I have come to the point of view that Eve is currently not worth playing at the moment. So I will not be coming back in May following my break to punish CCP for forum mismanagement.
One of the factors is not having anything worth while striving for most notably my own indy set up even with my chums from Astral. Everything I want to do is set up mechanic wise to be easy prey for kill farmers.
So until Eve has balanced mechanics that give me a fair crack at doing that I am not playing. Other people who want to do indy in hisec for example should come to the same conclusion while this is as it is.
Sounds like CCP designed a heck of a game, where itās cheaper not to do industry than to defend it.
Maybe they should stop creating half-billion-per-hour ISK/material faucets, and start making the value-added proposition of production much higher than it is today.
Getting rid of all NPC production slots, and making certain forms of production space-exclusive (so that itās necessary for industrial stations to exist in all areas of space) would be a good start. Maybe once half the value of a battleship hull lies in actually constructing it, then builders wonāt be such a bunch of filthy paupers who canāt afford to hire a cutie like me to bash someoneās face in on their behalf.
Eh? Once a war has been initiated you donāt have time to remove your structure. You ether defend it or you lose it. If you lose it, not only do you lose itās value in ISK but you have to fork out the same value again to replace it. So how dose it cost more than you gain to defend it (with mercenaryās)???
Iām not going to reply to everything you just said, mainly because what Iām quoting is correct. I am basing everything I said on personal experience, what I have seen while flying all over Eve, and having watched places I liked (or was just aware of) vanish. Almost over night.
You are completely correct about that, and it makes me wonder a bit.
I know the goons, who I like using as an example because they are huge, have lost a lot of structures, but they also have the ability to pop up new ones as fast (again, as near as I can tell from flying around in Goonspace in this instance) as they go pop.
I still think that these changes were small corp killers. Something that takes a small group of people all of their effort just to keep fueled and functional were already a target, they didnāt need to be more of one.
Iām looking at this, as you pointed out rather well, from my own point of view, and from my perspective of being someone who got lucky and didnāt deploy the station I had being a little disgruntled knowing that I am never going to deploy one. Itās just not an option unless something changes dramatically.
To me having an Athanor would have been fun, I would have popped moon ore for people who like mining, I would have had something that felt sort of like a home in Eve, and I would have gotten into manufacturing my own ships since Iām very very good at getting blown up.
Iām not alone in this, and itās hard trying not to tell people that they shouldnāt do stuff, not because of other players, but because of CCP. Itās limiting peopleās sense of having a future. Iām adaptable, I just changed (or rather abandoned) my goals in Eve, a lot of people donāt want to do that and shouldnāt have to just because someone else couldnāt keep up with fuel costs. There have been huge changes that effect this stuff, most of them negative, I spent months trying to figure out how I was going to use, fuel, and defend my station only to have all that research upended, and again, I got lucky and didnāt deploy something I wanted. In a way I still want one but itās not going to happen, I see no point.
Telling new people this and trying to not come off as negative is rather difficult, how do you tell someone ādonāt bother, they already nerfed it to death and are likely to do it againā and not sound like a pessimist?
I will never suggest that they go join the blue donut, and Iām not going to tell them they shouldnāt form their own corp when I have one of my own with no one but me in it. I should be able to tell them ādo it! It will be awesomeā and then come help defend it when the baddies arrive (turns out Iām not allowed to unless I have the resources to form an alliance). Thereās no defence against CCP, they do what ever they want, and donāt seem to care about anything other than getting off on people getting hurt. Other players you can sometimes shoot back at. If you follow all the rules and thereās a hell of a lot of them.
If I had a way of buffing volcanos I would think about giving +5 to the lava flow aimed at their houses. Then I would be able to sit back and watch them freak out in the volcanologist forums. I could help things like ābut the housing spam! Thereās too many houses and not enough people living in them to fight off the local volcano!ā.
I guess thatās where Perl Abyss comes in ādonāt worry, we got your back as long as you do everything we say and do it like we doā.
I would not take this as the going rate. I suspect what happened here is whatās happened at my job in real life a few times. A potential customer came to us with work we really didnāt want to do, but rather than just say no we quoted them a silly price.
People have no clue how to hire mercenaries or negotiate.
I did it for the better part of a decade, so here are some tips:
Be nice. Donāt talk ā ā ā ā , and donāt low-ball. You have to understand that these people are going to be risking their assets to defend you, and they have to be paid a rate that is competitive with other methods of making money.
If the mercenary negotiator canāt talk/type with any reasonable degree of formality, go look for another one.
Hiring mercenaries is not just about getting instant results, but is also an investment for the future, so treat it as such. The odds of repeated aggression are much lower if people see a successful war defense in your war history.
We used to have a really vibrant mercenary community until about 5 years ago, with multiple respected parties listed in a heavily-curated channel called āmerc contractsā. The latter stages of CrimeWatch and then citadels killed that off, but there are still a few reputable groups that do this. Talking to Alek, Kane, or Natural CloneKiller are your best bets right now.
Well, I provided a suggestion for how to fix that in my previous post.
We donāt.
That would be killing industry .
Also you make it for bad reasons. industry is intrinsically non beneficial. What makes money is the trade.
Making industry impossible for most people would not help the game.