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Dev blog: More Deployables from Super Friends

First post First post First post
Author
Bagehi
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#321 - 2014-01-14 19:43:11 UTC
Kotori wrote:
Bagehi wrote:
Three and a half minutes... in a bubble... in hostile space... not shooting a spaceship. For, what? A couple million isk, spread over 10 people? I repeat, no roaming gang would do that. Ratters wouldn't grind a structure with a quarter of that EHP for that kind of income, you can best bet a roaming gang (looking for a person to kill) wouldn't take the time to do it.


A roaming gang, looking to cause problems, roaming through space looking for ratters that dock up.... comes across a module, that gets them a little payout for their sins, a killmail, and causes a small amount of pain to the ratter sat at a pos or in a station, laughing at them cos they didn't get to kill his shiny ship?

Also, potentially generating a small response fleet from said ratter/their corp, to try and defend their (minimum) 30 million, probably a fair bit more investment (if the bounty bonus was to increase over time, and has been there a while).

In them 3 minutes or so, an allaince fleet isnt going to form, but the corp, who are already chatting on teamspeak, and nearby to each other, may form to defend it. Resutling in a fight for both side, and more isk lost!

I don't see the problem, it should probably be longer!

Anything less though, and there is no chance at ALL for the defender to actually do anything about it!

It holds 25% of bounties. Ticks are, what, around 30m if you're cranking. Ticks come every 20 minutes. A human can rat for a couple hours before taking a break. It would be rational to empty it at that point. So, call it 3 hours. Max take would be just shy of 70m in the deployable. Divided between 10 people is 7m a person. The take would statistically be in the 3-4m per person range though. Some gangs who are out for the tears might do it, especially if the deployable was annoyingly big (1000+ m3). Most wouldn't though.
Genoa Al Salam
Doomheim
#322 - 2014-01-14 19:45:56 UTC
100% of my nullsec ratting income goes to my pvp ships. This ESS thing has potential, but don't try and sneak in another BS income nerf. Either go F2P and make us buy PLEX all the time, or be content with subs. Stop trying to have our cake and eat it too. Greedy bastards.
Dave Stark
#323 - 2014-01-14 19:47:15 UTC  |  Edited by: Dave Stark
never mind me, i'm lazy, answer found.
Sephira Galamore
Inner Beard Society
Kvitravn.
#324 - 2014-01-14 19:47:26 UTC
Batelle wrote:
Re-posting.
This does beg the question though, a DESTROYED ESS will "remember" the distribution when a new one is dropped. But if a new one is dropped of a different faction, how exactly is it supposed to "remember?"

Because the ESS is just the interface & token printer, the actual data is stored on Empire servers.
That is, stored in CCPs database linked to the solar system not the ESS.
Like: SystemID (PK); PlayerID (PK); ISK or something like that
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#325 - 2014-01-14 19:47:51 UTC
Kadl wrote:
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:
Increasing the drop-isk-tag window from 40 seconds to 3-5 minutes will give the locals plenty of time to react and blap theives.


You seem to have an estimate of 3-5 minutes for a defensive response. I am guessing that is based on current defensive tactics and positions. Some things which might reduce the required response time are: ESS placed on station eject path, ESS placed near ratter's staging pos, assigned bookmarks for response fleet, additional reasons to watch intel channels, and additional reasons to rat while aligned. Having the times set for a specific number of seconds may favor certain system sizes. Perhaps 3-5 minutes is the time needed, but given these possible advantages it might be shorter.


I've formed up many a response gangs, and a 3-5 minute response is extraordinarily fast (unless your just warping in ships kitchen sink like, or already have a response fleet formed). Really, you want a 6-10 minute window for a proper response fleet to form up. (this is why I requested a 3-5 minutes to activate the ESS, and 3-5 minutes for the ESS to process your drop-isk-tag request). Then these will be conflict drivers.

