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There's also a difference between those who want to inconvenience individuals in that sov, and those who want to actually get fights in that sov.

The fact that a large percentage of gankers are using invincible interceptors now shows where most people who enter an alliances sov sit on that spectrum.

What amuses me about this is that siphons were specifically designed so that they couldn't be used by small groups to generate fights.

Really? Why?

If all you want is some kind of small-gang objective, why would you ever need something even remotely like the ESS, which does nothing for small gangs? If anything, it drives small-gang targets away.

…except for the wasted dev time and the pointless blanket nerf to nullsec bounties.

So what do you think'll happen? I'd hold a finger on the ESS being banned from deployment by most locals.


What'd be the incentive for me to put up an ESS?

Disregarding the fact you aren't going to get this choice (nobody is going to ESS an entire region) you'd still be a moron. If you spend more than 6 minutes an hour dealing with the ESS you might as well have not deployed it, and thats disregarding the cost of the deployable itself.

So what you now have is an ESS-free region where the ratters are safely making isk without interruption, and an ESS-laden region in which ratters are being constantly harassed and regularly losing chunks of isk, not only to theft but also to simply spending a lot of time in pos/stations waiting for hostiles to move on. The region without ESS is making more isk, with less work while it's combat pilots are free to go engage in fun fights. The region with the ESS has its pilots chasing uncatchable interceptor fleets and all manner of other roaming cloaky types terrorizing the region.

This is why nobody will use ESS, and why nullsec alliances will ban them rather than risking some of their members decide that it's a good idea. A couple of people using ESS doesn't just hurt the people using them, it hurts everyone in nearby systems as well.

As a side note, the idea of roaming fleets looking for fights is basically mythological, the ones that are looking for fights sit near a hostile capital and get fights. The ones looking to terrorize ratters are looking for easy kills and will run from anyone trying to give them an actual fight.

Yes it will. It will nerf their incomes by 5%. CCP has not agreed to remove that nerf yet just because its necessity has been refuted.

For the Dev team:

This is getting very convoluted, and would not be so difficult if a detailed upfont discussion was had beforehand.

What I am gleaning from this is that giving too much incentive to use this device and all its associated mechanics will imbalance the current isk faucets of Eve? Someone really wants to bring this out and see New Eden adapt or die, but can't really go all the way, because it could threaten the overall economy? In order for this to 'work' a negative incentive will need to be applied across the board, with significant risk associated, while the reward can't be so high that it will be an inflation driver?

There is a fix. Finish the Drone Alloy rebalance. REMOVE the 100% bounty rats from 8 regions of space and you will have more room to play with the carrot for your new stick. I'm not against the idea of the ESS, and I don't even rat for income anymore. But I do help new players everytime I get the opportunity. I encourage others to experience 0.0 life. It is already a challenge to convince the current playerbase to move away from Empire. As it is, the ESS is not designed to help this equation.

The ESS, in its current form, will punish the inhabitants of the poorest/hardest parts of 0.0 to live in greater than it will other regions of space. Provibloc issues have not been responded to so far. Drone region inhabitants issues have not been responded to so far. Rank and File members will be forced to accept a 5% TIME sink or add a 30mil isk structure with complicated mechanics just to keep at their current income levels. It will be more than a 5% TIME sink to receive added value from the ESS in its current format. It will be more than a 5% TIME sink to assign an alt to babysit the structure, when that alt could have been generating income. Small gangs will not likely get more fights, as either nullbears stop ratting long enough to wait out roams (as they currently do) or just stop ratting period, moving to hisec for their personal isk printing needs.

Just imagine how much fun for us all this COULD bring, if there was really enough incentive. Finishing the Drone Alloy rebalance and including some of the LP reward ideas others have suggested could give this module a lot of room to add value to the Rank and File players bottom line. There would be positive reasons to deploy these things, and make it a much better decision to in fact defend them, bringing more of the gudfites that Eve does need more of.

As it is now, its just wickedly gimped and will only hurt those on the margins.
Because of Alloy.

This!!!!!11

What the game needs is less invincible interceptors. (Remove their interdictor nullification)

In the grand scheme of things it achieves little to nothing against a big alliance. You spend 3-4 hours roaming through a region killing a few afk ratters. Meanwhile they have dozens or more active ratters in other systems still generating isk.

If instead there were deploy-able structures mining asteroids, moons, ice, or planets. What we have is a target for a gang to attack and an objective for the local inhabitants to defend. We can call these structures "farms and fields". They require pvp fit defense ships and haulers for small gangs to bubble and kill on either the station or the "farm and field". Give it a short 5-30 minute RF timer. Balance cost and ROI appropriately.

EDIT: For instance you can have the cost be greater than or equal to a common ratting ship today. Take for example an ishtar(200m isk). So we can make the structure cost 200-300m isk. Then for ROI we need the structure to be better income than ratting which is currently 50-60m isk/ hr or about the same as running l4 missions in hi sec. Therefore we need to make the income 75m-100m / hr to get people to use it.

Now what we have is a ton of people in null sec putting deployable structures at risk that can't be scooped instantly (5-30min offline/unanchor time). Instead of docking/cloaking up ratters in null sec will defend their structures putting not only their structure at risk ,but their ships as well. Content is generated in fights had over income generating structures.

EDIT2: I think the time should be closer to the 5min unanchor time than the 30 min unanchor time. So that someone can log on deploy their structure, make isk for 30 mins haul everything in and log off making a decent 30-50m isk in a brief hour long play session.

A gang of 5-10 interceptors is for all intensive purposes invincible. At best with perfect scenario (Which requires a equal sized 5-10 man fleet) you can conceivably kill 1 or 2 IF the server ticks magically align on a gate. If you bait them, they just orbit at 5km/s and warp off when you uncloak or warp to your bait to try to kill them.

Best case scenario after a perfect gate camp you still have 3-8 (or more) interceptors in your region terrorizing ratters.

Nano gangs can be bubbled and killed on gates relatively easily and risk 200m+ isk cruisers to do so. Not only are invincible nullified interceptors much MUCH harder to kill, they only risk 20m isk frigates.