Jetcans weren’t meant for mining, either. They were a testing tool CCP put in and forgot to remove.
These statements are true. They are also completely irrelevant to how they’re used.
Adding a script that mimics current behavior is a minor thing. It is not a large matter. It is not a large matter because the behavior is already in the game. It requires no changes to ship fitting stats or options, and affects only the performance of the one module that produces the problematic effects.
The problem is not the MWD. The MWD works the same way the MWD works on every other ship. The problem is the bubble generator, which only works on HICs. Changing the fitting stats on the HIC (one way to prevent the 500MN MWD from being used) changes what fitting combinations can be used without the 500MN MWD. (Shield HICs may not need plates, but a Broadsword uses a lot of PG with its ASBs). Making a special restriction on the hull (another way to do it) is… ridiculous. Seriously, it’s nuts. The hull already has a special case on it for the other module involved—the bubble generator.
2 modules interacting causes a problem.
1 of those modules is already a special case.
The other module does not cause problems on any other hull.
In what world does tinkering with the second module make sense?
Step 1: button is pushed.
Step 2: code checks to see if there’s any reason module cannot activate.
Step 3: code checks to see what effects the module has.
Step 3a: In the case of modules with multiple types of charges, code checks to see how those effects are modified by the charge.
Step 4: Code activates module, applies effects.
Steps 3(3a) and 2 might be reversed, but that’s the basic flow of the logic. As a coder, I can tell you that the bubble generator is already checking to see how it’s loaded before it takes effect. It has to, because one script doesn’t makea bubble. The question is where the navmods() function (or whatever it’s called) is called. Right now, the function that applies the navigational modifiers of turning on the bubble is called regardless of the script. You just have to move that function call to within the switch() determining effects of the ammo type.
But please, do tell me how software actually works.
What the ■■■■? No one cares about your queue. You can’t tell people they need to train something to do what they were already doing (but worse) then say “o no two weeks isn’t long” and expect them to just suck it up without incident.
I don’t even do wh crap but that post pissed me right off.
The wormholers aren’t making use of any bug. And the current group would go back to doing what we used to do before rolling HICs were a thing: get stuck leaving people outside the hole when the +/-10% variation screwed us, despite our best efforts. As soon as that happens 2-3 times in a day, a small group just gives up and stops playing EVE for the day until they can scan a route back in for the people who got stuck in hostile j-space (and who have to scan their way out at the same time).
Which, you know, is really great gameplay, isn’t it? ‘Oh, well, we were gonna play EVE, but the RNG said to get f*cked today. Maybe tomorrow’.
Doesn’t take a whole lot of ‘maybe tomorrows’ to turn into ‘yeah, screw this game, I’ll play a game that doesn’t tell me I can’t do shite today’.
The whole issue with the HIC is that there’s a mechanic which is getting exploited. That’s the Lurch HIC. It’s used in nullsec for gatecamps. It exploits the same mechanic (mass manipulation) that the wormholers use to roll holes:
Bubble generators reduce mass and increase agility, offsetting a massive reduction in top speed (ALSO produced by the bubble).
MWD increases mass.
An oversized MWD produces enough of a speed boost to completely overwhelm the bubble gen’s speed reduction, producing a very short period of interaction between the two modules (while the MWD is active, before it cycles to get hit with the speed penalty) where the Lurch HIC has insane agility and ridiculous speed. Because it’s using a bubble, it doesn’t need to target anything. It just needs to, well, lurch in the general direction of the target, who end up bubbled even though they were well outside of the hic’s bubble range… and a max-range HIC bubble is huge. The HIC doesn’t have the PG to mount the normal array of weapons+tank, but it doesn’t need to, because there’s the rest of the gate camp to support it.
That’s the mechanic being exploited.
Wormholers use the bubbles—multiple, like up to 4 on one HIC—to reduce mass to an extreme degree so they can safely transit a critically-disrupted wormhole. This lets them leave their system without collapsing the hole. Then on the other side of the WH, they leave the bubbles off, turn the oversized prop (AB or MWD) on, and gain 50,000,000kg of mass (roughly +400% of the HIC’s normal mass) to maximize the chances of collapsing the hole when the re-enter their system. This lets them roll the hole in relative safety. It’s not perfect. It’s not 100%. And the HIC doesn’t have enough PG (or high slots—they’re full of bubbles!) to fit any kind of tank+weapons, really, so it’s a sitting duck if it gets caught on the wrong side, where it will be alone, without any support.
It’s two very different uses of the same modules’ effects. One of them, CCP has been saying since at least before FanFest this year ‘we need to fix this’, and the other, CCP has been swearing up and down, including making promises to peoples’ faces at FanFest ‘we will not screw you over with this’.
And now that’s exactly what they’re doing. So the wormholers are pissed. I don’t live in j-space anymore, but I don’t blame 'em one little bit. I’m pretty pissed off by the idea that the devs will lie to your face about things, and then write you off as ‘unwilling collateral damage’, without so much as an apology about the matter.
And that line, by the way:
That displays a clear awareness of ‘We make a lot of changes that screw over wormholers as a side-effect’ while still conveying ‘but oh well, sucks to be them’.
You pay someone for a service. They consistently tell you ‘yeah, listen, these guys in another neighborhood were using the service in a way we feel is violating our contract… so you’re getting penalized’. And make it clear they think that’s perfectly ok and don’t give a crap if you don’t like it.
