Missions & Complexes

Hi everyone.

I'm proposing a few possible changes to data sites, because their current state is just sad. Let me try to structure why I think it is neccessary. Declaration: I do both ratting and exploration, more or less equally.

Proposals first (chose one or several):

A.) Give Exploration Sites a chance to drop loot that is not Salvage or Research-related. (who cares about millions of rigging skillbooks anyway?).

B.) Give Exploration Sites a chance to drop BPCs for faction ships or faction modules.

C.) Give Exploration Sites a bounty per hack.

D.) Make Scan Upgrade Mods lowslot

Now why:

*# XXX: A > B > C means: A greater B greater C
*Ratting means: Ratting/Missions/Combat Sites

ISK for effort
* Mining
Warp in, set up sentries, align out, mine. Try to be not too much afk. Do whatever else you like to do in the meantime, like market trading.
* Ratting
For ratting you'll get bounties, standing increases, loot, salvage and in case of missions even LP. Doable almost everywhere, move around a few systems and profit while shooting. Keep guard up obviously.
* Exploration
Move around a lot, scan down every single site, hack, keep guard up. Find way back.
ISK: Ratting > Mining > Exploration
# Effort: Exploration > Ratting > Mining

Method of profit
* Mining
Reprocess ores, sell almost everywhere.
* Ratting
Get bounties directly. Mission rewards too. Sell loot at market hubs or reprocess.
* Exploration
Sell stuff at market hubs.
# Easy cash: Ratting > Mining > Exploration

Needed level of activity
* Mining
While there is the chance of getting killed by other players, you can potentially be mostly afk.
* Ratting
You need to be active all the time. Plus: you'll quickly find targets.
* Exploration
You need to be proactive all the time. Minus: you'll spend a lot of time finding targets.
# less stressful: Mining > Ratting > Exploration

Time vs. ISK
* Mining
Steady mid-range income/hour.
* Ratting
Mostly steady mid-range to unsteady highest income.
* Exploration
Unsteady/unclear max. mid-range income.
# Profit/hour: Ratting > Mining > Exploration

Progression over time
* Mining
Grow your skilpoints, get better setups, profit more. Take risk by going into unfriendly areas, profit even more. You will make more ISK in safer areas if you progress your skills.
* Ratting
Grow your skillpoints, but also learn details of rat-adversaries, adapt, use better setups, take higher risk, get more efficient, profit more. The ISK per specific rat/mission will not change, so by higher skills alone you won't make more profit.
* Exploration
Grow your skillpoints, get more efficient (at finding sites first and foremost), get better setups, take higher risk, profit (a bit) more. It's a hard cap which absolute height you reach in a few months.
# ISK-Progression: Ratting > Mining > Exploration

Amount of opportunities
* Mining
Everywhere in known space: Asteroid belts. Anomalies (no need to scan down) in Wormholes and known space. Lower sec status equals higher value ores.
* Ratting
Everywhere in known space: Asteroid belt rats, Anomalies. On chance+scan: Signatures. Many systems in known space apart from Non-NPC-Nullsec: Missions. Lower sec status equals higher difficulty but also higher value targets (both bounties and loot). Exception: Level 4 missions in highsec can pay very well too. If you don't find Anoms/Sigs you'll always find Belt rats.
* Exploration
Only on chance+scan: Signatures. Move a lot.
# Mining > Ratting > Exploration

Need for specific setups limiting offense/defense
* Mining
Special ships are needed to do efficient mining. Defense can be still good, offense limited.
* Ratting
You can't do all sites with one fit, one for efficiency, two for pocketgates, three for different rats. Well, the last point is mostly irrelevant because you don't need to move around that much to find a decent amount of opportunities. When going for higher-value ratting people use certain T3 or T2 fits in which you can do many different sites. If hybrid PVP/E fit, you won't excel at either, but not completely suck either.
* Exploration
Need specific ships to be efficient, plus Probe Scanner and at least three mid-slots to be effecient. Limits offense/defense capabilites a lot. Also SOE BS hull is not for exploration.
# Better def/off capabilities: Ratting > Mining > Exploration

Risk of losing ships vs. the environment
* Mining
Very low if you prepare for rats that will come once in a while.
* Ratting
If you know what you're doing there is a very small chance to lose a ship to rats. Possibly there are exceptions like Burner missions or certain Incursions.
* Exploration
No risk in normal sites. Low chance in sleeper sites. If you're lucky enough to find a ghost site, the chances of ship-loss increase, because failing a hack will kill most ships and staying around just a tiny bit to long will do the same.
# Safer PVE: Mining > Ratting > Exploration

Risk of losing ships vs. other players
* Mining
Ganking and being caught pants-down in lower sec.
* Ratting
You'll fly a combat-fit ship. At the very least you're able to shoot back and have somewhat of a tank. In Highsec blingy ships are prone to be ganked. In Null/Low it depends how many hostiles can actually manage to stay around. Combat Scan needed for missions/escalations. Still, often considered juicier targets.
* Exploration
You can't stay in one place, so no safe-havens. Sites are easily scanable. But smaller ships are less easy to catch.
# Safer in Highsec Exploration > Ratting > Mining
# Safer in lower sec: all depends if friends dominate the area > Exploration (you need to move a lot for profit)

Data sites are a joke.

