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Dev Blog: No Honor Among Thieves - Siphon Units in Rubicon

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xttz
GSF Logistics and Posting Reserves
Goonswarm Federation
#801 - 2013-10-18 16:22:45 UTC
If this is intended to drive conflict and have more players interacting, then people need to be fighting over siphons. As they stand they're nothing but a griefing tool that people can profit from if they can be bothered to. Players can be encouraged to interact like so:

  • Remove waste as it currently works, a single siphon pulls 50% of material from a silo each tick. Up to 2 siphons can be anchored per 'end of chain' module on grid. They will automatically leech from the one that is physically nearest to them.
  • When a siphon is destroyed, the full contents within are dropped back into the silo it originally came from.
  • A siphon is emptied by a ship by clicking an 'empty' option while within 5km. This ejects any materials inside into a jetcan, but deducts a certain amount of waste first (much like POCOs). A nearly-empty siphon will have zero waste, a full siphon has 90% waste.
  • The API reports the total contents of a silo plus any siphons leeching from it, meaning that it's only possible to detect loss if material is removed from the siphon.


The net effect of which is:

1) Siphon owners who are very proactive about their theft can steal the entire output of a tower, but are more likely to be discovered.

2) Siphon owners get diminishing returns by waiting, encouraging them to empty more often. This brings more opportunities to interdict them, and therefore more chances for PVP. If they wait too long, the starbase owner gets everything back without penalty.

3) Siphons cannot be spammed merciessly, resulting in situations where small reaction corps have to clear 50+ structures from their towers at a time.
A Research Alt
Perkone
Caldari State
#802 - 2013-10-18 16:23:10 UTC
Goonswarm owns more than half the R64s in existence, so I don't see why they'd siphon their own belongings.
Pistonbroke
Super Villains
Pandemic Horde
#803 - 2013-10-18 16:23:23 UTC
This is an awesome feature.

The owners of all those hi-end moons - now they may have to actually "man the guard-room", rather than sitting back, and letting the automated systems do all the work, backed up by reinforced mode.

A chance for smaller groups to harass, disrupt, irritate and even for brave individuals to sneak a bit of that pie for themselves.

Bravo CCP. I am intrigued to see where this goes.

P.S. Please can you hurry up and come up with a "deployable fitting service" of some type - to permit roaming gangs the opportunity to adapt - it's too easy for "home ground" advantage to be played, by gaining intel on what a gangs setup is, and then simply countering it - a deployable mod which could permit a roaming gang to change fit would go a long way towards making roaming gangs more dynamic and effective.
Huttan Funaila
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#804 - 2013-10-18 16:26:09 UTC
GeeShizzle MacCloud wrote:
Alternatively look at it from an RP perspective...

A 20m3 module that costs 10 mil can within an hour breach the hardened shields of a structure costing between 6x and 26x its cost and extract items. Something that a full 250 man fleet dedicated to that action cannot do in 10's of hours of play (including reinforcement period). it can also reconfigure data systems of the structure and rewrite data logs to mask its actions but wont touch things like onlining/offlining systems and POS shield harmonics cause u know, who'd want to breach those things!


the whole things stupidly short sighted in initial implementation both in a game mechanics sense and in RP sense and seems to be vastly unbalanced in favour of the aggressors. sort it out.

This sort of fits into existing cyberpunk literature already. The Shadowrun series of books has as part of the premise that hackers need to get physically into a facility to hack the computers. So you get hackers parachuting into danger and dangling from ceilings like the Mission Impossible scene with Tom Cruise.
Weaselior
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#805 - 2013-10-18 16:26:27 UTC
xttz wrote:
If this is intended to drive conflict and have more players interacting, then people need to be fighting over siphons. As they stand they're nothing but a griefing tool that people can profit from if they can be bothered to. Players can be encouraged to interact like so:

  • Remove waste as it currently works, a single siphon pulls 50% of material from a silo each tick. Up to 2 siphons can be anchored per 'end of chain' module on grid. They will automatically leech from the one that is physically nearest to them.
  • When a siphon is destroyed, the full contents within are dropped back into the silo it originally came from.
  • A siphon is emptied by a ship by clicking an 'empty' option while within 5km. This ejects any materials inside into a jetcan, but deducts a certain amount of waste first (much like POCOs). A nearly-empty siphon will have zero waste, a full siphon has 90% waste.
  • The API reports the total contents of a silo plus any siphons leeching from it, meaning that it's only possible to detect loss if material is removed from the siphon.


