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Dev Blog: No Honor Among Thieves - Siphon Units in Rubicon

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Sgt Ocker
What Corp is it
#1241 - 2013-10-22 00:38:43 UTC
Miner Hottie wrote:
Icesail wrote:
Ganthrithor wrote:


Look, here's the deal. Based on your own assumptions, it seems like you are the kind of player you keep talking about when you refer to "little guys" practicing "economic warfare." It seems like you don't have much experience playing with sizable groups of other players, and you may or may not have experience in nullsec at all. If you did have experience in nullsec, you'd know that:


  • There's already room for small gangs to conduct economic warfare in hostile space. This is done by hunting and killing ratters, industrialists, random travelers, and basically anything else that floats through space alone or in small numbers. It can also be accomplished by doing nasty things like relisting: buying up in-demand commodities in nullsec stations (in their entirety where possible) and re-listing them at higher prices, forcing people to overpay for their ships and gear and funneling that profit into your own wallet.

  • Nobody is going to hang around for days at a time in hopes of possibly catching some hostile in a blockade runner that's come to loot a siphon: it's absolutely not worth doing, since you can easily retrieve your stuff from the siphon and then destroy it rather than spending ~48 hours in a Sabre poopsocking a structure, hoping that you'll be watching the screen at the exact moment some fool decloaks their hauler for 3 seconds to do a drive-by pickup. It's seriously not going to happen. The spergiest of spergs can sometimes be motivated to camp things for days at a time in hopes of a cap or supercap kill, but nobody is going to bother to do so over a possible Prowler kill.

  • Have you ever even been to nullsec? Let me give you a clue: your average nullsec resident is not very situationally aware. Someone running around planting siphons is just one more hostile drifting through a region: ratters will safe up momentarily until you leave, then go back to ratting. I've moved supercaps through null without being noticed, to think this won't be possible with a blockade runner dropping modules that leave no overt traces is ridiculous.

  • This siphon proposal doesn't involve any "gameplay" at all: your use of that term in this discussion is overly-generous to CCP. Pushing a module out of your ship isn't gameplay any more than anchoring a drag bubble is. It's the stuff that happens as a result of anchoring a drag bubble that constitutes gameplay: siphons make no such promises.


1. There's always room for more economic warfare opportunities for the small gangs.. Get over it.
2. Nobody expects you to 'hang' around for days.. So it goes.. You lose some of your passive income. Find another revenue stream if you don't like it.
3. Don't pretend you're the Encyclopedia of nullsec.. The moon syphoning is another game mechanic you will need to accept and deal with instead of bitching about it.
4. your drag bubble analogy isn't accurate either. I shouldn't have to explain it for you further.

EDIT: My apologies. My response was not meant as an attack on you. Let me rephrase it this way. All of your points are silly.


2. Passive income.... until one manages a moon or a reaction farm, one is not permitted to state if moon income is passive or not.

1. Syphons won't so much create economic warfare as passive income for those placing syphons.

My opinions are mine.

  If you don't like them or disagree with me that's OK.- - - - - - Just don't bother Hating - I don't care

It really is getting harder and harder to justify $23 a month for each sub.
Kropotkin
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#1242 - 2013-10-22 01:11:33 UTC
Sariton Xavian wrote:
The ... apparent asynchronous gameplay objective of siphons as announced isn’t quite right.

Everyone complains about AFK and asynch gameplay overshadowing real interaction... so rather than try to spice up the dull passive (plus boring administration) play of POS’s with another piece of fundamentally asynch gameplay, why not come at it from the angle of it encouraging interactive gameplay events instead?

Make the siphon a bit larger and more expensive, and provide a benefit to the POS operator if they respond to it quickly – for example by allowing the incapacitation, scooping and melting of the siphon (and associated recovery of its contents). The point is POS operators shouldn’t purely dread the threat of being siphoned, there should be a potential positive to them logging in to respond to one quickly. The API then wouldn’t need to lie, because the GOAL is that POS owners mobilise quickly.

