EVE General Discussion

Dracvlad, a few things, and I'm not attacking you, just responding.

Firstly, when I was with the Devils, and when I return to them, I am not a decider when it comes to who war happens with. We were a contract group, which meant that the powers that be chose whom to war with upon being paid to do so. What that meant for me was I had people I was supposed to hunt. I did not choose them. That said, the amount of legwork necessary to truly put the tongs to a corp in a meaningful way now is a pretty serious amount of work. Just compensating a merc corp for the labor time to do so would push the cost of hiring them well beyond what most employers would consider reasonable.

Secondly, and these are obviously not in any sane order.... the use of locator agents not being counterable is not an unbalanced thing if you consider the amount of time and effort that goes in to getting to be able to use them. I know many pve players can access them incidentally, but that's more of a side effect of their work rather than the goal. For pvp focused characters this means hours upon hours of gruelling, soul killing boredom grinding missions just so they can use these guys. Being able to find out where someone was five minutes ago every thirty minutes isn't over the top. Also, if you happen to dive into a wormhole they can't find you at all, so they actually CAN be countered.

And thirdly, I don't know of any mercs that bring ships that are stabbed to a fight. If a target has a point fitted and weapons of some kind they can very readily kill a merc's ship. If they don't have a point they can drive it off, which is still a win for them.

Now, that said, I'll grant you this much. If a merc is doing their job right the target wont know that they're in for a fight until about five seconds before it starts. It's EVE after all, fortune favors those who take the initiative. For us what that fight involved really depended on how far we had to go to engage. Closer battles meant cruiser class ships usually, anything further usually involved frigates and destroyers because nobody wants to spend two hours on the freeway driving to the amusement park.

Now. Sol.
Also not an attack, just trying to respond.
The reason I say the whole flying monkey thing isn't viable is that I've tried it.
Actually, it wasn't just me... there were more than a few of us that tried it for months.
It doesn't work.
You can sometimes get lucky, but if you are like me and play at hours when there are few people online then your chances are so low that they approach close enough to zero for there not to be much of a difference.
I spent countless hours flying around in search of targets, usually with over a dozen active wars and over 800 potential targets.
nothing, nada, zip.
There's just too much space for a handful of people to cover in search of what is likely to be one to a dozen people in the entirety of empire space online.
It kills your will to try and you realize that you could have spent those hours doing something productive instead.
When the change came around I muttered a little bit, warned some folks of the impending mass decs and hunkered down at got to work searching for targets in space.
I didn't really start griping until months later when it became apparent that this doesn't work and that there was nothing in the works to make it better.
So I come across a little bit bitter at this point because I am.
I don't want CCP to make something special and new so much as take responsibility for the fact that when they fixed one thing they broke another.

I honestly cannot understand your point that it is any different, apart from being easier, I can gather intel a lot easier in hisec, because as soon as I arrive in local even with a neutral looking alt that runs data or relic sites they still change their habits. In hisec they continue doing what they do. I can very quickly get their other accounts if I hang around watching them. I am talking about intel gathering to know how they operate, where and in what. As far as I am concerned that is a hell of a lot easier in hisec.

I probe them down in missions like you do, I get a point on them like you do, as soon as someone flashy red comes into local they can get safe like anyone coming into local for them You can do the same logoofski traps on the first gate. There is no difference at all. How is the act of hunting and killing different? The difference is that you are mass decking to get a wider sample of targets, while I can kill anyone who comes through, but the population is often a lot less in NPC 0.0. The only difference is that there are a lot more people around in hisec and that those you have not war deckked you cannot attack.

I would agree, but it is a method.

When I checked your alliance last I had 45 actual in alliance characters and around 8 out of alliance characters logged, can I seriously run a locator agent on that lot. Be serious, of course I did narrow it down a bit, I know which one your group was around Jita, which one was around Amarrr and I knew which ones tended to go out as a small fleet. But it is still a lot of people to cover with locator agents. But you have multiple players many with locator agents, totally different, its like people saying you can gank the bumper, its a throw away line which does not have any base in reality.

Scouts yes and no, depends on how many accounts and how many active players, but yes can be done.

Yes the maximum damage to a target, that I don't envy you for in terms of difficulty, from my perception I would never hire a merc to damage someone, I would only hire a merc for a specific target. There would be exceptions but I would make that call after having watched someone first to find out just how cautious or not they were.

Endie who was the CEO of Bat County picked up the issue around wreck EHP just after the AG players started to gank freighter wrecks, it was in my opinion a **** move, but even worse it showed just how out of touch CCP was with their own game, they destroyed emergent game play for the AG players that put them at the same level as gankers in terms of difficulty to stop. CCP having realised the gift then added EHP to freighters, I would prefer the wrecks stilling being as they were.

EDIT adjusted VMG nunbers, I had Archtype. numbers in before.

Omar that is a long mail and I will try to address it as best I can.

