EVE General Discussion

Information after the event doesn't sell it to me as a distributor of your game content - if I don't install the ihub upgrades we have no way to tell how many fewer of these sites will appear. With no way to predict the addition or absence of game content. With no way to predict and then evaluate usage, why am I going to run the titan and freighter ops to ship in hundreds of upgrades for this and then expend man days rolling them out?

I'm the player you need to sell this game content to first. I need reasons to kick off the project. So far you've given me nothing.

I AM your enabler and instigator for multiple regions in eve.

AGGGH - no - please - all I have in Eve is my cloaky pilgrim.. not that...please not that.

Don't think at all about cloaking -......it's not broken and I love it more than my wife (easy)

I promise never to post anything negative or have tears again...but please...no.....oh god no.......

You were talking about tracking usage so I presumed you were talking about data collection on activities you were carrying out or things that were publically accessible but not easily aggregated currently as a rule. As you note you'll still need information after the event to determine if your predictions are correct so it's still something that should be accessible.

In terms of prediction could you spell out what you'd like to see so it's clear what we're talking about.

As part of your research into this topic you will have datamined current ihub upgrade numbers and seen how few Suvery Networks and Entrapment Arrays are installed compared with Pirate Detection Arrays and Ore Porcessing Arrays.

Pirate Detection Arrays mechanics are well defined. Alliances can predict the income derived from them and their usage. They can decide when it is worth installing them, and how much it is reasonble to collect from them in corp taxes or rental fees. Even had CCP not made these numbers public, alliances could roll a few out and derive the numbers they need to justify installing them using observation andthe apis.

Ore Prospecting Arrays are similar, though alliance income is much harder to collect. CCP didn't reveal as much about these as they did in the blog posts advertising the PDAs, but organized groups were able to study the mechanics and write reports (see the slighly out of date Bloodtear Industry Report https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=109125) which allow the rest of us to determine whether to use them. Alliances are less enthusiastic about these, in large part due to the ease of smuggling and tax avoidance. Dozens of refineries in empire are the best place to refine your compressed ore blocks if your alliance tax is higher than 0.3%. No direct corp or alliance income erodes the enthusiasm for these, the local refinery tax being so trival to evade, but sovereignty data can be used to work out the potential ore extracted within some relatively wide bands, and the logistics involved in mass mining operations make identifying the groups using the site and charging them fees practical though not trivial.

None of this applies to Survey Network and Entrapment Arrays. The mechanics of the upgrades are not well known, despite some very time consuming projects to determine their effect. The income from the upgrades is nigh on impossible to calculate and even harder to collect. With the removal of the identifiable rats, you can't even tell from the API whether any of them have been run, nevermind who ran them. The game content they create suits the passing ninja plexer, who comes into system, scans it, runs it and leaves, with the owning allinace or corp gaining nothing. The old static plexes they replaced at least had the benefit of spawning in a fixed system at downtime so control of them could be fought over.

If you want us, the alliance leaders, to spend real life manweeks on installing these upgrades, give us an incentive, in information, if not in revenue.

CSM8 contains some very experienced null sec alliance leaders, Mynnna and Kesper especially. You should talk to them. It will be worth your time.

Hey Mynas :P

Tell CCP to look at this http://www.spacechemthegame.com, especially when using it for Reactions, now THAT would be interesting.

In his defense, as stated, once you click on one can it takes a few seconds to drag in back. You could easily have an alt 1000m further back to catch other cans, so you'd click, and while one can is being tractored, alt-tab and grab another, then repeat, so yea, you would "grab" faster.

It should be up to a player how much time/effort to expand, as long as it's in a controlled matter. if say 10 cans pop out, the most valuable 5 will account for say 60% (3/5) of profit, the other 5 for the remaining 40% (2/5), how valuabale a can is may be told from the scanner - and if current scanners can list by item every item in a Freighter, pretty sure they'd have no trouble with old ships.

You would then have to invest time in hacking each can individually, as people with higher invested skills and more expensive modules would be able to do a better job, encouraging more blingy ships and greater risk of loss.

Most would settle in hacking the more valuable cans only, while poorer players may sit there and hack them all, but this way, the effort is player decided, rather then (and I'm being facetious here) missing out cause my cat jumped on my lap.

The "loot Pinata" as everyone calls it, breaks immersion in a BIG way for me. Surely I'd mount a Net Caster Module after the 3rd time I find out these places just launch stuff at me. Multiple hack mini-games would still use effort, stop botting and increase players sense of achievement.

You're still going to share those rewards with the same gang.

I don't see missions forcing mission runners to share loot to get all the rewards. Currently the price you pay for solo is time invested.

There shouldn't be an implied law that every single action in Eve should be done as a group. There shouldn't be a mechanic that physically forces it in order to be sucessful at a site.

The loot barf/loot pinata idea is the only real problem.

Just have the loot eject... there's no need for it to randomly shoot off all willy-nilly, nimbly-bimbly.

er.. i posted a long post and erased in error so to precis -

Eve exploration has a Je Ne Sais Quoi that will lie forever beyond the understanding of those driven by statisitcs and loot tables.
It doesnt need to be altered to attract people who need to" bypass all the boring exploration" for a wad of loot - these people are undesirable riff raft, probably from null sec alliances who do strange boring hidden things in POS's that don't really interest me either.