EVE General Discussion

I also do them both. I begin to think that you are being intentionally obtuse. My point is that Data sites are NOT worth your time to do, because you could INSTEAD be looking for the next Relic site. You have said nothing to disqualify my statement other than say that they are the same thing... Which any fool can see that they are not.

Re Combat sites: In any given system, the harder Combat sites will give you more Isk than the easier sites. Damn this confusion about escalations, or HS vs LS vs Null.

All of that crap is irrelevant to the point stated:

Activity A (Relic Sites) are worth more for your time than Activity B (Data Sites), and it is a waste of time to do Activity B when you could be doing Activity A instead; RESULTING IN everyone else who comes along being screwed by you because you managed to get to Activity A before all of them.

Trying to confuse everyone with nonsensical bull sh!t only makes you look dense.

All I am trying to ask is for the two possible activities while doing Exploration Sites to be equally worth your time as a player, so that you can always know that the sites you are spending your time scanning down are not someone else's dredges.

I didn't realize I'd need to defend this point so vigorously... As it is a blatantly f*cking obvious.

Personally I tend to avoid personal value judgement, because those are just that "personal" but in my case I look at it two ways.

One, running around hoping for a Relic Site is boring. If I find one I'll prioritize it over a Data Site, but I don't generally hunt for them to the exclusion of other sites.

Second, there's no guarantee I'm going to find a Relic Site in the time it would take me to do that Data site. Lets say it takes me 5 minutes to do that data site, if I don't do it and go on searching and don't find anything then I've gained nothing in that 5 minutes.

Between the boring and the not making ISK for tens of minutes or even hours I just do everything and sell the loot, even if strictly speaking I'd probably make more over the long run just cherry picking the Relic Sites I make a greater combined value in fun x ISK per hour running everything.

Oh, and I don't cherry pick loot. I just do everything. If I find a site that's been picked I just warp off.



This was, in fact, still not true even disregarding escalations. A site can take me longer to do and still provide lower rewards, generally because it has a lot of Frigates that I over-kill where as the Cruisers and up provide several times the payout per time spent firing at them.

Similarly for sites that have a high chance of killing you the payout may or may not be equal to a site with a much lower chance of killing you, especially in a ship specifically fit for higher paying sites.



So... what? So people will go through and do both types of sites before someone else can get to them?

Again, there is nothing wrong with different site types being worth more or less. Just because you feel it wastes your time doesn't make it something that needs to change. This would be like asking that every single Level 4 mission be an Extravaganza or World's Collide or something.

On top of that just because you don't find them worthwhile to do a newer player may find them very valuable, because they're still worth more than other things he can do. That was the situation I was in for quite a while starting out. Missions were boring and I didn't have a ship that could do L4s, but I could make pretty good money doing sites, so that's what I did. While a 5m payday from a Data Site might not be worth much to an older player to me it was a pretty decent payday and enough to pay for a full ship with fittings. This sort of variety in site payouts creates variety in the game, and actually creates value for the newer players when the older ones leave them something that isn't worth their time.

Again, just because one is worth less than the other does not mean there is a problem here. Also, for the record, it takes about 30 seconds or so per site (less if you're fast) to identify if something is a Data or Relic site.

This is weird because i do the opposite. I run data sites and skip over relics. I use the data loot in production so that could be why. It benefits me so its worth it, all isk value aside. I feel your pain though. I refuse, and have done so for years, to do any drone sites. A 1-5000 chance for a chip drop isnt worth the ammo it took to shoot the buggers down imo.

How about a little history lesson.

A long time ago when exploration was a very niche activity scanning was difficult. You had to chose what probes to use for the type of site you wanted. Anomalies could only be found using a ship board scanner and only within 4AU of a planet resulting in planet hoping. Those of us that took the time to train the skills, practice a lot and weather the NPCs in the sites made very good profits from the efforts in both relic and data sites.

Slowly CCP changed the way scanning was done reducing the time factor and complexity in scanning. Then came the death of data sites: The Rubicon expansion.

Within a week everyone and their corps mates were scanning and the profits for both relic and data sites plummeted. Rubicon lowered the barrier of entry into the exploration profession so much it was seen as a first day activity for new players.

