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5 Excavators, unsieged, mine 4,787 m3 per minute
5 T2 drones with T2 Core mine 4,000 m3 per minute

2 MLU Hulk with unsieged burst mines 3,121 m3 per minute
2 MLU Hulk with T2 Core burst mines 4,081 m3 per minute

3MLU Hulk with unsieged burst mines 3,401 m3 per minute
3MLU Hulk with T2 Core burst mines 4,447 m3 per minute

Something something cheap fit platinum insurance bunch of barges, you get the idea

Please God makes this able to dock in the azbel at least, and introduce a skill to reduce cycle time and fuel cost of the industrial core to make this less of a dangerous asset to use. (fuel reduction to make it same cost of fuel over time as now but in smaller cycles. that would make the rorqual less dead... But make it more worth using with more training.

There's a reason siege-type modules don't have a cycle time reduction. That's a fixed risk that you take, and you mitigate it in other ways and then take it or leave it.

The former is wrong, and they're looking at the latter.

Any decent sized Alliance (say, 100 people active most days of the week in primary TZ) should be able to muster at least a small force to defend their Rorquals, even if that just means warping in with suicide ECM to break locks and get ships off grid when the PANIC drops.

Anything CCP can give you on the Rorqual that will let a little joe-blow 20 man Alliance defend a Rorqual against, say, Bomber's Bar is just going to let the bigger alliances defend a larger percentage of mining hot drops and spend less jump fuel to do it.

And a cheap system-wide Cyno Jammer is a pretty terrible idea. There is no reason ever not to put these in basically every system you control, and probably most of the ones you don't, unless they're ridiculously fragile. If they are then they won't be really effective, and if they aren't then they'll be OP for the cost. You could up the cost, but you said "cheaper" which implies fairly low price point.

Also something like a cheap and readily available cyno jammer is basically just a wet blanket on content generation.

I get that some people like smaller fights and smaller corps or alliances, but if you're going to self-select into that play style then you need to realize it comes with some in-built restrictions on what you can do and participate in.

You don't get the gist of the problem my post states. The problem is not the small alliance. Their Rorquals get caught, they PANIC, they form a response fleet, clash happens between the attacker and the defender. Whoever wins wins. Content generated. Everything works perfectly. New Rorquals awesome.

When it is the big alliance (Goons, PL, NC etc.), you catch the Rorqual, it PANICs (or even does not PANIC), lights a cyno, 50 titans and 100 supers drop on you. There is no force in Eve that can contest such a defender fleet. And if such a force moves toward your space, you will notice from miles away, so you will just dock your Rorquals. So these people do not lose Rorquals. In the end they are able to bring 30-40 Rorquals in the same belt with no fucks given. (Interestingly PL dreadbombed such Goon response fleet the other day, inflicting heavy losses (killing 2 titans etc) on Goons while losing their own dreads. This is a good counter example to what I am saying but it happens every 3 years, so it is not that relevant as well))

So the problem is the major powerbloc alliances can use the Rorqual in almost complete freedom while the smaller alliances can't. So bigger alliances treat Rorquals as hulk fleets on belts, not hesitating on putting 30 Rorquals in indy core same belt, while the smaller alliance only maybe uses one if at all to boost its mining ships. So the system favors major powerbloc, and it builds even more titans with its immense mining capacity, to the extent that nobody will ever be able to contest these groups unless they fight among each other.

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I've been thinking over the cyno inhib solution for a long time and perhaps should not have stated it here without a proper consideration.

The general problem in Eve is the N+1 logic. The game becomes meaningless when the only thing one can do to break a force is bringing a bigger fleet. CCP actively fights against that, e.g. Fozzie sov is supposed to be such a development to combat N+1.

N+1 is best experienced when the force you are dealing with is a Titan/Super fleet. Because if it is the ultimate decider, then the alliance with the biggest fleet will always win. This is not an interesting mechanic. Ideally one factor that should enable smaller forces beating bigger forces (at least with respect to the objective) by agility and mobility. So there are multiple objectives in a Sov fight, or some PvE ships to be killed in a major power bloc space, then there should be some options for the smaller fleet which utilizes mobility and agility very well.

Now this is not what we experience when we go whaling in these spaces. Apparently the Titan/Supercap becomes the most mobile force projection to do an objective in there, be it killing an astrahus or defending your Rorqual. Just have a bunch ready at a pos in jump range, and you have instant protection for your entire space. We tried to wear Goon titans' fatique out by doing multiple drops and even that didn't work. This is plain broken. All they have to do is allocate some alt accounts to def their entire space and do approximate %100 safe PvE in nullsec.

