Science & Industry

Are the people in this thread complaining about the changes used to mining with fleet support (ie Rorqual/Orca boosts)?

I'm seeing at least three categories of people here - those who ninja mine in space they don't control, those that only control a small amount of space and have difficulty securing it, and those who live in WHs who may fall into one of the above categories.

These are balanced by the people who DO live in space they control as a result of being part of a larger coalition, who DO protect their assets via on-grid countermeasures and off-grid intel, and those who have adapted nicely.

It seem very clear that the change was detrimental to mining in general outside of hisec, but is the adaptation really that severe? The proposals from the other side seem to summarize to "I can't mine solo anymore because people kill me too quickly or I spend all day docked up."

This seems to be really a case of not being in a large enough organization to control your environment.

Was putzing around Providence the other day and came across an industrial index level V system - complete with warp bubbles, guards picketed outside and inside the gates, and actual atk personnel. They noticed me in system, told me to leave, and had the ability to enforce that request had I non complied.

I don't see what's so hard about setting up that sort of a system - if one is wanting to reap the benefits of all the rarer and more valuable materials that are outside of protected spaces.

Yes this does put more high-ends in the hands of the larger groups - but they had the majority of them anyways. Now people who are unorganized or unwilling to create a coalition to seize those rewards are getting cut out due to the barriers to entry. Seems to be working as intended.

Try mining outside of your big blue SOV space. In Sov space controlled by smaller alliances, not surounded by waves of blue space, and NPC null , the safety net provided by grav sites was a necessity. Even with that safety net mining in those systems was a high enough risk that almost nobody did it. Now without it, it is impossible.

To the OP. I believe CCP knew exactly what they were doing. With the big nerf to moon goo income that went along with the elimination of Technetium as a bottle neck, they have given the large null sec power blocks a monopoly of the null sec ores, as they now can not be mined at an acceptable risk level out side secured SOV space.

What I do not under stand is how CCP can be so blind to the true issue of this game. They know for a fact that these huge power block alliances are part of the problem. CCP developers complain about how stagnant null sec has become and look for ways to drive conflict. Yet they ignore the fact that this stagnation is caused by these huge power blocks. When you or your allies own every system within 40 jumps where do you go for conflict. Along the borders. leaving huge sections of space empty, and dead. Ghost Towns.

Why do we need these huge numbers of ghost town systems? These systems could provide space for smaller entities to get into null. Systems not even used by the groups that own them, systems that serve as nothing but a safety barrier. More small sov holding entities means more boarders, and more conflict. Many of these power blocks control such large area's of null that the systems at there core are safer than high sec. Why? So the members of these power blocks can be safe while they are ratting or otherwise engaging in PVE. Null sec was never meant to provide this level of safety for anyone, it is supposed to be dangerous space. Yet much of it is safer than high sec, and much more profitable. But only for those belonging to one of the power blocks.

The bigger the sov power blocks are, the less borders there are, less boarders means les conflict, less conflict means less PVP. The game was not designed to have player organizations larger and more powerful than the NPC empires. Titans were designed to be almost impossible to build, It was thought that there would only be a few in existence at any one time. Yet now we have hundreds of them. Even fleets of them. The best solution to drive more conflict is not to suppress the small entities while supporting the power blocks. it would be to change game mechanics so these large power blocks can not be so easily maintained. Change the way SOV works so that these big power blocks will fall apart in favor of many more smaller groups.

Make alliances rely on there members for financial support. Bottom up, as has been discussed so many times. But do it in a way that players have to actively support their alliance, not just automatically through taxation. What this would do is make these huge power blocks unmanageable as it would be far to difficult to keep track of who is pulling their weight and who is not. We would see much smaller groups of elite players in the best alliances, while much of the dead weight will end up in other smaller groups, over all leading to more boarders to dispute,and much more conflict, as there would be much more division between those living in null sec.

Rather than simply attacking your neighbors to take there space, how about some new mechanics to pillage space. When attacking an i-hub you could target specific upgrades, as an alternative to destroying the i-hub and taking the system. The attacking corp or alliance could get a payout equal to 50-60% the value of the upgrade they destroyed. Pillage rather than concur.

For PVP to thrive, null sec should be full of many smaller groups that are free to attack each other generating casual PVP, not these massive power blocks engaged in cold war, So afraid to lose what they have that they do not fight unless they know they will win. The massive fleet battles this results in can be epic, but the servers can not support them well. this has gotten much better since TiDi was implemented, but still, EVE was not designed for battles of this scale, and the average PVPer is not content with an epic battle once every couple of months with almost no PVP in between, while assets are rebuilt. Daily smaller battles would make for a much more enjoyable engaging game.

