Crime & Punishment

Haha, indeed

Well, the difference between killing AFK miners and ganking mission runners lies in the fact that missions can be done in PvP capable ships. Groups of them, even. So if you're planning a New Order style crackdown on missioning in general, you're only really going to deter 'Hszqhfy' and their twelve alts in poorly defended CNRs running completely alone.

I'd still bet though that this guy was just solo running missions. A single target is much easier to completely overwhelm gang, for the most part (though then really that just escalates into 'then bring a bigger gang' in the end).

This is the fine line between what is unrealistic but needs to be there. If there was no security in missions against gankers, there wouldn't be any mission runners. All thoes flashy faction items wouldn't be there.

As far as i'm aware you're lucky if you earn 40M/hour as an L4 Mission runner, While incursions yield about 100M/Hour not considering the LP.

100 %

Low sec need to contend

More than anything it appears to me we most need a common starting point for evaluation. The numbers exist to break down an activity to fractions of Isk/Hr. That alone coupled to the relative price for 30 days of play can give us an hours per day of said activity for an account to pay for its self.

For the sake of discussion, let's set an arbitrary level of 5hr in hisec mining is the "correct" amount to pay for that day of play. So 500m/30days converts to about 16.6m/day. That is to say to pay for that accounts play for that day they must generate 16.6m. There for, assuming 5hr as a desired model for hisec, An account mining in hisec "should" be making between 3-4m an hour.

Seems very low but its really just an example. If you then put that analysis in perspective however, at 40m an hour missioning that same char can pay for 11 accounts with spare. That seems far far to high.

Thus back to my point. If we can agree on some mid ground where the hours spent per day should be for a given activity it becomes easy to agree where that activity belongs in terms of risk reward.

Additionally, if we want to say the debate is about subscription numbers for CCP it seems that it would be much wiser to make the availability of isk lower to force more players to either play more or pay more. CCP and the developers have all the tools to make rational adjustments to set the levels. Its really easy to do in fact by manipulating minerals needed (say as part of the tierocide) and adjustment of the minerals available in the given spots. Next adjust rat bounties and mission payouts to reflect the new desired level.

More than anything CCP can make sure that the changes have an obvious rationale and end all the demagogues ranting back and forth about safety this and reward that. Make them then yell at each other about the core issues of greed.

Need to correct a math error. @40m an hour you are only able to support 2+ accounts. Still far too much for the safety factors contributed by hisec.

Well so what'd you say is it should be like? a BS cost roughly 100-200M if you buy a Mega navy issue you'll have to spend ~8 hours missioning or mining, to get the hull. 3,2 Hours of incursions. How would people ever get the capital to do anything if it should take longer?

For myself the question is not a function of how long but of where. Lets run for a moment with the 8hr to get a Nav-Mega. For easy math lets say another 2hr to T2 mission fit it. So 10hr of mission running over a week would buy a T2 mission fit Navy Mega. If that is to be the case then the expectation should be reasonable that the Navy Megathron should NEED to be replaced every week for the average case.

Now granted a zero sum case like this is unrealistic but it high lights the systemic flaw. In Hisec that Mega is at (virtually) no risk now even without a safer hisec. So then each mission runner in this case is inflating the space money pool by that mega every week. This money then goes to supporting the 2 accounts as mentioned before. That second account which can then make enough isk to support 2 more. With competence thats 3 hulks and the orca to go with it. And so on to the extreme cases of the all automated belt clearing bot fleets o

If that was then moved to lowsec or some means of making that mega explode on a weekly basis I dont find that to be unreasonable. Particularly if the player sitting watching his mega has good odds of identifying the threat and escaping destruction. D-scan, Intel, scouts and things like that greatly improve survival and encourage group play as well.