Putting them on a station, or on a deathstar POS will destroy the conflict driver potential of these, because the homefield advantage of engaging on these grids essentially means it is suicide for a small gang to engage. Pull it away from POSes and Stations and Gates, and more ships die, which is a good thing!

stelios102
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#326 - 2014-01-14 19:49:21 UTC
This is by far one of the most insane things i've ever heard. This has nothing to do with Small Gang Warfare and if CCP actually cared about Small Gang they would fix the mess they made with the Interceptors. It has to do with CCP trying to drive us to buy PLEX imo. Ratting has been nerfed several times as it is so at the end of the day further nerfs do nothing but force players to buy PLEX. I pay 3 Subs for EVE as it is and CCP need to decide if they want to go F2P with Microtransaction or keep the Subscription model because they simply can't do both.

I would also like to point out how the only real positive remarks on the subject are by CCP Devs.

Bagehi
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#327 - 2014-01-14 19:49:42 UTC
Innominate wrote:
Bagehi wrote:
Please explain who would drop on and destroy a structure like that. 500k EHP is far more than a roaming gang would be able to burn through. That would be a flat buff to null income. Might as well just boost ratting income and save the extra step. I do agree that the benefit from deploying one of these is a bit underwhelming. So, I'm not sure how widely used they will be.


It's less than half the ehp of a ratting carrier, without the active tank yet carriers are far from immune to roaming gangs. That's also the total EHP, the amount required to reinforce vs kill can be shifted as desired between easier reinforcement and easier killing.

If the value of blowing them up is too low(and yea, actually looking at it I do think that's the case), make it 25% of six hours of ratting income.

Except a carrier would get tackled, then have a reinforcement fleet rushed in to kill it. A carrier would drop hundreds of millions in loot and leave a big happy killmail and a fondly recounted story for all involved in the kill. This structure wouldn't come close to providing any of these benefits to make it worth the time and effort. Again, a ratter wouldn't put the effort in, why would anyone expect a roaming gang to?
Tankn00blicus
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#328 - 2014-01-14 19:52:40 UTC  |  Edited by: Tankn00blicus
ESS: Biggest buff to awoxers ever. Additional awoxing toons require additional accounts. Additional accounts make additional money for CCP. That can be the only explanation for this.
Batolemaeus
Mahlstrom
Northern Associates.
#329 - 2014-01-14 19:53:26 UTC
I don't typically post on these forums, but the amount of not-actually-playing-the-game evident in the devblog is just too high not to...

I'm honestly just amazed. Let's go back in time a bit.

When Dominion was released to make sov warfare worse than before, there was a vague promise of more ihub modules being released. As people who actually play this ****** game may know, many of the ihub upgrades have been completely broken since release, but at least there was the pretense of ~~iterations~~ happening at some point in the future. One upgrade that was suspiciously absent was a way to tax income generated in the system and transfer it to a holding corp.

When CCP was queried as to why this obvious feature was missing, the stated reason was that Eve didn't support something like this.

So now CCP reveals that this capability exists, but wastes it on a 0.0 ratting nerf instead. Have there been no lessons learned from siphons? To remind you: siphons did one thing, and one thing only: They made POS worse and more of a pain to run than they already were without generating fights at all. I, for one, thought such a thing wouldn't be possible, but apparently someone at CCP took that as a challenge.

So now the same people decided to devalue 0.0 a little more. It does, after all, offer sub-par money making possibilities if you are doing PvE. So, to make a bad feature worse, ratting siphons are implemented.

The amount of derp that lead to these deployables is hard to grasp. The tractor unit, depot and jump inhibitor were pretty good. The mjd and scanning deployables raised eyebrows and are a little weird. But these? No way this is not a troll. Nobody can be so clueless about the realities of 0.0. I pity whoever is still doing PvE in 0.0.
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#330 - 2014-01-14 19:54:40 UTC
Bagehi wrote:
Innominate wrote:
Bagehi wrote:
Please explain who would drop on and destroy a structure like that. 500k EHP is far more than a roaming gang would be able to burn through. That would be a flat buff to null income. Might as well just boost ratting income and save the extra step. I do agree that the benefit from deploying one of these is a bit underwhelming. So, I'm not sure how widely used they will be.