Are the people in this thread complaining about the changes used to mining with fleet support (ie Rorqual/Orca boosts)?

I'm seeing at least three categories of people here - those who ninja mine in space they don't control, those that only control a small amount of space and have difficulty securing it, and those who live in WHs who may fall into one of the above categories.

These are balanced by the people who DO live in space they control as a result of being part of a larger coalition, who DO protect their assets via on-grid countermeasures and off-grid intel, and those who have adapted nicely.

It seem very clear that the change was detrimental to mining in general outside of hisec, but is the adaptation really that severe? The proposals from the other side seem to summarize to "I can't mine solo anymore because people kill me too quickly or I spend all day docked up."

This seems to be really a case of not being in a large enough organization to control your environment.

Was putzing around Providence the other day and came across an industrial index level V system - complete with warp bubbles, guards picketed outside and inside the gates, and actual atk personnel. They noticed me in system, told me to leave, and had the ability to enforce that request had I non complied.

I don't see what's so hard about setting up that sort of a system - if one is wanting to reap the benefits of all the rarer and more valuable materials that are outside of protected spaces.

Yes this does put more high-ends in the hands of the larger groups - but they had the majority of them anyways. Now people who are unorganized or unwilling to create a coalition to seize those rewards are getting cut out due to the barriers to entry. Seems to be working as intended.

Seeing someone in Local is not enough. Being AFK or not. Have you ever mined outside of protected sov space? It has nothing to do with being AFK. I have timed it, jumping into a system, waiting for the grav sites to pop up on scan, f there is one, and warping to it takes about 8-9 seconds. A HULK takes about 10 seconds to warp out. MACK and SKIFF are a little faster. That is a very small window. It is not like mining in static belts were they have to guess which one you are in, if there is only one ore site, any miners in system will likely be in it. Warp in cloaked and you can be within tackle range before decloaking. If you are traveling through nll sec looking for miners to gank, there is a good chance any HULKS or ORCA's will still be there when you reach the belt. even if they were watching local.

Then there is mining in NPC null or low sec, there was always someone in local when I mined there. But very rarely did any of them have a probe launcher, making it some what safe. It was still dangerous enough very few did it, but it was doable. Now it is not. If you were actually a miner you would know those extra 10-20 seconds it took them to scan you down are very important. if you think that your warping out every time you saw a neut in local is all you needed, you don't understand how it worked. Just because you did not watch D-scan for probes does not mean that scan time was not helping you. No matter how well you are watching local, even if you are aligned, with the changes a ganker can jump into system, and warp to the ore site, before a HULK, and certainly an ORCA can warp out. It always worked before because there need to scan you down gave you more time. Now the window is very tight.

Sure, watching local and intel channels is still sufficient when mining deep inside sov space, but read the thread title, this is about NPC null, low sec, and W-space. You do not even have local to watch in W-space. This change is game breaking to miners outside of secured sov space. If you are going to warp out every time a neut pops up in local in those area's you will not be doing much mining. Even if you make 3 times the isk/m3 that you get in high sec, you need to spend at least 20 minutes out of every hour actually mining, not setting up, hiding, or moving, actually mining just to break even. If I am going to spend 90% of my time hiding it is not worth it. I would make more staying in high sec. And that is the big issue. With grav sites that extra layer of safety is what made it work. It still did not work well, as almost nobody did it, but now it does not work at all.

I am not asking for the changes to be undone. Just give us back grav sites. Add in new ones rather than reverting the ore anomalies back. Give us hard to find grav sites that spawn randomly all over new eden. Large sites worth actually mining. leave the ore anomalies for upgraded sov since they are working so well for nullbear miners. just add new random spawning grav sites on top of the converted ore anomalies.

While we are adding grav sites, how about a whole new chain of signature sites for all exploration branches, Sites that are much harder to find/scan down then what we currently have. Some thing to give veteran explorers a challenge to find. With the changes to exploration brought with odyssey any noob can now find any site with a few hour training and some basic equipment. Those of us with maxed scan skills and faction equipment no longer have any high skilled content. it has ALL BEEN KNOCKED DOWN TO ENTRY LEVEL. I do not want to see the entry level access to this content changed, I think it was a good move, But give us some high level exploration content as a goal for those noob explorers to work towards, and us veteran explores something to do. Having it all at entry level with nothing harder to reach for makes no sense to me. It really bothers me that after train months to get near maxed scanning skills, I can not find anything that a 2 week old noob can not find. being able to find it slightly faster was not worth the training time.

Lots of stuff, seemingly angry.

Sir,

Good Job.

v/r
Kick