Market Discussions

This is complete rubbish.

The devs are trying to create a null sec where conflict ISN'T driven by moon drivers. The last few CSM minutes confirm that they really do not like the fact that entities will go shoot a pos into reinforcement to get a bigger fight the when it comes out of reinforcement.

When things are dependant on an entity you will find that the price paid is significantly higher. The reason for changing the need of the R64's in the first place was because alliances had become stagnant living in their turf and being able to fund entire fleets from holding a mere handful of these moons. By changing the need for the R64's and increasing the number of moons that have a R64 resource we are heading back to a similar situation of 2008.

Darling

If you are going to post a reply to my thread make sure you include the whole post that includes your statement of



The only person that is "being utterly clueless" is you. Go read the CSM minutes and you might discover that time and time again they do not want moons being the catalyst for conflict.

On a larger scale it's sad that you reverted to personal attacks. If someone doesn't agree with your posting then perhaps put your point across differently.

Or they are a sign of a weak argument.

Hmmmm...I didn't exactly want to imply that they thought it would directly lead to "more fighting", a hard thing to quantify and predict for nullsec, rather that having the vast majority of the value in a few (couple) regional moons is generally a suboptimal set-up for conflict and politics in general, or even just a general sense of "fairness".

You're probably correct with it being a side-effect of a bigger picture. I went back and reread the blog, and it jives with what you're saying more than my memory of it initially suggested.

The "blue doughnut" has always been a bit of a misnomer and if you've been paying attention to politics you'll realize that segments of it are on the verge of tearing each other apart anyway. The redistribution of the moons causing conflict is, as I said, a bonus rather than a goal, but it is going to be like throwing gasoline onto the embers that are forming, too.

I agree 100%, But then CCP went and f**ked it all up by changing hidden belts to anomalies.

This may seen like a small insignificant piece to the puzzle. But I believe it is the straw that will break the camels back.

Looking at this from a former null sec miners perspective.

Nobody mines in null sec static belts.

Why?

Because any time a non blue ship jumps into the system you have to dock up. You do not know if they will warp to the belt or not.

So null sec miners mine in the hidden belts. This has several advantages.

1st - of all you get higher value ores, so more isk/hr when mining.

2nd - if you watch D-scan you do not have to safe up unless you see probes on D-scan. Any potential threats will have to
scan you down before they can find you.

With these new changes several issues that hold back null sec industry have been addressed. Manufacturing slots are far more readily available. Ore compositions have been adjusted to address the shortage of low end minerals in null sec. These are great changes, these alone would have been a good buff to null sec industry.

But then we have the nerf to mining in the same patch. If the system was perfectly balanced before I could see the need for a nerf to offset the buff, But it was not balanced, and this nerf will make the over all system worse than we have now.

Lets consider how null sec mining works, as far as risk to being ganked.

A mining ship has no combat capability aside from a flight of drones. fine for rats, but useless for PVP. any PVP ship passing through can tackle and kill any mining ship, the mining ship has no chance of survival once the fight starts. Even a max tanked Skiff will only last a few seconds longer than a max yield HULK. There is no survive long enough for CONCORD to show up like you have in high sec. Tank on a null sec mining ship is meaningless. Once tackled you are dead, no matter what your EHP.

The safety of a null sec miner comes from mining in the hidden belts. The only way to get ganked in a hidden belt is if the roaming PVPer(s) have a probe launcher and can scan you down. You can offset this risk by watching D-scan and warping to a safe in side a POS shield or whatever if you see probes on D-scan. This risk mitigation is what allows null sec mining to be profitable. I could see this level of safety being nerfed by increasing the signature of grav sites making them easier to find, but removing this safety net completely will make mining far to risky, no matter what the potential profit.

Mining ships can not survive in null sec without some sort of protection. The hidden belts gave them this protection. With this change that protection is supposed to come from having combat ships in the belt for protection. This simply will not happen. For the most part PVPers hate carebears, and nullbears are just carebears of a different color. No PVPer is going to cancel a roam to sit in a belt, just in case the mining fleet gets ganked. Most PVPers could not care less whether the miners live or die. A developers idea of teamwork will not change this.

What will happen if this goes live? Well the hidden grav sites will be no safer than the static belts we have now. A single click on the ship scaner which every ship has with give a warp to for the anomaly the miners are in. They will not need probes to find them, So in other words any PVP roamer can jump into a system and warp to the hidden belt within seconds of entering the system. Mining ships are slow to warp, so they will have to safe up every time a potential threat enters the system. They will not be able to wait for the probes to show up on D-scan as there are no probes to show up. If the attacker is in a cloaky ship, the ship will not even show up on D-scan.

This is not a minor change. This is going for a manageable level of risk that can be mitigated thru active use of D-scan to a unmanageable risk level that can not be mitigated. As much as the other changes are a major buff to null sec industry, this one piece of the puzzle could break null sec industry completely.

There is no need for this change, any player that thinks it is a good idea has no idea how null sec mining actually works.

The only nullsec miners that will be able to continue to mine after this change as those belonging to the huge null sec coalitions. When you are 20 jumps deep inside friendly territory there is little chance of a roaming gang coming across your mining op. This will give these coalitions comparable control over high end minerals they currently have over moon goo. Anyone who does not see how game breaking this can be needs a smack upside the head.

I guess we will see who is eating crow in six months.

Im not a goon alt, the time is up.

(edit part)
as much as we like what the goons have become over the past year, its time to make the game better instead of doing all that can be done to destroy it. - so stop trying to bargain.

You know somehow I missed this post on the first page.

Players need to get over the idea that bottlenecks are a bad thing in and of themselves, because they're not. Bottlenecks are an excellent way of imparting value onto things that CCP wants to be valuable, and "surprisingly", CCP wants R64s to be valuable. To keep them from getting too valuable, you use a pressure valve of sorts, which in this context is Alchemy. Alchemy doubles as a means of transferring that extra value out onto other minerals as well, which is another favorable outcome.