Missions & Complexes

I agree that all professions should be avaiable from day 1. You've made good point with security missions but...to run higher level of missions you must invest SP. Its not that i will just do them more effectively, because i can't do lvl 4 with a frigate. Yet I can do low sites or even null without good explo skills and in cheap ship. Difficulty is not connected to SP of my clone. Where's the balance?

I think the idea to open exploration for the masses was good thing, but i feel it was like "its new and its easy, try it now!".

You can do it in a cheap ship with poor skills, even in nulsec, yes. But the newbie won't make nearly as much isk/hour as a skilled character (and a skilled player) in a covops with T2 modules. It will take the newbie much longer to scan down the sites in the first place, and some of them they simply won't be able to get to 100%. Of the sites they find, they will fail the hacking minigame often, both from player mistakes and from simply not having enough virus coherence and virus strength to beat it.

Newbie with hacking 3 in a magnate with a t1 data analyzer: Coherence=70, Strength=30
Pr0 with hacking 5 in a covops with a t2 data analyzer: Coherence=110, Strength=40
(I didn't include rigs and implants, because they help both the newbie and pro equally, and the pro is more likely to know they exist.)

That strength difference may not seem like much, but it is the difference between taking down a Firewall in 2 turns instead of 3 turns. Getting hacking and archaeology to V to get the T2 modules made a huge difference for me.

The covops cloak is also a great help for survivability in nulsec space, so the pro will be safer while they do all this than the newbie.



It isn't like hacking in nulsec is the top of the profession. If you have combat and scanning skills you can run sites in wormholes. Or you can get a Stratios, quickly scan down relic and hacking sites, and just kill any explorers that are running around in unarmed frigates.

The goal is to sell loot and make isk, right? The goal of most PVE activities is to make isk. And, in general, a highly skilled character is able to make more ISK/hour. In exploration a highly skilled character will make much more isk/hour than a newbie. The system works.


I like that exploration doesn't hold your hand and point out "you must be this tall to ride" like many other activities. There are many sites a newbie won't be able to scan down to 100%, but they'll never know unless they try. There absolutely are many cans a newbie won't be able to open based on how many unavoidable barriers are between the start and end point, but it doesn't tell you which ones. Even if you learn which cans are usually the most difficult, occasionally you'll win the lottery and find the system core in just a few clicks. The mystery is half the fun.

Yep half the job already done for us. I don't mind anoms showed on system scanner but signatures should be hide from players. Basically if they merge old way to scan signatures with odyssey probes managing it would be supa fun.

Hmm. If it kills exploration stone dead, there must be fewer people doing it now than were doing it a year ago, right? I wonder if that is the case.

Heh, yeah, you caught me. Hyperbole makes me silly.

Honestly having exploration sites show up the moment you enter a system is a bit silly. I wouldn't object at all to having to drop probes in every system to see what is there. The one preset probe formation actually seems to exist for finding "is there anything in this system" and doesn't make much sense the way it works now. Does anyone even use that formation for anything now?

The only "elite" thing I really object to putting rats back in exploration sites. One of the complaints about loot spew is that it is a third mini-game and 3 mini games to get your loot is too many. Rats are also just another mini game standing between the explorer and their loot. When I tried exploration as a wee newbie years ago I didn't fit a combat capable ship, I used a fast ship, kited the rats out 200k away from the cans, then warped back to hack the cans, repeat as necessary. It was slow and boring and not a good mini game at all, much worse than loot spew.

Exploration encompasses more than just data and relic sites.

From a game play standpoint removing rats only ensured most explorers were ill prepared if a hostile ship entered the site.
From a lore perspective, removing rats from data sites makes no sense as they are still "active" sites with techinology that one should want to protect.

Most of the changes to exploration was okay, being able to detect signatures and anomalies without having to drop probes is fine. People was doing more or less the same with the old system and DSP, the only difference was they had a really good idea of what sites the signatures contained with a 1 probe system scan.

The old system gave players who a lot of skillpoints invested in scanning skills some unique advantages, removing DSP and adding the system scanner reduced the sp advantage of older players. That combined with removing T3 cruisers from 4/10 sites, i think was two of the better changes.

Simple answer is you don't. When rats used to be in Hack/Relic sites (or Radar/Mag as they used to be known), nobody used CovOps for exploration. It was all about the Tengu back then... in the hoary old days of Exploration... when men were Men, and we would fight to take what we wanted... *strokes beard and takes a puff from his pipe*

Really though, bringing back rats on warp-in would be a fairly terrible idea.

Here's an idea... Make the sites use an "alarm system" where once it gets to a certain level, then NPC rats start showing up. Every time a ship warps into the site the alarm goes up a bit, every click in the mini-game the alarm increases (so doing it efficiently matters - game would still need some work though), every time an offensive module triggers (web, scram weapons, etc) the alarm goes up ALOT, etc. Just an idea. *shrug*

That would be okay if they removed the ability to scan containers before you hack them. Otherwise it would just lead to more jerks cherry picking the best cans and leaving the junk for the next guy. Jerks!