EVE General Discussion

Respect.

That many drones, that quickly? Not sure what constitutes "that many or that quickly".

Not really sure what constitutes "minimal" either.

Having said that there are missions out there right now that aggro the drones as well as sleeper sites. Based on experience with this AI already, it is clear that there will be an increase in drones losses. You may not feel the same and because of that, won't prepare to sell more drones.

On the other hand I am preparing to meet the increased demand that will come with this change.

Pretty much WAI by CCP as not every marketeer prepares properly for changes, which of course allows me to beat their socks off in market PvP. YMMV.

It was always in your best interests to let the ratter clear the NPC frigates and possibly cruisers as well, as they were the biggest threat to you immediately after the ratter died and had the least firepower to contribute to your gank attempt.

Larger NPC rats are the least likely to interfere by switching targets to your SB in mid-gank, and the easiest for you to evade the fire from if they did.

So if mission runner wants to use drones they will have to destroy the frigates first which would be the same ships that would be targeting your bomber and then the cruisers.

So in theory the mission runner would take out the ships that would attack you first.
end result would be the same.

However if they go top down then frigates will go after you while the heavy's continue to go after the mission runner.

I don't see why this is a problem.
Besides you are another hostile in NPC space and you are a fastest kill so it would be natural them to remove you from the field first or in this case split off a group to take care of you.

This really is a non issue.

And it has nothing to do with belt rats so you can continue to hunt there like normal.

Or is this a case of I wouldn't have been able to take out the mission runner without NPC help and I don't think it is fair that now I have to do all the work on my own ?

Null sec ratting and exploration is like my main thing, and a totally agree that creating nullsec concord (NULLCORD!) is a bad thing. Someone once said to me "well, the cloaked gank will get wait till you kill the frigs". Well I ain't killing no frigs in an anomaly with someone in local. Their only chance to catch me is if I somehow can't warp out of the site fast enough like getting caught on a structure, but if they are in a small ship, the new AI NPCs could end up giving me COVER FIRE till I can get out.

I don't WANT to lose my Machariel, I just don't think this is a good change for the game. CCP has already had to back off some of the change (they are not applying the new AI to NPC sentry guns and overseers ) but we keep telling them the problems those overseers and sentry guns have are indicative of ALL the NPC sites, ie they just aren't designed to handle the new AI.

I'm pretty resigned to the idea that it's going to happen anyway an have already bookmarked the relevant threads so i can post links in the various "we told you" threads set to appear in December lol.

This is going to go live in the next update for sure and clearly ccp foxfour has his inserted firmly into his ass.

But honestly, if I were him, and I just spent hours and hours coding a "fix" that ****** up the game for 30% of the user base which would require hours and hours more to get to a workable point and probably wouldn't make the next patch cycle, I'd probably just commit the changes and flip off the community too.

So yea.

I like it, minus the stealth bomber aspect. im assuming what they're going to do is make NPC's able to see anything cloaked.

if that goes through, thats pathetic.

that would make sense wouldnt it, there's positives to being high standing to factions, but nothing for pirates other than watching that standing snail its way up the ladder. i honestly dont see why they just dont take standings for pirates out considering it has no note worthy value.

Dear OP,

In general, I agree with you, though perhaps not for the reasons you presented.

One thing that worries me is, this game still has a fairly/very vibrant mission runner community. When I was starting out, I would spend my evenings running L4s in high sec, chatting in Missions channel, there were regular folks there, the discussions were anywhere from serious to total nonsense, and it was just a fun and relaxing thing to do in the evening where I didn't have the energy to play something that actually required me to actively move and dodge. EVE PvE is really great like this. A few clicks, watch things melt for a minute, a few more clicks, and again relax for another minute. Not very demanding.

This gameplay could go to hell with the coming AI change. There are some missions that I personally believe will no longer be soloable, not without very good/excellent character skills and a very well built (expensive) boat. That means, all those casual players looking for relaxing PvE in high sec in collegiate atmosphere are about to have that gameplay destroyed. And for what? If they wanted to fight sleeper AI, they could have gone to wormholes or ran incursions. They CHOSE the low-pressure, low-payout L4s because that's gameplay they prefer.

What's more, this change will also put into stark contrast the imbalance in EWAR systems. Previously, as Gallente, you could deal with jamming Caldari NPCs fairly easy. Just pull aggro, dump out aggressive drones. Presto. After the change, if you are jammed, you are dead in the water. Why? Because you can't order your drones what to do, and if they take damage and you pull them in, releasing them won't make them re-engage the target, and you can't even remote-repair them. In other words, you're totally screwed. And there's quite a few missions where you face 3-5 jamming elite cruisers in a single pull. Which WILL jam you. That's just one example how this upcoming change will further wreck missions.

In my mind, I see this AI change the same way I see the UI change in Inferno. It wasn't ready, nobody really wanted it except for a tiny minority. But CCP still shoved it down our throats, despite MASSIVE amounts of negative feedback regarding the operation and features of the new UI. They're doing the exact same thing now, with the AI change. I see virtually no positive arguments as to how this improves the quality of the gameplay, but I see tons of examples how it negatively affects it. In many facets - from high-sec carebear mission running to null ratting and everything in between. The argument that "it works in wormholes and incursions" does not work, because both of those are designed as group content, not solo content.

Bottom line, I don't see anything good coming out of this change. Especially if it is not ready. This is really something that needs to be TOTALLY polished before release, not iterated over the coming year to get it up to snuff.

Having said all that, I strongly urge everyone to stop complaining. Why? Because the bigger the explosion of negativity after the expansion release, the better the results will be. Remember Incarna. Remember the rage explosion after the Incarna. Remember how CCP scrambled for Crucible? Same thing can happen with this expansion. The bigger the rage, the higher the odds they will finally pull their collective head out of wherever they are keeping it and start paying attention to user feedback. Not just nodding along and then saying "yeah, well, we're releasing it anyway, brace yourselves because it's mighty cold."

Appreciate if you read the OP, thanks.

Most sig worthy! Thank you Destiny.