The net effect of which is:

1) Siphon owners who are very proactive about their theft can steal the entire output of a tower, but are more likely to be discovered.

2) Siphon owners get diminishing returns by waiting, encouraging them to empty more often. This brings more opportunities to interdict them, and therefore more chances for PVP. If they wait too long, the starbase owner gets everything back without penalty.

3) Siphons cannot be spammed merciessly, resulting in situations where small reaction corps have to clear 50+ structures from their towers at a time.


This is a really good idea, I like it.

Head of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal Pubbie Management and Exploitation Division.
Zakhin Desver
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#806 - 2013-10-18 16:35:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Zakhin Desver
xttz wrote:
If this is intended to drive conflict and have more players interacting, then people need to be fighting over siphons. As they stand they're nothing but a griefing tool that people can profit from if they can be bothered to. Players can be encouraged to interact like so:

  • Remove waste as it currently works, a single siphon pulls 50% of material from a silo each tick. Up to 2 siphons can be anchored per 'end of chain' module on grid. They will automatically leech from the one that is physically nearest to them.
  • When a siphon is destroyed, the full contents within are dropped back into the silo it originally came from.
  • A siphon is emptied by a ship by clicking an 'empty' option while within 5km. This ejects any materials inside into a jetcan, but deducts a certain amount of waste first (much like POCOs). A nearly-empty siphon will have zero waste, a full siphon has 90% waste.
  • The API reports the total contents of a silo plus any siphons leeching from it, meaning that it's only possible to detect loss if material is removed from the siphon.


The net effect of which is:

1) Siphon owners who are very proactive about their theft can steal the entire output of a tower, but are more likely to be discovered.

2) Siphon owners get diminishing returns by waiting, encouraging them to empty more often. This brings more opportunities to interdict them, and therefore more chances for PVP. If they wait too long, the starbase owner gets everything back without penalty.

3) Siphons cannot be spammed merciessly, resulting in situations where small reaction corps have to clear 50+ structures from their towers at a time.


Trying to get enough nerfs to the module so you don't lose your moongoo superiority? Oh you....

Wastage must exists, destroying resources from the game is a good sink for money printers. Without waste factor, only small alliances with not enough numbers will be harmed. This expansion is supposed to empower the weak, not to settle the superiority of the powerful.
MeBiatch
GRR GOONS
#807 - 2013-10-18 16:37:55 UTC
xttz wrote:
If this is intended to drive conflict and have more players interacting, then people need to be fighting over siphons. As they stand they're nothing but a griefing tool that people can profit from if they can be bothered to. Players can be encouraged to interact like so:

  • Remove waste as it currently works, a single siphon pulls 50% of material from a silo each tick. Up to 2 siphons can be anchored per 'end of chain' module on grid. They will automatically leech from the one that is physically nearest to them.
  • When a siphon is destroyed, the full contents within are dropped back into the silo it originally came from.
  • A siphon is emptied by a ship by clicking an 'empty' option while within 5km. This ejects any materials inside into a jetcan, but deducts a certain amount of waste first (much like POCOs). A nearly-empty siphon will have zero waste, a full siphon has 90% waste.
  • The API reports the total contents of a silo plus any siphons leeching from it, meaning that it's only possible to detect loss if material is removed from the siphon.


The net effect of which is:

1) Siphon owners who are very proactive about their theft can steal the entire output of a tower, but are more likely to be discovered.

2) Siphon owners get diminishing returns by waiting, encouraging them to empty more often. This brings more opportunities to interdict them, and therefore more chances for PVP. If they wait too long, the starbase owner gets everything back without penalty.

