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If we really want to drive conflict and encourage small gangs we need something different. Sure, Null-bear ratters could anti up a bit of earnings for greater average payout. And Pirates could make a play to take that anty. The current proposal doesn't accomplish the goal well enough. It's too easy for a single player to make a pass at the earnings, meaning there's no small gang, just a cloaky/nulli thief instead of a small band of pirates. In short, hard set timers are dull and discourage creative play.


Here's an alternate approach:

ESS stats:
30m price tag
HP set to ~150k (resistance holes based on faction used)

ESS is a beacon for empires to monitor activity and reward good behavior.
- That reward comes automatically in 2 hour ticks. (use a cool counter and display the current pot as you like)
- if the ESS is destroyed all payout is now loot in the form of tickets.

The EHP is high enough to require the thief risk something of value. (ships/time etc.)
The ratters could interrupt the thief, remote rep the structure, or take it off line. to redeploy later and receive payout.
The Cost is high enough that ratters don't want to be replacing these all the time, but would need them to stay deployed for at least 2 hours to get their payout.
It engages the PVP timer. This is PVP and should be treated as such.

Notes:
It requires everyone to risk something in order to gain. In all cases smart playing and decent skills are useful at improving chances.

It gives small gangs a reason to go to Sov Null space and harass ratters.
It gives ratters a reason to undock in PVP fleets when reds come.
It is simpler to use and won't require an extensive wiki page to describe.
Numbers help both sides but large raiding fleets will be cumbersome to manage payouts and the risked asset is not so high that defense fleets need to be giant either (no sense risking billions in fleet assets to save millions in ratter income)


Please give us a simpler route to content creation. the current item does not encourage group play and makes ratting in Sov space too much like busy work.

Epic thread.

So many tears, you guys better drink some water or you will all become severely dehydrated...

Fortunately, most of the negative feedback isn't actually negative feedback, it's kneejerk reaction posting and "me too" posting and can be safely ignored. Most of the posts in this thread follow a format so rigidly that you could probably write a single regular expression* to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you've kept up with the thread you will notice that the actual feedback that wasn't a 3-5 paragraph thesis statement of the poster's inability to handle risk or think critically was actually considered and about half of that feedback was actually implemented.

* hurrr /GBS Logistics and Fives Support/ is a funny answer

I can't unsub in protest, I paid for a years sub a week before this was announced... somehow CCP knew.

I wouldn't say this is worth cancelling subs over but I think it's getting near the old ways of CCP not really understanding what its player base wants. Hopefully the ESS will continue to be work on after release but I honestly do see this as another Rapid Missile case where people say "It wont work" and CCP say "Nah it's fine" then after a month and the initial rage/indifference no one uses it and it sits in the game doing nothing.

I love the LP options it brings, I think more work to add the LP stores and new upgrades to NullSec are great, but the whole gambling of ISK and 5% reduction under this supposed need to reduce ISK from NullSec is just meh.

Also I think it's like three more posts until 100 pages now? Make 100 something shiny, colours and lights!

Much better indeed, but still not efficient as a potential harassment tool and it still feels and sounds forced being that it's a 0.0 tweak without a deeper rework of the system.

The reasons it's not efficient as a small gangs objective:

• Day to day 0.0 is hardly if at all worth defending against anything that doesn't threaten the sov level
• Ratters don't man up to defend a system when a system is roamed in, they're there to rat, not risk pvp assets
• With no RF timer, no attack notification and low HP on the thing, the best you'll achieve with this is the same as if you were AFK cloaking: everyone stops ratting until offenders go away.
• If the ratters themselves have deployed an ESS, they can hit the Share All option from an alt at the structure when they see a neutral come in - there will rarely be something to steal

Though I don't think there are concrete ways to positively change this though without a complete overhaul of 0.0 and sovspace particularly :(

It isn't designed for the small gang to deploy. It is designed for the RATTER to deploy. Deploying it though has the inherent risk that a small gang might come mess with it and snag the "bonus payout" it gives for themselves.

Your final point: that a ratter's alt can hit the share-all button before any small gang can hinder that is the foremost issue with its current design! A 20 second access time isn't enough time for a cruiser to warp to it and inhibit that noobship alt from hitting "share all", which is a BIG PROBLEM that must be addressed!

if i were trying to take from the ESS and i was a negative... i would just do share all as it would ensure i get some ISK and it only takes 20 seconds.

perhaps it should be standings based... if you have negative standings then you can only take all and not have the option to share

It's intended to be deployed by ratters, not hostiles. The last point is fixed by the timer they added: they're tackled for 20 seconds if they hit share all, and I think they have to live that long. Plus any account is better off ratting making money instead of sitting on the ESS.



You'd have contributed nothing so you'd get nothing. Share all gives everyone what they contributed, not an equal share of the pot.

well that would make a heck lot more sense then...

i figured it just shared with everyone in space... though upon reflection that was rather dumb of me.

cheers!

If anything, this is more of a direct competition with Faction Warfare, being that it is only empire navy LP. And honestly, FW is already a bit on the 'too good' side.