It's less than half the ehp of a ratting carrier, without the active tank yet carriers are far from immune to roaming gangs. That's also the total EHP, the amount required to reinforce vs kill can be shifted as desired between easier reinforcement and easier killing.

If the value of blowing them up is too low(and yea, actually looking at it I do think that's the case), make it 25% of six hours of ratting income.

Except a carrier would get tackled, then have a reinforcement fleet rushed in to kill it. A carrier would drop hundreds of millions in loot and leave a big happy killmail and a fondly recounted story for all involved in the kill. This structure wouldn't come close to providing any of these benefits to make it worth the time and effort. Again, a ratter wouldn't put the effort in, why would anyone expect a roaming gang to?


I would gladly setup a 5-10 man roaming fleet on one of these for 5-10 minutes to steal the bounties out of them. The goal wouldn't be the bounty though, the goal would be to have the locals ship up and come out and fight. Baiting with "part" of the fleet would be common place, and I could easily see this being an excellent conflict driver. I also wouldn't blow it up, as it benefits me as much as the local ratters.

James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#331 - 2014-01-14 19:57:23 UTC
Batolemaeus wrote:
I don't typically post on these forums, but the amount of not-actually-playing-the-game evident in the devblog is just too high not to...

I'm honestly just amazed. Let's go back in time a bit.

When Dominion was released to make sov warfare worse than before, there was a vague promise of more ihub modules being released. As people who actually play this ****** game may know, many of the ihub upgrades have been completely broken since release, but at least there was the pretense of ~~iterations~~ happening at some point in the future. One upgrade that was suspiciously absent was a way to tax income generated in the system and transfer it to a holding corp.

When CCP was queried as to why this obvious feature was missing, the stated reason was that Eve didn't support something like this.

So now CCP reveals that this capability exists, but wastes it on a 0.0 ratting nerf instead. Have there been no lessons learned from siphons? To remind you: siphons did one thing, and one thing only: They made POS worse and more of a pain to run than they already were without generating fights at all. I, for one, thought such a thing wouldn't be possible, but apparently someone at CCP took that as a challenge.

So now the same people decided to devalue 0.0 a little more. It does, after all, offer sub-par money making possibilities if you are doing PvE. So, to make a bad feature worse, ratting siphons are implemented.

The amount of derp that lead to these deployables is hard to grasp. The tractor unit, depot and jump inhibitor were pretty good. The mjd and scanning deployables raised eyebrows and are a little weird. But these? No way this is not a troll. Nobody can be so clueless about the realities of 0.0. I pity whoever is still doing PvE in 0.0.

Goon tears be-wait, what?

Enjoying the rain today? ;)

Turelus
Utassi Security
The Curatores Veritatis Auxiliary
#332 - 2014-01-14 19:58:49 UTC
More RP/Lore stuff and improvement ideas.

Quote:
An ESS allows an empire to monitor bounty-generating activities in the solar system it is deployed in. Why this is a thing is due to an on-going and ever-growing feud between the empires and Concord.

I thought this feud was meant to be between the Capsuleers and the Empires not the Empire and CONCORD? The only tension I have noticed was the Caldari fleet vs CONCORD during the Caldari Prime event (unless I missed much more).

Quote:
Concord has decided that monitoring these bounty-generating activities (i.e. killing pirates) outside of their jurisdiction is becoming too expensive, especially with the lost income from high-sec Custom Offices. As a result, they will no longer pay the full bounty amount.

Why are they not just lowering the bounties they have placed on the NPCs rather than saying they will pay x amount then hold back 5%? This seems like a very backwards and unbelievable way for an organisation to handle things.

Quote:
The ESS represents empire monitoring efforts that allow them to compensate players to offset the reduced value that Concord is paying out.

