Wormholes

"I mean, sure I made 3 billion isk this week - but I had to pay 25m to monetize that last 500m isk"


Not really, since you're making more money than you're spending. It's only an isk sink on a technicality, and that's intellectually dishonest because the isk faucet is 10x the size of any sink as far as I'm aware.

I suppose that they're a major isk sink relative to other sinks in incursions, but the net effect of incursions is still very positive even with a small isk sink to access your LP earnings.

QFT

Without violating NDA or any other CCP restricted concerns, can you elaborate on your statement? I have similar concerns (ff grants some area to stage from, an area to exchange items between pilots without access to corporate hangars, etc). Not least of which is with the sheer number of hulls typically kept in smas having those 'tethered' to some structure would likely look ridiculous (or at the very least like some Lego construction built by five year olds with crap hanging off all over the place).

I don't understand the tethering idea, but I would like to know more about
1) why CCP thinks forcefields are broken or have room for improvement (post-Titan-bumping fix)
2) what other concept they think would be better

My concern is this: I want to put a POS in lowsec and construct capital parts with a Thukker Component Assembly Array. That's a new item added in Crius that is specifically meant to encourage lowsec industry. It has a 15% material cost reduction, compared to 2% at a normal POS array.

My POS in lowsec might get attacked. If it becomes reinforced, my industry jobs will stop, and I will lose my materials (as I understand the mechanic.) That means I lose mats/ISK/time even if I defend my POS successfully when it comes out of reinforcement.

Now, it takes some work/risk on the part of an enemy to reinforce my POS. You need a fleet that is worth killing. If a fleet worth killing attacks my lowsec POS, I'll ask my K-space alliance to help me, and they probably will because content. If I'm lucky, I will get help before it even goes into reinforce, and I will be able to use my POS guns (if they aren't dead) and not lose mats if my side wins.

So if something changes with the POS mechanics, how will it affect CCP specifically trying to encourage POS manufacturing by introducing new items?


I also care about all the points others have raised about SMAs, cans to exchange items with friends inside a shield, D-scan, etc. I just want to make sure someone is considering this from an industry perspective as well, because it matters to me and to CCP.

I agree with your uses of the FF and POS current mechanics. I can't help but wonder what CCP hopes to accomplish in a "player owned starbase" sans forcefield.

@ Pro TIps - I believe that CCP stated an intention to balance/address POS defense mechanism (ie. guns and ewar etc) as they realize as POS currently function there's virtually nothing a defender can do against a capital fleet intent on reinforcing the POS. I look forward to seeing what changes they have in mind for that particular aspect of POS mechanics.

Somewhere in there is one of the CCP devs stating they want a session change (like a jump/dock etc) in relation to POS's. It's not the first time I've heard them say it too.

Corbexx/Asay, would you be able to ask CCP to release why they want a session change over the current FF bubble?

cmon man... NO ONE wants more session change timers anywhere in the game...

i think it is important to maintain the forecefield insofar as Corbexx said; in w-space if people are docked up there is literally NO WAY of interacting. If you are in a FF currently, and are uncloaked (and yes, you can land cloaked and be cloaked inside, neat trick) then everyone can see you and you can (in theory) d-scan and see anyone not cloaked.

This causes ::content:: especially when people helicopter dicq your POS in a Nereus. Just for example. It allows baiting, and intel gathering, including the "launch everything from SMA to scare off an attacker" gambit, however poorly that works.

Causing a session timer upon entering or exiting forcefields, I'm not sure where Greyscale is coming from or going with this. If he wants to prevent bubble games, then I can't see the value. There are a few people and a few situations where the bubble games are exploited (in a non-pejorative term) during PVP, and there's also some where they are (like carriers launching a flight of fighters and then ducking inside a field).

For example, bubble fighting is already basically identical to docking games, you just do it a bit differently than on a station. You can even set your POS up to utterly take advantage of this, and it provides you with a valuable mechanism for defending your POS during an attack, during the RF / cage phase, and on the final assault. This is true in and out of w-space; some Russian guys in Khanid lowsec were pros at it, really fancy and impressive.

But the question is then - are bubble games detrimental as compared to docking games? Not in my opinion.

The alternative, of tethering, is bizarre. It's like, OK, so the ship and the player are going to be on grid but inside a totally invisible no-touchy zone where you can't bump them...as opposed to being inside a spherical hazy bubble of no-touchy where you can't bump them? That's a vast improvement. (extreme sarcasm eyeroll)

That said, the ideas of modular POSs, POS fittings, making POS's look more substantial than a scrawny stick (shepherd's crook, rusty dreidel, grey dreidel, green lawn ornament) would be fantastic. Also my suggestion of damaged POS's flaming out in hull? Plox.

Regarding ProTips concerns, well, that's an economic decision and a risk you have to take to be a better carebear than other carebears.

Speaking as an habitual low-class sieger, stront checker, POS fitting war-gamer and all round general idiot, my conception of POS warfare as it stands at the moment is that only a very, very small number of people adequately defend POSs in any active fashion - be it defending in a fleet, defending from inside the bubbles with bubble games, or POS gunning.

In general, POSs are pretty much borked the moment someone attacks with dreads, or in the case of low-class wormholes, gathers eenough extremely bored people to go fishing, or to overwhelm the defences, and the defenders are bad.

The first failed siege I attended in a long time was because of 240M EHP's (yay 82.5% omni on a DG Large) and the ability to anchor and online infinite numbers of guns at ANY time, which is terrible game play. If your defence strategy relies entirely on anchoring more EHP in front of an enemy than they can be bothered grinding through, then the whole POS system favours defence based entirely on boring.

As it stands currently, you are better off with an 82% omni large Dullstar and a hangar loaded with 200 medium long range guns packaged up inside, which you begin onlining. There is absolutely no upper limit to the lengths you can go to to anchor guns around your POS in the face of an attack, during the attack, and online them.

No. That's a lie. There is a shell of space starting 15km from the forcefield and extending 40km from the forcefield. Within this shell, there is a cellular grid of anchoring slots into which you can anchor guns. Theoretically, with infinite ISK, infinite lack of sleep, a defender could fill this volume entirely with guns and ammo. A defender who cannot use dreads would then be obliged to incap X number of guns before he could render the POS defenceless.

It's a ridiculous mechanic. I know the line is that a defender gets to online and anchor defences as a, I quote, "last ditch attemt at defence" but what ends up happening is that the attackers spend hours for naught but to see defenders anchor literally hundreds of millions of EHP more guns in front of them. Even one or two man corps can avail themselves of this. That's shite gameplay which favours grind defence, not skill or interaction.

What I'd like to see is a limit. Yeah, you screw up, your POS blows up. Tough caca buddy. Make a choice and live with it.

The problems i see with no ff is the obvious intel needs to remain as is now both for defenders and agressors.

Now for tethering it raises some serious concerns besides intel. When someone wants to rapecage a pos now they have to go to a little effort with at least four large bubbles giving the defendor a little wriggle room to break out and options to split up agressing forces when you force them to cover the whole spread of a rapecage. How easy will it become to harrass every small entity if the teather point for defenders/locals is much smaller then it is now. Also if a pos is RF'd how will the defenders do anything they can currently do while in that stage of an eviction or even out of an eviction in everyday living.

The whole teathering concept i find concerning, i understand from the development side they are struggling with force field but they need to give the whole gammit of pos living some thought before teathering with docking games becomes a thing.

EDIT: I also find that my phone can't auto correct for ****.

OBLIGATORY "HAVE YOU EVEN CHECKED HIS CURRENT ALLY BRO?"