Wormholes

Holy Bob! So much ******* around with ideas, some of them really hopelessly bad. Some people really don't have a clue.

Two (and a half) things are the issue with c5/c6 sites as it is.

1) The safest thing is to roll your holes and run your sites in a self contained bubble -always without mistake. You're an idiot if you don't do this.
2) You can run the same sites 4 days in a row - making you close your hole 4 days in a row now for safety
The 0.5 thing) Solo dread is a very viable method



Why are they issues?
1) Doesn't promote interaction with the outside. You are safe unless someone rolls into you - statistically unlikely esp in some tzs. Even then you can notice it and get out. Promotes very risk reduced gameplay. Yes, you have caps on field and blah blah but in reality your risk with the holes closed is very low.
2) Makes 1) even worse as it promotes 1) on a longer timescale. No incentive to go into the static when your home sites run out cause they don't run out that easily.
The 0.5 thing) I don't have an issue with solo dread because it can be easily multiboxable by a person or w/e. You can easily multibox the carrier+loki+dread style just as easily. Except the carrier+loki+dread is much closer to a real pvp fleet that solo dread - you have logi, a blap dread and subcap support already on field ready to go if someone drops. We should be promoting pve fleets as close as pvp as possible. Drop a couple subcaps on a solo dread and that's all she wrote when it runs out of stront.


Fixes:
1) Remove chaining of escals 4 days in a row. You are going to run out of home sites much faster. What do you do now? Sit with a thumb up your bum and pray to BOB to spawn new sites or go raid your static?
2) Increase the high class statics to take the mass of 4 caps and a smattering of subs before collapsing. Ie make it possible to put a carrier+loki+dread into the static and back home. Bonus points- discourages issue 1 as it's harder to roll yourself into little risk pve. But we'll be able to seed holes more easily! well too ******* hard - we have already demonstrated that it ain't that hard already to seed target holes anyways.

3?) Potentially change spawn points to semi random so solo dread not viable - I'd keep this one up the sleeve and see how fix 1+2 work. If those don't do it, roll this one out.



There you go. Now go fix the ******* poses, corp roles and rebalance the t3s. Make t3s able to be assembled in ******* wh space from the subs for the love of BOB and make them truly modular by allowing rigs to be refitted. Edit - forgot to add, delete data sites - not worth the time to probe them.

There you go, fixed wh space /sarcasm. Stop whining about boohoo too much isk being made. It's not how much but how you do it.
(cue penis jokes)

There will be many ways to game my suggestion, same for as any other. The higgs ravens places the onus on the bear to maintain scouting awareness. And they'll be making it home only if they survive exiting the site/tackle. They survive site/tackle your options are to try safe log or extract down the rabbit hole towards the unknown - much more fun/content right? You remembered to pack a probe scanner and probes on your moros right? And if you wanted to bear in the static it is likely it'd have more than 1 or two holes open - harder to close, more prone to mistakes, likely to run into someone else. Even if they roll everything but the way home now you have two systems to roll into for targets instead of one - your absolute risk doubled but your relative risk maybe didn't increase so much - at least it is something.

I agree the choices aren't brilliant but welcome to wh space - where you face bleak and hard choices rather than rolling yourself in the cocoon of your own hole.


The way I see it is that all the factors of how it is setup at the moment push you towards rolling yourself in and bearing up. My proposed changes flip that pushing you out of the hole. In a way that don't change core mechanics dramatically and act together more than one change by itself. We need push and pull mechanics, atm it's all pull into rolling to safety.



It won't change day two after patch but 3rd month in when they realise that the home hole is barren they will be starved for sites in the static cause they need the isk. The nice thing is that the potential isk remains similar or increases as you can roll for more sites while increasing your exposure.


And if you can't be ****** bookmarking the spawn just drop a carrier+loki+dread.

Back in the day, I lived with a group in a C2 and we used to run sites in our c4 static in pvp ships. This led to some of the best experiences/fights I have had in wormhole space as we often got jumped and almost always won!

If (and I hope they do) CCP change sites to encourage static farming and increase the mass to allow 4 cap jumps, most groups will bring 2 dreads + guardians, sub-cap support and active scouts. I don't see a problem with this as I think it gets wormhole PVE back to what it used to be - a blend of pve and pvp. Thus farmers will soon become good PVP'er.

However, I rarely run sites these days and I'm unsure how much extra you get from an escalation. Is it worth fielding 2 caps?

Making it so that you can get 4 caps with a WH will change nothing. People who want to use it to drop will still drop and will drop with one more cap than before. Rolling is not really harder. How many people can't field a few carriers for rolling? I can and we are small.

Making solo impossible? No one in their right mind lives in c5/c6s with just one account. again even our small corp on a quiet day can field 6 caps if we need to.

Also logoff traps are a thing and happen plenty. And so blobs in WHs are also a thing.

