Local Comms Blackout - Discussion Thread

[Arrendis]

And here, for everyone saying the World News piece means they’ve decided:

[–]CCP_FalconCCP Games 54 points an hour ago
That’s an in character news piece, no one has released any information saying this would be forever.

It’s a test, we’re still collecting data, and it’s far too early to say if this is going to be permanent.

Might want to unrustle your jimmies for a while there bud.

I mean, Jesus Christ, the day Goons are being such idiots as to make me agree with Falcon… what’s next, calm, reasoned analysis without a WWII analogy from Boat?

[Makshima_Shogo]

It’s kind of nice how they aren’t just giving us patch notes for the next month of changes, making us sit here and gather small bits at a time, keeps things interesting.

[Mad_Raptor]

If it was anyone else saying it, it would be suspect. I hope that it is not permanent, for the sake of the game.

[Arrendis]

More and more, I hope it is. I hope they just iterate on it to make it better.

@Arrendis

Remove Local from null completely, put Constellation as the default, and have it show as delayed but provide the pilot count. Lowsec, move the delayed/count setting to Local.

Put in structure modules to allow FW to get current local behavior based on ACLs and WZ control, and NS to get the delayed/count moved to Local, accessible by ACL and only available w/Strat 2+.

[Haulie_Berry]

They do it because they are stalwart believers in the New Halaima Code of Conduct, as handed down by his lord and worship James 315, PBUH, and in the important mission of thwarting all bots and bot aspirants across new eden.

[Mizhara_Del_thul]

@Arrendis

but provide the pilot count

Defeats the purpose. Constellations are too small for this to be a reliable obfuscator. Region at the very least. Also, structures or whatever circumventing it also defeats the purpose, as this will instantly benefit massive blocs with resources disproportionately to smaller entities.

There’s no point in watering down Blackout.

Edit: An idea would be to have the ability to activate a sort of “sonar” style pulse X amounts a day, per constellation. This’ll reveal local for Y amount of time, depending on structures and ADMs etc, but will always be less than the system count and limited enough that it’s something you save for when you need it for warfare’s sake.

[MB_ThePhotographer]

Ah, to be young again! (and have the time again )

[Arrendis]

Putting it onto structures means it can be countered. Make it something that goes inactive on initial RF, not just Armor RF. And then fix freaking structures so they blow up more often. That won’t water down the blackout, it’ll make the Blackout something you can interact with, and which can provide points of conflict.

No RF timers for low-power, for example, and no damage cap. Drop to a single timer for high power. And ditch asset safety outside of the immediate system, too—everywhere. You want asset safety, have a safety net, even if it’s just an NPC station or another asshouse in the same system. As long as CCP provides a means to notify them ‘I am out of game for a while, please lock my stuff down’, people will still have reason to come back if RL slaps them in the face with a tragedy or a deployment or something.

@Mizhara_Del_thul

Edit: An idea would be to have the ability to activate a sort of “sonar” style pulse X amounts a day, per constellation. This’ll reveal local for Y amount of time, depending on structures and ADMs etc, but will always be less than the system count and limited enough that it’s something you save for when you need it for warfare’s sake.

I dunno, I feel like that’s kinda too much information, even in small pulses. Maybe stage how much you get by how good a network of these things there is. Treat 'em like IHUB upgrades, but don’t build it into the IHUB or it’s just more goddamned entosis bullshite.

[Orca_Platypus]

@MB_ThePhotographer

There’s always a risk when you gank someone.

Not anymore. You can gank safely now, even if he has backup, it’ll never land in time.

@MB_ThePhotographer

You just never know if the other guy has backup.

And with those changes, you don’t need to.

[Ms_Steak]

@Arrendis

Putting it onto structures means it can be countered.

putting it into structures means that those structures WILL be everywhere and instead of good fights NS will turn into structure bashing for everyone, even roaming fleets from LS and HS.

[Arrendis]

@Ms_Steak

putting it into structures means that those structures WILL be everywhere

You’ll notice I didn’t say ‘make it a new structure’.

[Ms_Steak]

@Arrendis

You’ll notice I didn’t say ‘make it a new structure’.

me neither.

[MB_ThePhotographer]

CCP has shown that they can take a large hit to the player base. I’m still puzzled by the why this? It seems that other, frankly better ideas have been tossed out at them in the past. Was this just the easy way out?

