These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE Information Portal

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Dev blog: More Deployables from Super Friends

First post First post First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Tahnil
Gunboat Commando
#1481 - 2014-01-17 15:24:19 UTC  |  Edited by: Tahnil
As has been constantly pointed out, ESS is an attempt to add more small-scale pvp targets to the game, and it is a mechanic inspired by the „farms and fields“ idea. If there are farms and fields, they will automatically be at risk. They may be pillaged by brigands (small scale roaming gangs), or abused by neighbours (awoxers).

Most people who reject the ESS seem to reject it out of one or several of the following reasons:

a) they don‘t want their income to be nerfed
b) they argue that they want to rat with their PvE alts mostly or completely undisturbed
c) they say that the mechanic is too complex to be good for the game

With regards to a: „I don't want my income to be nerfed“

I can understand that. And I agree that there might be an issue with income levels in sov nullsec compared with hisec. Some have pointed out that this is a more general issue, and I tend to agree. No single module will fix that for you, so this is not a very strong argument against ESS.



With regards to b: „I want to rat safely or mostly undisturbed“

Sorry to say so, but this argument is plainly ridiculous. You‘re living in NULL SECURITY SPACE. So by definition you do only have security as far as you yourself or your corporation or your alliance are able to provide. Did you ever hear wormhole people complain about the fact that they can be slaughtered anytime in their sleeper anomalies? I bet there have been a lot of complaints, but I am also quite sure that very few nullsec people would agree with such complaints.

I do understand though that there is a long history and tradition in nullsec. All existing game mechanics have led to the current state of affair. Warfare in sov nullsec is all about bazillion hitpoint structures that have to be attacked and defended by huge fleets. There are massive deployments, often far away from home. It‘s far more convenient to have two characters, one specialized for such large scale PvP encounters, one specialized for PvE activity back home.

I really understand it.

But the thing is: none of this is „good“ in itself. It may be normal, but only by tradition and because of how the game evolved.

Again, I can only reiterate: CCP is trying to introduce some change to how the game works. For years it has been a sad fact that large portions of 0.0 space is rather empty. There are a thousand reasons why. ONE reason is: there are no „farms and fields“, and therefore not a lot of good reasons to fight for something on the small scale. And therefore roaming gangs are few, and they need to specialize on hunting down the slowest and dumbest ratters.

All of this is the result of game mechanics already in place. And there has to be some change. And with change, all people involved will have to adapt. Nullsec ratters as well as small scale roaming gangs.

I hear a lot about nullsec alliances. Most of them are not very accessible for newbies. There are some, of course, but there are also a lot who only accept characters with 10 or 20 million skillpoints. There has to be a reason why organizations like Brave Newbies exist.

Small scale warfare, defending their home, killing single interceptors trying to steal from the farms and fields – that may not be the preferred activity for 100m sp characters, who are interested in fighting with their blap dread in a big sov fight. But there are a lot of people in EVE who would like to do that.

If you want farms and fields in the long run, then you will have to accept that nullsec entities might have to change the way they operate as well.



With regards to c: „ESS is too complex to be any good“

Yeah, maybe. But if THIS is your main argument, then please try to improve the module. There have been a lot of good suggestions in this thread already.



So please stop fighting this module out of the wrong reasons.
Billybob Sheepshooter
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1482 - 2014-01-17 15:30:40 UTC
Tahnil wrote:
So please stop fighting this module out of the wrong reasons.


We will.
When CCP introduces the module for the right reasons.
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#1483 - 2014-01-17 15:30:47 UTC
Wyn Pharoh wrote:
Zircon Dasher wrote:
Rarnak Ki wrote:


5% nerf aside, there is a potential to increase ratting income by 5% from current levels. This happens after ratting for an hour or more at not 95%, but 80% of normal income. To balance out, a ratter will need to rat for 5 hours just to break even. 1 hour at 80% and 4 hours at 105%. This means that not only will the ratter have to rat for five hours before a profit is made, but the ESS has to both survive and not be emptied out during that time.



