Missions & Complexes

For the record I have not been online in over a month. But I can tell from the forum activity that this is heating up to a respectable level so here is a great place to post your comments, rants, insults, psychic premonitions or even just a good idea.

So I don't have to keep looking at drama plugging up the Community information thread.

In my opinion it is good PR stunt from TVP, selling them self as the white knights of Incursions, while what Noble Ranger did would be probably not classified as good behaviour between Inc channels, it is by no means outrageous or not replaceable by the channels or individual pilots on short notice. I guess it will last for a couple more weeks, I am actually not mad about it, because it gives me a bit more spare time for other stuff instead of FCing on grid the hole day.

Also doing Islands with IIC and Helix and a few others this week was fairly refreshing and a welcome change of pace for me again plus the opportunity to finally put my dual DST setup that I did acquire for tasks like this to good use.

It will not last forever, I give it another 3 to 4 weeks till the numbers for HQ fleets in TVP and ISN drop to level where they can't do it everyday in the current fashion and people will probably settle down.

Except that TVP never held any type of high ground. On comms, anyone who dissented with their decisions was promptly removed from the server permanently. Eventually, there's no dissent, and so they can now claim everyone supports them. And yes, I was present for the pow-wow and the actions were watched by over a dozen of us.

Helix Incursions does not, and has not, supported TVP's actions, as it runs counter to the morale and welfare of the community (both ours and others). We are interested in making ISK in order to lose that ISK in PvP, Quafe, hookers, and the occassional fedo smuggling ring.

Ditto WTM.

Well exploration does work and since the bounty's are not the main thing in Exploration it is no issue, a lot of our channel actually do some exploration before form up or after the fleet. Mining is also possible, the mining spawns do hardly any DPS and you only need a active tanked BS/BC(we normally use the standard RR fleet fitting) to kill them and properly tank the barges. We cleared out 2 mining sites with ventures this week(yes even the frigs can easily survive them with a bit RR) with 2 BS to shoot the spawns and 2 RR on my paladin that I simply put on a frig if it got agro. As for missions it is less bounty, however bounty is just a small part of the rewards and once the bar is at 100% the resists are the same again and moving a single BS to another agent is rather low effort compared to what some people have to move around to run Incs(well over 20 ships for me sometimes). Another option is simply to join a active fleet(that is how I did my first Inc when it spawns in my mission constellation) since most mission BS can be refitted and re rigged in the focus without much issues(OIC has multiple people that regular fly here that xed up in her mission domi the first time and flown her first Inc in the same ship that they used for L4s).

Besides this approach is not really useful for people that run Incursions, because it is actually a lot of movement with the hulls, time spend on forming and organizing fleets and while some pilots do complain, the FCs and channel leaders actually have to do even more work by updating MOTDs and moving the hole channels around on a constant basis and moving more hulls than most other people do.

Well I guess the idea was that people locally fight back the Incursion. I remember myself often doing fleets out of the local Inc chat, a few years ago, when no other FC was around, mostly having people in mission BS with just a extra resist mod, extender or plate on it on grid that never done a Incursions site before.

However a lot has changed over the years and I don't really see that much people locally looking for a fleet. I don't know if it was the Incursion changes 3 years ago that changed the relationships between channels from mostly positive to in some cases even hostile or that it is the public Image of Incursion runners that did lead to this(to be fair it went downwards a lot after the changes because many good people did leave and others started new channels enforcing much stricter fitting and play style that did lead to it). When I pick up new players they are actually surprised that stuff like faction cruisers, T1 logis or BCs can be used(with a proper fitting ofc) and you can do them without Logi 5 and pirate BS as well without any elitism attached to it, since this is not really what they did hear or did read about Incursions before.

