My question was not rhetorical. I was literally asking how often people defend armor timers when they know they are going to get blobbed.
To say I am oblivious to that kind of content is absurd. I have killed a large number of citadels, and I’ve done it in big groups and small. The amount of times even a small group of us bashing has been pushed off an armor timer I can count on one hand. Last night, for instance, we had a very small group and got pushed off on a shield timer. That is more my experience. Once somebody has reffed a structure, you either decide to defend it or you don’t, and most folks won’t defend a small structure if they don’t really need to. So I asked the question because my experience seems to differ from what others have.
Are there some fights on armor timers on these small structures? Sure. Is it worth the tedium the other 95% of the time? No.
I understand your viewpoint, I just disagree with it. That’s not me being dismissive. It’s simply me disagreeing.
The Next mirror will most likely be next month somewhere in the middle to the end… Mirrors are done every 3-4 months, or unless CCP needs something tested that requires a mirror.
Sorry, I hope I am not coming over as against you personally. But I do believe you are missing some understanding here. And because I rate you highly I want to make an effort here.
The answer is more than you know, don’t forget that you are part of the biggest blob in the game. And I know the impact that has when I saw Goons turn up to support Razor against IRC and cause a fail cascade, from that should I say all Eve combat is like that?
I should also point out that there are blobs, and there are lessor blobs.
The group that I am currently with defend their armour timers, even against blobs, I am not in the TZ when these fights happens sadly. The fights are not alliance level CTA’s, they are member corps of Test or PH looking for their extra income and away from the main fights so the blob is not really happening unless it coincides with a major CTA which has happened, but we pick off what we can.
Outside of that, these fights happen and I repeat my comment that the normally end up with them running away from us.
These changes make it pointless to defend medium structures.
I also see it from the other side, I was in Tactical Supremacy and trying to get people to go after the structure spam of Simple Farmers in Catch was impossible, it was wrack a mole and players did not want to waste their time. But here is the thing, Tactical Supremacy and our coalition as a whole did not have the staying power to step up and keep at it.
I have many structures on my killboard too, not to your level obviously. I have done it in big groups and in small, but I bet I have defended a lot more medium structures than you have .
Every time where I am currently living, if a structure is reinforced to armour a fleet is formed to defend it, PH ran away during the armour timers on the last few events and Test before that.
You are dismissing it as unimportant and that is the issue, there is game play here, but you are oblivious to it as it is outside of your experience. Please listen to this.
So why wouldn’t you defend your armor timers after this change? If the bads usually end up running away when you guys show up to defend, this isn’t going to change that.
I’m not dismissing anything as unimportant. I’m saying that you haven’t made the case as for why this change is suddenly going to stop you guys from defending on an armor timer like you had in the past, or why you think suddenly the big groups who didn’t form sizeable fleets to ref your stuff on an armor timer are going to start doing that. I don’t expect anything in that regard will change. You will still get your content.
Can you see the perspective of the people who do this kind of bashing that largely the hull timer is never contested and it’s just weaponized inconvenience to make folks come back a third time? Because in the 140+ structures I’ve killed, that has been the rule, not the exception. Generally, when I’ve seen folks actively contest a hull timer, it’s been on a larger structure.
Why is it that people generally do not contest hull timers? Is it possible that hull timers are often not contested because of the extra danger it poses for the defenders compared to the old armour timers? After all, if the fight ends in favour of the attackers it means the defence fleet has no tether anymore after a lost hull timer.
Now that this last ‘dangerous’ timer will happen at armour instead of hull, it is possible that the amount of uncontested final bashes does not get reduced, just the amount of contested in-between bashes (which are to be removed from medium structures)?
This means the relative amount of uncontested bashes may go up.
It is explained above and rather well too. It is a final timer, so the first thing that will happen is people think about removing stuff rather then getting ready for a fight, as I said you don’t have this experience as you do not live out of medium structures, so you are oblivious to the impact. It massively changes that. This is going to change that because you downgraded the need to fight, prior to this change, shield walk in the park easy time, armour set up defend, if lose evacuate. You just removed the mid point.
The dice just got loaded against us, you just made it sudden death. And I just explained what the content was above, we end up putting all our efforts into evac rather than fighting.
As I have been there yes, I exlained about Simple Farmers in Catch, and you actually proved my point, when you have got to the hull timer the defenders have given up on it, you have evacuated your stuff and if there is a blob like a full Goon CTA it is going to go. But you just made every fight for medium structures a hull timer.
Go back through this thread and look at everyone who has uttered this exact same set of concerns over and over and over again in a dozen different ways and tell me how it’s humanly possible for so many people to say the same thing and someone still not understand. That’s why he understands, just disagrees.
Why do you keep saying “you don’t have the experience.” Of course I have the experience. You think we’ve never lost a structure before?
