Stormbringer in abyss electrical T5 and T6 is mathematically impossible to survive

[Kumbara]

Hi

After a ticket the GM suggested posting here too to share my find-concern and perhaps start a discussion.

TLDL Stormbringer in electrical T5 and T6 has room combinations that are mathematically impossible to complete in 20 minutes. Leaving absolutely no player agency to the final outcome of certain loss of the whole setup. Except to not participate. And in a game setting I feel that kind of game design is a bit iffy.

Recently I decided to switch things up in my EVE activities and delved into the abyss content. Some minor testing on live server with frigates, research on strategies on internet wikis and youtube. Decided to settle on running in a cruiser and aim for T4-T6 as I got relevant skills trained for just such a thing.

Tried quite a few ships and fits and decided to stick with Stormbringer as I enjoyed using it the most of all tested.

Did over 100 runs of T4-T6 on a test server with several versions of fits and strategies (pyfa is my No1 game).

A setup can survive any single room I came about, but with continued testing found a bottleneck that threatens the whole setup - overmind rooms in a single run.

Worked on a fit more to overcome that suspected bottleneck and math won.

On T5 and T6 electrical single overmind room can take 7-8.5 minutes to clear with maximum gun heat. When starting to hit the overmind in seconds of entering room and leaving room as soon as it dies (other targets die by proxy from arking). With perfect skills relevant to gun damage, range, tracking, heat.

That means if very next room is overmind again, I have no more heat left, room taking 20+% longer on top of that.

That can leave about 2 minutes for the third room at the very start or end of the run. And certain spawns even beside overmind take more than 2 minutes with no heat.

Even if the overmind is first and last room, the situation can be super hairy too. I had a run like that, gated out with a few seconds remaining without even looting the last biocashe.

And 3 overminds can definitely spawn in a single run, had this in T4 once, but that was survivable.

Assuming that overmind room is about 10% to get on every gate, this means statistically ~1% of runs can spell certain death just by math and player can do absolutely nothing to combat it.

No drugs work on vorton gun, no mutaplasmid for damage mod, no faction version damage mod, no implants benefit in any way. Only skills and ammo affect its damage, and once you have those maxed out - no more options for you. Stormbringer got no drone bay either to play with, no spare high slots for smartbombs or something.

And it’s quite clear that Stormbringer is very much meant to be viable in abyss, rat behaviour, cache placement is done to accommodate the use of vorton projector, as is ship itself.

However the conclusion is plain mathematical certainty of death on certain room chains in a single run.

GM could not confirm that this is a design choice nor that there are any safeguards from this happening.

In comparison my second choice for abyss is Ikitursa, did not do enough testing with it to narrow down on bottlenecks, but that ship has so much more choices to play with to apply damage and clear abyss faster: faction damage mods, mutaplasmids, drugs, implants, up to 3 flights of variety drones, 3 spare high slots for whatever. Heck, you can do 2 heavy drones or gecko with active reps on them if that works for you. Because you can.

Stormbringer got none of those options so it is much simpler to narrow it down and see that it is just a math problem. Perhaps it is the same math problem with other ships too. Perhaps this is even by design? Sure I heard some plan and design fits for loss, but not sure if that is meant to account for player error when clearing or just very unfavourable spawn. Would be nice to know if mathematically certain loss in abyss is by developer design or just player error/choice to not spend too much isks and skills on the setup.

So here it is. And this is why I feel iffy about having no player (me or hostile) agency on my survival in a game design. Russian roulette is not my jam.

[Brisc_Rubal]

My understanding is this is how these are supposed to work. If you catch a bad roll, you’re going to die.

[Gerard_Amatin]

Maybe take frequency of death into account in your maths and see if you can maximise profits with an economic fit?

[Kumbara]

Hi

After a ticket the GM suggested posting here too to share my find-concern and perhaps start a discussion.

TLDL Stormbringer in electrical T5 and T6 has room combinations that are mathematically impossible to complete in 20 minutes. Leaving absolutely no player agency to the final outcome of certain loss of the whole setup. Except to not participate. And in a game setting I feel that kind of game design is a bit iffy.

Recently I decided to switch things up in my EVE activities and delved into the abyss content. Some minor testing on live server with frigates, research on strategies on internet wikis and youtube. Decided to settle on running in a cruiser and aim for T4-T6 as I got relevant skills trained for just such a thing.

Tried quite a few ships and fits and decided to stick with Stormbringer as I enjoyed using it the most of all tested.

Did over 100 runs of T4-T6 on a test server with several versions of fits and strategies (pyfa is my No1 game).

A setup can survive any single room I came about, but with continued testing found a bottleneck that threatens the whole setup - overmind rooms in a single run.

Worked on a fit more to overcome that suspected bottleneck and math won.

On T5 and T6 electrical single overmind room can take 7-8.5 minutes to clear with maximum gun heat. When starting to hit the overmind in seconds of entering room and leaving room as soon as it dies (other targets die by proxy from arking). With perfect skills relevant to gun damage, range, tracking, heat.

That means if very next room is overmind again, I have no more heat left, room taking 20+% longer on top of that.

That can leave about 2 minutes for the third room at the very start or end of the run. And certain spawns even beside overmind take more than 2 minutes with no heat.

Even if the overmind is first and last room, the situation can be super hairy too. I had a run like that, gated out with a few seconds remaining without even looting the last biocashe.

