EVE General Discussion

I question the validity of this statement...

In fact IsBoxer allows to exponentially increase income for one single player.
after an important expense to set their fleet up.Once they are up and running, I bet they buy plexes from ISK

So if that was to be the case, multi boxers would be subsidized by the other players that do not multibox.

I believe the meme about multi boxers paying a lot of cash to CCP is a fabricated legend that serves the multi boxers lobbying efforts to keep the status quo as it is right now.
Now only CCP can tell for sure, and the initial expense to set up multi boxing may still be good enough in their books

Personally, I wish using such tools would fall under the macro Eula, as I do not like the feeling that my subscription cash is subsidizing locust swarms..

Dude, you are in for a world of hurt if Tippia reads that post.

Mr Epeen

100mn Stabbers work well against Orcas or Freighters, but they will typically fly straight through Skiffs without actually hitting them, particularly if the Skiffs are orbiting. 10mn MWDs work a lot better in that case.



Discopocs work better than Discophoons - 8 hislots on an Apoc vs 7 on a Phoon. That being said, bear in mind a Catalyst can easily put out more than twice the DPS of a disco BS against a single target; aside from the massive price difference between a BS and a Destroyer, that also means you need fewer players/accounts to get a single kill. Though if you do achieve critical mass with smartbomb BSes you get to wipe out a whole fleet, of course.



Not really - if you cut the supply of ice, whatever's left sharply increases in value. We saw that when Odyssey reduced the supply from always-present static belts to limited-volume anomalies (isotopes have tripled in value since, with occasional spikes even further). Locusts like me would still take a big slice of the now-smaller pie and get paid more per unit of ice for our troubles.



Ganking is not the only "tool" that can be used against miners. Bumping works extremely well in situations where ganking is not viable. Since it doesn't lead to criminal flags or spawning CONCORD in belts it can actually work better in some cases, even when you could gank a target. That aside, why is this behaviour that needs to be "policed" in the first place? EVE has always been a game that rewarded multiboxing, a fact that's openly acknowledged with offers like Power of Two. Locust fleets like mine are just another example of EVE's famous Emergent Gameplay, even if you don't like it.



As above, EVE has always been multibox-friendly. There's also the unfortunate but very relevant point that somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of all active EVE accounts are multiboxed - CCP hasn't revealed the numbers recently, but I believe the last time they did was a few years back and the average accounts/player was about 1.5 then. It's probably fair to say it's gone up since then. Ultimately there's no way CCP would be willing to lose that much income, especially when it's for dubious benefit.

I'm not going to read all the replies to your post. Your concerns are valid. To add to the problem, scores of lowsec ice systems sit empty. My opinion is to buff the Rorqual to invulnerability and give it the ability to protect its exhumers so that the elite players will get their ice in low and null with the Rorq's superior bonuses and the highsec belts will be free for the casual players.

I only had problems with a multi boxer once for a while. The guy's toons were all in NPC corps. He also had a freighter on site, so I assume the Orca was max tank. He also had a Scorpion on site, I assume to break the freighter's tackle. And this was in 0.7 so the gank force would have needed to be pretty big.

The OP's concerns are valid. Everybody just flippantly tells him to "do something about it." Well only certain entities in Eve would have been capable of doing anything about the guy I ran into.

100mn stabber says "Hello". Procurers/Skiffs are really crappy when their ore hauler is thrown around and the lack of flexibility ISK boxers have in reacting when their working setup is disrupted makes things even more complicated for the miner.

The lack of combat ships has nothing to do with the EHP of Skiffs/Procs and everything to do with the nature of combat in mining sites. Hisec NPCs are no threat to anyone with a couple of combat drones, so the only threat outside of a war is from gankers. Gankers are highly specialised for very rapid strikes - hit and run combat at it's finest. Because of this, outside of a very few exceptions there's nothing that "combat ships for defense" can do. The closest there is to a combat-ship counter to ganks is something like a rapid-locking Griffin set up with Gallente (and maybe Minmatar) jammers in the hope that you can stop a gank after they start (so that they get their criminal flag) but before their target dies. The problems with that are: 1) Mackinaws and Hulks are weak enough that there's a very fine margin to hit. 2) An alt in a combat ship with a mining fleet is an alt who could be adding to their ISK by mining instead. 3) Riding shotgun on a mining operation is quite possibly the single most boring activity in all of EVE.

Even if Skiffs did not have their current tank, none of the rest of that would change - we didn't see belts full of combat ships before Odyssey, for example.



People have tried this against my fleet before, enough that I actually have a counter tactic. I drop an MTU and have miners orbit that, let them bump the orca as much as they like and rely on warping the freighter in, jetcanning before it lands, scooping the jetcans and warping out again before serious bumping can happen (fitting the freighter for agility is a huge help there). Bumping works a lot better against ISBoxers, though - they can't adapt nearly as well or as fast as a manal locust like myself. Plus most miners, even other locusts, simply don't have that much experience with being bumped, or else aren't paying enough attention to respond before they're 50km outside the belt.



All my accounts are kept active via PLEX and (I assume) the same is true for other locusts, not to mention most solo miners. I'm not sure why anyone would put in the effort if it didn't at least result in the accounts being self-supporting. On the other hand, why do people buy PLEX from CCP? To sell to other players in return for ISK. My actions make ISK available for those players to buy with PLEX. Demand from all of us locusts actually raises the price of PLEX, which in turn encourages more people to buy them from CCP - their IRL money will now get them more ingame ISK!

TL;DR: A player buying PLEX from CCP is doing so because other players will give them ISK for it. Without locusts there to provide that ISK, CCP wouldn't sell as many PLEX.



It takes either a large number of players working together, or one player with a lot of accounts (and possibly coordination software like ISBoxer) to have an impact on what is either a large number of players working together or one player with a lot of accounts?

Gosh, that's a shocking concept.



For what it's worth, I actually enjoy running a large-scale fleet myself, not to mention working out ways I can get better at controlling it and improving efficiency. I know that doesn't appeal to most EVE players and I'm not expecting that it should, but I do like that EVE as a game lets me do that, just as it lets you go out and shoot people for your amusement.

Without demand??? There is an ever raising demand for PLEX, prices have gotten high very quickly. There is talk of measures from CCP to stop the price from getting too out of control. I think they don't need that extra plex demand from locust swarms. Now let's say plex prices did go down a little, well that's great, more normal people will be able to play the game instead of quitting due to high prices.

Really? Well I guess that solves all problems then. Hulk has a little bit more yield than a max yield skiff. You heard it everyone, put your Skiffs away, Hulk is good, it has more yield!!

no, i said it was balanced not good.

reading is tough, huh?