3) Siphons cannot be spammed merciessly, resulting in situations where small reaction corps have to clear 50+ structures from their towers at a time.


i like this idea... i was also thinking what if the siphon unit was chance based? with a skill that increases chance for siphon.

starts off with 33% chance of siphon and goes up to 66% with skill at V.

this would make the unit unpredictable which IMO is a good thing.

There are no stupid Questions... just stupid people... CCP Goliath wrote:

Ugh ti-di pooping makes me sad.
Querns
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#808 - 2013-10-18 16:38:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Querns
xttz wrote:

  • Remove waste as it currently works, a single siphon pulls 50% of material from a silo each tick. Up to 2 siphons can be anchored per 'end of chain' module on grid. They will automatically leech from the one that is physically nearest to them.
  • When a siphon is destroyed, the full contents within are dropped back into the silo it originally came from.
  • A siphon is emptied by a ship by clicking an 'empty' option while within 5km. This ejects any materials inside into a jetcan, but deducts a certain amount of waste first (much like POCOs). A nearly-empty siphon will have zero waste, a full siphon has 90% waste.
  • The API reports the total contents of a silo plus any siphons leeching from it, meaning that it's only possible to detect loss if material is removed from the siphon.



I like this, but I think it could be tightened up a little bit. Instead of having the siphon transfer any moongoo at all per "tick", have it just build up an internal counter representing a potential amount to be taken. Then, when the siphoneer mashes "STEAL," the amount promised is deducted into a jetcan just as outlined. This way, there is no reason to even have a complicated routine on the AssetList call to calculate the amount stolen and whatnot -- the silos themselves haven't even been touched yet, and the siphon remains unseen by the API until it is too late. KISS principle in action.

Edit: To prevent a POS owner from just emptying the silo and undoing the work the siphon has done, lock the affected silo online until the siphon has been cleared.

This post was crafted by the wormhole expert of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal, the foremost authority on Eve: Online economics and gameplay.
Aryth
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#809 - 2013-10-18 16:39:18 UTC
xttz wrote:
If this is intended to drive conflict and have more players interacting, then people need to be fighting over siphons. As they stand they're nothing but a griefing tool that people can profit from if they can be bothered to. Players can be encouraged to interact like so:

  • Remove waste as it currently works, a single siphon pulls 50% of material from a silo each tick. Up to 2 siphons can be anchored per 'end of chain' module on grid. They will automatically leech from the one that is physically nearest to them.
  • When a siphon is destroyed, the full contents within are dropped back into the silo it originally came from.
  • A siphon is emptied by a ship by clicking an 'empty' option while within 5km. This ejects any materials inside into a jetcan, but deducts a certain amount of waste first (much like POCOs). A nearly-empty siphon will have zero waste, a full siphon has 90% waste.
  • The API reports the total contents of a silo plus any siphons leeching from it, meaning that it's only possible to detect loss if material is removed from the siphon.


The net effect of which is:

1) Siphon owners who are very proactive about their theft can steal the entire output of a tower, but are more likely to be discovered.

2) Siphon owners get diminishing returns by waiting, encouraging them to empty more often. This brings more opportunities to interdict them, and therefore more chances for PVP. If they wait too long, the starbase owner gets everything back without penalty.

3) Siphons cannot be spammed merciessly, resulting in situations where small reaction corps have to clear 50+ structures from their towers at a time.


This is the most elegant solution I have seen. It prevents greifing at scale, encourages individual actors, rewards active partipation, and still have the nice market impact effects for that dynamic.

They are probably still too cheap and too small in m3, but this eliminates the really nasty problems.

Leader of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal.

Creator of Burn Jita

Vile Rat: You're the greatest sociopath that has ever played eve.
MeBiatch
GRR GOONS
#810 - 2013-10-18 16:39:55 UTC
A Research Alt wrote:
Goonswarm owns more than half the R64s in existence, so I don't see why they'd siphon their own belongings.



really this is goonswarm we are talking about... remember alts provide anonymity so how would the top goon brass know its one of thier line members chewing the fat?