Placing a siphon then becomes a small scale incitement event available to individuals or small groups. A more fluid, faster turn around, accessible alternative to re-enforcing a tower. If the POS owner is lazy, doesn’t care, isn’t paying attention, then the individual/small group can profit. If the owner is on the ball, they lose nothing and maybe gain a bit – and heaven forbid a skirmish might even occur. With a design along these lines larger groups might use siphon placement as a baiting, testing or buildup exercise which once again adds to the experience rather than detracting.

I like this idea but offer refinements:

I see opportunities to synchronize time of opportunity for interaction and sizes of forces on opposing sides at each opportunity for interaction.

Time: In full-out attack to destroy POS, attacker has complete freedom to choose time to start attack and attack is fully effective from start until POS enters "reinforced" state. Attacker can choose how long defender has, to respond during initial attack, by choosing size of attacking force: larger attacking force drives POS to "reinforced" faster. Once POS enters "reinforced", though, further attacks are futile until "reinforced timer" expires, and attacking force is vulnerable to counterattack, maybe by superior third-party forces just looking for kills. Defender controls how long reinforced state lasts, but timer-expiration time is visible to both parties. When POS "comes out of reinforced", it becomes vulnerable again to attack. If attacker does not resume attack then, defender can repair POS and restore initial state.

For siphon-planting, perhaps adopt similar mechanics, but perhaps offer POS-owner option to go directly to state similar to "reinforced"? In exchange for diverting power-and-CPU to anti-siphoning defenses, thereby reducing production, let POS-owner choose a schedule on which siphons could become effective. Siphon could be planted any time, but would only start sucking product when interval of vulnerability arrives. Siphon would be invulnerable while waiting for POS to become vulnerable to siphoning. Start of vulnerability interval now becomes synchronizing event: POS-owner sets it and siphon-planter can see it and plan to be present to defend siphon at activation time.

If only POS-owner shows up for activation time, he can destroy siphon and avoid all loss of product.

If only siphon-planter shows up, siphon becomes active and becomes invulnerable for length of time set by siphon-planter. Just as POS-owner can trade off between POS-yield and length and frequency of vulnerability intervals, siphon-planter can trade off between amount siphoned and length of time siphon would remain invulnerable.

If both POS-owner and siphon-planter show up, they can fight over survival of siphon. POS-owner risks losses caused by successful activation of siphon and maybe his ship; siphon-planter risks loss of siphon and maybe his ship. Of course, each might also have allies.

Once successfully activated, and until destroyed, siphon provides recurring sequence of predictable opportunities for battles over siphoned product. Control over times of opportunities alternates between POS-owner and siphon-planter.

Size: I do not understand situation for sizes of forces as well as I understand time, but I think there can be opportunity for both sides to control sizes of forces it would make sense to bring to each opportunity for battle, by controlling how much is at stake each time. POS-owner could increase or decrease stakes by shifting power-and-CPU between production equipment and anti-siphoning countermeasures. Should be possible for siphon-planter to do something similar, but I do not quite see what control(s) to provide.
Kropotkin
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#1243 - 2013-10-22 01:27:04 UTC
Sariton Xavian wrote:
If the siphon is scoopable after incapacitation, and/or requires fuel to run that the POS owner can claim as their prize when they respond to being siphoned (and which also reduces the profitability of a siphoner when targeting lower value moons), then the POS owner can achieve a net profit from responding effectively to being siphoned at the expense of fire and forget siphoners. ....
My first reaction was to suggest that siphons be manufactured from, and yield when shot and salvaged, lots and lots of Tritanium. POS-owners are industrialists, right? Tritanium-shortages are a recurring complaint of industrialists, right? So let one problem solve another.

My second reaction was that this would offer an obvious exploit, as a way to ship Tritanium from hi-sec to null-sec in the form of siphons.

My third reaction was to wonder whether that exploit would be a Bad Thing or a Good Thing.