Except that you get 100% of your current ISK the second it activates. 80% will be in your wallet and 20% in the EES. The 1% level ups are over and above that amount. According to SoniClover 'several' people ratting will max out the bonus in about 30min. Assuming 20min ticks that means about 2 ticks before you are at 105%. Assuming you get an extra 2mil/tick/character that means it should take about 1-1.5 hours to break even. EDIT: Assuming 3-4 characters


What SoniClover said was that each bounty payout has a chance of triggering a tick. Yay for more chance based mechanics in New Eden. I did a run at the maths, and presumed that a pair of Ishtar's grouped together for ratting. Speculating on what was stated, that it could take a single player an hour or more, but several players could knock it up in 1/2 an hour, I gave each tick a 1% bonus, and ran that forward. It will take 3 HOURS of uninterrupted ratting, according to the new mechanics, to reach break even with where we are at today. It will take another 5 HOURS of uninterrupted ratting for the Ishtar pair (presuming each pulls 20mil/isk/tick) to PAY for the upgrade with the 'bonus isk' generated by this device.


It takes 60 seconds to deploy, after which you IMMEDIATELY make the same bounty/tic that you do today. Then, as you rat, that feedback increases to a 5% boost in ratting income. And if a hostile enters system, scoop it up.... the isk is still stored in the system bank, so you don't lose anything (the ESS included) and can deploy it again after the ratters leave.

Wyn Pharoh wrote:

Let us suppose that we have a system that can support 4 ishtars. That's really pushing most single systems, but lets go with it. We will let each tick give +2% and see what happens...Its only about an HOUR and a HALF of uninterrupted ratting, with a total of 4 HOURS to pay for the 'upgrade'. None of these considerations take into account the cost/logistics of getting the upgrade into nullsec to begin with.

If you have to clear the cache anytime during ramp up and reset, then the nightmare starts all over again. Even if the ESS lasts long enough to pay for itself without getting blapped, a couple of people are going to have to agree to work together for 4 HOURS every time they opt for PVE to see a 3mil/isk/hr 'bonus'. This is nuts. Its rubbish.

Gizznitt Malikite wrote:

So, you really have two options:

1.) Make suggestions to improve it so it gains utility within the current environment.
2.) Demand it be removed from game, giving you no value for the money that has already been spent on it.


3) Demand it not be implemented until its fixed, applying the suggestions that will improve it AND get full value for the money that has been already spent on it.

Its a trainwreck and when its suggested that we all just 'forget' the 5% or when you and others say the 5% isn't part of ESS mechanics, that's just plain wrong. It's built into the lore supporting the thing. Its built into the posted 'logic' supporting why the 5% is even being implemented. CCP believes that there is an isk faucet issue. So, instead of dealing with the isk faucet they created when they fixed the Drone Alloy mineral faucet problem, ALL of 0.0 get to deal with an across the board nerf to ratting income, with an ABSURDLY BAD potential of getting pocket change as a reward.

Lol Drones... I've come across that a few times. Lol Drones...its so bad, the rest of you get to pay for how bad it really is.

I'm not trying to sling mud across New Eden here. I'm really trying to get answers. To be honest, I personally think good conflict drivers are good. I see this one as horribly and fundamentally flawed, and that no one has put enough effort into making it GREAT.


If CCP had not mentioned the 5% nerf to nullsec income in the same dev blog, this module would be a fairly solid success. The module design, while it has some flaws that CCP mentioned it is addressing, is a straight up boon to those that risk using it and successfully defend it. The majority of the hate here is because people can't distinguish between the 5% income nerf and the release of the new module.
greiton starfire
Accidentally Hardcore
#1484 - 2014-01-17 15:45:25 UTC
Tahnil wrote:
some rambling garbage

you forgot the biggest reason everyone is fighting it... it will never work.

if someone did use it, they are at a huge disadvantage when the roaming fleet appears, since their systems dont support enough ratters to be able to mount a defense together they would need reinforcements. and since a bubble on station would catch them before they can refit the reinforcements have to do all the fighting, for isk that isn't theirs.

but lets move on from the fact they wont be able to defend it, once the take button is pressed it turns it into tags, whether they form up to fight or not. so now after the drama of divvying up the tags, they have to take them somewhere to turn them in. in null sec shipping (especially safe shipping) costs isk. so just by showing up the roamers have put a large dent into the income of the ratters.

also, when the button is pushed the rewards reset, so they have to slowly grind it up again. (remember only a few ratters can be supproted in a system, it takes a while to grind up again.) and if it is destroyed you are out 30 mill isk, which takes a long time to grind 5% at a time. if that gang decides to come back during those hours of ginding you are out even more isk, rinse repeat.

