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To crosspost from another whine thread on that same topic - I'm one of (if not the) largest contract trader in Eve today. I have no problems with this change. Deal with it.

RE: Incursion balancing

I love that incursions are getting looked at, and have no real qualms with how VGs are looking on sisi right now. I would agree that assaults did take a step in the wrong direction though. Somewhat randomized spawns are great, but they are not really dangerous as-is. (Well, they never really were but now is the time to change that!) My suggestions are:


Specialized waves :
Waves should have a chance to have specialized squads of ships, as in 3-4 of a certain kind. For example, an ewar wave with 4 Arnon Epithalimus, or 3-4 Outuni Mesen, in addition to the other 'normal' parts of the wave.

Bigger waves

If a wave has less than 12 ships or so, it's far too easy. It doesn't really matter what they are, There needs to be a good number of sansha on the field after a new spawn or sites will just be extremely faced paced and easy. Edit: I guess it does kind of matter what they are. Ideally in assaults I'd like to see a minimum of 4-5 battleships, 4-7 cruisers, and 2-6 frigs. Obviously certain combinations in those numbers will be incredibly deadly, and I think that is awesome.

More danger than ever before

I want risk of death to be a very real thing in incursions. Otherwise they get boring and stagnant and yet another grind of monotony. Even with the new changes to vanguards, there's still really not enough danger. Most fleets never need to worry about losing a ship unless there is massive lag or disconnects etc. and I honestly think this is wrong. In almost two years of FC'ing incursions I have only ever had 2 ships explode in my fleets. That may sound cool and something to brag about, but I think it's terrible. It just goes to show that there is no real challenge in this cool feature. But there could be.

AI should swtich targets more often, target logistics with more ewar, and spread fire to make things harder for the logistics. Sansha should be able to use tracking disruptors as well, possibly even sensor damps. Some ships could stand to have their damage output increased a little as well. Renyn Meten are absolutely useless, all they really do is web but they could stand to pack a bit of a punch.


TL:DR

More rats in spawns
More jamming and neuts in waves
Better AI, Targettng logistics and splitting DPS to make it harder for them
A bit More damage output from weaker sansha ships
Even in experienced fleets people should have a real chance of death
Eve is about risk vs reward. Where's the risk?

You're lack of isk flow says otherwise.

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but now columns on the overview have a fade effect at the right hand edge.

I already find it quite hard to keep the screen clutter free (at 1920x1200), and it just makes a bit worse if I'm forced to keep the overview a bit bigger. This just doesnt seem like something to me that adds much in the first place in terms of UI polish

Yes Darth, we have an active community, or at least trying to be, in Sisi testing sites as much as possible.
The NCN is still the same mechanics of split fleet and 2 sides though.

Thank you for all items on market

I see this as one more isk drain too (market taxes).

I see that only things that cant be on market are illegal things.
Illegal/contraband items are only logical items to not to be on market, all others don't have a reason not to be there.



About market marks - they are a little blah... :/


And about Incursions - You completely ****** up Assaults - They are just too easy.

Regarding meta5+ items on the market.

It simply makes sense. Contracts are for multiple items, contraband, fitted ships.

Every single module should be market-tradable otherwise.

It's a big boon to the average capsuleer, who now has much less trouble selling his loot.
Also: newer players will now actually find the shiny, cheap higher meta modules (c-type prop modules, armor repairers, ANPs, you know...).

Does it effect the contract trading profession negatively? Yes. I made a nice side-income on that as well. But as market-pvpers we are flexible anyway... moving on to other green pastures.

CCP, please keep in mind that 'making sites more difficult' does not mean 'let's drive the logi-pilots crazy, while the DPS and snipers can continue to doze off"

Some ideas:
- random mini-waves during spawns (so it's not simply 'clear the tags and pop the 'J' for the next wave')
- NPC support like dampeners and neuting influencing a lot of the ships in the fleet at once so it can't be ignored as easily
- more variation in NPC abilities, examples:

RR NPC and high Alpha snipers that need to be jammed to deal with effectively, high-speed kiting NPC that need to be 'caught' and webbed. DPS cruisers and frigates MWD-ing in from range, requiring painting&popping before they get close, waves that specifically focus on taking out drones (run, drone-bunny, run!), short-range sentries forcing the fleet to relocate and snipe, NPC with smartbombs, NPC with drones, NPC with boosters, NPC that need to be neuted, NPC with damage holes, etc.

Maybe some more objective-oriented missions like defending NPC ships or defending a site for as long as possible with increasing waves, multiple goals in a site forcing fleets to split up, 'gear-check' objectives, sites that require interceptors to scramble targets, etc.

I think adding 'secondary objectives' for extra pay-out is a nice way to vary and balance the difficulty and payout of sites.

Still, long-term, the best way to make Incursions more challenging is to make the NPC 'smarter'. Sure, incursion rats are a step up from belt rats, but it's na very big step. Simply shuffling the makeup of the waves a bit, isn't going to change much.

I like the Vanguard changes.
OTAs are back in line with how they used to be, as opposed to triple deltole blitzes.

Assaults still have to be tweeked a bit more imo, otherwise CCP has basically switched ridiculously easy VGs for ridiculously easy Assaults.

On SISI we were able to complete assault sites in a 15 person fleet with 3 logis (same as required in vanguard sites) at 100% Sansha influence without much difficulty. We even had faction navy spawns aggressing us and were able to tank those too!

I do highly appreciate the NCN gate tweeking though :)

Overall I think there's a little bit more work involved for FC's now, which is a good thing.

Hello! Me again

I've been testing sites since the last post, trying to keep fleets going for as long as possible. Mostly vanguards, but quite a bit of assaults as well

After running some sites, with different people from different incursion backgrounds, the main issue remains that assaults seem to be too watered down. No real challenge or risk, to the point our fleet would match a regular TQ fleet with 1 less logi and 4 less combat ships on grid

This sounds funny, but our 3 logistics inside an NCS were keeping the fleet alive from the Sansha thread as well as the Gallente Navy all at the same time, without losses. My point is, that the Nation Commander Stronghold, one of the hardest sites, is too easy, even at 100% influence and penalties. Time per sites hovered around the 17-18 minute mark with the full penalties and lacking 4-5 pilots on grid per site

Concerning vanguards, sites seem OK in my opinion. They require more concentration from the fleet and take slightly longer, but it is doable. Takes slightly longer, or a slightly larger fleet, but they're fine - to be fair, though, it will take some time adjusting to the changes and getting to learn the sites

One last thing to add to today's little update on the rebalanced incursions. Fleet members felt, or at least the general feeling was that it felt like grinding the assault site, instead of having any risks or threats. This last point was fairly obvious on the NCS (aforementioned). Regularly, on the current version of Assaults, the spawn can be 6 initial ships all the way to the full spawn. Now it is 5 or 6 ships, then a second quarter spawn, then a third then a fourth; Sansha little chunks of fleet engaging a fleet 3 times it size. This is not challenging in any way, sorry