And 3 overminds can definitely spawn in a single run, had this in T4 once, but that was survivable.

Assuming that overmind room is about 10% to get on every gate, this means statistically ~1% of runs can spell certain death just by math and player can do absolutely nothing to combat it.

No drugs work on vorton gun, no mutaplasmid for damage mod, no faction version damage mod, no implants benefit in any way. Only skills and ammo affect its damage, and once you have those maxed out - no more options for you. Stormbringer got no drone bay either to play with, no spare high slots for smartbombs or something.

And it’s quite clear that Stormbringer is very much meant to be viable in abyss, rat behaviour, cache placement is done to accommodate the use of vorton projector, as is ship itself.

However the conclusion is plain mathematical certainty of death on certain room chains in a single run.

GM could not confirm that this is a design choice nor that there are any safeguards from this happening.

In comparison my second choice for abyss is Ikitursa, did not do enough testing with it to narrow down on bottlenecks, but that ship has so much more choices to play with to apply damage and clear abyss faster: faction damage mods, mutaplasmids, drugs, implants, up to 3 flights of variety drones, 3 spare high slots for whatever. Heck, you can do 2 heavy drones or gecko with active reps on them if that works for you. Because you can.

Stormbringer got none of those options so it is much simpler to narrow it down and see that it is just a math problem. Perhaps it is the same math problem with other ships too. Perhaps this is even by design? Sure I heard some plan and design fits for loss, but not sure if that is meant to account for player error when clearing or just very unfavourable spawn. Would be nice to know if mathematically certain loss in abyss is by developer design or just player error/choice to not spend too much isks and skills on the setup.

So here it is. And this is why I feel iffy about having no player (me or hostile) agency on my survival in a game design. Russian roulette is not my jam.

[Katya_Itzimaru]

You could try running T6 filaments in an exequeror but you’re not going to succeed.

The whole point of EVE is that it’s based around emergent player behaviour. They’re not trying to fine-tune PVE content in a vacuum like other games because of this.

It doesn’t make sense to say that the Stormbringer is “designed” for abyss content because that’s not really how EVE design works. CCP just throws interesting stuff at the wall and sees how players join the dots.

[Gerard_Amatin]

@Kumbara

TLDL Stormbringer in electrical T5 and T6 has room combinations that are mathematically impossible to complete in 20 minutes. Leaving absolutely no player agency to the final outcome of certain loss of the whole setup. Except to not participate. And in a game setting I feel that kind of game design is a bit iffy.

1. How often do you run into ‘certain death’ rooms?
2. How well do T5 and T6 rooms pay on average?
3. Is it possible to run a Stormbringer fit cheap enough that you still make a good profit even if you lose your ship every now and then?

I don’t have the answers to those questions, as I don’t do abyssals. But to me it seems that there is a possibility you can make a good profit in a Stormbringer in electrical T5 and T6 abyssals as long as the frequency of death compared to ship price and profits is in your favour.

Also, similar to what @Katya_Itzimaru said: abyssals and stormbringers aren’t designed in a way that your Stormbringer necessarily has a way to survive any combination of ships thrown at you. Stormbringer, Gila, Ishtar, whatever you choose to fly, some ships may survive more often, some ships will do them faster, some will be cheaper that even if you die you have more profit.

It’s up to you to figure out what combination of ship, fit, risk and abyssal type works best for you. And it might very well be that a 100% survivability fit is not the best profit.

[Io_Koval]

This thread reminded me that there was a fairly recent thread on this exact topic, and the bullet points I took away from that conversation was:

• abyssal runs are never designed to be guaranteed beatable (for any ship/fit plus room combo)
• each room “just is” and it’s up to players to figure out how to beat the room
• abyssals still follow the risk/reward tradeoff, particularly at higher tiers, which yes means ship losses happen – and since it can’t be eliminated, it’s up to the player to minimize them to maintain profitability

[Gix_Firebrand]

RNG. Risk vs reward. Get gud.

That sums it up

You’re meant to die sometimes in the Abyss.

The idea isn’t to run T6 perfectly every time, its to run it to make a profit because you’ll inevitably lose your ship eventually.

[ISD_Traindriver]

I’ve merged your two posts for you. Please do not create double posts in different categories in the future.

[Kumbara]

Thank you for all the replies.

My initial ticket was with the goal to find out if this math problem was by game design or just overlooked case. Seems that it is by design indeed. So that is clear and I’m glad to be in the know. Thank you for the help.

Furthermore I did not mean that Stormbringer is designed for the abyss running. My idea is that abyss is somewhat designed to accommodate use of vorton projector. Certain cache, rat spawns and behavior looks to me as clear intention to allow vorton arking to be viable, and with different abyss parameters the use of it would be so much more problematic.

For example sleeper battleships always stick within arking range, leshaks almost always do too, as well as marshals-thunderchilds. If behavior and placement of these were just a bit different and arking not as easy - the initial post might have not even happened as viability of the ship would be a lot worse and I would be focusing on another ship for me to use.

In comparison abyss looks to me not designed to be remotely viable using smartbombs or any long range guns (at least on cruisers).

A bit shame that abyss math is so, but it is rather lucrative and fun enough and personally satisfying to run in Stormbringer, so I’ll reevaluate my setup and will account for certain loss probability. Rip.