you claim this was them trying to push small gang warfare in null sec, but the fact is fundementally this is not true. if they wanted more small gang warfare they never would have involved pve in the first place, as no one ever fights in a pve ship in eve willingly, anywhere, ever, in all time.

as for your issues with small gangs being dead, you realize that is what wormholes were designed for right? systems that can only be accessed by a few ships at a time before the connection resets. the idea was that people wanting to fight would roam them, maybe kill some locals here and there, and run into other roaming fleets. te problem is small gangs dont want even fights, they want ganks. not having local scared them cause they couldn't tell if another ship was off scan somewhere. it didn't matter that unless you lived there any fleet could ony have the same mass as them. don't give me boohoo small gang is neglected and needs help, you have an entire region of space to live in. (profitable region too)

finally, if you can make far more isk safer running level 4's in highsec where roaming gangs can't steal your money and kill you everyday over and over again, why the hell would you stay in nullsec. this mod does the oposite of what you want, it incentives people to stay out of null except for staging systems, and those people want to fight you but you don't want to fight them.
Zircon Dasher
#1485 - 2014-01-17 15:45:48 UTC
Jenn aSide wrote:

Exactly.

one of the things CCP doesn't understand is that a lot of alliances have the unwritten rule of "don't crap where you eat" ie don't engage in pvp in your pve grounds because that just encourages them to come back because they know they can get a fight.



If we defend the Farm today, attackers will come to the Farm more often.
If attackers come to the Farm more often, we will have to spend an ever increasing amount of time defending the Farm.
So, If we defend the Farm today, then we will have to spend an ever increasing amount of time defending the Farm.

Time spent defending the Farm is time we cannot spend generating ISK
So, If we defend the Farm today, then we will generate an ever decreasing amount of ISK.
We do not want to generate an ever decreasing amount of ISK
So, We should not defend the Farm today.

Does that sum up the argument?
Sounds like a Farm&Fields concept is doomed unless people don't have to defend the Farm.

Nerfing High-sec is never the answer. It is the question. The answer is 'YES'.
Yeep
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1486 - 2014-01-17 15:45:52 UTC  |  Edited by: Yeep
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:

If CCP had not mentioned the 5% nerf to nullsec income in the same dev blog, this module would be a fairly solid success.


No, it wouldn't. Because there would still be no reason for a spaceholder to deploy it themselves. A 5% increase in ratting income is not worth the time, effort and isk required to defend it.

Zircon Dasher wrote:

Sounds like a Farm&Fields concept is doomed unless people don't have to defend the Farm.


Defending the farm is fine so long as you can still make more money farming than people still sucking on the teat of highsec missions.
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#1487 - 2014-01-17 16:03:51 UTC
Tahnil wrote:
Most people who reject the ESS seem to reject it out of one or several of the following reasons:

a) they don‘t want their income to be nerfed

You forgot "without a legitimate reason."
Reasons were given, none were legitimate.

Tahnil wrote:
b) they argue that they want to rat with their PvE alts mostly or completely undisturbed

Pretty much nobody has said this, because this really wouldn't increase the amount of disturbance. If you spend 30 million isk you can occupy a few carebears away from ratting for maybe 5 more minutes after you leave the system. Not really a big difference.

Tahnil wrote:
c) they say that the mechanic is too complex to be good for the game

Too complex? Who said this? It's not that it's complex, it's that it's stupid. It doesn't work in any of the intended ways.

I'll address the rest of your arguments when you're ready to make arguments that aren't strawmen.

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#1488 - 2014-01-17 16:03:59 UTC
greiton starfire wrote:
Tahnil wrote:
some rambling garbage

you forgot the biggest reason everyone is fighting it... it will never work.

if someone did use it, they are at a huge disadvantage when the roaming fleet appears, since their systems dont support enough ratters to be able to mount a defense together they would need reinforcements. and since a bubble on station would catch them before they can refit the reinforcements have to do all the fighting, for isk that isn't theirs.

but lets move on from the fact they wont be able to defend it, once the take button is pressed it turns it into tags, whether they form up to fight or not. so now after the drama of divvying up the tags, they have to take them somewhere to turn them in. in null sec shipping (especially safe shipping) costs isk. so just by showing up the roamers have put a large dent into the income of the ratters.