There are no stupid Questions... just stupid people... CCP Goliath wrote:

Ugh ti-di pooping makes me sad.
Powers Sa
#811 - 2013-10-18 16:40:00 UTC
Zakhin Desver wrote:

Trying to get enough nerfs to the module so you don't lose your moongoo superiority? Oh you....

Wastage must exists, destroying resources from the game is a good sink for money printers. Without waste factor, only small alliances with not enough numbers will be harmed. This expansion is supposed to empower the weak, not to settle the superiority of the powerful.

That's not even a real rebuttal.

Do you like winning t2 frigs and dictors for Dirt Cheap?https://eveninggames.net/register/ref/dQddmNgyLhFBqNJk

Remeber: Gambling addiction is no laughing matter unless you've lost a vast space fortune on the internet.
Zakhin Desver
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#812 - 2013-10-18 16:41:20 UTC  |  Edited by: Zakhin Desver
ROFL, redesigning a module that still didn't see the light to serve your own purposes Lol

psssh, ask for removing the hidden data in API, do it Pirate
Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#813 - 2013-10-18 16:45:57 UTC
Powers Sa wrote:
Zakhin Desver wrote:

Trying to get enough nerfs to the module so you don't lose your moongoo superiority? Oh you....

Wastage must exists, destroying resources from the game is a good sink for money printers. Without waste factor, only small alliances with not enough numbers will be harmed. This expansion is supposed to empower the weak, not to settle the superiority of the powerful.

That's not even a real rebuttal.

Does it matter, GOON

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
Kenneth Skybound
Gallifrey Resources
#814 - 2013-10-18 16:46:44 UTC
CCP SoniClover wrote:
Hey guys, thanks for all the good feedback. Couple of things we're contemplating:

a) reduce waste factor from 20% to 10%

b) have a character limit on how many siphons you can deploy (i.e. have in space at the same time). This would probably be in the 5 to 10 range.

Let me know what you think.


a) Fair enough. So long as there is still significant losses.

b) Absolutely not. These things are not hard to find nor hard to kill. They do come at a cost to the thief which racks up really quick. A cov ops filled with 20 of these is going to cost the player 200million or so simply to deploy them, assuming all get deployed. That's 10 starbases (2 per starbase) which can be checked more easily than the thief placed the siphons.

If someone wants to take a blockade runner FILLED with these (multiple billions of ISK) then go right ahead. Those multiple billions of ISK worth of siphons will quite rapidly be gone if the POS owning corp/alliance actually checks on their stuff. It really shouldn't be all that hard for someone to find these in due course.

Don't give in to those who cry about needing to be on 23/7 or camping every POS with instacanes. They miss the point of corporate assets (POS is on a corporate, not personal level), allies and large 1 hour cycle times on something detectable by directional scan!

Limiting the number deployed simply isn't needed. Cost vs reward does that and frankly 10m gives a suitable cost.
Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#815 - 2013-10-18 16:47:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Alavaria Fera
Miner Hottie wrote:
Expressing my understanding of your point and position. Don't agree with it, but eh, CCP is determined to ignore us and implement this and then they will nerf it to oblivion once goons complete the cycle of deliberate abuse that has started now that they have warned CCP about it being OP.

Oh you noticed the cycle ...

Still working on drone assist, it appears they are PERFECTLY BALANCED and cannot be abused

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
Tzar Sinak
Mythic Heights
#816 - 2013-10-18 16:48:03 UTC  |  Edited by: Tzar Sinak
I am not reading all the pages to see if this has been mentioned.

Why would these siphons be accessible by anyone and everyone? If the owner of the unit deployed is noted in the info window why would the siphon not have secure container properties thus allowing a password? This would force the siphon owner to empty it daily for it to be effective. It also means the POS owner would be unable to recover stolen material before destroying it.

Having a siphon password would make the unit much more effective at theft and make the theft more meaningful.