Have I been reading this thread too long? Question
Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#1244 - 2013-10-22 01:42:41 UTC
Kropotkin wrote:
My first reaction was to suggest that siphons be manufactured from, and yield when shot and salvaged, lots and lots of Tritanium. POS-owners are industrialists, right? Tritanium-shortages are a recurring complaint of industrialists, right?

Terrible troll.

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
Kropotkin
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#1245 - 2013-10-22 01:52:21 UTC
Varius Xeral wrote:
Ganthrithor wrote:
Lots of good stuff


The troubling issue with these siphons is that it demonstrates not only a lack of lessons learned from previous timer and structure systems, but a complete lack of awareness of even the basic dimensions of the issue. Considering that the entire game hinges on the designers ability to encourage fun emergent interaction, it basically means that there is either no one left at CCP who even understands the fundamental theories and ideas that make eve successful or their success was and continues to be completely accidental.

It is obvious that the thought process wasn't "What was good and bad about pos? What was good and bad about dominion? Where can we go with the lessons learned?", rather it was "what is some tangential sop to our sophomoric understanding of the issues with nullsec gameplay that fits into our "running around putting out fires" model of game development?".

It demonstrates that this game is ultimately doomed because CCP has either lost or never had the institutional culture requisite to handle the segment of the industry that they apparently stumbled blindly into. Now all they are doing is babysitting a game in decline, while randomly throwing **** at the wall in response to "game through a pinhole" survey feedback.

In the end someone else with some balls and vision will come along and take what CCP got right ten years ago and make something good and progressive out of it, and CCP will have no one to blame but themselves.

If CCP lack theoretical understanding of what makes sov-warfare mechanics good or bad, should perhaps CCP gear up for more empirical exploration of space of possible Game-mechanics systems for controlling Game-space?

Right now Wormhole space has one different system for controlling space. Maybe CCP need to try more alternatives? There would be development costs, certainly, but perhaps there would also be advantage that gearing up to deploy multiple Game-space-control systems would encourage CCP to keep implementation of each alternative system simple and well-documented, as distinct from horrible state of current implementation?

See ideas of Steve Blank on "Lean Start-ups".
Kropotkin
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#1246 - 2013-10-22 02:47:27 UTC
Alavaria Fera wrote:
Kropotkin wrote:
My first reaction was to suggest that siphons be manufactured from, and yield when shot and salvaged, lots and lots of Tritanium. POS-owners are industrialists, right? Tritanium-shortages are a recurring complaint of industrialists, right?

Terrible troll.

Ritual apologies: was not intended as troll.
Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#1247 - 2013-10-22 03:18:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Alavaria Fera
Kropotkin wrote:
Alavaria Fera wrote:
Kropotkin wrote:
My first reaction was to suggest that siphons be manufactured from, and yield when shot and salvaged, lots and lots of Tritanium. POS-owners are industrialists, right? Tritanium-shortages are a recurring complaint of industrialists, right?

Terrible troll.

Ritual apologies: was not intended as troll.

ok, then I'll explain. Mentally divide the main things into the following:

Supercapitals: POS, sov nullsec
Capitals: Stations, lowsec
Just about everything else: Stations, highsec

Reaction and mining poses aren't run by people who need trit.

Also, 10 or 20mil of trit isn't all that much, unsurprisingly.

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
Strom Crendraven
The H8teful Eight
#1248 - 2013-10-22 03:27:11 UTC
Miner Hottie wrote:
Marlona Sky wrote:
Sgt Ocker wrote:
So reality is; pos siphons will be used to shut down the small operators while those with most of the decent moons remain pretty much untouchable and are very likely to actually profit from this whole thing..

Well done CCP, you've given the major power blocks another foot hold on total domination of eve.

By siphons being a real mechanic in the game, means it will create player traffic. This means the opportunity for combat increases. Any POS operators that rely on some 3rd party tool to play the game for them will be the ones to suffer the most. Any groups that actually inhabit the space they have POS in will be just fine as they will have eyes in the system to see when a siphon is deployed.

I can't believe how heavily some groups rely on programs to play the game for them and go out of their way to make sure AFK game play and mechanics remain a thing for EVE. Pathetic.