The only thing that changes here is that potentially you have a harder time extracting if you lose the structure. But you’ve already claimed that you guys often successfully defend on armor timers, so why do you think that’s suddenly going to change now and instead you won’t?
If this pushes up the evac timetable, that still doesn’t change whether you guys decide to defend on the final timer or not. If you’re doing it for content, then you’re still going to show up, right? If you’re doing it because you’re actively trying to save the structure, you’re still going to show up, right?
With asset safety, I don’t even know why you’d be that concerned about evacing anyway, especially if these are things like athanors, which you referenced before. You guys aren’t staging in astrahuses are you?
They aren’t loaded against you. The attackers are unlikely to change their behavior, so there’s no real reason why you need to change yours. Horde isn’t suddenly going to get another 200 people in fleet just for an astrahus or athanor killmail. It’ll be the same corp level guys doing things. So the only thing that’s changing here is your perception of the final timer. It doesn’t have to. There is no reason why you can’t keep doing what you’re doing. If you are successfully defending armor timers now, you should still be successful even after these changes.
Simple Farmers in catch is exactly what I’m talking about - you could finally clear the region out from them under these changes. As long as you form big enough, the amount of time it would take to clear out all their stuff would be far less, and the chances of you burning out are far lower. Structure spam would not be the deterrent it is now when you can easily ref everything in one night and then come back a few days later and kill it all.
Yes, it means that defenders actually have to try to extract and get away, and that is content in and of itself. It forces fights. This isn’t like a keepstar fight where if you deploy caps on the hull timer, they’re stuck in space and likely to get destroyed entirely. It’s not like a defense fleet for a medium size structure is going to be so immobile you can’t get away.
Ignore that guy - he is just another toxic fan who has no idea what he’s talking about and can’t stop posting wherever I am.
I see what you are saying, but I remain unconvinced that this is going to cause the outcomes you are claiming it will cause. I honestly don’t think you’re going to do much differently, if what you’re saying is true. You’re still going to be able to stop these guys on the final timer if that’s what you choose to do. All this is doing is compressing the timetable. In the end, the decision tree really isn’t that much different.
Again, I really wish you guys would stop this “oh, Brisc, you just don’t understand” nonsense. I get what you are saying, but I also understand the perspective of the people who like the change, and I think their views are more persuasive (and line up more with my personal experience).
Perhaps you should try to understand where we are coming from?
He disagrees because he does not have the perspective, at least that is what I think. The onus is on us to give him that perspective, I do fear you are right that he just disagrees which is what he said, and dismisses our perspective and experience, but if I did not try to at least try to explain to someone I thought had something about him then I could not look in the mirror.
I used the Simple Farmers in Catchs as an example, I totally undertand why he disagrees. And he confirmed it in his reply above.
By the way you have done a great job on this, but I fear medium structures are dead.
And how much of that has been in the last 2-3 weeks over this topic, I wonder? Or would you like to ignore that that’s a pretty even spread of replies to several different people?
You are correct. It is not about you.
If it were the Mittani here doing this, I’d contest him just as hard. The only difference is is that he’d tell me from square 1, Hey man, I don’t give a damn if it ruins your game, I’m here to be the space emperor and this crap is annoying to my space empire, so I’m gonna advocate to remove it.
I suppose, to me, the more concerning bit is that you do quite well understand, and in so understanding, are willfully putting the weight back onto others with legal framework structured argumentation to push for a change that benefits larger groups and detriments those under a minimum weight class.
Alright here’s an interesting talking point! So. Asset Safety. This is a strong contender for why you ‘don’t bother’ evaccing, in the eyes of many. And, for larger groups, frankly? Asset safety is a major boon for them. Just let it go to safety for seven to twenty days depending on whats going on, its not a big deal because they have reserves spread reasonably wide across other structures, or can move new reserves in quickly to a replacement and pick up the safetied bits later.
For a smaller group? Seven to twenty days of asset lock out is hellish. Say, as an example, I’m staging out of an Astrahus, in, lets say… Eugales, a lowsec system that I’m sure you’ve passed through a few times(you killed one of my random drop RP POSes there I think, was actually kinda neat to see!), and I have some other structures for say, moon mining, Athanors and such. The astrahus is the main stage, because its, supposedly, the most defensible in its given line. And in some respects, it is, though I disagree in certain contexts, as I’m sure you’ve seen me voice elsewhere.
If the astrahus is sieged, I form for armor, and we wipe, we have time to evac to another structure in system, and setup for another potential timer, and re-evaluate the choice of ships and tactics, call in favors, see if anyone wants to pile on, etc. But if we don’t evac the material, we lose all the staged materials for seven days. That’s, under current mechanics, one more structure without a coordinated defense chance due to staged assets being locked up, and while I CAN and have the means to bring in more, its a mite more difficult than just getting a logistics team on the case, because I’m the main person of the logistics team.