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Alavaria Fera
GoonWaffe
#817 - 2013-10-18 16:49:07 UTC
Tzar Sinak wrote:
I am not reading all the pages to see if this has been mentioned.

Why would these siphons be accessible by anyone and everyone? If the owner of the unit dropped is noted in the info window why would the siphon not have secure container properties thus allowing a password? This would force the siphon owner to empty it daily for it to be effective. It also means the POS owner would be unable to recover stolen material before destroying it.

Having a siphon password would make the unit much more effective at theft and make the theft more meaningful.

I must support this.

Triggered by: Wars of Sovless Agression, Bending the Knee, Twisting the Knife, Eating Sov Wheaties, Bombless Bombers, Fizzlesov, Interceptor Fleets, Running Away, GhostTime Vuln, Renters, Bombs, Bubbles ?
Zakhin Desver
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#818 - 2013-10-18 16:49:15 UTC
Kenneth Skybound wrote:
CCP SoniClover wrote:
Hey guys, thanks for all the good feedback. Couple of things we're contemplating:

a) reduce waste factor from 20% to 10%

b) have a character limit on how many siphons you can deploy (i.e. have in space at the same time). This would probably be in the 5 to 10 range.

Let me know what you think.


a) Fair enough. So long as there is still significant losses.

b) Absolutely not. These things are not hard to find nor hard to kill. They do come at a cost to the thief which racks up really quick. A cov ops filled with 20 of these is going to cost the player 200million or so simply to deploy them, assuming all get deployed. That's 10 starbases (2 per starbase) which can be checked more easily than the thief placed the siphons.

If someone wants to take a blockade runner FILLED with these (multiple billions of ISK) then go right ahead. Those multiple billions of ISK worth of siphons will quite rapidly be gone if the POS owning corp/alliance actually checks on their stuff. It really shouldn't be all that hard for someone to find these in due course.

Don't give in to those who cry about needing to be on 23/7 or camping every POS with instacanes. They miss the point of corporate assets (POS is on a corporate, not personal level), allies and large 1 hour cycle times on something detectable by directional scan!

Limiting the number deployed simply isn't needed. Cost vs reward does that and frankly 10m gives a suitable cost.


Applause Big smile
Benjamin Hamburg
Chaos.Theory
#819 - 2013-10-18 16:49:51 UTC
xttz wrote:
I

  • Remove waste as it currently works, a single siphon pulls 50% of material from a silo each tick. Up to 2 siphons can be anchored per 'end of chain' module on grid. They will automatically leech from the one that is physically nearest to them.
  • When a siphon is destroyed, the full contents within are dropped back into the silo it originally came from.
  • A siphon is emptied by a ship by clicking an 'empty' option while within 5km. This ejects any materials inside into a jetcan, but deducts a certain amount of waste first (much like POCOs). A nearly-empty siphon will have zero waste, a full siphon has 90% waste.
  • The API reports the total contents of a silo plus any siphons leeching from it, meaning that it's only possible to detect loss if material is removed from the siphon.




I don't agree. Waste should (and logically do) occur during the syphon action and not after. With your idea, if you just destroy the syphon without empty it before, there is no waste at all since all the content is returned in the silo with no others drawback.

+1 for the API idea though, it's seem to be the most logical way to do it.
Alner Greyl
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#820 - 2013-10-18 16:52:17 UTC
Looks like a not funny joke.

May be it's cool for expensive moons. But what about common moons? For example. I need to mine something very cheap because I need for my reactions. So some1 will need 10 mil to buy a siphon and take my moon mats. So without my online 24 hours a day I can't save even my cheap moons? And I'll need to offline all my pos - really cool situation.

I don't want to spend 24 hours in game to protect pos from siphons.
And yeah, CCP go on with cloak afk ships. You are making everything to play EVE in cloak. What? Most of this siphons will be installed with cloak ships. We can't have a defence from cloak ship and you are adding more weapons to them. What?

My post looks like a carebear crying, but it's my time and I hate cloak wars. It makes fun only for 1 side who is in cloak and have a big cargo.