EVE General Discussion

Agreed. Lowsec scanning is terrible now because of how many people are doing it. CCP screwed us by improving exploration, so now we can't be the special little snowflakes we used to be. Clearly Odyssey is a failure.

(go to null)

It's only ruined if your bad. I'm sorry, but there's really no other response here. I made a billion isk in the last 2 days, just playing for a few hours after work. The new system adds some much needed interaction, and means I don't have to watch netflix to retain sanity while I'm clearing rats and waiting out my hacking cycles. I loved scanning, but the exploration sites themselves were **** before. Now they're excellent. The hacking minigame isn't amazing, but it's a nice first step and I like it because it actually does have a bit of strategy. It's like a mini roguelike game.

So not only do we not have to deal with boring tedious rats in sites, but our ability to clear sites quickly is based on some degree of personal skill. Plus with good prioritizing of cans and a cargo scanner, you can get 100% of high value loot from every site, and you don't even need to click quickly. My process for a site is cargo scan it, prioritize my cans, then when the spew happens, I casually look through for the cans of choice. Sometimes I'll waste the first 5 secodns sifting through, before clicking one can. Most sites I get all the loot I want in 2-3 clicks. If I'm feeling antsy though, I'll spam click after that, but it's usually crap, and only worth it if you want to up your income by 5% on relic sites.

Oh, and as a solo hacker, our available space went from about 800 lowsec systems, to an additional 3200 nullsec systems. That's a 400% increase in available exploration space.

There's literally no downside for the solo explorer this patch. Now I can enjoy my PvE and exploration even more, and get rich doing it, which means more time do what my other fun time of solo PvP. It's a great time for a solo pilot. Oh, and the firetail get buffed.

HTFU

Yes. It shows exactly what's inside. you can skip the shitcans entirely. The trick though is knowing what your priorities are. The spew cans come out in 5 different variants. Scrap cans are always useless, but different types of loot have a certain probability of going into a specific can. Parts cans are the safest to grab, as there's usually 2-3 per wreck. Also they are always where the decryptors go. However, when you add in BPCs, and salvage, and other things, you need to figure out which is the best can between Parts, Data, and Materials. But if you're starting out, go for Parts>Materials. Data is situationally *awesome*, but don't grab it until you know better.

It's going to be like it was before. For a while everybody is going to be a scan monkey until they realize it's not as profitable nor as fun as what they were doing previously.


On the upside I am actually seein NOOBS in sites. This is a good thing.

@Garresh

You've done a good bit more of this than I have, so I'd like to ask you about something in regards to hacking.

Is it just me, or are the firewalls easily ignored? I have yet to see one that actually locks down the system core. Perhaps it's just a limited sample size on my part (less than 50 sites), but the trend worries me slightly as to this potentially being trivial.

So have you actually had to hack through a firewall or defense to get to the system core?

Where are you hacking? The firewalls themselves don't lock down the system core. They lock down the surrounding nodes, which means they only lock down the core if they're adjacent. This by design, so you can circumvent them by taking a different route. However, as you go deeper into low, and null, it's not unusual to see grids with at least 10 firewalls. I think I saw like 15 once. Now factor in death combos like the Inhibitor + Regen, or the sheer stupidity of a 5x inhibitor grid, and the game gets stupidly difficult.

In short, bypassing firewalls is by design, because even in lower level ones, if you had to kill every firewall you wouldn't be able to complete it.

Huh. To be honest, I never actually clicked a core while a firewall was adjacent, cause it was greyed out. Lol well, I'd report that. I'll test it when I do another exploration run tomorrow. This new stuff is too much fun to not do another run.

It's always been the case that certain regions are more profitable than others. I did a little experimenting across regions, but I actually settled into Molden Heath as well, but for different reasons.

It's not the highest profitability compared to some of the other regions, but it's reasonably high, and also quite distant from Jita. As a result, competition is low, which means I get better access to sites. Also, the region has a lowsec mission hub on the entrnace, and occassional lowsec missions sent out from Gulfonodi. This, along with a lack of mission hubs deeper down the pipe, has created a huge swell of pirates along the first few systems into Molden Heath, which camp it religiously, but fail at everything else(also, they ganked me once while I was trying to teach my new-ish friend how to rat in lowsec, so I haet them).

The interesting thing about this huge pirate swell though, is that it creates a false perception of a very active/dangerous region, which drives explorers away as they feel that the lower payouts compared to risk aren't worth it. As you go deeper into Molden Heath, competition and piracy vanishes, and you're left with this relatively nice set of systems almost entirely devoid of fellow explorers. Obviously, that information is going to be somewhat less useful once a bunch of people read about this, but the region is still quite nice if you fly to the back end.

Basically, if you're going to explore low, you want to go to lowsec regions far from jita. Caldari lowsec is a trap, as the competition and pirate presence will be fierce, and annoying. Amarr lowsec was, last I checked, pretty much dead. But the decryptors and salvage were pretty ass too. That information is outdated though.

Actually, just ignore that last paragraph. You wanna pick a lowsec region, you need to consider 2 primary variables: Distance from trade and PvP hubs(and mission hubs that border/exist in lowsec), and the profitability of racial salvage and decryptors. You can get the first information by looking at a map, and the second by looking at the jita markets. Do the math, find your own risk/reward ratio preference, and go to the lowsec you find most exciting.

Yes clearly scanning is broken, in the days since odessy I've made only 1B isk with drops I got from it.. clearly something is wrong as before I made a few hundred mil tops..