EVE Information Portal

I think he knows

Are you literally at the point now where you are just copy pasting?

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1470742#post1470742

The scope of your argument puts it well past the realm of incursions and does little to acclimate to the type of change you want. You are literally talking about changing the rules of engagement around a person with no warning of any kind. If it should be decided that a change from current mechanics is needed it should be announced and allow people the opportunity for people to prepare.

Additionally, highsec without concord is still functionally lowsec. The dynamic creation of lowsec doesn't change the way that people do and will react to that type of space. The only likely difference will be the people caught with their pants down by early responders hunting prey that didn't and couldn't see it coming. Other than that we have all the aspects that make lowsec underutilized, should those that live there be believed, exasperated by the fact that moving to the constellation is still a "safe" trip.

Without any specific stated mechanics regarding your other suggestion they cannot be criticized, but it bears mentioning that CCP denounces the idea of a totally safe highsec as is. Regardless of player misconceptions this has not changed.

More ISK sink ?

Dear Simi Kusoni,


This will be much lesser then before the nerf of death. And it will complete the goal CCP had, with bringing more people into larger sites. But there are currently 2 major problems for larger sites:

1. Too small playerbase to recruite from
2. Payout not really more or less then small VGs

And last but not least, of course a 20+ man fleet should have the possibility to earn more money as a singleplayer in lowsec. Becuase Highsec does not mean there is less risk.

To continue out my risk versus reward line of reasoning and bring in the next part of my argument--opportunity cost.

The new OTAs are a great example. They are exceedingly difficult to run. They can be ran with a hacker ship or by a very shiny fleet setup that can alpha through the reps. The time it takes to assemble a fleet that is capable of doing OTAs and then accomplishing the sites can give you a reasonable guess of expected 50-60 million isk per hour once you get the fleet going, but delays and repping and rest breaks and corp taxes can bring that down to earth pretty quickly as well. To about the point of chain running Level 4 missions or null sec ratting/plexing and much less set up time required to start generating isk. Yes I understand really shiny fleets can make even more isk per hour and they wouldn't have that concern, which leads me to yet another major factor in Eve online--barriers to entry.

How much does a good pirate faction battleship cost? How much to fit it out with faction gear? Officer gear?
How much does the average new player have available? How many level 4 missions does it take to make that much?
How much does it hurt if you lose that faction battleship before you earned back the isk you invested in it?

There is a simple example of barriers to entry. To be able to get into a fleet that can make isk better than running Level 4s costs more than the average player can get ahold of easily. All this circles back around to the risk versus reward. How likely is a player going to risk an expensive ship that they cannot easily replace? How likely is that carebear mission running player going to risk his several billion isk ship on incursions? How likely is that player to go into low or null sec? How likely is that person going to risk going into a low sec or null sec incursion site?

Do you see what I'm getting at? People follow basic economic principles based on their own level of risk taking. If something is very risky the reward has to be equal or greater to the risk before normal people will want to do it. And there are risk thresholds as well. If I had you roll a 20 sided die and gave you $20 if you got a 20, but you had to pay me $10 dollars if you rolled a 1 ad you could roll as many times as you liked. You would play alot and I would pay out alot, but if I gave you 1 million dollars for a 20 and I killed you if you rolled a 1 I don't think I would get too many interested people.

If CCP tries to buck these fundamental rules then they will get unused game content

First, a note to all the people in this thread who are angry. It's a game, get over yourselves please. I understand the frustration some of you probably feel, and I agree that the way Incursions have been iterated on was not very desirable to a significant portion of the player base, but raging at Devs isn't going to fix that. CCP has plenty of other things on their plate, and a constant stream of accusations and rage from people in threads like this isn't going to do anything positive for Incursions or the game as a whole.

TL;DR - Chill people.

Now, this is probably going to be a fairly long post, and I'm starting with a basic disclosure about my experience with Incursions. I was part of the group withing the CFC which used to run lowsec incursions with (fairly) shiny T3s and assault frigs. It's going to sound like a hollow claim that the previous fact doesn't have any bearing on the suggesting I will make below that Incursions should be lowsec only, but I assure you, it's true. I also truly feel that Incursions do bring together a "community" of people, or at least they did for my coalition, but that does not necessarily mean that "community" will come together for other activities. Incursions draw a specific type of players in terms of mentality and resources, and a certain type of character in terms of skill points and SP distribution.