As for Incursions just with medium ships, I don't think that would be to different(we did run something like this on the Islands before with ABC and T3 fleets). I still have to move 1-2 Orcas and lots of ships just to be flexible with what I fly on my chars, to refit hulls or to switch between armor and shield fleets(while the dps hulls are refit able you need extra logis for that). Also the more the FCs have to move and the more often they have to rebuild fleets, the more time it takes them to do so. People that are on her way to a old focus and not really there would have to change her path more often and if local people want to join, given quick closure of Incs it wouldn't be worthwhile for them to refit ships or getting a logi or something else from the closest market hub first. Even if they join, they would most likely stay there when the others move on what means you have to look for new people again at your destination for the new spawn. A quite similar situation would arise for people that can't go to all 4 empires by her standings.

I don't think it would change to much about the attitude, even worse probably reducing the player base to people that are extreme mobile and have the ships and chars at hand to relocate and reform fleets quick, what would increase the entry barrier even more and a lot of FCs would probably stop her work under such conditions, what again kills variety and reduces the active fleets around.

While the point of view on Incursions like putting a x into a channel and shooting some tags on the overview is pretty common and valid I guess people mostly ignore that on the other side you have a few people that have to update mailing lists, MOTDs, collect fleets, deal with issues on and off grid at the same time, sort out issues between pilots, have to sort out/reimburse losses and much more stuff to move and much more questions to answer about where the fleet is, what it currently does and when people arrive to replace others or when they will be on grid etc. This people would have to carry the biggest burden with this kind changes, while they already have to do a lot more than others. While I liked that people did organise her own Inc fleets back in the days, you don't really see that any more and by putting more pressure on the people that try it doesn't really encourage them to give it a go.

As for the farming aspect, people that are into the social interaction in fleets will leave first(it is always like this) because they are much more casual and will not spend to much effort moving longer ways when the mom will go down on short notice. What you will be left with are people that try to do her ISK with Incursions and that will enforce similar standards as they are now. In the end all the people that complain her on the forums or ingame are from the 2. player type pool, they want to make isk, however they lack the will or ability to do that elsewhere(I for example did SOE L4 last year when the same situation was in Incs and didn't care about it for the most part) and lack the experience and patience with Incs to know that it all comes in waves, is hardly the first time and complaining about it will do nothing. The social dudes will simply do something else, often together with other Incursion runners with a similar mindset(that can be mining, L4s, exploration or pvp), for the simile reason that they are not so much into the ISK but to have somebody to play with and talk to and they don't really need Incs to do that.

I get it, you like your Vindicators and your farming. Incursions as currently constituted are still dumb (as evidenced by how mind numbingly boring they because after 2 weeks when people figured them out).

I am very disappointed with TVP popping moms to discipline ISN today. Because it should have been done ~18 months ago, if not earlier. There was no point to wait so long to demonstrate - who's useful (and thus strong) and who is useless (and is just temporary nuisance) for whole incursion community?

As for ~30-40 people gathering HQ fleet with ~0 isk/day income during few weeks - this is the saddest thing I've ever seen in EVE. Reminds me this episode of Futurama.

It's about as much as high-sec groups could do to each other. On the surface, it seems childish: you do what we tell you or we'll ruin everyone's fun.

Thinking about it, if this was only about Noble, TVP could gank him every time he undocked, no matter what he was in, until they'd destroyed enough ISK to cover what they believe he wrongly acquired. This would seem a reasonable response.

Instead, we see one sub-group bullying the rest of the community in a gamble to coerce a single other sub-group and in the process establish primitive authority over the rest.

It's 2014 and still people resort to acting like cavemen. And cavewomen. Cavepeople.

While I don't think excluding BS from Incrusion sites it a good idea, I had Cruisers(even T1, like T1 logi cruisers, Thorax, Omen, Vexor etc.) on grind in VGs without any issues, HACs or faction cruisers are easy to tank up and BCs can do the sites absolutely fine. A modern ABC setup can 3 slot tank AS(1600mm, EANM, DCU, even 2 slot tank is possible with slaves) sites in armor and 3 slot tank them in shield(DCU+Invu+LSE) and is used in that kind of fashion by channels for the NCN site.