I did kinda fix that by making a capital have to stay in the site to keep it spawned.
Drones pausing the timer announced as a bug, site can be run in a solo HAW rev in 21 minutes at least
H ow is this a Capital combat site when there is nothing CAPITAL to do with it other than a capital ship needing to activate it⌠Lame, i was hoping to be able to fight NPC caps
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Comments so far:
- HAW phoenix is easy mode.
- HAW rev awesome if I can solve the jaguar tracking problem. Smartbomb or grappler and faction crystals.
- Those damn Ogres really clutter the overview.
- Pay rate is so awful itâs worse than L4s.
- Carriers seem to really struggle while dreads have no problems whatsoever.
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Wonder if this is CCPâs way of announcing HAWs coming back for titans?
boson ratting hasnt been a thing since titans were nerfed again; no haws, boson nerfed.
VERY doubtful
Iâd love to be able to test this with dread alts on SISI but theyâre still banned there, so hereâs just what Iâm seeing after last having ratted pre-2019:
CCPâs been nerfing income streams for quite some time now, both in raw numbers coming out of rats thanks to horseshit like the DBS which is still broken in terms of how low it can go and how long it takes to ârechargeâ, reduced spawns, increased spawn times, removal of belts, removal of HAWS from titans, Avengers being dogshit ISK for their EHP, the resist nerf making it harder to tank sites and people, and more.
I understand that CCP wants to put big toys on grid again, but that will not happen with your industry changes remaining how they are, and with CCPâs constant war against income.
I understand what youâre trying to do, but you wonât do it unless the income is over 330m / hour / character, and the resists are only for the linked ships and not hostile aggressors.
As it stands, thereâs zero content in the game where itâs worth it to bring a Dread on grid vs a Marauder, especially when the marauder + fit is less than the HULL COST of the Dread. Marauder has a shorter siege cycle time, has MJDs, and has much, much better application against subcaps than any HAW dread on the planet short of a Vehement. Unless there are escalation waves at the end that drop quite a lot more loot than weâre seeing so far while not having anywhere near the EHP of Avengers or Drifters, this will not be worth using capitals on grid.
We tried it, rorquals canât activate the CRAB
I mean after the dread or whatever activates the beacon and leaves.
Feedback: for a capital site the scan resolution / precision of the NPCs is quite excessive. A 'ceptor shouldnât be near insta locked and popped when warping in. Pods shouldnât be at risk for dawdling.
My two cents on this:
Currently, I donât think this is viable for any of the intended uses, if I understand CCPâs intent being to have capitals and supers out in space and vulnerable. Hereâs why:
Titans wonât be in space because they are unable to track or apply to the rats in the site.
Supercarriers wonât be in space because the rats insta-frag fighters, meaning that you come out isk-negative in all likelihood because fighters are very expensive in the loss amounts weâre seeing
Carriers wonât be in space, they have the same problems supers have, only itâs worse because they have less tank AND less dps
Dreads wonât be in space either, because the site lasts far too long, and they donât have enough tank to stand up to any number of kikimoras or other roaming gangs.
So hereâs how this plays out on Tranquility - the BEST CASE scenario of a capital being âvulnerableâ is the initial anchoring time (it wonât be truly vulnerable here either, because faxes can easily save them if they get dropped while linking), after which it docks up and either Leshaks or Paladins then quite easily complete the site. The only things truly at risk from this site will be blingy subcaps, which is great but likely not the intended target of this gameplay - theyâre already at risk in plenty of other methods.
Dreadnoughts are currently the only ships that can maintain an isk positive ratio, but when any small to moderate, think 20ish kiki fleet comes by - they wonât be able to hold tank. At a max tank blinged dreadnought, they can tank maybe 50. So they die with zero chance of an escalation. Precious few are going to run these in a 8b dread that will die the very first time any formidable gang comes by. This can kill a few dreads, sure, but itâs not meaningful pvp, its just ganking dumb dreads - which is FINE but likely not the goal here if I understand it correctly.