We keep being told that the Empires are getting worried and losing control of us Capsuleers so why would they care what we are doing out in NullSec and want to pay us for removing pirates outside of their space? Is this an attempt to rein us in and play the good cop or do they just feel sorry that CONCORD is screwing us?
There seems no logic behind "The people that we worry are becoming too powerful are losing money, we should pay them more money!" unless this is the Empires giving CONCORD the finger in which case why are we constantly being told that the Empires are losing control of us, when it should be the Empires are getting tired of CONCORD.

Additionally why do we have four racial variants if there is no difference at all in what they do, it seems there are more options for development here which are not being used.
* Have the tags give LP instead of ISK.
* Have the value of tags tied to FW making who is winning wars more important to NullSec (would need to fix issues around switching ESS depending on who's winning.
* Having an ESS in your systems gives you station/outpost options linked to that Empire.

I remember CCP Soundwave saying how he (CCP) wanted to see more ways in which players effected one another without having to directly be in contact, the ESS having ties to Factional Warfare would seem a strong way of doing this.
However there also has to be a reason to want one of these within your system and making up for a 5% loss in bounties isn't enough, the 5% overall seems more like a reason invent just to try and make people use these rather than making them appealing enough to be used willingly.

I am truly disappointed with how little thought has gone into this both lore and mechanics wise because I know you can do better CCP. Please stop working on single little gimmick modules and start thinking of more broad game-wide links which will make this feel like the living evolving universe you supposedly want to create.

As it stands now the ESS is just a griefing tool with no benefit to the Sov holders and because of its implementation we lose out of 5% of the income, which as others have pointed out is only going to effect the little guys grinding ISK for ships to PVP in not the people running the show.

So how I would ideally see this working with lore to support it.
Remember while reading this that LP is (as said by CCP) a large ISK sink for EVE Online, turning ISK into items which are then eventually destroyed.

The Empires/CONCORD are worried that they're losing their grip on Capsuleers so they develop the ESS to help monitor Capsuleers activities in their Sovereign NullSec systems.
The way they sell this as good thing to have to the Capsuleers is they offer LP for the pirates destroyed in the form of redeemable tokens, as we all know Capsuleers (players) are inherently greedy so the chance for more money will rarely be turned down.

The redeemable tokens can be taken to any NPC corporation within the Empire they are printed for and converted into LP for that corp (with the exception of Factional Warfare corps).

Sov entities place down an ESS and gain a value in LP off the bounties received. This LP is gathered inside the ESS much like how the ISK is right now, and the mechanics work the ESS is now (although I would highly recommend longer timers as posted elsewhere in this thread)
Additionally to this the structure can be sent into a reinforced or Incapped mode where the bounties in the system are then reduced by xx% because of the scrambled system monitoring that CONCORD now has.

The structure then would need to be repaired right away (incapped) or later (reinforced) forcing players to either defend their space as roams come through or suffer consequences which might be losing income for a period of time and needing to save a smaller structure from destruction (fight generation/set-up)

This gives an interesting feature that both buffs income for NullSec line members whilst giving new chances to raid and obstruct the income of your enemies. Which follows close to the "fields and fires" idea which has always been talked about.


My idea above has plenty which can be expanded on (FW ties) and the mechanics would need more thought but it would already (at least in my mind) be a far more favourable and interesting addition the NullSec and EVE as a whole.

Turelus CEO Utassi Security

The Frodo
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#333 - 2014-01-14 19:58:58 UTC
ESS - One of the most stupid ides.

Reminds me - "Hey walking in stations is so cool. Everybody will love. Let's implement this"

I hope the would cancel this one or it's time to go back to missions. Pays better and no risk.
Tankn00blicus
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#334 - 2014-01-14 19:59:12 UTC
Mirthander Kane wrote:
I thought about this, and i think it might have to do with the fact that people buy plex with ratting isk, thus taking away from CCP's monthly income - now they introduce this to lower the isk gains, meaning less plex and (hopefully) more subs.

