Missions & Complexes

the fit above is full neut fit, full slave won't do any good

Warning: Incoming wall of text taking up two posts.

The shield HQ/AS incursion community (The Valhalla Project) is still managing to move along, but it increasingly feels like we're taking war refugees. Frankly we'd be suffering too, if it weren't for having something resembling stable leadership, and running the least nerfed sites. The double/triple nerf to almost all incursion sites is way beyond what was needed or expected. As other incursion community leaders have stated already, the communities are suffering. Here's my take on why, from the (yet another) perspective of a shield HQ FC and community leader.

Incursions overall, of all flavors, were hit hard by the influence bar. Upwards of 100 people need to be actively running sites to keep the incursion bar down, and it takes forever to actually lower it to 0. If incursions were created today, they would never be touched for this reason alone. Low-sec and null-sec incursions are not being run now due to this very reason as well. Too much risk, for basically no reward relative to null ratting, plexes, etc. High-sec groups are being pushed together, but the shear effort and manpower needed to get anywhere with the influence bar is rather daunting.

VANGUARDS:
I run these the least, as I find the larger sites to be more fun, so this is less experience speaking, and more opinion gathering. They were nerfed the most, being hit with a triple hit in the form of the influence bar, reduced payout, and a huge spawn increase. One, maybe two of these would have been fine, if done with some thought. I like challenging sites, it makes folks think, and actually allows skilled pilots/FC's to get somewhere, but what you guys did was just up the tediousness of them.

Nation Commander Outpost (NCO): So there's more stuff to blow up, and legion fleets can't blitz them quite as insanely. At the end of the day though, it's just a turkey shoot. You need one site like that for all of them, at least as a simple introduction to the site size. Still tedious. Maybe a tad more randomization/threatening ships, but less overall ships. Honestly not sure.

Nation Mining Colony (NMC): A bit more diversity, as you have to do something other than blow up ships to get paid. Still a point and shoot kinda shindig though. Gets tedious quickly like NCO's though.

Override Transfer Array (OTA): These just went from being near the best, to being the crippled old man of Vanguards. While I have no issues with increased complexity/hardness/whatever, you guys made this a tad too hard for folks to get anywhere. 100km to travel for the hacking array makes specialization for this site a *****. You have to have a ship dedicated to this and nothing else, which at a fleet size of 10 is just silly. Has potential to be actually fun, but went a bit too far into the hard realm. Move the hack point closer to the spawn, and perhaps remove a few DPS ships.

ASSAULTS:
These are where I have a bit more experience. I still run HQ's the most, but I've been running Assaults more since the patch. Overall, these are just the bastard child of incursions. No one really runs them, as they were effectively double nerfed over the patch. Some shiny folks run them, but as soon as you hit NCN walls, you run into problems. Your patch notes from Escalation stated assaults would be buffed, which frankly didn't happen. I'm getting more info in the near future, as I hope to run them more.

Overwhelmed Civilian Facility (OCF): You added ships to the spawns. This makes them harder, not easier. You also have to blow up every ship on the field, which is just annoying. The civilian picking up is nice and has potential, but needs improvement. I'd suggest having captured civilians spawn from any ship, not just the romi's/last ship on grid from a wave. In addition, have larger ships give more captured civilians. Lastly, make it so that you have to defend the freighter as it leaves, and give the freighter the align/warp time of an actual obelisk (AKA forever). As all of that only really adds time, make more civilians spawn from the waves, and allow the civies to be dropped sooner. You could also change payout to index with the number of civies rescued.

Nation Commander Stronghold (NCS): While normally a semi-boring "shoot **** till it dies" site, randomized spawns and more threats, plus the larger fleet size makes this a bit more fun. Still not the manifestation of entertainment though. Maybe bring in logistics arrays, like OTA or Mom sites, in combination with a bit more incoming DPS, and change the commander spawn condition to be something other than his standing fleet being massacred.

Nation Consolidation Network (NCN): There are reasons these flood assault systems. Namely, we hate them. No, we don't hate them, we want to murder them, burn the corpse, and then curse NCN's entire bloodline. Split site was an inventive idea, except it is taxing on FC's (you need two of them), you drastically limit fleet comp (1 side doesn't take battleships), and it takes for ever to run the sides. Tier 3 Battlecruisers help quite a bit with the fleet comp problem, but they still take quite a while to run. If you guys wanna help, remove a room from each side, and allow T2 BC's into the cruiser side. I'm of the opinion that this site is hopeless, though. Split site goes against the grain of the whole group thing, splitting the fleet into two separate fleets.