[Mizhara_Del_thul]

… you have seen Delve right? You didn’t just materialize in Amarr and sort of stay there?

Structure warfare is a) The most boring thing in the universe. b) Not really an option in a lot of places, unless you have eight gorillion titans to spare.

Fixing structures and the retarded Titan numbers in Eve need to happen first. Then we can start attaching mechanics to structures again. They’re broken as hell and can’t be the basis for fixing anything. Yet. All the things you mentioned are good ideas in an of themselves, but all of them need to come into place before we start attaching more mechanics to broken mechanics.

… and honestly, even then it’s not the best idea when scarcity just isn’t a thing for the big boys anymore. When you can slap down multiple Forts on every gate and celestial in a region with relative ease, and have a thousand titans within easy reach of every last one, it’s not really “counterable” anymore.

[Arrendis]

Which is also why I say they need to either remove Supercapitals completely, or wildly repurpose them. I still favor the oddball idea the RPers came up with (which I stuffed into the article):

One idea that’s been batted around in a few areas goes as follows: Make them into mobile bases. Return supercarriers to the ‘mothership’ idea: jump-capable vessels that move slow, warp slow, and have little to no offensive capabilities. But they do have the ability to dock subcapitals. Dozens of battleships. Hundreds of smaller hulls. A single supercarrier could provide a beachhead. A supercarrier fleet could be a legitimate invasion force. But only because of the other players docked up inside. The supercarrier itself would represent almost no threat.

At the same time, titans become something similar: jump-capable emplacements. As they undock, they have jump drives, solid defense, but no offensive capacity as a ship. The pilot pushes a siege-like button, and the titan’s a station until it comes out of siege. In station mode, it has lots of defense, and a good amount of offense. No warp drive. No sublight drive. And they can’t enter station mode within 100km of another titan in station mode. But they can dock everything up to normal capitals, and carry cloning services. They become another component of an invasion force, or a supplemental defensive screen: put a few titans around a station under siege, and force your enemy to go through those first.

[Orca_Platypus]

@Maria_Dragoon

Considering that there are three primary driving forces to figure out the cost of things is man power, time, raw resources. It you sir that I don’t think understands basic economics, the more minerals something consumes upon it production means as a side effect, the more man hours required to mine all those resources. This causes the price of things to increase.

Are you by chance a communist or something equally economically disabled?

What you described is cost to build. The PRICE is for the consumer to worry about. Being industrialist is to produce whatever has best returns. How much minerals it requires is irrelevant, only profit margin, in eve terms ISK/hour, and ISK/hour is only affected by supply/demand, and production speed. You can pretty much estimate every resource cost in eve by not knowing jack ■■■■ about it, all you need to know is average wage (ISK/hour of a generic job in the area), how much of those resources one can pull, and if there’s enough people available who are able to pull it are around (meaning enough switch to it if it gets more profitable than average, thus controlling until the profitability is back to said average) - and every resource will bounce around that average, unless it’s overproduced as a side product (hi pyerite), or limited due to lack of specialists, equipment, or other limitations (hi mercoxit).

Oh well, I know who I’m trying to explain it to, ms I am mistaken in every post.

tl;dr Industry is hard for economically disabled ganktards.

[Ms_Steak]

@Mizhara_Del_thul

… you have seen Delve right?

[Arrendis]

Miz is well aware of my position within Goonswarm.

[Ms_Steak]

@Arrendis

But they do have the ability to dock subcapitals. Dozens of battleships. Hundreds of smaller hulls. A single supercarrier could provide a beachhead. A supercarrier fleet could be a legitimate invasion force. But only because of the other players docked up inside.

There could be a problem with that implementation when it comes to log in/offs of either a SC pilot or any of the pilots docked inside.

[Arrendis]

Why? Upwell structures are ships from the code’s point of view. That means they have literally already done this, they just haven’t applied it to a previously-existing hull.

I mean, let’s look at the ‘big’ technical changes:

1. You’re docking in another ship, but you’re still in your ship. DONE.
2. You can logoff while inside another ship. DONE.
3. The person flying the other ship could logoff while you’re in it! DONE
4. If the ship jumps, your ship’s location will change because of something someone else does. MJFGs. DONE.