Anyone else really not looking forward to the Winter update?
This was incredibly well said.
To add in one more thing: CCP even made it a lot harder to report bots, requiring several extra clicks on the new photon UI to get to it. If the ship is in warp and leaves grid while you are double clicking to get the pilot info, it will fail to load who the pilot was, too.
Alternatively, something to change Local from being 100% guaranteed intel. I’ve heard many great ideas over the years, but all of them get a strong “no” from Nullsec on the principal that they can’t use bots that rely on local – from the intel bots docked in random systems that post to discord and other out-of-game messaging systems every player that enters, to the anom running bots that have a chance of being banned when you report them.
Take away Nullsec’s bot-focused economy, and then we can discuss how to make actively playing the game more fun and more rewarding.
2 Likes
but I believe CCP is going to bend the knee again, like in here https://forums.eveonline.com/t/an-open-and-honest-letter-to-ccp-from-an-alliance-leader/
There is always this “open letter” trend lurking around.
2 Likes
I do 
I think the Skyhook, SovHub, Metenox are just the start.
THE FIRST STEP ON AN EPIC JOURNEY
…as Upwell puts it 
And I can’t wait for providing Capsuleers with contraband for making more drugs on my Vanguard character 
Good ! That’s what they should do, if they like their customer base, when it has legitimate complaints about the product they bought.
Perhaps one day you could do that too, with concerns about the nerfing of hisec ganking. You never know…
But it’s heart warming to see that even hisec pvp’ers of your stature have opinions and concerns about the state of nullsec, even if those opinions and concerns are not shared by, you know, nullsec’rs. It shows we’re all one close-knitted community, relying on each other’s well being, doesn’t it.
LMAO.
1 Like
Maybe you mistook the route of the conversation a bit: I was adressing the point that “smaller groups can be rolled by larger ones” which is also the case in WH space, the mechanics don’t prevent that at all, it is just more effort and is more inconvenient - which is exactly the reason why small groups can survive there. Which directly leads to your next point:
Yes, it absolutely is. Because you have to differentiate where that wealth is generated and how. Smaller groups live in the Lowclass WHs and they are - excuse the wording - piss-poor. These holes can’t even feed a 2-3 man group, they HAVE to farm on the chain, which means they farm with open holes by default. And the money they make is worse than what you make in HS with just grinding L4s.
The WH money is in the HighClass WHs and those really do “close doors” on farming, but the people living there are all farming-alts of big groups, part of big alliances or renters. No small group can stay independent and defend their highclass WH for long. All those stories of WHers automatically making billions each day are completely exaggerated, I know enoug people living in C5 with C5/C6 static and do you know how often they can farm their home with “closed holes”? Maybe once a week, and they have to share all the profit among those present at this day. Do you know how often they farm their static? Well, also maybe once a week and not every attempt is even successful because with bad luck the neighbor next door is Lazerhawks or another larger PVP group that can absolutely wreck your farmfleet if they notice you taking their sites. Don’t believe anyone trying to tell you how “incredibly profitable” WHs are - they aren’t that good if you can’t conveniently live under ticker-protection in a highclass WH. All the rest (means C4 and below) are only able to feed a group of you use the chain - aka fully open to ambushes and thirdparty attacks in an environment wihtout local where new holes can be rolled into your chain any time. Counting in the fact that you don’t have asset safety in there, so ALL your stuff is at 100% risk all the time, yes, we can conlcude that his “get into WH space and you will drown in ISK” actually IS a myth.
So, please don’t get me wrong, I don’t want NS any harm. Quite the opposite, I want it to be unique, flourishing, profiable if developed and maintained by active players living and fighting locally. I would even agree that the Skyhook/Metenox mechanics aren’t optimally balanced yet, but in general the idea that raiders can steal from these structures is a good one. I mean, it is NOT the goal that each and every moon in NS is permanently passive-farmed with these things. Metenox Drills shall be limited to those systems and alliances who can actually cover multiple timezones and are able to protect these things 24/7 in their heartland, else you will have parts of their resources stolen. At the outskirts or for a small local splinter group they simply aren’t lucrative and that is actually not a problem, it is good design (it is a strategical decision to place one, or not). And if you place one and someone tries to steal from it, you again have to decide if and how you want to defend it (thats a tactical decision).
