Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Hey everyone. With vacation season winding down here in Iceland, we're fast approaching the first release since the Aegis Sovereignty deployment: Galatea on August 25th.

Galatea will contain the first (and definitely not the last) set of updates to the sov capture system released in Aegis, thanks in large part to your excellent feedback and observations we've made of the first few weeks of the new system on Tranquility. This first set of adjustments is focused on the capture times and maximum number of Command Nodes, as well as some tweaks to the Entosis Link penalties itself.

The first and most significant change in this release is that we are reducing the base capture time of Structure Command Nodes from 10 minutes to 4 minutes, and Station Services from 5 minutes to 4 minutes. This means the capture times for these structures will range from a minimum of 4 minutes (for defenders and when the multiplier is at its base of 1) to a maximum of 24 minutes (for attackers against a 6x multiplier structure). This change only applies to Command Nodes and Station Services, NOT to the initial reinforcement of a sov structure (which keep their current base capture time of 10 minutes).

To help ensure that defenders maintain a robust but fair advantage, we are also starting the defending alliance off with 60% control in the overall event tug of war when nodes start spawning. This means that an uncontested defense will now require capture of 8 nodes at 4 minutes (plus warmup) a piece, down from 10x10 before. In total, the fastest possible defense would require 4 players and 12 minutes post-Galatea, compared to 5 players and 24 minutes pre-Galatea.

To help reduce the clutter that builds up in lower value systems when capture events are left for extended periods of time uncontested, we are also reducing the cap on total nodes that can spawn per structure from 20 to 10. We are also reducing the spawn rate of randomly appearing extra nodes by approximately 50% (this second part only applies to the randomly spawning extra nodes, not the the nodes that spawn instantly when old ones are completed).

We are also making an adjustment to the penalties on the Entosis Link module itself. The mass penalty is being replaced with a "speed limit" to 4000m/s. This means that the normal subwarp engines of a ship with an Entosis Link fitted will never accelerate it past 4000m/s. This limit was chosen to have the smallest possible impact on ships fit for engagement and combat while having a larger impact on the escapability of evasion fits than the mass penalty.

We are also releasing the first batch of Sov UI little things, which CCP Punkturis and CCP Sharq sourced from your feedback in this thread. These changes include an overview of sov data in the constellation show-info window, direct access to the default vulnerability timer and a new region column in the sov dashboard and improved tooltips in the infrastructure hub UI. Punkturis is continuing to work on improving the sov UI and we encourage people to keep posting their requests in the little things thread.

Finally this release also contains a number of bug fixes, some of which are quite visible (Alliance logos once again appearing in space on the TCU) and others which improve handling of rare edge cases (such as alliances disbanding mid-fight) and back-end code.

The Galatea is just the beginning of our commitment to iterating and improving nullsec and sov. We are hard at work on the changing coming in future releases, including formal methods for dropping sov, the ability to turn IHub upgrades on and off, updates to the formula for calculating activity defense multipliers, new PVE experiences for sov nullsec and much more. Nullsec and Sov remain our focus here at Team Five 0 and we'll be continuing to update you on progress as we go forward. We are listening to your feedback and continuing to observe the results of our changes as we make them.

These Galatea changes will also obviously not be the final changes to the capture mechanics themselves. We have some changes we know we want to make (like partially captured structures returning to defender control at a slow constant regeneration pace to reduce the need for "maintenance linking") and others that we don't want to rule out but that also need more investigation and internal/external discussion before making final decisions (such as ship restrictions on Entosis Links). Thanks to everyone who's been providing constructive feedback so far, we hope you'll continue.

Thanks everyone, and good hunting!

:munch:

Hurray, feedback! :)

So glad we will still see troll ships....... not

So how does capping at 4km/s solve the troll ceptor problem? Do you plan on reducing the t1 entosis cycle time to 4 minutes instead of 5

So, we can still fly trollceptors?

Yeah.

A 4km/s speed limit is not enough.

Limit these things to ships that force players to put some skin into the race. On top of this, players in trollceptors can still fly through space while generally being untouchable... sure, they can only go 4km/s, but that still is enough to outrun most combat fit ships in the game.

More boring spining round a structures , give me something to shoot for gods sake , fozzie sov is boring lets creat content , not

Well this will be fun.

I just finished training up the last skills I needed for my Orthrus too.

Some good first steps there, though I do question the logic of releasing the new sov system right on the cusp of iceland's extensive holiday season, thus preventing this iteration from taking place sooner. Still, what's done is done and I hope this stuff helps.

The 4k/sec limit is a curious approach which is still going to result in trollceptors zipping about. As others have pointed out, this still doesn't address the need for an attacker to put some skin in the game, so it's not that big of a change. This smacks of the old '5% change and wait a month to see what happens' approach when something far more decisive is required, but at least there will be no more goddamn 500mn cruisers. Less timesink is also a good thing. Probably have to wait for more iterations before it's a bearable experience though.

edit: Consider prohibiting microwarpdrive use while entosis links are running (I mean warp drives can't be used, why can microwarpdrives?). It'll peg the speed more than you've suggested above, promote AB usage and make fights happen more often.

Good to see, hope more to come soon. Things are getting bad out here.

The big question will be does anyone care?

Shake-up needed asap.