also, when the button is pushed the rewards reset, so they have to slowly grind it up again. (remember only a few ratters can be supproted in a system, it takes a while to grind up again.) and if it is destroyed you are out 30 mill isk, which takes a long time to grind 5% at a time. if that gang decides to come back during those hours of ginding you are out even more isk, rinse repeat.

you claim this was them trying to push small gang warfare in null sec, but the fact is fundementally this is not true. if they wanted more small gang warfare they never would have involved pve in the first place, as no one ever fights in a pve ship in eve willingly, anywhere, ever, in all time.

as for your issues with small gangs being dead, you realize that is what wormholes were designed for right? systems that can only be accessed by a few ships at a time before the connection resets. the idea was that people wanting to fight would roam them, maybe kill some locals here and there, and run into other roaming fleets. te problem is small gangs dont want even fights, they want ganks. not having local scared them cause they couldn't tell if another ship was off scan somewhere. it didn't matter that unless you lived there any fleet could ony have the same mass as them. don't give me boohoo small gang is neglected and needs help, you have an entire region of space to live in. (profitable region too)

finally, if you can make far more isk safer running level 4's in highsec where roaming gangs can't steal your money and kill you everyday over and over again, why the hell would you stay in nullsec. this mod does the oposite of what you want, it incentives people to stay out of null except for staging systems, and those people want to fight you but you don't want to fight them.


How can you accuse Tahni of "rambling garbage" and then spew this load of bullshit?

1.) A ratter can hit warp to station long before the station is bubbled by a hostile that just enters system. Ratter has to hit warp... Nuet has to actually warp there, drop a bubble (aligned to your local no less), and do so before you hit the warp button.

2.) If you cant defend it, don't use it.

3.) It immediately gives you a 5% bump in net income the moment it is deployed. The grind is to improve the payout to 10%.

4.) This doesn't involve your PvE ships... it involves your PvE mechanics. What the **** do you think a farm is? When hostiles enter the area, you reship to PvP ships to fight them off, as no one is expecting you to defend the farm with hoes and rakes.

5.) WH were designed for many purposes, and while small gang combat occassionally exists there, they were not designed to shoehorn all small gang pvp there. Have you ever been to W-space, because you're coming across very ignorant.

6.) The imbalances between safe-ish highsec income and risky-nullsec income should be addressed, but this module is a straight up boon to those who use it and can defend it. The imbalanced income between security regions truly is another matter (albeit an important one!).
Sal Landry
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#1489 - 2014-01-17 16:11:13 UTC
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:
Have you ever been to W-space, because you're coming across very ignorant.

Oh the irony.
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#1490 - 2014-01-17 16:12:02 UTC
Yeep wrote:
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:

If CCP had not mentioned the 5% nerf to nullsec income in the same dev blog, this module would be a fairly solid success.


No, it wouldn't. Because there would still be no reason for a spaceholder to deploy it themselves. A 5% increase in ratting income is not worth the time, effort and isk required to defend it.


How much would you like to bet that this module will be routinely deployed in CFC ratting space within 2 months of its release. I don't care if you ban it, you'll have plenty of pewbies that deploy it so they can earn some extra income.

Yeep wrote:
Zircon Dasher wrote:

Sounds like a Farm&Fields concept is doomed unless people don't have to defend the Farm.


Defending the farm is fine so long as you can still make more money farming than people still sucking on the teat of highsec missions.


We understand the QQ'ing over the income disparity between highsec and lowsec, especially considering the risk: reward and effort:reward paradigms. That still doesn't undermine this as a farms and field concept though, it just means your unhappy with the balances of income between security classes.
Tahnil
Gunboat Commando
#1491 - 2014-01-17 16:15:02 UTC
@greiton starfire:

Sorry, but all of your arguments are pretty bad. And they disregard most of which has been said by people in this thread who support the idea behind ESS (not necessarily the proposed game mechanics, as they are currently on SiSi). Let me show you why.

greiton starfire wrote:
if someone did use it, they are at a huge disadvantage when the roaming fleet appears, since their systems dont support enough ratters to be able to mount a defense together they would need reinforcements. and since a bubble on station would catch them before they can refit the reinforcements have to do all the fighting, for isk that isn't theirs.