If you don’t like the hassle at all, don’t use them, do the standard method of mining the moon with an Athanor if you want these resources instead, because if you live there, you can do it within your timezone when you can protect your miners if badguys appear.
But, your mindset is the problem here: Just because those option exist, you really believe there is a godgiven right (aka entitlement) that you can use these things, use them en masse, use them conveniently and others should have only very few options to interfere, at best only at a level where you can easily crush those attempts with your stagingfleet. And I am happy CCP has chosen another route here. Maybe they have understood what the problem in NS is: too much power in too few hands, trying to order, control and define everything that even sets a foot into there. And that has to be broken apart, completely. Else NS will never recover again.
2 Likes
Metenoxes don’t share the same mechanics with Skyhooks. They still have a short timer and attack reports (like a mobile depot). You can only “steal” what drops from a destroyed metenox, etc. But even with these differences, Metenoxes require close monitoring (and vigilance), less than with Skyhooks, but drastically more than any odd Upwell structure with normal timers. Instead of TZ tanking nullsec is having TZ building and TZ destruction (build up during one’s timezone, see it destroyed during one’s off-time). Even large alliances are quite vulnerable to this. Metenoxes are an over-exposure (I said so in another post a few weeks ago). In that light I agree with you that it should not be the idea to deploy those things on every possible moon - just as Athanors weren’t put on every moon. A bad tactical choice is always just that - and one certain groups will gladly use for their own benefit. Which leads us to “why would you put up even one of those things if it forces you to stay awake 24/7”, right ? Metenoxes could provide a basic income for smaller groups if they were sustainable and defendable - but that does not seem the case. In the current version they may benefit only the largest groups who are staffed around the clock, and even that is questionable and a challenge.
But none of that even applies to Skyhooks. That part of the infrastructure is just plain wrong, not only overcomplicated. Imagine your real world connections to gas, water, cable and electricity were outside the walls of your house (no protection, no alarms), open to anyone who is looking to steal some or to cut your cables. That’s what Skyhook is right now. And we do not have a choice to use those or not. Without them we cannot fuel the few jump bridges we could theoretically still install. That is the reality.
And what I wrote is independent of anyone’s mindset, it’s a direct consequence of design, not of behavior.
The options were taken away. Why else would people call it Scarcity 2.0. After gradually nerfing almost the entirety of the game for 5 years straight, and adjusting and adapting to that (wrong) approach, protesting and criticizing the latest grand update is hardly entitlement. This expansion affects how much choice there is left, where it used to be almost complete. Expecting us to give up that choice while paying for it with more effort, more time and, indeed, more cash, and pretend to enjoy it is just silly. Denying the sentiment is what, then ? Jealousy ?
The expansion didn’t give a pile of lemons to make lemonade with. I’ll put it in far stronger words than any open letter did, because it does not really matter what my personal opinion is. This expansion gave us the one ingredient to make only the perfect ■■■■ sandwich with. Some would love it if we took a bite, of course. That’s also me running out of patience explaining and discussing subject matter and details with players who do not even live in nullsec or who are poorly informed about the mechanisms and their consequences. If you think that any expansion is a godgiven right to reduce gameplay that made the game great and visible for the better part of two decades to a shadow of what it was pre-equinox, I guess you’re not commercially oriented, nor have insight into the group dynamics of those affected. Entitlement indeed.
But it isn’t their pupose to give more ‘passive income’ to every joe average and his maybe 5 real comrades that together have one of those carebear Nullsec Corps, living in rented space or under some big block umbrella.
Metenoxes are designed to work as additional income for active pvp groups who would rather form and defend than mine for these resources.