Yes, because PLEX are free. If you go to the account management page where you can get PLEX, they cost $0. You should get 50 of them, because 50 x $0 = $0, put them in the cargo hold of a shuttle, and sit on the Jita 4-4 undock, preferably while I'm sitting within 2500m of your ship. It's not like you'd lose any money if you got ganked, since PLEX do cost $0 after all, right?
Pinky Hops
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#335 - 2014-01-14 20:02:06 UTC  |  Edited by: Pinky Hops
I really dislike this new ESS thing.

Reasons:

1) It's too complicated for what it does. Moving around a structure, anchoring it, interacting with it, etc, all for a bit more income from rats. I view ratting as a fluent activity.

2) It feels forced, not emergent. The big obvious "take all" button vs the "share all" button. I mean, come on. I like conflict drivers just like the next player, but this is laying it on a little bit thick.

3) It barely even makes sense. Look at the story in the blog and how convoluted it seems. It's so ridiculously arbitrary. Just reading it makes me cringe:

Quote:
An ESS allows an empire to monitor bounty-generating activities in the solar system it is deployed in. Why this is a thing is due to an on-going and ever-growing feud between the empires and Concord.


It's like, what? Sure, it makes sense...I guess..., but I really wouldn't call this EVE quality.

Siphons are a lot more direct, usable, understandable, and I think actually great for the game. This ESS thing though, it's bad...

Scrap it, back to the drawing board please. Ugh
Dave Stark
#336 - 2014-01-14 20:14:22 UTC
Why didn't ccp just save themselves all the effort coding half of this stuff, and the really awkward justification, and just create a bounty inhibitor which reduces all bounties by 20% and be done with it.

less to explain, less to code, and the same outcome.
Martineth
Sihars Little Industries
#337 - 2014-01-14 20:15:19 UTC
CCP Phantom
They should call you CCP Santa cause you allways bring this bag full of goodies.Lol
Taram Caldar
Royal Black Watch Highlanders
#338 - 2014-01-14 20:15:22 UTC
ESS: Worst Idea Ever

"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.  He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."

Kadl
Imperial Academy
Amarr Empire
#339 - 2014-01-14 20:15:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Kadl
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:
Kadl wrote:
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:
Increasing the drop-isk-tag window from 40 seconds to 3-5 minutes will give the locals plenty of time to react and blap theives.


You seem to have an estimate of 3-5 minutes for a defensive response. I am guessing that is based on current defensive tactics and positions. Some things which might reduce the required response time are: ESS placed on station eject path, ESS placed near ratter's staging pos, assigned bookmarks for response fleet, additional reasons to watch intel channels, and additional reasons to rat while aligned. Having the times set for a specific number of seconds may favor certain system sizes. Perhaps 3-5 minutes is the time needed, but given these possible advantages it might be shorter.


I've formed up many a response gangs, and a 3-5 minute response is extraordinarily fast (unless your just warping in ships kitchen sink like, or already have a response fleet formed). Really, you want a 6-10 minute window for a proper response fleet to form up. (this is why I requested a 3-5 minutes to activate the ESS, and 3-5 minutes for the ESS to process your drop-isk-tag request). Then these will be conflict drivers.

Putting them on a station, or on a deathstar POS will destroy the conflict driver potential of these, because the homefield advantage of engaging on these grids essentially means it is suicide for a small gang to engage. Pull it away from POSes and Stations and Gates, and more ships die, which is a good thing!


I was not clear enough. The dev blog is clear that the ESS must be placed "several 100 kilometers" from a station. It does not mention POSes but we can assume a similar distance. The point is that the ESS could be placed along the eject trajectory (facilitating an instant warp to it from the station). Also the warp distances can be designed to be a short distance from the defender's staging POS.

I am also expecting the ratters to already have a PvP ship setup and ready when they warp to their staging safe spot. I think it is fair to expect a bit of extra preparation since sitting afk is no longer the best option.
Foo Chan
Sparks Inc
#340 - 2014-01-14 20:17:34 UTC
nobody is going to use this stuff more than the first epic fail its destined to be

just another cut down to income
not selling enough plex i suppose

Yes, I can build that.