The calculation isn’t changing too much for groups that, actively, are forming 30 plus in any given timezone and have wide spread reserves. For smaller groups in my weight class where we have a pretty thin margin for error as is, it changes it a lot.
These changes, for me encourage me to either not bother unless I can put up 30 people in at least three timezones, or spam more structures, don’t stage anything, and ignore the losses… which, if it were just me, I’d eat pretty readily, but my alliance is not just me, and I also have to factor in this… tiny little thing called Morale.
Even if you have chosen not to form, and I’d argue, even more so if you’ve chosen not to form, its an acceptance of inevitability and helplessness. If its something that happens repeatedly, smaller groups lose out on motivation that’s hard pressed to spin back up. ‘Oh yeah we have the isk or materials to replace it’ and ‘do We want to go through the effort of replacing it if we aren’t going to bother trying to keep it anymore, or are not going to have as much opportunity to try to’ are some interesting points that I think need consideration.
I suppose, my biggest question to @CCP_Aurora and the team is, is my group an acceptable casualty of the changes. And if so, I want to know upfront. None of the hype train shenanigans, no platitudes. I just want them to be straight with me about what to expect, so I can plan accordingly.
I’m not going to do anything extreme like unsub all my accounts. That’d be kinda dumb. But… I don’t want to be jerked around and told ‘oh it’ll get better, just wait!’ And then come to find out its only getting harder to operate with structures at my size group.
Maybe this is a good change for the game as a whole. Hard to really say. In my book though, its a bat swung straight between the legs to smaller, lower activity groups that previously, at least, could pretend they had a snowball’s chance.
You are ignoring what I said. I said medium structure that you live out of. You are in a big bloc that lives out of Keepstars and deploys to Fortzars taht you sprinkle around like confetti.
Two reasons, the first is I and those around me are moving stuff out as first part of reaction now, rather than organising fleet and getting stuff in to fight the doctrine that came in on us. That structure by that definition has become less valuable and you should read what Gerad Amatin said above.
We have already switched to looking at all medium structures as throw away, you always had that feeling as did Simple Farmers, but we did not because we used and lived out of them.
The reason to defend it got reduced significantly, the opportunity to save it got reduced, it is not difficult to see, you changed the dynamic of those structures from something we valued and would fight for to something that is throwaway by removing the armour timer.
We are staging in Astrahuses, But we won’t be when this hits…
The attackers will change their behaviour, for a start you are now much more likely to attack structures because you can knock them over in two hits and have those little people running around to your tune. It means that people will be forever pinging medium structures to wear defenders out, it just changed the whole dynamic. Because of that I adjusted my thinking that medium structures are now worthless throw away structures. So fights are not going to happen.
We do know that it will be easier to remove their structures so they take the location of the moon, and we stop them from mining and then ping them continuously, the dynamic here is that the Astrahuses we base out of were just made damn easy to clear, thanks guys…
I know that, this is where you and the bloc FC’s are coming from, I thought our coalition was incredibly weak willed not to make the effort to force them out, this change enables you to do it.
But you are damaging the game enabling this, that is the issue.
I think he has got upset at you being dismissive.
We will, I can’t live out of Astrahuses, I can’t have them as tougher deployment bases, I have to live in Large structures that are attractive for major CTA’s and the fun of throwing capitals around. It is a huge difference.
I have now changed my view on medium structures following this change, they are worse than mobile depots, they are worthless throw away structures that are not worth defending.
The decision tree got completely blown up.
You do not understand, but more to the fact I think you do not want to understand, the views of the people who like this change are definitely more persuasive, you are on teh CSM and have a direct line and the bloc FC’s are deemed content creators and often have direct lines to the devs. So I know damn well that this is a done deal.
I would think that the Simple Farmers example in Catch showed that I did, I have to say that it saddens me to see that you could not work out that I did understand it, but I guess my fault for giving you an emotive way out by thinking that you did not understand where we were coming from. I pretty much agree with @Kenrailae at this point, you do understand, you just don’t care, and see no value in this game play, which is fine as far as that goes.
Sadly I just went to that point to.
@CCP_Aurora what about you, and with this I know I will be ignored because I have no direct line to devs as a member of the CSM nor as a content creator. So whatever…
The change has already been proposed. You oppose it. The onus is on you to convince those of us who support the change why it is overall bad for the game.
I see a ton of arguments that the changes will be bad for a small segment of the game, but as I’ve said over and over now, I am not seeing anything that is compelling that they shouldn’t do the change at all. I did see compelling stuff from the wormholers, which is why I’m trying to get their issue resolved.
What I’m seeing here is a bunch of “Brisc, you’re just too dumb to understand” and “You don’t care about small alliances” stuff, and that’s not exactly the best way to convince me that your argument is correct or that your case is compelling enough to warrant me changing my views. But hey, you’re right - you don’t have to convince me, you have to convince CCP.