Relic site value leveled out for reasons already discussed. Data site values continued to plummet. Certainly things were changed for data site loot; reduced item volumes, added BPCs, materials added to build requirements but data sites never recovered.

The future of data sites is also in doubt: Eventually POSes will be phased out along with pirate BPCs for POS components.What will take their place?

When looking at the long view of exploration, no other career option in EVE was been hit so hard. Exploration was the reason why I started playing EVE. Other activities have kept me playing but exploration is my first love. Based on all events since Rubicon the heady days of exploration challenge and profit are long gone and it is doubtful they will ever come back.

So yes, I too cherry pick data sites. I earned it.

I really enjoy running data sites in drone space. Even though the margins are nearly gone for many of the BPCs, the drone guts bring in solid ISK. Perhaps a solution would be to have 'Augmented' faction (angels, etc.) ships and modules... if acquisition of these 'Augmented' BPCs required invention using a huge number of datacores and decrypters, you would have a sink for the excess on the market, bringing their cost back up. Data sites could also drop "faction computer parts", essential for the manufacture of said 'Augmented' BPCs which should have solid demand.

I think they could make Data sites drop things for implants manufacturing like ghost sites do. That would obviously require adding such a system( to manufacture implants) but they clearly can do this as shown by ascendancy line.

Or make skill books only droppable from data sites and not sold by npcs. It would eliminate those two things from supposedly "player controlled" market.

Just my 0.02 ISK

Do you have any arguments that don't include random ad hominem inclusions?

Look, when I run exploration I'm looking for a handful of sites: ghost sites, superior sleeper caches, 5/10s, 6/10s, annexes, and distribution facilities (I'm often in a ladar region). Those are, for me, the most profitable sites to run given my overall setup.

However, they are far from equal. I would much rather get a 6/10 than a 5/10 (at least in the regions I'm in most often). But that doesn't mean I don't run the damn 5/10 even if I might be missing out of a 6/10.

Why, and how is any of this relevant?

Game theory works here, I suppose. I'm basically faced with a choice between a known payout for a known cost and the chance for an unknown payout that might and might not appear. Yes, the unknown payout is better, but I have no guarantee of getting it. I've decided, again based on my own circumstances and ability, that the 5/10 is an acceptable payout against the risk of not getting anything. Would I run 6/10s all day if they were available? Of course! Am I willing to risk passing on getting one for the right price? Sure!

Relevance? You're doing the same thing with data versus relic. You've decided that for you, under your circumstances, the payout of data sites is not high enough to risk missing a relic. And that's your call. I'm not here to tell you you're wrong. However, your personal judgement about relative worth and availability doesn't point towards a structural problem any more than my preference for 6/10s means that 5/10s are **** and need to be boosted and/or more 6/10s should spawn.

You've utterly failed to justify the existence of an actual problem here.

Try this. Next time you're out, hit all the data sites. Cherry pick them; I don't care. Spend a few hours on it. Then another time, spend the same amount of time but run everything. Repeat. Make a spreadsheet. For completeness, do a run for the same controlled amount of time doing only relics and hunting hard for them, skipping all else. Track it all. If there's a real problem, it will show up in the data.

Until then, you're pissing at the wind and claiming to be right based on a sense of entitlement and nothing more.

I tried them. They aren't even REMOTELY worth the risk.

Hi; this is my first message in the forums (at least as I recall). (also, English is not my main lang, sorry for the mistakes)



I don't usually like cherrypicking, but I wonder, how is it different from other pvp practices, so strongly defended in the forum?

I mean. When you cherrypick, specially out of your usual exploration zone:
-You make other competing explorers lose their time scanning just-crap sites
-You make that zone (in which you don't usually operate) less productive
-So, you disencourage other explorers, perhaps moving them to avoid exploration, so letting more place for you
And, of course, you maximize your isk/hour in that trip if you don't mind finishing or blowing the crap cans.

I can see intentionally cherrypicking as a pvp-way of competing with other explorers. So, "don't cherrypick!" should be looked into as if someone said "don't blow other people's ships!", shouldn't it?

I'll do data sites in null if I can't find anything else. I do not do them in wormhole systems because of the distance between cans is too much time to be exposed when the risk versus reward is factored in.