That depends entirely on circumstances. I have been in nullsec oftentimes, and I know how the population is distributed. There are a lot of systems with no inhabitants at all, or only a single pilot ratting, travelling, or doing whatever. But these are not the interesting systems for roaming gangs. We go where a lot of people are. Not necessarily the HQ system, but roaming gangs love to visit systems with 15 to 30 local players. And there are systems like that. I know it. I‘ve been there often. And I‘m talking about roaming gangs with less than 15 to 30 pilots.

As has been pointed out before: even if I accept it as a fact that any given system may only support four to six ratters at the same time, this is not the problem. Because (a) not all people are ratting at once and (b) given that inhabitants have some intel and some more time to react than the suggested 60 seconds, you will be able to have some support from other systems as well.

Also your argument with regards to a bubble at the station is none at all. I don‘t know if you ever roamed in a small gang. Only in rare circumstances a roaming gang is able to catch anybody in a bubble at the station. Because as soon as the ratters get intel about enemies, they initiate warp, and no bubble will catch them.

greiton starfire wrote:
but lets move on from the fact they wont be able to defend it, once the take button is pressed it turns it into tags, whether they form up to fight or not. so now after the drama of divvying up the tags, they have to take them somewhere to turn them in. in null sec shipping (especially safe shipping) costs isk. so just by showing up the roamers have put a large dent into the income of the ratters.


This is only a problem if the attackers push da button first ;)

Also this is not a good argument against the idea behind ESS, only against a specific aspect of it‘s current iteration on SiSi. So why don‘t you try to come up with a better game mechanic instead of rejecting the whole idea?

greiton starfire wrote:
also, when the button is pushed the rewards reset, so they have to slowly grind it up again. (remember only a few ratters can be supproted in a system, it takes a while to grind up again.) and if it is destroyed you are out 30 mill isk, which takes a long time to grind 5% at a time. if that gang decides to come back during those hours of ginding you are out even more isk, rinse repeat.


These may be valid arguments, but not against the introduction of an ESS style module, only against the current iteration. You could make some constructive proposals how it would work better! I think this would be exactly the kind of feedback CCP is looking forward to.

greiton starfire wrote:
you claim this was them trying to push small gang warfare in null sec, but the fact is fundementally this is not true. if they wanted more small gang warfare they never would have involved pve in the first place, as no one ever fights in a pve ship in eve willingly, anywhere, ever, in all time.


PvE is a wonderful thing to fight over! And it‘s done all the time, all over EVE. Your statement is plainly and simply wrong.

greiton starfire wrote:
as for your issues with small gangs being dead, you realize that is what wormholes were designed for right? systems that can only be accessed by a few ships at a time before the connection resets. the idea was that people wanting to fight would roam them, maybe kill some locals here and there, and run into other roaming fleets. te problem is small gangs dont want even fights, they want ganks. not having local scared them cause they couldn't tell if another ship was off scan somewhere. it didn't matter that unless you lived there any fleet could ony have the same mass as them. don't give me boohoo small gang is neglected and needs help, you have an entire region of space to live in. (profitable region too)


Wormhole space is very different from all other space, and that‘s a good thing. What I strongly reject is the notion that there should be dedicated areas in EVE Online for different kinds of engagements. Because that reminds me of WoW and other games, where players are strongly encouraged to stay in certain areas, if their skills and levels are not „good enough“.

I believe in an EVE Online where the one day old rifter pilot has his place right next to a titan.

Your last argument (balance between risk and reward in hisec compared to nullsec) is not an issue of ESS, but of general game balance. This is a different topic, but I tend to agree with you.
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#1492 - 2014-01-17 16:15:07 UTC
Actually, I feel compelled to respond to this:

Tahnil wrote:
Sorry to say so, but this argument is plainly ridiculous. You‘re living in NULL SECURITY SPACE. So by definition you do only have security as far as you yourself or your corporation or your alliance are able to provide. Did you ever hear wormhole people complain about the fact that they can be slaughtered anytime in their sleeper anomalies? I bet there have been a lot of complaints, but I am also quite sure that very few nullsec people would agree with such complaints.