And just a reminder on this point, before people say things like ‘yeah, but why should rolling holes be something people can make predictable and (somewhat) safe? If you live in j-space, you take that risk, that’s clearly the intention’.
It isn’t. The intention was for day-tripping. When wormholes were designed (including the variable mass and no way to know how much mass was left), CCP had no idea people would choose to live in them. Wormholers themselves are jetcans: a behavior CCP did not envision and was unprepared for, but one that the people in charge saw and went ‘that’s really cool’.
The intention was that the dangerous bit would be collapsing a hole with part of your group still on the inside, where the worst-case scenario—getting blown up—would put you… back in k-space, where you could rejoin your friends, get a new ship, and keep playing. Instead, people living in j-space get locked out, leaving both them and the now-reduced number of people in the hole more likely to be unable to keep playing.
This is not the intended behavior. No part of it is. So CCP really does need to make sure their mechanics aren’t screwing over their customers.
You’re still missing the point. We’re trying to do that.
This is a fix that benefits one area of the game, but causes significant inconvenience to another part of the game. You’ve got folks who want lurch HICs fixed and have wanted that done for two years now, and you’ve got WHers who have adopted an obviously broken mechanic and made it the meta because it works better than everything else - which is basically EVE in a nutshell.
So how do you balance when you’ve got two groups who want diametrically opposed things?
What I’m doing is pushing for the HIC fix while pushing for a fix for WHers. Hopefully we can do that. But all the guys reeeeeeing about this need to recognize that what folks are doing is trying to make the game better for everybody. We don’t and probably won’t always agree on how to do that, but that’s the goal.
Because there are still benefits to having 500mn MWDs on HICs when they aren’t being used as lurch HICs. They can be overpropped, and that’s fine - that’s never the issue. It’s how the prop mod works in conjunction with the mass reducing effect of the bubbles that’s the problem.
Nobody is arguing that you shouldn’t be able to have 500mn MWDs on a HIC. We’re arguing against this specific usage that is oppressive. It just happens that this specific usage provides an unintended to benefit to WHs that I am trying to argue needs to be preserved because folks have relied upon it…
You know how many new things I’ve had to train on my five accounts because of some meta change? This is EVE. This is what we do. I’ve got skills on Brisc that I almost never use, but trained up anyway because they let me do things that I might someday want to do. I have never, not once, ever used Brisc for mining, but he’s got Mining Foreman V. Why? Because I might want to do that some day.
And with training implants, cerebral accelerators and skill injectors that makes this 1000x easier than it was just a couple years ago, the idea that suggesting someone train up something else because that’s the new meta is somehow offensive to you? Really?
You still don’t get it, don’t you?
WHers don’t apply this “specific usage” (at least not for the use case they now complain about getting deprived of). The mechanics that bubbles lower HICs mass, was working as intended from the beginning.
What was not working as intended is the fact that in conjunction with an oversized MWD and a glitch in the module cycling mechanics this becomes the Lurch HIC problem.
And instead of addressing only the latter glitch, the proposed solution is to take away the “works as intended” part. Which is basically the most horrible design choice in about any field of engineering.
Basing your arguments (the term used in the sense of “a point being made”, opposed to the sense of “struggle”) on (i hope not deliberately) misrepresented (aka wrong) facts, may not say much about the goal you’re trying to support with that argument. But it says that your argument just ain’t that (an argument) because being based on (real) facts is part of the very definition of the term “argument”.
The easiest, least time and resources intensive way to fix the lurch HIC issue is what they’ve proposed. That fix negatively impacts WHers who use the part of the mechanic that’s easiest to fix as part of their meta.
That’s the issue. Fixing it this way takes away another usage.
What I am and have been advocating for is to fix lurch HICs this way (because it’s the easiest, least time and resources intensive way to fix it), but also provide an alternative for WHers so they can keep doing what they’ve been doing.
As for the “works as intended” thing - that’s still wrong. Not only did CCP never expect HICs would be used this way for rolling holes, most of the way the wormhole meta itself has shaken out was never what was intended either. But that’s EVE - it’s a sandbox and the game evolves in ways nobody expects, and that’s fine. But c’mon. Let’s be honest here.
If it takes away a usage which is considered legitimate then it’s not a fix but rather a workaround. And you completely ignored the “glitch in module timing” part. This is what needs fixing. Whats currently supposed is to just take the whole leg off because it’s “easier” than treating a sore footnail
Nobody ever expected that folks would start using a cruiser to roll frigate holes, for example. The fact that a cruiser can get down to mass levels lower than a pod was not something folks expected to have happen. It was a creative usage of existing mechanics, but it was never something that CCP expected to happen.
Just like they never expected people to start living in wormholes, or rage rolling holes to control their entry, etc.
None of that really matters other than to point out that in both situations, the intended use of the ship has been warped into something else by players being smart. In one instances, it’s oppressive, in the other it’s beneficial. Regardless, nobody can state, with a straight face, that this mechanic is working as it was intended to work.
No, but nobody can say that removing it restores the ‘intention’ for living in wormholes… because there wasn’t one.
And that’s not the biggest issue with this.
CCP told wormhole players to their faces that they would not do exactly this, at FanFest.
CCP just released a dev blog that called their players “unwilling collateral damage, as they often are”—indicating that a detrimental effect that can be avoided is something they consider acceptable, and that screwing over this same group of players is a consistent pattern, and that’s ok with them, too.
How is that ok? How is that attitude from a company toward their customers ok?