And it should be. I mean, a running drill mines 24h a day with 40% efficiency. That equals a miningfleet grinding those rocks at 100% efficiency for almost 10h every day… make a calculation how much the fuel costs and how much profit you still make after that. Then you can decide if its still worth it for you if a certain amount is stolen (which you can influence by activity).
For Skyhooks I mostly agree, the whole system around these new resources seem unnessessary complex, for the sake of looking fancy and uniqe. They should have just created a fifth kind of FuelBlock that requires the same PI components like the other fuelblocks and some NullSec exclusive mats for building them. Those fuel the MetenoxDrills and the other Sovstuff, deal done, easy and understandable.
At least everyone agrees that he Skyhooks are a disaster, the new materials are a total pain.
As for the Metenoxes, I have seen various PvP groups putting them down, I keep hoping that these PvP groups start kicking the shite out of each other over them. However, that is not happening as they seem to be forming blue agreements over them, or that seems to be the case where I am. So much for creating PvP content out of them, they are just sitting there churning away, it is a bit of a joke. actually.
Maybe that’s what they mean by “reinvigorating”. Those PvP groups were reinvigorated to make deals to leave each other’s Metenoxes alone 
1 Like
You cannot steal from a Metenox. You can only pick up the loot after it is destroyed. Unless the announcements from ccp are wrong, of course.
My prediction is that it will not take long before any size alliance will only deploy these inside the core of the heartlands, because of the fueling, because of their vulnerability, because of the short timers and all the tedium imposed on alliance members for defense and manual repairs. That, or some backroom agreement on not attacking that type of sov related structures, for the same reasons.
They go down rather fast, as players in Outer Passage can already testify… I didn’t experience shooting those nice looking drills as “fun” either. As to the chances they will provoke capital fights like the one that happened in Ignoitton, they reduce with every encounter. They’re simply not worth it. I’m sure that, in the end, Snuffed and BIGAB fought for the fun of having the fight, not for the moon drill itself, whose value is a tiny fraction of what was dropped on the grid.
Furthermore, I doubt that Metenoxes will be deployed on R64/R32’s, but only on the cheaper moons, where a loss of 60% is still preferable to an unmined moon. And the new fuel requirements also prevent limitless deployment anyway.
We agree they are bad, but for very different reasons. Skyhooks are just the most visible symptom of the “reagent-power-workforce” limitation imposed on nullsec.
1 Like
Seems like you are right with that, but it does even further validate my point: the metenox drill is an additional option for PvP focused groups to get moon resources without the need to employ Miners or doing it with alts. The RF timers might be short, but if I understand the charts correctly you always have some hours of preparation time, you can always set the timer into your own TZ of highest activity and meet anyone trying to kill them with a fleet. And that is what those groups want, right? They want fights? They are at home, they can bring FAX, they can switch out doctrines, they can escalate if it’s a larger attack, they can replace lost ships from their home station that is next door - all the defender’s advantages are on their side. That of course only apply at their heartland, but thats okay.
Thats why I predict that attacks on them, especially deep in some alliances core systems will be rather rare and the need to “permanently babysit them” will not really be an issue. I mean, the attacker doesn’t gain anything and is just wasting his time if he can’t destroy them when the timer hits. The larger blocks will be able to run them 90%+ of their time without issue and do exactly what they were designed for: make some passive money to fund alliance projects without the members needing to manually mine all day long. Yes, from time to time there will be a serious assault, maybe even one that is just a bait to provoke a fight: but again, thats exactly what these things are made for. If you again try to minmax here by saying “losing ships over them isn’t worth it because the ships do cost much more!!!” then this is exactly the “mindset problem” I have talked about. Losing 20B in ships over such a thing offered content for your members and it is absolutely worth it because that wasn’t your only drill, 20 or 50 others bring in cash day after day after day, easily replacing the occasional welped fleet. And again, if you think you constantly lose more than you gain AND don’t embrace the fights as fun: just don’t use these drills.