This argument is so utterly tired and debunked, it's a wonder you people still bother trying to make it.
You're obviously ignoring the fact that interruptions reduce the amount of ISK we can make. If these interruptions threaten to bring us below the amount of isk we can make in highsec, then does it really make sense for us to stay in nullsec? No, not really.

Your utterly predictable and equally stupid response would be along the lines of "clearly you need people to protect your ratting spaces more" to which I respond "really? Great idea. How much should we pay them?" At which point you say "I don't know, with the isk you get from ratting?"
Yeah, right.

You should probably check how many people actually die in wormhole space PVE, compared to how many people die in null PVE, adjusted for population.

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Zircon Dasher
#1493 - 2014-01-17 16:17:52 UTC
Yeep wrote:

No you don't. You have to factor in the cost of the deployable and the time spent flying to and from it to retrieve your bounty.


1) The post I responded to broke the recoup time out of the equation. I responded to the part of the post where the author said it takes 3hrs to get back to generating 100% of the current bounty. That is false.

2) Do you calculate your ISK/HR subtracting out the cost of your ship? No, you don't, because that cost is a sunk cost. Same for deployable cost.

3) Time spent to take the ISK out of the ESS can range from 0 to a couple min depending on how you chose to accomplish that task. Luckily, it does not particularly matter since you generated the ISK regardless of whether you collected the ISK.

Nerfing High-sec is never the answer. It is the question. The answer is 'YES'.
Tahnil
Gunboat Commando
#1494 - 2014-01-17 16:19:44 UTC
Zircon Dasher wrote:
Jenn aSide wrote:

Exactly.

one of the things CCP doesn't understand is that a lot of alliances have the unwritten rule of "don't crap where you eat" ie don't engage in pvp in your pve grounds because that just encourages them to come back because they know they can get a fight.



If we defend the Farm today, attackers will come to the Farm more often.
If attackers come to the Farm more often, we will have to spend an ever increasing amount of time defending the Farm.
So, If we defend the Farm today, then we will have to spend an ever increasing amount of time defending the Farm.

Time spent defending the Farm is time we cannot spend generating ISK
So, If we defend the Farm today, then we will generate an ever decreasing amount of ISK.
We do not want to generate an ever decreasing amount of ISK
So, We should not defend the Farm today.

Does that sum up the argument?
Sounds like a Farm&Fields concept is doomed unless people don't have to defend the Farm.


I disagree.

If you defend your farm EFFICIENTLY and SUCCESSFUL, then there will be less incentive for brigands to come back. They might choose to terrorize a different alliance instead, one which is less successful in home defense.

But nevertheless: it would create new content for everybody. And nobody is forced to be a part of it. But alliances will have to adapt to this new threat, and I'm sure they are able to do so.
Jenn aSide
Soul Machines
The Initiative.
#1495 - 2014-01-17 16:21:05 UTC
Tahnil wrote:


I disagree.

If you defend your farm EFFICIENTLY and SUCCESSFUL, then there will be less incentive for brigands to come back.


I doubt you play EVE.
James Amril-Kesh
Viziam
Amarr Empire
#1496 - 2014-01-17 16:32:36 UTC
Tahnil wrote:
If you defend your farm EFFICIENTLY and SUCCESSFUL, then there will be less incentive for brigands to come back.

If you defend your farm "EFFICIENTLY and SUCCESSFUL", you completely negated any ISK you could have been making by just farming in highsec instead.

Enjoying the rain today? ;)
Yeep
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1497 - 2014-01-17 16:32:51 UTC
Tahnil wrote:

As has been pointed out before: even if I accept it as a fact that any given system may only support four to six ratters at the same time, this is not the problem. Because (a) not all people are ratting at once and (b) given that inhabitants have some intel and some more time to react than the suggested 60 seconds, you will be able to have some support from other systems as well.


Those people who aren't ratting are AFK, or doing industry, or doing research, or managing a POS, or logged in from work just to chat. If they are idly defending your ESS then they could be ratting (or doing any of the other things I mentioned) so you need to budget them into your costs. And those costs currently don't break even until there are 10 people ratting in a system.

I'll say it again. CCP need to drop the idea this is ever something a spaceholding alliance would want to deploy themselves and re-work it to be a purely offensive module.
Zircon Dasher
#1498 - 2014-01-17 16:40:30 UTC
Gizznitt Malikite wrote:

If CCP had not mentioned the 5% nerf to nullsec income in the same dev blog, this module would be a fairly solid success. The module design, while it has some flaws that CCP mentioned it is addressing, is a straight up boon to those that risk using it and successfully defend it. The majority of the hate here is because people can't distinguish between the 5% income nerf and the release of the new module.