Except the siphon griefers will be in nulli interceptors or stabbed blockade runners or cloaky recons, generating rather indifferent volumes of combat. I also love they way you seem to think moon mining is AFK. I reckon a survey on player burn out in Eve would show two groups with the highest level of burn out being CEOs and POS monkeys, with FCs possibly being up there as well.

I also find it ironic that a senior figure in NC., which has substantially outsourced the act living its own space, i.e. has gone beyond being AFK in its own space, is chastising people for running POS, which it thinks is AFK.


Nerf NC burn out cloaky AFK nulli monkeys stabbed ironic POS siphon thingys!!!
Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#1249 - 2013-10-22 03:38:29 UTC
Strom Crendraven wrote:
Miner Hottie wrote:
Marlona Sky wrote:
Sgt Ocker wrote:
So reality is; pos siphons will be used to shut down the small operators while those with most of the decent moons remain pretty much untouchable and are very likely to actually profit from this whole thing..

Well done CCP, you've given the major power blocks another foot hold on total domination of eve.

By siphons being a real mechanic in the game, means it will create player traffic. This means the opportunity for combat increases. Any POS operators that rely on some 3rd party tool to play the game for them will be the ones to suffer the most. Any groups that actually inhabit the space they have POS in will be just fine as they will have eyes in the system to see when a siphon is deployed.

I can't believe how heavily some groups rely on programs to play the game for them and go out of their way to make sure AFK game play and mechanics remain a thing for EVE. Pathetic.


Except the siphon griefers will be in nulli interceptors or stabbed blockade runners or cloaky recons, generating rather indifferent volumes of combat. I also love they way you seem to think moon mining is AFK. I reckon a survey on player burn out in Eve would show two groups with the highest level of burn out being CEOs and POS monkeys, with FCs possibly being up there as well.

I also find it ironic that a senior figure in NC., which has substantially outsourced the act living its own space, i.e. has gone beyond being AFK in its own space, is chastising people for running POS, which it thinks is AFK.


Nerf NC burn out cloaky AFK nulli monkeys stabbed ironic POS siphon thingys!!!

Er, what?

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
Miner Hottie
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1250 - 2013-10-22 05:03:31 UTC
Sgt Ocker wrote:
Miner Hottie wrote:
Icesail wrote:
Ganthrithor wrote:


Look, here's the deal. Based on your own assumptions, it seems like you are the kind of player you keep talking about when you refer to "little guys" practicing "economic warfare." It seems like you don't have much experience playing with sizable groups of other players, and you may or may not have experience in nullsec at all. If you did have experience in nullsec, you'd know that:


  • There's already room for small gangs to conduct economic warfare in hostile space. This is done by hunting and killing ratters, industrialists, random travelers, and basically anything else that floats through space alone or in small numbers. It can also be accomplished by doing nasty things like relisting: buying up in-demand commodities in nullsec stations (in their entirety where possible) and re-listing them at higher prices, forcing people to overpay for their ships and gear and funneling that profit into your own wallet.

  • Nobody is going to hang around for days at a time in hopes of possibly catching some hostile in a blockade runner that's come to loot a siphon: it's absolutely not worth doing, since you can easily retrieve your stuff from the siphon and then destroy it rather than spending ~48 hours in a Sabre poopsocking a structure, hoping that you'll be watching the screen at the exact moment some fool decloaks their hauler for 3 seconds to do a drive-by pickup. It's seriously not going to happen. The spergiest of spergs can sometimes be motivated to camp things for days at a time in hopes of a cap or supercap kill, but nobody is going to bother to do so over a possible Prowler kill.

  • Have you ever even been to nullsec? Let me give you a clue: your average nullsec resident is not very situationally aware. Someone running around planting siphons is just one more hostile drifting through a region: ratters will safe up momentarily until you leave, then go back to ratting. I've moved supercaps through null without being noticed, to think this won't be possible with a blockade runner dropping modules that leave no overt traces is ridiculous.