TL;DR - I'm part of the CFC Incursioning group. but I love Incursions in general and don't think that biases me too much.

The current state of Incursions is something I consider lamentable, but I am not in favor or a rollback to the previous state of the mechanics either. I see both mechanical and lore problems with current Incursions, and because some of my suggestions stem from both of those factors, I will discuss them together.

Suggestion 1: Incursions should be unique to lowsec.
- Reason 1 (mechanics): Incursions were (to some extent still are), and should be fairly significant sources of income for the players running them. They need to be balanced based on the security of the space they are in, but to balance them for high and nullsec would (in my opinion) leave only the current option, which is to make them pay too little to compete with other forms of income in those areas.
- Reason 2 (lore): Someone can correct me on this, as I'm sure to get some details wrong simply because of the vast amount of EVE lore that exists out there, but the base principle of this argument is that I do not feel Incursions in space other than lowsec make sense. Sansha tech used in Incursions is specifically designed to combat capsuleers, which means that conventional ships controlled by the Empires would function normally in "Incursioned" systems, and the forces encountered in Incursion sites are not formidable enough for me to believe that the Empires could not deal with them. On the other hand, nullsec, while lacking the NPC forces of hisec, is not (as far as I understand from lore) of interest to Sansha Kuveki. Attacking nullsec systems would not spread fear in the Empires, and nullsec planets are not as densely populated.

Suggestion 2: Alternatively to suggestion 1, Incursions could be balanced uniquely for each security type.
- Reason 1 (mechanics): Essentially the same as covered above, Incursions in each security type should be balanced for income and challenge, according to the other activities available in that security type.
- Reason 2 (lore): Sansha should have different goals for attacking each security type. Hisec could be small terrorist attacks; quick enough to hit and run before the empires can respond, but still frightening, while nullsec could see more mining and production related activities, as resources are more abundant there, and time should (theoretically) be less of a constraint. Lowsec Incursions could remain largely the same, as they best fit the lore. They are Kuveki's way of striking at the empire and capsuleers simultaneously, while also attacking highly inhabited planets.

Suggestion 3: Scout sites need to be rewarding, or to be removed.
- Reason (mechanics): As CCP have already acknowledged, these sites are not really run by anyone, because they are not worth running. I believe they need a new set of mechanics, because (due to the nature of frigates currently available) they cannot be balanced around the same types of fleets (logi and dps) that run other sites. Perhaps they could be balanced for T1 cruisers, with an eye looking forward to the new frigates we will be seeing in the near future.

Suggestion 4: "Pioson" is bad.
- Reason (mechanics): The fact that one out of three sites for each Vanguards and Assaults currently is extremely impractical to run combined with the fact that sites are spawned randomly to populate a system is a poor mechanical choice. Currently, it is very exaggerated by the fact that the "poison" sites are so slow to run with even a specialized fleet that they are not reasonably profitable, but even before the changes NMCs and NCNs were just plain annoying sites. However, I actually applaud the fact that one single fleet type does not optimally run all three sites, but I think this would be better accomplished by having two of each of the three sites encourage a distinctly different combat style, while the third could be run by either or both. For (not a very good) example, if the one of the other two Assault sites strongly rewarded players for NOT using BSs, NCNs could be run two at a time by one full group of BSs and one full group of non-BSs working together. Additionally, I believe that a system should not be able to spawn a full set of one type of site. If this idea was taken to its logical extreme, I would be very pleased to see a combination of site types spanning Vanguards through Headquarters that encourage different fleet comps that can also be exchanged, split, or combined to move between different site spawns and types.

Which is why low/null would be making more. As it's currently setup and thing that boosts site rewards boosts low/null proportionally more than high.

Rolling back the 10% doesn't change really much.
- Fix OTA
- Boost Assaults and HQ rewards

AS and HQ pay too less compared to VG. They are more risk, need more people, need more work, need more attention. So they should pay better.

Dear Forum,

VG are already pretty nerfed, so much that to less people running incursions to recruite for larger sites. I always said nerf VG and buff AS/HQ. CCP only did one thing a that really heavy.