This. If CCP only announced a nerf the ensuing threadnaught would have had people demanding some way to bypass the nerf via effort/risk.

CCP anticipated said threadnaught, provided a mechanism to bypass the nerf AND buff income via effort/risk, and people still complain.

I <3 EVE players.

Nerfing High-sec is never the answer. It is the question. The answer is 'YES'.
Wyn Pharoh
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#1499 - 2014-01-17 16:52:53 UTC
Zircon Dasher wrote:
Wyn Pharoh wrote:

It will take 3 HOURS of uninterrupted ratting, according to the new mechanics, to reach break even with where we are at today.


That is false.

Assume current RatBounty = 100k

Without ESS:
95k goes into your wallet.
TOTAL BOUNTY: 95k

Immediately upon ESS activating:
80k goes to wallet
20k goes into ESS
TOTAL BOUNTY: 100k

Current rat bounty - Activated ESS bounty = 0
SO after the 60sec activation time you break even by comparison to the current system.



I am ok with revising figures to account for the lost% going directly into the ESS, along with the held isk. Lets use a progression instead that begins with 1% added to the 20% withheld and move forward. It is better for the farmer not to have the ridiculous ramp up time. Now, lets pay for the upgrade...

Hour 1. Our pair of Ishtars raise 2.4mil isk to pay for upgrade.
Hour 2. Our pair of Ishtars raise 5.6mil isk to pay for upgrade.
Hour 3. Our pair of Ishtars raise 6.0Mil isk to pay for upgrade.
ETC...
...requiring ONLY 5.66 uninterrupted hours to pay for the 'upgrade'. Reasonable people should hardly bank on 2 hours of undisturbed PVE life, so it will more likely take 7.66 hours to pay for the upgrade. A LOT of people will only get in an hour, those folks will lose 12.6 hours of their life to pay for 'upgrade'. As long as there are at least two folks working together. As long as it never gets killed of course. Failing to take into consideration cost in fuel and time to import from Empire as well.

All these things are better than my original projection that improperly accounted for withholding mechanics. Not that this is really good at all. Its still entirely rubbish and needs to be put on hold while CCP takes the time to do this right.

We cannot forget the risk factor here, of isk in holding. The cost of an entire ESS is being held for our two ratters over each hour that it is in place. Losing 1 hour of withheld isk to either friend or foe then sets you back 5.66 hours of gametime to get caught back up to where you would have been pre-ESS. If its blapped in process, oops, you and a friend have now lost 11 and 1/3 hours of your life over what would have been put in the pockets of the Rank and File, pre-ESS.

Ofc, one could babysit the monster with an alt. An alt that isn't being productive, losing 60mil/isk an hr to guard the 30mil isk 'investment' and and potential gains from this 'upgrade'. Its such a lose-lose scenario, I can't believe we've gotten this far without a sincere and honest apology from all of Team Super Friend.
Jenn aSide
Soul Machines
The Initiative.
#1500 - 2014-01-17 16:55:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Jenn aSide
James Amril-Kesh wrote:
Tahnil wrote:
If you defend your farm EFFICIENTLY and SUCCESSFUL, then there will be less incentive for brigands to come back.

If you defend your farm "EFFICIENTLY and SUCCESSFUL", you completely negated any ISK you could have been making by just farming in highsec instead.


And this is the entire point. I honestly don't know why it's such a hard concept to grasp. CCPs fundamental thinking behind this is flawed because they don't understand player behavior.

If my goal is to make isk to do something else, why would I light a "pvp here" cyno beacon begging for someone to come screw with me?

Wait, i'm wrong, it's not a "pvp here" beacon, it's a "pvp or loot here" beacon, on requiring my or my mates to waste a toon sitting on it read to scoop and hoping that toon can get our before the ceptor lands half a server tick from now.

CCP hasn't had a bigger cheerleader than me, i even stuck with them through somer gate, but at this point i feel very close to threatening to unsub my 17,000 accounts thus crippling Iceland's economy (and then where we import our sheep's head and fermented shark from?).