  • This siphon proposal doesn't involve any "gameplay" at all: your use of that term in this discussion is overly-generous to CCP. Pushing a module out of your ship isn't gameplay any more than anchoring a drag bubble is. It's the stuff that happens as a result of anchoring a drag bubble that constitutes gameplay: siphons make no such promises.


1. There's always room for more economic warfare opportunities for the small gangs.. Get over it.
2. Nobody expects you to 'hang' around for days.. So it goes.. You lose some of your passive income. Find another revenue stream if you don't like it.
3. Don't pretend you're the Encyclopedia of nullsec.. The moon syphoning is another game mechanic you will need to accept and deal with instead of bitching about it.
4. your drag bubble analogy isn't accurate either. I shouldn't have to explain it for you further.

EDIT: My apologies. My response was not meant as an attack on you. Let me rephrase it this way. All of your points are silly.


2. Passive income.... until one manages a moon or a reaction farm, one is not permitted to state if moon income is passive or not.

1. Syphons won't so much create economic warfare as passive income for those placing syphons.


Great enjoy emptying them every 25 hours, unless someone else empties it first. Passive fun and games.

It's all about how hot my mining lasers get.
Miner Hottie
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1251 - 2013-10-22 05:12:08 UTC
Strom Crendraven wrote:
Miner Hottie wrote:
Marlona Sky wrote:
Sgt Ocker wrote:
So reality is; pos siphons will be used to shut down the small operators while those with most of the decent moons remain pretty much untouchable and are very likely to actually profit from this whole thing..

Well done CCP, you've given the major power blocks another foot hold on total domination of eve.

By siphons being a real mechanic in the game, means it will create player traffic. This means the opportunity for combat increases. Any POS operators that rely on some 3rd party tool to play the game for them will be the ones to suffer the most. Any groups that actually inhabit the space they have POS in will be just fine as they will have eyes in the system to see when a siphon is deployed.

I can't believe how heavily some groups rely on programs to play the game for them and go out of their way to make sure AFK game play and mechanics remain a thing for EVE. Pathetic.


Except the siphon griefers will be in nulli interceptors or stabbed blockade runners or cloaky recons, generating rather indifferent volumes of combat. I also love they way you seem to think moon mining is AFK. I reckon a survey on player burn out in Eve would show two groups with the highest level of burn out being CEOs and POS monkeys, with FCs possibly being up there as well.

I also find it ironic that a senior figure in NC., which has substantially outsourced the act living its own space, i.e. has gone beyond being AFK in its own space, is chastising people for running POS, which it thinks is AFK.


Nerf NC burn out cloaky AFK nulli monkeys stabbed ironic POS siphon thingys!!!


What? Oh needs an animated gif to make sense.

It's all about how hot my mining lasers get.
Sgt Ocker
What Corp is it
#1252 - 2013-10-22 07:03:26 UTC
Miner Hottie wrote:


Great enjoy emptying them every 25 hours, unless someone else empties it first. Passive fun and games.
Do you really think there will be syphons that survive for 24hrs?? I'd be surprised if there were many lasted more than 12.

My opinions are mine.

  If you don't like them or disagree with me that's OK.- - - - - - Just don't bother Hating - I don't care

It really is getting harder and harder to justify $23 a month for each sub.
Saeka Tyr
Sanctuary of Shadows
#1253 - 2013-10-22 07:45:49 UTC
Just to pitch on what CCP Sonic said....

Quote:
b) have a character limit on how many siphons you can deploy (i.e. have in space at the same time). This would probably be in the 5 to 10 range.


I would be entirely in favor of this if there was an equivalent system in place to prevent a single character from putting literally dozens to hundreds of bubbles online.

As for reducing the wastage, I don't see the problem with 20% however if you think reducing it would be good I'd prefer to see a skill based fix to that.

Perhaps an anchoring bonus? 2% reduced waste per level of anchoring. But not a dedicated skill, as that strikes me as excessive.
Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#1254 - 2013-10-22 07:50:42 UTC
Sgt Ocker wrote:
Miner Hottie wrote:
Great enjoy emptying them every 25 hours, unless someone else empties it first. Passive fun and games.

