In the aftermath of the Drifter Crisis, the Autothysian Lancers no longer have a presence in high security space.
Forward Operating Bases:
Forward Operating bases that would previously spawn in highsec are now spawning in lowsec, and at a higher rate.
We’ve been looking into the subject of capsuleer safety in highsec, and as part of our investigation we’ve noticed that new players do lose ships to Autothysian Lancers and ‘diamond rats’ (from the FOBs). While the new player journey should include the experience of ship loss, destruction at the hands of Autothysian Lancers and diamond rats does not adequately teach new players about how to improve their survivability.
The issue of highsec safety is an ongoing discussion that will require further time and continuing feedback.
Why? i dont believe that many players complain about FOB’s to change it?? I quite enjoy doing FOB’s with few friends or just soloing them.
Yes but i feel like they could do others things besides just nuking completely out of highsec
Like change the behavior of the FOB rats, could make so if you warp on belt and there is FOB rats there, instead of them calling the response fleet in right away, only call if the player attacks them…
In regard to Lancers: They barely ever show up on grids that aren’t either a stargate you can instantly jump through (you don’t get a weapons timer for shooting npc’s) or a station which you can instantly dock at (which is what people who farm them do to avoid the doomsday) and you have to aggro them first in any case. Even when they do appear in belts for example, they are cruisers with a totally different looking icon than the majority frigate npc’s you’ll ever encounter. A much better change would have been to just change them from red to say, grey which would be consistent with their behavior just the same as grey faction npc’s which will also murder you if you decide to start shooting at them..
In regard to Diamond Rats: Diamond rats only ever get you if your AFK and more often only show up because you decided to shoot at an npc miner, which unlike Lancers are typically not red on your overview so you definitely had to make a conscious decision there.. and even in the former case of roaming diamond rats, I’ve literally watched an idiot streamer in a completely untanked terribly fit Orca get himself tackled by one and right as he was getting into hull and he’d all but given up the rats just for no reason at all decide to just stop tackling him and he escapes. The only times I’ve heard of people actually dying to them are if they either were trying to fight them on purpose or were really REALLY AFK.. a better fix would have been to simply make the roaming ones not tackle, that way people at the keyboard have plenty of time to react to them.
That is well known fact. Ganking is getting nerfed every every year. Either the ships that gankers targets gets massive buffs to EHP or ganking mechanics themselves are restricted or hulls and weapon systems used for ganking are nerfed. Every year.
Well, the FOBs aren’t really designed in a clever way anyway, right?
There are two groups of players:
a) Those who don’t know how a FOB works and what it does. And until they read out-of-game articles or watch videos they won’t find out in game. Or better, they will find out, by being totally obliterated without any chance. The rats will just kill them, even in a ship that is considered very well fitted for HS as a starting area.
b) Those who do know how a FOB works. And for those the FOBs simply are no challenge at all. They just come with a setup that can run them in 100% safety, rather stupidly boring grinding away the endless HP of the structure while tanking the NPCs. And in the end get some cash. Go for the next one, repeat.
So, in my book, they should have either been redsigned from scratch or be removed (what they did). In LowSec there is at least some risk from getting surprised by other players. Those who chose to live there are usually strong enough to deal with them, remove them quickly if they are unwanted in the system and make some cash while doing it. Another income source that is availabe in LS but not in HS, nice thing.
It also makes no sense for the sites to drop modules that can be crafted, essentially devaluing them beyond production cost. I criticized this from the very beginning. It is fail content anyway since it was meant for groups but is usually done by two megablingy ships mulltiboxing. Or maybe even solo.
I had no idea what diamond rats were and so one day I got curious and ended up trying to fight them, because of course I did lol. Like a year ago or so. Got my butt handed to me! It was pretty hilarious actually. I had a good laugh at myself. After that I did some research and realized how silly I was. I can’t imagine people complaining about them, they had never bothered me until I bothered them. But I suppose some folks will complain about anything. I kinda think they moved them partially for the reasoning you mentioned, adding some risk in there for people running them.
They already blocked them from starter systems, could have just limited them to 0.5 like other sites. We should really just disable weapon damage in highsec and call it a day.
I can see why they did this but I will do fewer of these now. You could casually join a fleet and invite local when running these in highsec. Different friend making opportunities in lowsec.
Heres to loosing ships to blops instead of gankers I guess.