I understand that you have to act on clients requests, but you can also temper expectations, ask them for intel etc. Yes it can be a lot of work I don't deny it at all.

I hate running missions as much as you do, I also understand that you likely did that on an alt account taht will hang around that area, doubly hard, however you can add them to fleet and increase it quite easily.

I agree with the statement that finding where someone was five minutes ago once every thirty minutes is not over the top, but as the prey I have no counter to that intel unless I sit in a WH.

I have killed a fair amount of mission ships, you guys are likely better at PvP than me, my only issue is what else they can bring in before we can kill it or that we have to hold them in their missions while getting people in on them, its not easy in terms of that..

I read what you said to Sol, I think adding the online status to locator agents would be acceptable, but I think there are benefits to my idea of an OS has a lot of merit, because I am coming at it from the point of view that I want people to fight back.

The wreck ehp change was good because it also gives people a chance to loot caoitak wrecks in large nullsec fights where it was previously not happening due to people just popping the wrecks. AG popping wrecks in a thrasher is not content like ganking a freighter is. AG have plenty of opportunity for content but lack the knowledge, willpower, and/or organization to do so. You have the same amount of tools that gankers have.

The OS thing, I have mixed feelings about it. Well, by mixed I mean I think it has potential for hilarious results.
What would happen is this.
Neutral eyes are kept on the OS.
The moment people locate it and start forming up the mercs mobilize.
Derpfleet lands on OS, mercs head that way. Upon arrival the larger and slower mercs warp in to engage Derpfleet.
Faster smaller ships linger outside of system on the out gates.
Derpfleet's morale breaks upon facing players who LIKE to fight other players... the smart ones dock up. The dumb ones warp out of system and are either immediately greeted by the faster small ships left behind or are pursued by them.
Rivers of tears flow.
Outraged bears flood GD with more whine threads.
Admiral Akbar faps in his quarters.

The EHP change was accepted by AG players because of that point, I accept it for that, I just don't like how it was done. Having said all that it was something that had been like that from the start of the game, just as the wacth list was there from 2005 I think.

I don't like the throw away line you just gave, it shows ignorance of the subject and contempt.

First of all that wreck EHP was like that for years, but as soon as AG start popping wrecks bang it gets changed, thats like a Catalyst killing a Hulk is it not, but no two and a half years it took for an adjustment and a single catalyst can still kill a Hulk in a 0.5 system.

So what is AG, its a resistance militia, mostly made up of unpaid and low SP characters, you have no idea just how difficult it was to get enough people to have an alt that was trained up to gank wrecks and they were happy to go -10 with. That is akin to me dismissing the fact that you still had to get on the guy who you ran a location on. The thing is that you have to move quick, before they can scoop it,, so being 20k is now a bit of a challenge, think that through that is three Catalysts, say 18 seconds worth with CONCORD on the scene in a 0.5 system with a lot of people also around shooting anyone that goes suspect. Due to the low numbers those people would be better off in repping ships perhaps, or ECM ships or trying to bump the freighter out of catalyst range. The majority of AG fleets I have been in had 3 to 6 people, I was in one that got up to 24.

You are also having to find which target they are hitting and they stack up targets and people often have to come a long way, you must be aware of the lag that you get when a gank fleet jumps through, 24 pilots can cause all manner of issues on poor hisec nodes. I have been on the gate with a fast locker unable to lock a Talos, gets a bit annoying so I leave that to people with better internet.

So what next you might have caught one on the gate, now its a race against the DPS with reppers, while people try to jam them or kill them before they can get full DPS. ECM is easy to counter, while killing them is pretty difficult in terms of stopping the DPS unless you have a lot of people with good alpha ships, AG in the main does not have those players. Most are low SP.

Gank the blackbird that does the suicide point, most AG don't gank, gank the Macherial bumper that is one to four Talos's and in any case ganking a fast moving BS like that is not the same as ganking a freighter.

The only time they had the ability to use a small fast ship like the gankers and it gets taken away immediately, so in reality its just a game of more often than not passive defence such as repping.

Disorganisation, people giving their spare time against dedicated gankers from the most organised alliances in the game, willpower, people want to help against people who are fully focused on this to make ISK and hurt their enemies. Knowledge in terms of SP where most AG are the alts on which they can spare some SP.

To be utterly blunt I respect them hugely for doing as well as they do.

You are actually very correct in this. I would counter argue that AG banding together and effectively fighting would generally help every haulers profits. If AG proved to groups like Minikuv they they were an actusl threat and capable of stopping ganks then you would see AG doing just that.

But you are right... Theres always potential profit when a ganking group targets a freighter. The flipside is that unless the freighter offers payment to AG for helping, theres not much direct profit... Unless you do things like gank their dst, catch their suspect looting freighters, or loot their bump machariels that AG can gank.

Only thing that would increase profits for haulers is increased risk and loss.

If we could start to push something like that it would improve the game, but remember just dying without a kill is not going to do anything, that is why the OS was at least something.