Do you really think there will be syphons that survive for 24hrs?? I'd be surprised if there were many lasted more than 12.

But the poses are afkkkkkkk and passiveeeeee

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
Miner Hottie
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1255 - 2013-10-22 08:29:12 UTC
Alavaria Fera wrote:
Sgt Ocker wrote:
Miner Hottie wrote:
Great enjoy emptying them every 25 hours, unless someone else empties it first. Passive fun and games.

Do you really think there will be syphons that survive for 24hrs?? I'd be surprised if there were many lasted more than 12.

But the poses are afkkkkkkk and passiveeeeee


The cognitive dissonance in this thread is approaching the levels of a creationist like Ray Comfort being confronted with samples from the Lenski e.coli experiments.

It's all about how hot my mining lasers get.
Sgt Ocker
What Corp is it
#1256 - 2013-10-22 09:28:27 UTC
Alavaria Fera wrote:
Sgt Ocker wrote:
Miner Hottie wrote:
Great enjoy emptying them every 25 hours, unless someone else empties it first. Passive fun and games.

Do you really think there will be syphons that survive for 24hrs?? I'd be surprised if there were many lasted more than 12.

But the poses are afkkkkkkk and passiveeeeee
Sorry of course they are, how silly of me..

Hangon why if pos's are so passive do I need to spend on average 10hrs pw ( over half the average persons online time) managing my pos's?

My opinions are mine.

  If you don't like them or disagree with me that's OK.- - - - - - Just don't bother Hating - I don't care

It really is getting harder and harder to justify $23 a month for each sub.
Saeka Tyr
Sanctuary of Shadows
#1257 - 2013-10-22 10:47:05 UTC
Sgt Ocker wrote:

Hangon why if pos's are so passive do I need to spend on average 10hrs pw ( over half the average persons online time) managing my pos's?



other than "picking up materials that accumulated while sleeping" and "putting in more fuel", there really isn't much else for you to do.
Miner Hottie
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1258 - 2013-10-22 11:00:43 UTC
Saeka Tyr wrote:
Sgt Ocker wrote:

Hangon why if pos's are so passive do I need to spend on average 10hrs pw ( over half the average persons online time) managing my pos's?



other than "picking up materials that accumulated while sleeping" and "putting in more fuel", there really isn't much else for you to do.


These mythical self anchoring, assembling, linking and on-lining POS's whom do I acquire them off?

It's all about how hot my mining lasers get.
marly cortez
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#1259 - 2013-10-22 11:48:02 UTC
Just read the CCP scat left out to warn about these siphons.

Conclusion: Having failed miserably to force players to synchronize there interactions CCP's only recourse was to force asynchronous interaction upon them as punishment for not doing as they were told the first time.

Utterly priceless.Twisted

Humanity is the thin veneer that remains after you remove the baffled chimp.
Sgt Ocker
What Corp is it
#1260 - 2013-10-22 12:00:57 UTC
Saeka Tyr wrote:
Sgt Ocker wrote:

Hangon why if pos's are so passive do I need to spend on average 10hrs pw ( over half the average persons online time) managing my pos's?



other than "picking up materials that accumulated while sleeping" and "putting in more fuel", there really isn't much else for you to do.

Ok so tell me, how do the raw materials get from 1 pos to another, how do they get into the silos, how does the reaction get started and when needed everything cleared and another reaction get setup, how does the fuel get the 15 jumps from empire to the pos's?? Then on top of that because I run alchemy reactions (not everyone has R64's) everything needs to be hauled to a stationed system, processed then returned to the pos to be reacted.

PLEASE tell me there is a way to automate all those things to be done while I sleep, please please tell me how..

My opinions are mine.

  If you don't like them or disagree with me that's OK.- - - - - - Just don't bother Hating - I don't care

It really is getting harder and harder to justify $23 a month for each sub.