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Insinuating that this isn't and hasn't been a thing in nullsec alliances already for years now.

Actual man hours were spent trying to develop the ESS.

There are flaws inherent to this logic btw.

By tying the payout to the market value LP, and the bonus being so crappy (20% is still crappy btw given the stakes) - you risk the value of the LP dropping.

For instance, the value of the loyalty points could drop to a level where you actually get less net income by having an ESS in system. - because that "bonus income in LP" doesn't recoup the losses in ISK.

What do you do then? Have CCP setup buy orders to artificially keep the value of the items high? That would just reverse the process of inflation to begin with - or basically just making the whole thing more complicated.

And it's already way too complicated.



Thanks a lot, this post made me spit beer out of my nose.

It's true in a really twisted, sick way. It's literally designed to be bad. I would hate to get paid to do bad work on purpose.

"You have to make this item be as crappy as possible. Make sure nobody uses it or the whole thing fails by design."

i swear i remember reading that CCP are much less willing to adopt an idea that has been put forward by a player than by an original idea from one of their Devs. Something about Devs earning their wage or something. Is it possible that the playerbase has brainstormed all the good and semi-okayish ideas out of the possible implementable ideas pool that Devs can think up, and so have to resort to ridiculously idiotic ideas and solutions to problems like this ESS that CCP SoniClover and Team Super 'Friends' have announced?

But seriously, did you have to go and insult our intelligence by dressing this up as a buff when its realistically a blanket nerf? literally adding insult to injury, and you wonder why subscription levels are dropping currently...


ohh and any baseline PL member that approves with the implementation of the ESS as is currently, remember that they generate their isk in any way other than NPC rats in null, so they're not affected, just their enemies, and thats always a good thing in their terms.You can practically wipe their comments from this as they 'play' in nullsec but grind isk anywhere but.

The fact that a CCP Dev would lie through his teeth and insult our intelligence rather than admit his pet project is a steaming pile of bullcrap is far more concerning than a measly 5% nerf to nullsec bounties or a broken deployable no one will ever use (as stupid and unnecessary as those are).

Yeah who am I kidding, everyone will just dock up.

Since the LP would not be related to the space the player was ratting in, but the space to which the ESS was bought from, your first point is removed. Providing the Empires LP is considered equally valuable. Though this could also be balanced by making it Concord LP which is then fairly universal.

The 5% initial bounty nerf could also remain. Call it pirate siphons in between 'here' and Yulai or whatever you want to do. And the ESS blocks those siphons however they do some LP payout instead of isk in return.

The main thing is the potential reward needs to be at least 1.5 times the potential penalty. Since the structure itself has a built in cost any time you loose the LP, chances are the roaming gang will also blow the structure up to hurt you as well.
So even if we assume 50% of the time you get the LP, you will only break even at that point.

This also means that the structure needs a sensible access method. Free access to owners alliance, Hacking required by anyone else sounds fair, especially given Black Ops have a hacking bonus so easy enough to bring a hacker.
And a better EHP method. Maybe a 10 min reinforcement timer. That gives time for a fleet to actually form to defend it. More EHP simply makes for a bigger grind but doesn't put a real timer on it.

The concept itself isn't terrible, the numbers attached to it right now are.

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Edit. Also darn you Mynnna, normally I disagree with your posts, but that's fairly close to what I think. Much as I think the 5% base nerf can stay. Provided the potential gain from the ESS is large enough.

I don't often post, but when I do, it is to point out that this module is a terrible idea in its current form and needs severe reworking. The blanket null income nerf is the exact opposite of what needs to be happening. Is this what you guys were envisioning when you spoke about a desire to pursue bottom-up income for alliances?

tl;dr - Either scrap this **** idea or rework it in such a way that it will actually be worthwhile without blanket-nerfing everyone who doesn't want to play tower defense in space.

It is important to remain constructive, so I'm going to be very deliberate...

In post #696 SoniClover has suggested some tweeks to the ESS module due to some great observations of how to abuse the fundamental mechanics of the module itself.

From posts #821, #835, #838 and #844 CCP SoniClover has gotten into some of the fundamentals behind the very existence of this module, i.e. the economic indicators driving the introduction of a new isk sink that will in theory off balance the introduction of turning down an ingame isk faucet. Frankly, all of this should have been upfront and direct from the very beginning. There aught to be graphs, charts and various other 8x9 color glossies included with the original devblog.

I'm going to dive into an exception that I am taking with the end of post #838...



While it may be fair to say 'as we take from Hisec, so we shall also take from Null' in order to justify a blanket nerf to 0.0 bounty incomes (and the isk faucet these bounties represent), it is not true that you 'hate everyone equally'. From all postings read so far, the political implications of deploying these modules suggests a nerf to the entire Provibloc community. I got my 0.0 feet wet there, as have countless others, and it is no overstatement to suggest ESS mechanics will be a political nightmare for the Holders to manage.

Beyond political considerations, the very real mechanics for the Drone Regions must not be understated. In fact, they are at the fundamental root of the problem. Virtually all income for ratting in Drones is derived directly from bounties. This will be a potential nerf greater in relative proportion to Drone inhabitants than it will be for all other players in null sec. No one else will face a real and true 5% diminishment of total potential income as a choice other than Drones residents. In every other region of space, its a 5% 'tax' on the 80% odd income that is directly added via the bounty system, while a considerable portion of the available potential income will remain untouched by ESS mechanics. I think that I'm being generous, considering that Officer loot drops, Exploration income and Moon mining tends to favor Pirate Nullsec space overall.

On the subject of this isk faucet problem, part of the problem is directly of CCP's own creation. Once it was decided that the loot drops from the Drone Regions had created an imbalanced mineral faucet, the response to this was drastic. NPC alloy loot drops were removed from 99.9% of the Drone NPC's and were replaced with 8 regions worth of bounty only producing rats. 8 Regions that did not contribute at all to the bounty isk faucet, overnight, went from 0 to 100% part of the bounty isk faucet problem. This is the cost CCP accepted when the Drone Alloy problem was fixed.

Now, all of null sec is being asked to accept an across the board 5% nerf to bounties or to accept the usage of a deployable that may potentially buff system bounties by 5%, if they are willing to risk the cost of maintaining said deployable. Because of bounty isk faucet issues. Isk faucet issues that cannot be disentangled from the fix for the Drone Alloy problem.

Here is a modest proposal to CCP, fix the Drone Region bounty problem first. Nerf drone bounties back inline with Pirate bounties and insert loot drops. Any loot drops would be fine. Roleplay the heck out of drone NPC's being a patchwork of empire parts and get on with fixing this isk faucet in the simplest fashion from top to bottom. Then, and only then, lets have a real conversation about conflict drivers, fields and farms or whatever else may be viewed as added content to justify the introduction of the ESS into New Eden.

mynnna's idea plus:

Make it so we can buy, sell, trade, manipulate, scam, send and receive (you can send isk to an from characters. Why not LP?), etc. on the market in either straight LP or a LP tag form. Let the free market take over. This Thread is the original idea. That way more NPC groups can get in on the LP for bounty gig and carebears can quickly calculate the isk payouts of their ratting.