can’t make enough money to maintain a ship that way, you clearly can’t make enough money to replace a ship that way, and since you have to assume whatever you fly will explode, that sounds like ‘if you don’t bear often enough [to replace your ship] you get punished’.

[Mizhara_Del_thul]

Doesn’t matter how you’re forced to make that money, it still forces you to grind for isk just to avoid being punished. It’s not just a bad idea, it’s downright retarded. It adds nothing, while punishing playing a game casually. Risking your assets in combat is one thing. Having them all nerfed to the ground if you don’t grind enough? That’s absolute tosh and nonsense.

I did not peg you to be this fuckin’ retarded, of all people.

[Ikki_Phoenix]

One thing I will say is that EVE is not for casual players.

[Mizhara_Del_thul]

Isn’t it? I’d say the great majority of the playerbase is casual as hell.

[Litsea_Reticulata]

@Arrendis

You know that in the end, we covered all of it with less than 20 people, right? That within 48h, we’d figured out how to handle it, had the ACLs set up for the gunning group, and that was it?

Covered it with 20 people? How does an organisation of that size figure out a gunnery group? Who has to pay for stuff like bombs and make sure they aren’t getting wasted, they’re like 6 million each?

@Arrendis

By the time we did have a handle on things, we’d already started moving. At that point, you really can’t just grind the wheels to a halt and say ‘ok, no, keep assaulting’. Too many pieces were already moving. Stopping them all and reversing course would’ve been an incredibly arduous undertaking, especially immediately on the hells of getting them moving in the first place. This goes back to the ‘do you think we just wave our hands and things happen?’ point.

Okay, I just assumed Devle had so much stuff everywhere its like those old war movies where they just drive the truck through some scrim netting and start loading boxes of 50 cal rounds into the back and refill the gas tank out of huge pile of 44 gallon drums…

I did hear this story once about using a titan to bridge about 90 freighters one after the other… true?

@Arrendis

Just the fuel supplies—the four racial isotopes which we provide to capital/supercapital pilots for free on strategic ops so that the alliance, not the individual pilot, bears the cost of waging war—that alone is half a dozen JFs.

You moving it compressed, or the refined isotopes?

@Arrendis

Myrmidon - even cheaper, makes a profit faster than the VNI, 100% afk-friendly.

Takes longer to train, slower to warp out. Never could run it AFK because the little frigates would get too close.

@Arrendis

Dominix - about the same price, makes money at about the same rate as the VNI, also 100% afk-friendly.

Sentry drones lock it in place, more time to train. Same problem with frigates getting too close. MJD is a plus though, but not if you’re alpha.

@Arrendis

Using civilian guns for triggers would still not be auto-aggression, would it?

Since you put it that way. So no auto aggression is that drones won’t attack if the parent ship is attacked, but the drones will fight back ( individually ) if attacked? Or never defend themselves at all?

@Arrendis

That was one of the issues with the wardec system: to really fix highsec wars, they’d need to fix Crimewatch, and they’re not gonna touch that for a while.

Bring back aggression Graphs!!!

@Arrendis

That’d be interesting.

Maybe put a maximum M^3 in NPC stations? Give people a reason to put up a citadel and fill it with their stuff? It seem dumb groups in 0.0 that loose their space can just dock all their stuff up in NPC stations and wait for everyone to leave like nothing happened.

@Arrendis

That’s 100 people working like madmen on the first day . More had to do additional work on additional days.

Yeah? On the 7th day did everyone in Delve rest?

[Arrendis]

That kinda attitude right there? That will do more to kill EVE than anything CCP can do. EVE needs casual players. EVE needs people who are only able to login for an hour, half an hour, at a time, 1-3 days a week. Because they’re still in space, and without them, there’s less for the guys who like to wank off about how ‘hard core’ they are to go after.

[Mark_Marconi]

It used to be. Actually that used to be a great draw card. I used to work 6 days a week and I loved the idea that I got SP while I was working, while in WOW at the time I could not keep up with anyone.

[Litsea_Reticulata]

@Ikki_Phoenix

One thing I will say is that EVE is not for casual players.

Why can’t it be? Isn’t it better to have 100 players on %10 of the time, than 10 players on %100 of the time?