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Good to see some of this has gone through, however it does appear the simple 'cut vanguards in half because it's easy for us to do' idea isn't quite cutting it, - again mostly because of the kind of force a single player can exert vs the opponents put on the field.

i suggest now as i have before restricting these scout sites to sub BS and BC (BC at largest) this way you can 'account for player strength potential' without resorting to masses of subversion modules, as has been indicated here, NPC ECM is cheaty, fighting cheaty mechanics often not fun, because there's no *pauses to think about wording a bit* "real reason it should be different"

if you want to use ECM i would suggest instead inserting tracking disruption or sensor dampeners (yes, new rat type, but much less frustrating than the cheaty false ECM mechanic) - design focus should be to make this content fun for the largest number of players - right now all i see is it's more of the same that vanguards are.

still, they are better than they were before, but i still don't think this is the direction you should be trying to take them in - uniformity in creative content look and feel often bad....other than that, good stuff, nice to see the world changing for once.

Awesome.

Still say it would be nice if even at 0% the mom wouldn't spawn for a day or two.. But this is for sure an improvement.

With less downtime between spawns killing the incursions more often will be a lot of fun

one change at a time, test, compile, test again.


to deliver the kind of change necessary to get a GOOD balanced system back into place will take months to a year (balance in terms of all income streams)

they will get around to it when they decide they have a good enough answer as to how. ease off the repetition pedal a bit they know the imbalance exists, one guy repeating the same idea a dozen times solves nothing. (believe me I'm trying ;) )

personally, i'm just thankful fozzie seems to be dropping his bad habits of trying to make everything absolutely equivalent (see wormhole changes blog)

No one want's Null sec incursions. They stop PVP and they disable the local infrastructure. Also the changes you suggested are incredibly stupid.

WOW. that was interesting to say the least. I lost an Ishtar to a scout site... under guardian reps. I was immobile because I didn't take the site seriously, and got eaten.

I don't know what's what, or if the triggers were random, but I found them.

bottom line: that was a lot of fun. HOWEVER. it's not lucrative enough to repeat.

here are pastebins of my logs. (not all of my clients generated one. don't know why).

Ishtar [KIA]

Ishtar

Golem

Hello all, I would like to make suggestion on what to do with the "STAGING" sites of incursions.

I would like to see them adjusted for difficulty so that newish players in Destroyers could run them. Sure change the payout on LP rewards to what is suitable. The thing with incursions is that a lot of the community around them are very much a "BRING BLING OR YOU DONT GET IN", They is very discouraging to new players as they have no real way of getting that sort of BLING with out months are play (sure some will do it, But not everybody is a scammer/mad PvPer/ but Meh).

So my idea is that the sites be adjusted so that a fleet of 5 pilots with 2 logi frigs and 3 Destroyers and or assault frigs are the best combo to do the sites. I would also make it so that the sites do not allow ships above Destroyers (t2 Destroyer can also use the sites) to enter. The reason for this restriction is to promote PvP at a cheapish level in 0.0 and Lowsec.

This change would then encourage small corps in all parts of space to go run the sites as a team. And not get pushed out by the big community's that all want you to fly BLING that you don't have.

The sites do not have to pay out that much. In fact I would make them very poor for ISK and better for LP. And have that scale up alot as you move to Low and 0.0

This could be a boon for lowsec and 0.0. The upshot is that newish players could get in on the ISK, And also if done right more ships in space in Lowsec and 0.0. And we all know that if players are undocked,. Things go boom.

@Rain6637- Why do you say that the spawn ranges would prevent a Golem from solo'ing? In my experience a Golem is the most comfortable across those ranges out of the Marauders, Vargurs and Paladins have their ammo switches of course but the Golem can load Navy's or Furies and never be out of range. Unless you are using torpedoes, in which case the abysmal range will severely limit your effective engagement envelope.

What kind of site times were you getting with your fleet comp? Your post wasn't explicit but I gather that 15min sites would require some bling and practice.

In my experience with a Golem, Fury CM's are only beat by Rage Torps when it comes to damage and the edge in application lies with the CM's as well as the range.
Also, do you think a Golem would need to stay in Bastion? If not, you could take advantage of the reduction in 100MN MWD activation cost and go mobile, that might make torps more viable. Just at thought, I haven't tried it.

according to my logs I was in that site for 30 mins (15:42 - 16:13). you could do it a lot faster, I'm just not familiar with Incursions and basically went in blind. I will tell you the eve-survival for Propaganda Cluster is completely wrong now. I had no spawn control whatsoever. pretty sure I had 3 spawns out at the same time.

I sent the golem alone initially, then needed the backup due to range. the loki had webs and target painters, and the ishtars were used as tanky drone haulers, each with a web and TP. all of my drones were assisted to the golem, which was immune to jams in bastion.

as a whole, the gang had...

3k DPS, possibly 3.2k DPS in EM (Torps and drones--mostly Sentries) and...
6 Target painters (2 Republic Fleet on the loki, 1on the golem, 1 on each Ishtar)
2 loki webs (45 km warfare link boosted Fed Navy)
4 normal webs (Ishtar/ Golem)

guardians and Ishtars were 10MN Afterburner, armor tanked, with around 80-90k EHP. as for the exact fit, its purpose was just tank and drone DPS, to get a relative feel of it...

Ishtars were trimarked,
2 Drone Damage Amps,
1600mm Plate,
an EX hardener and EANM,
2 Omni directional links, (tracking speed script)
1 web, 1 TP
10MN AB
2x drone link augs

...pure drone haulers.

Loki and Proteus are bricks, Proteus was 900 DPS blaster fit for things that got close, but I never used it.

if there's one thing that makes the site tricky, it's the ECM. incoming DPS was fine. I died because I thought it would be a joke and didn't bother orbiting with the Ishtars. I was going to continue on to a Vanguard, but I think my pride has taken enough of a beating for today. lol. I'll get in a RR BS setup and see about Vanguards tomorrow.

the NPC neuts were wasted on the Ishtars, which were mostly passive. even when they were on the golem it was fine.

I might also try scouts again with some T1 things. not too optimistic though.


jams were full-time on the golem. if you go alone, you need a marauder for bastion and ECM immunity. absolute must. also for the tank.

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also, about Golems and marauders, and Torps vs Cruises vs RHMLs: i'm not a marauder person. I have a marauder character purely for RP reasons--the idea of a marauder goes against the multibox strategy of using more characters. I just brought a marauder out today to see what its performance was like in this scout site (so please excuse my errors in using torps vs cruise and 3x TP and rigs to optimize a Golem, it's not my thing).

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missed 1 combat log: Loki