Missions & Complexes

So you have no problem finding incomplete sites?

Nullsec.
I cover three regions on my exploring roams.
More than half the sites I find are incomplete.

Yeah this.
Anyway... another patch, still no fix.

Awesome, thanks!

Personally, I've been using my decryptors for production. I know most of my hacker corp mates are selling theirs though. But for me, they are working out great for rig production.

exploration in drone space is basically worthless :(

As soon as we possibly can.
Might be tomorrow, the weekend or very early next week. No later than that.

What exploration sites still need?

One word: balancing.

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The Summary

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- nerf relic sites by removing all BPC drops from them, preferably moving them to data sites.
- nerf both relic and data sites significantly by adding defenders to the more lucrative sites. (low sec should be on par with average high sec combat sites, null sec should be on par with average low sec combat)
- make w-space data/relic sites worth the time of clearing out, considering the PITA defenders they tend to have.
- change loot drop mechanic for data and relic sites to be: more user friendly, sensible and to give an advantage to the player who also brings friends.
- beef up low sec combat sites a little, so that they actually feel like a step up in comparison to high sec, especially when you also consider the added risk of running them.
- tweak high sec combat sites to give more ISK rewards and less (or no faction / deadspace loot). Getting 400m ISK modules from 15 minute runs is a joke, when the rest of the bounty from the site stays below 10 mil.
- fix escalations, because they are pretty much pointless at the moment, as they tend to end well before they reach the end, if they start at all. Ensure that the end boss of an escalation drops at least something decent. When the faction frig at the end of an escalation chain (the only one I managed to get to the end out of 6-7 some escalations) drops two meta t1 modules, then you seriously start to question the validity of its existence.

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The explanation

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Since exploration is so popular, the price of loot specific to data and relic sites has plummeted.. now since data sites mostly just drop specific stuff with a very limited demand, it has fallen in value in mere days. Relic site value stays high as the influx of rig components from those sites is not significant compared to the total trade volume.

On top of that, relic sites give you BPCs for T2 rig components and faction stuff, while data sites give you tons of tuner BPCs.. again, something rather specific, with very little variety and as such mostly useless as there are large quantities of it floating around. I got dozens of tuner BPCs myself, and i did data sites for maybe a week. Solution? Remove BPC drops from relic sites. Have them drop faction modules, if you really want them to be "relic", at least the equipment category of cans would see some use. Reserve BPC drops for data sites, giving them a much higher variety of possible BPCs and as such increasing their value.

Balancing vs other activities.. A good lv4 mission runner can do what? 40-50m ISK an hour? That with a rather expensive mission running ship, tens of millions of skill points invested into his trade and possibly also the use of an alt for extra salvage and loot income. An explorer can make way more than that with just a piece of junkyard trash bolted to an engine and barely enough skill points to fit a cloak and a scan probe launcher. Oh sure, there are days when you find nothing, but the next day you will go home with 750 million isk worth of rig components in your cargo, not to mention the other billion isk in blueprint copies. Hell, on my lucky days, I can make 1bil+ isk just running the sites in high sec.

Talking about high sec: Reward for those combat sites should be bounty based, with a somewhat increased bounty payout imo. So little more ISK from bounty, but no fancy faction loot, generally giving the same level of loot than before. Even then, with combat sites, you at least need an investment before you can run them properly, safely and fast enough, so let's just assume that they are fine for now. I dont think its ok, that every other combat high sec DED site drops deadspace modules worth 10s if not 100s of millions of ISK. Rewar should be in line with effort, having the isk come from killing would not only make it more in line with other activities, but also prevent people from just ninjaing the final boss after someone has spent 20 minutes clearing the site, taking 95% of the rewards with them.

High sec, vs low sec, vs null sec, vs w-space. Let's consider high sec the baseline for now.
- Low sec.. why are low sec data and relic sites undefended? Also low sec combat sites should be beefed up a little (max level of ded complexes appearing in low sec increased by 1 or 2), considering how its more dangerous to run them than null sec sites in most cases.
- null sec is similar to low sec in that data and relic sites should not be undefended. It is a joke right now.. go to any part of null sec, and you will see covops ships roam the area, with the occasional "MC Hammer fitted" strategic cruiser doing virtually the same with even less of a risk.
- w-space: data and relic sites are protected, quite heavily in some cases.. yet hacking those sites is virtually worthless.. at least i did not find anything of value in the data site we cleared, which is especially lame, considering how it took two people to clear the site in the first place. Im happy that those sites got their little protectors, but with risk, there should come rewards, and from what I learned, hacking those sites is not really worth the time right now.

- So very torn about all this, the drop in salvage is a real kick in the jimmy to pvp'rs that salvage wrecks after fights to go buy their next batch of ships. I guess perhaps this will drop T2 rigs on the other hand and you might see a slight increase in their use.

- Exploration is too easy. Put the rats back in. This flying around null in interdicted nullified/cloaky T3's is just too easy, almost no risk at all. Hard rats forces you to fly ships that can handle the rats, the risk/reward balance has been completely jacked and it needs to be brought back in line. You want big isk? You need to risk big for it. That simple. That will solve the price drop issue.

Boom: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=250602&find=unread

You guys understand that this is more like adressing the symphtoms more than fixing the problem? Real fix would be something in lines of evenly distributing the loot between all the cans with blueprints being the only thing to cherry pick. That would solve the problems with picking only valuable cans to hack in relic sites. What to do with data sites i have no idea, couse they seem totally broken right now.