EVE General Discussion

make this thing work aswell in high+lowsec. If you take all ISK tags out of it you get a suspect flag. Simple as that and it would generate enough "content". I can allready see some powerblocks camping that thing to keep stealing ISK from the mission runners.

Sec gets pretty crappy. Most of vale is above (or worse than) -0.2, my entire constellation consists of such systems.

Actually you've put forward another experiment for me to try (ie particular combos will outperform the base ships), so thankyou very much for the hint in any case. Something that requires 2 players to work is not at all off the table for me - I'm fine if that's what works.

No.

Not that either. This module is likely to be not add anything other than a reason to boot people from the corp for putting them up. The knock-on effect is that all that happens is that null income is reduced and there are more dead code in the system that will have to be revisited one day, wasting even more dev time.

There's absolutely nothing about this module that creates any reason or incentive to defend your ratting space. In fact, if anything, it generates less of one since that ratting space is now less valuable and can sustain even fewer people.

So no, it really doesn't add anything.

Ok as I read this thread I've started to change my view on the ESS module, first I hated it, there are still parts of it I don't like.

So about Nullbears, the people who don't interact with the alliance, who don't defend their space, who just rat every day and don't go on fleets would need to co-ordinate with other people in order to defend their income. Brilliant.

My only concern is that interceptors will just warp in at 0 and warp off with the tags before any of these nullbears can even react, therefore whats the point of even trying, you might as well dock up until they have gone or even call it a day and log off. Losing 30 mil is better than losing your ship.

If this deployable is staying, it will need changing in the future and how to change it will only be known once its tried and tested. Bring it on!

In a nutshell - yes. The case of PvE sucking is rather complex, starting off with low base bounties vs. inflation rendering ratting profitable only if rats are slaughtered en masse. Construction of anomalies themselves, relying on large amount of rats forcing specific, optimized ship setups to be used - setups that are so gimped in PvP that most of the time they simply stand no chance.

It all, indeed, ties into the skewered risk vs. reward ratio. The situation is made worse by ratting being a very popular source of income, an ISK faucet and EVE's economy being as complex as it is. Drastic changes to the way PvE works, like buffing nullsec anoms across the board, would likely have consequences.

And, yes, ESS is borderline useless. I can see it being "useful" - drop it in a system, cloak near it, ha-ha! I'm reducing the income of this system by 20%! Stealing cash from the filthy carebear bourgeoise! Power to the people! ...hey, yeah, I'm also in local and not blue, so due to how PvE works those guys won't rat at all so my 30 mil investment into an ESS reduces 0 ISK income by 20% of 0 ISK. Presence alone shuts down the system because they know I won't bite an actual pvp target - my cloaky is ill-fitted to fight an actual gang they will throw at me.

Now, it's a case bordering a cautionary, environmentalist tale: the Carebear (or, in fact, any ratting boat) is a shiney, tasty thing on the bottom of the food chain. It attracts gangs, it can spark random fights when someone decides to hunt the hunteres. Now, the carebear's natural habitat is kind of already a wasteland to the point most migrated to hisec (you don't see random armageddons belt ratting in nullsec because they can pay their ship back quickly this way, do you?).

Couple that with lethal natural predators (a ratting fit bs will go down to a cloaky T3, even frigates...) and you've got a recipe for slow extinction - or a bad case of "dock up and log off for a week". If all line member income becomes unprofitable and we're left with 100% top-down, the only fight we'll see in null will be clashes of 1000 man blobs in heavy tidi. And, as fun as it is engaging in one of those from time to time - they stop being fun after a while (your mileage may vary on that, it's a personal thing.)

...if I had to come up with an answer? Someone green-lit something wayyyy too fast. I mean, this does kind of look like an early draft - if you run the numbers on how it would work and actually take a closer look on how nullsec ratting works in general this would get sent back to the drawing board really fast.

Thing with POS/Sov reworks are that they're things that need fixing but are based on gigantic piles of legacy code and mechanics that need to be balanced carefully. Both will likely happen. Both are likely either on the drawing boards, or being implemented now but both will feature long-term iterative design.

As the big toys for the sandbox are designed, CCP is keeping people sated with some small stuff. It's small, but useful - take MTU's that see widespread use and some clever emergent gameplay. Siphons and Depots are used all over the space and I guess the MJD thing along with scanner disruptor will also be used. I guess someone at some point got a "great idea" for a new deployable and they rushed it without thinking.

Actually, I just had a thought. If they wanted the ESS to be a "small gang objective" or a part of the "farms and fields" initiative, then what they should do is do one of two things:
1) stop selling it as a boon to the system holders, and use it as a siphon-style module: go into hostile space, drop it, reduce their payouts by x, you get y, they have to blow it up to get back to their 100% bounties.
2) heavily reduce normal bounties payouts if the module isn't active, demand that it's on (and make it hackable; maybe even make it so you can direct the isk stolen (or some of it) to the guy(s) hacking it).

The current bullshit about it "being useful for the system owners", while at the same time letting everyone **** with whomever put it up there by warping to it and pressing a "steal" button is ludicrous, and this schizophrenia is ruining the module's usefulness.

You mean the goons with their alts in hi-sec? Yea your right, that why the front line goon has an average of 8 accounts.

You mean the cloaky disposable alt that could be ratting instead?
There is no such thing.

What will happen is instead of doing this, people will simply use those 2 toons to run missions and hover up loot with that send toon in a noctis for more isk than he would have made ratting with one toon. What you talk about is never practical.

We're talking about what people actually do, not what you think they should.

Give us a deployable that reduces the bounty of everything on grid and collects the difference in it. Make it explodable, with suspect consequence. Who blows it up gets the rest.

Mission runners will cry, but get the chance to destroy it... xD