TL;DR:
- Capitals arenât at risk during anchor because FAX can easily save them
- Carriers and Supers
; theyâll be Isk-negative and wonât do the site - Titans ; they canât track or apply and wonât do the site
- Dreads
; they will die to any roaming gang, but MAY rarely attempt the sites
Truthfully, this content as it stands fails at being a meaningful way to get capitals out in space and vulnerable - all it amounts to now is farming for blingy subcaps, and the possibility of ganking the rare dreadnought.
PVE Content designed for capitals will likely need to involve capital and supercapital NPCs with massively decreased bounties and the addition of infinipointing rats (increase player attention, must primary pointing rat). This will also prevent subcaps from easily farming and introduce something that will truly REQUIRE caps and supers to be used and put at risk.
7 Likes
I have some insight to provide regarding capital pve but first I must preface that Im a massive lowsec capital krab ( lvl5 missions) and a capital krab hunter ( 100+ carriers killed in L5 missions).
With that said, I believe that Lvl 5s are in a pretty good spot when it comes to pve-pvp balance as far as capital ratting content goes and these new sites could borrow some of the concepts that make L5s a successful source of content for capital pvers and pvprs alike.
L5s are largely regarded as low-risk; not because you can easily get your friends to come save you, but because of the gameplay mechanics present in the mission sites (unscannable, unwarpable, deadspace) and what these mechanics do is create a safety net for the krab and a barrier for the hunter. In contrast with nullsec anom carrier ratting, it is common for people to run L5s with neutrals, sometimes even known hunters, in local and far away from their corp/alliance staging because they know that vast majority of hunters are neither dedicated or prepared enough to overcome these barriers and snag their carriers. This creates a very healthy hunter-krab ecosystem where an attentive mission runner can effectively evade most ill-prepared threats but at the same time the boost of confidence given by these safety mechanics creates a small window of false sense of security that someone like me can exploit.
In summary, consider these changes as you work on these sites:
- Make them unscannable and not visible on overview, combat probes only in order to find someone.
- Turn grid into deadspace upon beacon activation (no cynos)
- Minimum distance from a celestial, so you cant pop them at a deep safe
- Tone down fighter aggro, carriers should be viable as a less risky but also lower isk/hour (but still relatively high) alternative to haw dreads.
- No tackle rats
- Get rid of the self-tackle linking process
- Improve rat AI aggro so they dont nuke hunters
- Keep the beacon destruction mechanic if a player decides to leave the site, thus punishing people for warping off even when there is no apparent threat (i.e neutral enters local)
With these changes, a pve player is free to engage in this type of content without having to rely on a blob to come save them or pray that no one finds them, it creates content for skillful hunters, and it punishes overly skittish krabs that decide to abandon their site - but its important that they can make that decision.
thats all and if ur a dev and still reading this pls give the hydra a no targeting delay bonus like the other AT covops thanks lol
14 Likes
This ^ echoes issues that I saw, but didnât feel comfortable enough to put in my post - I wholly endorse these changes minus a few tackle rats, which IMO make it so that you have to pay more active attention and primary them, instead of just auto-locking and pressing the ânext targetâ hotkey.
Well said @Grease_PaYN.
And please revert Chameleon ECM to the old days thanks
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was doing the drone site next to the concord beacon and the test server reset⌠and when we came back on the beacon was there and not running it didnt auto destruct as usual
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Well warping out almost means forfeiting the site because the final deadline timer of about 30-31 min will end the beacon. I do think the enemy tracks too wellâŚand they chew on fighters too horribly. ive had cases where the enemy deletes a whole wing before i can get them back into my hanger.
for sure, they delete far too many fighters to be useful. in my experience, warping off doesnt end the beacon (it should), it stays alive as long as you keep the rats off of it - which a few marauders or leshaks at once can easily do
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