Just had an hour and a half long wormhole trip. Firstly scanning for appropriate WH, scanning around 15 signatures and running sites.

Found 6 sites, all data. There was not a single relic site. It kinda speaks for itself. Most probably somebody cleared relic sites and didnt even bothered. Its quite common occurance.

Anyway I cleared all 6 sites and total loot was 15 millions. Thats 2.5m per site on average. Over an hour long trip. And this is not an odd incident.

Most serious explorers I talked with, doesn't bother with data sites. There is a reason for that.

Seems like an only option for any serious non-combat explorer, is to focus not only solely on relic sites but also doing exploration in one specific part of space(sansha).



As for proposed changes, I think best solution would be to add to Data sites a very small chance to find some rare valuable item(s) like BPCs.
Bounty per hack is intresting suggestion, but I still prefere the first option, keeps the opening cans more thrilling.
Not sure what the purpouse of making scan upgrade mods fit onto low slots.

From my point of view relic sites give much profit and buffing them is not a good idea.
Data sites need some improvements like higher rate for some T2 bpc's or fraction bpc's.

The only thing that makes me sad - is that Drone regions have only data sites and they do not generate profit at all. So at least some interesting things should be added there.

Data sites (hi-end ones) provide in general more isk than relics.

Sleeper caches, ghost sites, drone data, and if i remember correctly Silent Battleground are all data sites.

However, they are also the more difficult ones, with the greater risk of losing the ship, so maybe that's why ppl are not too interested in them.

Because it is a player driven market, CCP can't just magically make items worth more. For useful items, they can influence the cost by balancing the supply - e.g. Decrease the drop rate decreases supply which should increase price and this is what they did in the recent buff. This does not apply to the high-tech loot though as it is currently not used for anything so reducing the supply will not increase the market value.

CCP have been saying for a while that they will be useful eventually but so far, nada.

While I agree most profession/data sites are garbage I am in total disagreement that you are taking much risk at all in running them (even most with rats are easy in SOE hull). Any player with about 1 month training tops can run 90% of exploration prof sites in low sec. That in itself is what killed off exploration because it's so damn easy, risk free and accessible now. I beg you to go back to the days where you had to warp to every single planet and drop a probe, not long after that time when the probes got first over haul exploration was at it's finest. It was not super easy to scan down sites and many had rats while you also didn't have all these easy exploration hulls that really removed all risk of doing prof sites.
Not many people done it effectively prior to that because it was hard and more risky. That meant the market was not flooded with salvy and other loot. From that point exploration went down hill, I remember spending a full month in low sec and made very little.. then I went to high sec, ran a single 4/10 and made 500mil. They very rightfully nerfed that HS bs (last I checked) but they didn't do a great deal to make low sec worth the risk.

If you want to make decent isk in low sec you have to take risks that are not actually worth the reward. It's actually pirates or low sec corps who have their own little corner of space cut off that make the most from it (that means they take little risk in running the more lucrative sites) and that's contrary to what exploration is about. Genuine explorers (usually solo) have to risk far more than is worth or take the safer option and run the sht out of prof sites (as we see).

I also dislike your dismissive attitude toward other means of isk making. To effectively run L4 missions or mine to any decent level of profit you need months upon months of training and quite possibly the need for a pos in the mining case (then leaching into many more months of training for production to further increase profits).
Mission runners who try to maximize profits use blitz fit faction ships that are always at risk to some griefers boredom. The best isk from missions is to be made blitzing for LP. Problem is when many people do that (and they do) the LP simply degrades in value. The only thing that appears to be worth while now is SOE lp farming (last I checked) but that is almost entirely dependent on the popularity of exploration, Ironically. But then exploration in turn ruined the salvy market for mission runners. That means lower level mission runners take a huge isk hit because they don't have high enough skills to properly blitz missions yet make very little from farming missions, 10 to 15mil per hour tops if low sp. Maybe 20 mil for avg skills and a decent mission. Mining is a hugely catered to market because as you said it's ''easy''. It is certainly not easy to maximize mining profits because you then also need to get into production and pos as I said, then into marketing buy/sell orders and so forth.. it's more work than exploration and missions put together to maximize.



And this is the end problem with exploration. The prof sites are far too accessible and very low sp requirement and risk.. so the market is flooded with all of it's loot. The more profitable exploration requires too much risk for a genuine explorer, you will spend more time running from pirates than running sites.

Pirates or those who have cut off their own piece of low/nul are the only real ones who benefit enough from exploration to rival mission blitzing because they have drastically reduced the risk factor of being killed/chased out of combat or harder prof sites.


The core problem of most low sec prof sites is that they are too easy due to mostly having no rats now. Changing the loot table is a joke.. you don't deserve to have a random high value drop for something as easy as cov-ops scanning and a simple hacking game.

As I've said above, the stuff that is profitable is on the opposite end of the spectrum, it's too hard and risky for a solo explorer.

So basically, increase the entry difficulty and reduce the ceiling difficulty. They are both at the opposite ends of extreme right now.