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Now one solution I have been pondering is giving attacker fleets means to block cynoes in systems, so that the defender fleet cannot move its capitals that easily. Currently it is completely up to the defender (holder of the sov) to block a system to cynoes or not. But if the attacker has some options, then the defender actually needs some mobile, non-capital force to kill the attacker's cyno inhibitors to be able to bring in their Titans. I believe this would be an interesting change in both PvE ship defending issues, sov contesting/defending issues and general nullsec shenanigans. And it would absolutely be a factor to diminish the N+1 mechanic.

The challenge here is coming up with such a cyno inhibitor module that is also not exploitable. Say if 100 of these modules are dropped, good luck to a capital force to break that many on a timely manner. But here is my proposal on such a module:

Mobile System Cyno Jammer

- Seen on overview (so the mobile force that wants to remove them can easily warp to them)
- The cargo volume is a little above to an Astrahus (so normal ships can't carry them, you at least need a blockade runner)
- Works only in sov null space
- 1 minute anchoring time, blocks existing cynoes (so the target Rorq itself can't expect to survive just by cynoing)
- Not a lot of tank. Say 10k ehp when anchoring and 50k ehp when anchored

I am sure with enough brainstorm CCP can come up with a balanced module.

Large group of player used teamwork. It's super effective!!!

You meant skill points and Titans*

Because that's exactly what this game should reward right? How much SP and how many titans you have?

Its like the more titans and SP you have, the faster you should accumulate more SP and titans right?

If you want to contest the major powers than go nation build. It's not even like NC/PL/Goons have been the major powers for 10 years. 8 years ago the biggest power in the game was Band of Brothers and Goons were this kinda up and coming upstart power. Now 8 years on BoB is nowhere to be seen (and neither are half the other big Alliances from 8 years ago, Atlas Alliance anyone?) and Goons just got kicked out of their space.

The reason FW has more dynamic power blocks is because it's smaller scale and easier for someone to break into. That's also why you rarely hear about major FWar upsets but there were articles about Goons losing on mainstream news sites that don't focus on games.

I'd also like to point out that you just said that "all it takes" to keep a Rorqual safe is like 30-40 times the value of the Rorqual in assets sitting around doing nothing. Not listed: all the stuff it takes to keep those few Supers from getting dunked if someone drops them when they respond. So yes, I would say it takes a lot of planning and organization to keep a major Alliance running. There's a reason the jump fatigue changes were careful not to aggravate the Logistics people because those guys are two steps from insanity on a good day.



Again, they aren't entitled to any real or perceived safety, they got it by having enough stuff, time, and organization to deter or beat people who come to make things dangerous for them.

If you don't like it, and feel it's OP, then go build your own big alliance and kick their door in. It's happened before and it'll happen before, but it won't be fast and it won't be done by whining on the forums about how you can't reliably kill Rorquals with 200 bil in assets playing bodyguard.



Again, because people aren't idiots with their ships. Numbers are an advantage, if you want to win a fight you need to make sure that you have as many advantages as possible. This is not going to change without turning Eve battles into weirdly restricted fights like WoW battlegrounds or Arenas.

People with a clear super cap advantage can and have lost fights when they were stupid and got countered, like your dread-bombing referenced above.



They don't need to cover every system, they just need to cover the ones the Rorquals are in for that day, and with their own cyno-jammers up in each system they can ensure that they have local force superiority.

Also you just contradicted your own point about this being a case of "a few alts" just sitting AFK on standby.

Cyno-Jammers aren't easilly scattered around to every system at present, what you're proposing would be an extremely cheap way to do what now takes an expensive module, upkeep, and an IHUB. I seem to recall there also being other restrictions that make it impractical to just spam Cyno Jammers around in every system, but I may be somewhat out of date there.

Wormholes and gates aren't going to be bringing many if any supers through, or enough sub caps to deal with even a small cap support fleet.

Also nowhere did I say the OP-ness was restricted to your attack-fleet case, I just said they'd spam them everywhere and turn them into another defender's advantage. There's a reason Cyno-Jammers are a defender's advantage thing and required Sov to use.

Overall I'm just not seeing this as a convincing argument, you're basically complaining that large organizations (that take a ton of work to keep going) provide too many advantages for the effort required.

I wouldn't even say the game enables 'cowardliness' it's that the game has to offer choices in order to be a game, and one of those choices has to be to not fight in order for the game to be a sandbox.

Otherwise we may as well replace the game with a lobby queue and the Alliance Tournament arena.