" without trying all that hard, but it does take some pre-planning"
One change is that a lot of people’s pre-planning is turned into a waste of time, with the recent changes (fx ratting and mining).
You are focusing on Metenox drills, probably because you can deploy them in wormholes, and want to discuss “mindsets”. That’s fine. I’d advise you to stay awake in your wormhole, and roll holes constantly to avoid waking up without a Metenox or two. 8M HP @ 75% resists to put it in reinforce may look like a long stretch for small fleets, but it isn’t if you have the time … the 20M HP @ 0% for the hull goes even faster … For the usual kiki fleets that take down structures, they won’t break a sweat - that thing goes down.
Let’s talk about mindset: FC’s who use infrastructure as doorbells for fights are like people waving their arms in a bull enclosure. Something will happen, and it will be out of that FC’s control - never a good thing. (some may even take to social media and complain about the response they received, saying how risk averse nullsec’rs are with their umbrellas etc etc etc). The message is: you don’t need infrastructure to get good fights, only to get fights that are out of your control in enemy space.
On the other hand, if you can pester someone in their off-time by putting their drills into reinforce (making them inoperable) every time, there’s only so much pestering one will take. And people complain about having large coalitions in this game ? Just LOL.
You also seem to be unaware of the Ignoitton fight. It was not a 20B fight, it was a 2T fight. That, to put my comment into perspective. Both groups were, from the start, ready for escalation (you don’t keep dreads/faxes on standby just for the fun of pinging players to get ready). It’s impossible to tell if the objective really was to deploy a functioning Metenox or to use it as bait. The fight was not about the drill (2 trillion spent on a 1.8 billion drill ?!). Either way, it seems to have survived that massive brawl and Snuffed now has a functioning drill, lmao - or it’s missing from the battle report. Unfortunately, I was too late to 3rd party in that fight, having missed Shines’ excited ping about a free, all-you-can-eat dread BBQ in Ignoitton 
If you’re willing to lose 20B worth of ships to try to put a structure into reinforcement or simply force a good encounter, then your SRP wallet is able to deal with it, I suppose - and any good alliance will take you up on that offer. There are more - and better - ways to force such fights. But if you force an alliance to field logi or fax every other day to repair stuff, again, the response to this annoyance may spiral out of your control very quickly, as per the usual in EvE.
In any case, and regardless of what my opinion is about the (non?)sense of the introduction of this kind of passive income, Metenox drills are most likely toys for the bigger boys. If CCP were serious about giving smaller entities a chance to grow in nullsec, the old POS mechanic with its mining module, able to defend itself, would probably be a preferable option - and without the reagent requirements of course, the true pain in the behind caused by Equinox…
1 Like
fyi, CCP response to Equinox feedback
did they get the ez isk printing?
Nah, I am focusing on Metenox Drills because they are the less complex feature and their profitability will probably be very good for all groups who can muster a sizable defense force on ping (yes, even after counting in some traps), the masses of unchallenged drills will make the profits.
We will probably not use them at all, because as a small group, our only chance of survival is to look as uninteresting and poor as we can, so nobody wants to spend a week sieging our boring hole just for some lousy Astrahus that will be mostly empty anyway. Metenox drills are simply not worth the hassle for casuals like us, most of our guys are brand-new newbros we try to school and train how to survive in WH space, mining is the last thing they wanna spend their time on and we only do it if some nice Gneiss rock is sitting right in our home hole. But for the cheap moon ores in WH (they are the same as in HS), surely not.
With all those SovStructures and their fuel/investment costs and the difficulty to maintain them I have little experience, so I don’t argue about them, the NullSeccers will give feedback over time, CCP will adjust the features over time and at some point a balance will be found or key features will be changed again if the players won’t accept them at all.
I would like to use that siphon deployable on them, if we can steal from Skyhooks why not Metenox drills?
It is good to see CCP responding and adjusting, is this enough?
2 Likes
Which system is the PLEX Bank? Why can’t we rob a bank?
1 Like
We agree on that 100% 
