Wormholes

Hi all,

I've read that the new mag/radar sites with the new hacking/archaeology minigame will not have any NPC ship spawns. Can anyone (ideally someone who was at fanfest) confirm whether this means that post Odyssey even W-space mag/radar sites will lose their sleeper spawns?

If so, it means (at least marginally) less blue loot and nanoribbons available for harvest in w-space; whether this is good or bad for w-space dwellers' wallets I guess depends on how lucrative the new hacking/archaeology sites will be... but it would mean even solo w-space nomads in exploration-fit covops will be able to get something out of even C6 mag/radar sites - previously a bit too difficult to get anything from solo.

All hail Bob.
Z3

when asked if it was going to remove escalations or npc from Wh site the devs at the exploration roundtable didn't know

Thanks for the replies guys, it'll be interesting to see how this turns out!

I would think these would not necessarily be the same as in k-space. K-space radars and mags have always been light on defense. On the flip side radars and mags are generally a touch harder than their WH class anoms.

The Drake and the hacking ship can be one and the same, too.

I was at fanfest and they did not know if wormhole mag / radar would keep the battleship escalations, its quite remarkable how many devs forget about wormhole space altogether.

Fozzie told me when he is ship balancing they definatly take wormholes into account, Greyscale said independently from Fozzie that wormholes are always considered when they make balance changes.

I know that devs can never reveal what corps/alliances they have been in but I did not come across any that i felt have been involved with the high class wormhole mechanics.

I think they should hire a wormhole specific Game Designer :)

I hope neither mag/radar changes, nor gravimetrics found without probes would come to wormholes.

I pointed CCP Affinity to this thread, hopefully she should respond shortly. She is actually the person working on the new mag/radar changes.

I actually really hope that WH is at least *partially* affected by these changes.

Just from a sheer realism standpoint, it's stupid how *everything* in WH space has to be fought to obtain. There's an easy solution here: Just add more sites. Keep the combat sites, but I'd LOVE to see sites that are non-combat.

People get worried, and for good reason. If the mini-games are too easy, then at the end of the day the loot will be next to worthless. But that's literally the answer, right there. Just make the mini-games difficult. Say each minigame covers a basic theme and you go through "stages" in the game. It gets harder the farther you go, but your chance to get better loot (or guaranteed loot---but that isn't the mantra of eve exploration---especially in WH space) goes up.


As long as the mini-games are extremely skill dependent and hard, then I wholly support non-combat sites in WH space. I am a resident of a C4 with a static C2, and sometimes I really don't feel like getting my scanning ship, scanning down even a ladar, waiting 30 minutes for sleepers to spawn, go kill them, get in my salvager, then FINALLY get in my ship that's meant to actually do the site.

Yes, CCP has opened a can of worms here; but, if done properly it could be a massive + for the game. Eve shouldn't just be about combat. I really hope Odyssey changes that and I hope the playerbase recognizes you don't need combat to make something difficult.

If they change w-space sites, in whatever way, it is very important that they can NOT be done in a simple cov ops.

They brought us the Venture, which eliminated 70m harvesting battlecruisers and replaced them with 10m near-uncatchable junk that isn't even worth scanning down.

If they now allow people to rake in the ISK with cloaky cheap frigates, another big chunk of worthwile ganking targets will disappear and be replaced with ships that are nearly impossible to catch and not even worth catching anyway.

If you want to make good ISK in w-space, you should always have to put expensive and vulnerable ships on the line. This principle was sadly abandoned with the Venture, please don't do it again!