And now, for HQ's! Only I'm running out of space in this post, so post number 2 here I come!

I think you will find that this will sit in a guristas santum all ******* day.... what is there to haul ?? Refine factory is in damn system and all loot is repro-ed and used to make Bc and BS and sold for extra 50 - 60m.... Dont BS me - this work very well for me and i live in a null sec alliance doing this all freakin day.... Thats the damn eco system working right there so make use of it, the gap between high and null is wide enough your just too damn lazy to realise it.

PS: Tengu fit .... nice bot.

Pubbie test is now using the liine of im in a NPC corp, LOL.... you know full well that what i speak is accurate and now your using the "that money making is market trading" bullshit..... But i thought living in null sec was all about creatng eco systems where ISK / Hour should be greater than in high sec..... - the activity i describe is what you should be doing instead of running your blob JF's backwards and forwards from Jita every day.... thats lazyness right there.

PS: thats an activity completed solo by the way

The 10% additional nerf was unnecessary and people have stopped doing them nearly completely. I can earn the same amount doing missions in high sec with much less risk.

I took a short break from the incursion community and helped my alliance settle a Wh, then went back and did some incursions about a month ago. So I've not been "Farming" incursions. And when I go to incursions I run in Assault fleets and higher. So I'm not doing the "Grinding" that every incursion runner is charged with.

Also, you say that I lost 2 battleships as if it was nothing, did you look at some of the modules destroyed. An officer web worth at current guess 2.5 billion isk, A-type EANM's worth 1 billion T2 rigs on all but 1 of the ships. Both guardians fitted with A-type adaptive nano platings.

I do other things than just incursions, I also pvp from time to time... I'm not an "Isk hoarder" another charge for most incursion runners, think I've got just under a billion isk liquid at the moment.

OTAs have the same problem now, as if they weren't hard enough for the average player, now you need an over-tanked anchor with overheated invuls.

TL;DR:

• Vanguard changes haven't stopped pirate BS blitz fleets in highsec but have hurt 'regular' highsec pickup fleets and lowsec HAC/T3 fleets
• Increasing Vanguard payouts by 10% would bring highsec blitz income close to previous levels while not appreciably helping other fleets
• Assault changes missed the mark - problem was and remains the NCN sites, not NPC grouping or difficulty
• To make assaults more attractive, reduce number of rooms in NCNs and allow Command Ships into the cruiser rooms

Wall of text:
I disagree with the claim that the Vanguard changes have somehow stopped blitzing; if anything, they've significantly increased the gap in earning power between pirate BS-heavy blitz gangs and other fleet types. Highsec pirate BS blitz fleets now get through sites in 4-6 minutes, while both 'regular' pickup fleets and the HAC/T3-heavy fleets that were most commonly used for lowsec incursions now take 10 minutes+ per site. This is largely due to the Override Transfer Array sites - while pirate BS fleets can punch through the NPCs' reps without needing to hack, other fleet types cannot. Reversing the 10% income change would bring the blitz fleets' income close to pre-nerf levels while not really helping other fleets all that much. Ultimately, I don't think it's going to be possible to prevent players from min-maxing fleet compositions and tactics to minimize site completion times unless you're willing to introduce some kind of hard lower boundary on site completion times, such as a boss NPC who only spawns after a specific amount of time has passed.

As for assaults, I think your comments and changes both miss the mark. The main source of complaints, before and after the changes in Escalation, was that the Nation Consolidation Network site is a giant pain in the ass, being much slower to complete than the other two assault sites and requiring a much more specifically-tailored fleet composition. You didn't really do anything significant to address that, and the changes you did make had little impact on running assaults one way or the other. If you want to make assaults more attractive, you're going to have to do something about the NCN. Ideally, this would be done by having only one cruiser-only and one BS-only room before the final room in which the fleet re-unites, with an increased number of NPC waves in the two rooms where the fleet is separated. In addition, I would encourage you to allow Command Ships into the cruiser rooms, since they are more useful than most cruiser hulls in the other assault sites, and so would make it less of a drag to get an NCN-capable fleet together.

+1 for everything he said in his previous post.

More QQ, Oh this doesn't surprise me.