Random Spawn points. Hmm I like the idea of much more interactive rats. I mean if i can't find real PvP it would be kinda cool to be able to have gf with rats. However just buffing tank, DPS etc, or even random spawn points does not give us anything more. We just need to slightly adjust how we run the site. But within a few days, we would know how to run the site just as fast as before. And just as safely. Unless there was like sleeper Capitols. That would be crazy. Probably perma tank 3 dreads or something. But its just a DPS tank numbers game. Nothing interesting.

Keeping WHs open. Well now we just support bigger WH entities over smaller ones, who will just move out. I mean if we can't run sites we not going to keep the space . The bigger corps can always blob more *and* bubble WHs or have cloaky hics waiting at every entrance without even stressing how many pilots they need online before running anything.

Blue doughnut in WH space anyone? I mean its almost becoming a thing now.

I just lost a dread to LZHKs with a log off trap like 20mins ago. I was solo (5 accounts) since the rest of the corp is playing ark. The rapier i lost doesn't count since that was a lagged/ DC (Logged on in time for to see the pod getting shot and reaped at the same time).

They just farm Dread kills LZHK. No problem with that, risk reward and all that. But to make it something that doesn't affect bigger corps but kills us smaller corps, and WH space will just be another null. Lots of systems and nothing in any of them, unless your in a huge alliance you just stay away.

As it is with my RL commitments, I have really give some serious thought to sticking around in WH space. I either have to do a big recruitment drive (time intensive), join one of these boring WH alliance (ok so hard knocks could be ok), or pack up and give null a go or something.

Does everyone in this discussion understand the isk the farmers are making here?

Lets say you are starting from scratch and you have nothing. You need:
- 1x good dread pilot (~30b)
- 1x sitting/rolling dread pilot (~10b)
- 2x sitting/rolling carrier pilot (~15b)
- 1x scanner (assuming none of the above can do it) (~5b)
- 4x capitals (~15b)
- 1x setup (tower, fuel, structures etc) (~3b)
- 5x plex (to fund your 5 accounts) (~6b)

Total cost, ~85b and this is on the top end of what you'd expect to pay, realistically you can save 25-50% of this cost. Now, most of the cost of setup is never at risk (toon purchases), you are only risking some capitals (mitigated by logging off in them) and a tower.

In return, every time you run a site, counting blue loot, you get around 600m. You can run the same site 4 times. 2.4b. You can easily average, in c5 space, 10 sites a week. Weekly income? 24b. Using hero dread, its going to take from 15-30 minutes per site. If you are doing 10 sites, 4 times, thats 40 site-runs, or 10-20 hours over the week.

Monthly income from a C5 farm hole? 100b, or around 1.5-2.5b/hr

Now look back at the setup costs and running costs. Each month, you'll pay around ~6b for plexes, plus whatever replacements you need, say the entire fleet wipes every month and you have to setup a new tower (~18b), total profit for the month, in C5? 82b.

82b profit after replacing every capital, and the tower, and paying for plex. Every month.

And thats in C5 space, where you are relatively safe, there are plenty of empty systems to use and you are unlikely to get jumped.

If you move up to C6 space, which is (almost) entirely owned by renting alliances now, you can almost double that because the number of farmers and active holes significantly increases your individual site spawning rate, and averaging 20+ sites a week is easily achievable.

This isk flow has to stop. You must increase the risk of running capital escalations, without killing corps who rely on capital escalations at home to fund operations. Its the farmers who must be punished. Some of my (and others) earlier suggestions would do that.

- Increase connections to WH's that collapse their static
- Require an active, open, unmassed static WH before escalation waves spawn

If I would do cap spawns I would switch hero dread to 5-10 ravens. And still do cap spawns - income would be the same and you can do it on sem-afk.

Ok I have to ask, why did you have two webs on your nag?

Same group ware somewhere else two days ago, they just left a scout and came for you ;P



Most time I play almost alone and have plenty things to do.
Just avoid larger groups if you don't have enough ppl online. If they show weak points, hit them hard.
If they come for you, well new POS is cheap ;)

Out of my ass? Years of experience? Easily provable? Take your pick. I made all these numbers up during the course of the post. Feel free to dispute any of them.

10 sites a week is about the average we've seen since moving back to C5's (~6 months history).
20 sites a week is maybe a touch high for C6's, but the average C6 we connect to has lots of sites, and is populated by a farmer.
600m per site is a rough C5 estimate on blue loot, which is about average (some sites less, some more), based on personal knowledge of sleeper loot.
Capital prices are 'guestimates', based on what i pay when I buy my capitals, ~6b for a good hero dread moros, 3b for 2nd moros, 2b per carrier.
Character prices are 'guestimates' (I haven't done character trading since plexes were 200m each) and could be way out.
Tower/Mod costs are 'guestimates', but are an upper maximum.
Plex prices are based on 1.2b per, which is roughly right last i checked.
Time to run a hero dread site is based on watching farmers do it.

I mean, don't audit my figures, they aren't perfect, but they will all be within the ballpark.

The sites/week figure can probably be argued, depends on luck, how many others are running sites, etc, but its irrelevant to the argument. Hell, even if you halve that value, the profit is still amazing and the isk/hr doesn't change, just the total monthly profit changes.