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So The BR Sotiyos
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Fek Mercer
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2017-05-20 00:56:06 UTC
You may have noticed the new blood raider sotiyo being destroyed by a fleet of speed tanking t1 frigates earlier today. Now lets not bash on CCP for not seeing this coming, it's just counterproductive. what are your ideas for making the br sotiyo less exploitable? The most likely contenders seem to be either point defense and/or a web and scram fitted to the station. blood raiders are known for web bonuses afterall.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#2 - 2017-05-20 01:30:29 UTC
No matter what you do a human player will it out play the ai plug this ands we will find another. Besides the easier they are too farm the cheaper the bpcs will be

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Fek Mercer
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#3 - 2017-05-20 02:27:47 UTC
That's a popular saying to be sure, but consider if we made the sotiyo have infinite hp and concord levels of response fleets. tada, a simple thought experiment shows it to be a fallacy.
Merin Ryskin
Peregrine Industries
#4 - 2017-05-20 03:33:44 UTC
Ok, unless the AI is literally unbeatable the human players will always win. You can try all you want to make better AI, but in the end it's still following a pre-made script with a limited set of possible responses. And a fixed script will never be as clever as human opponents that can adapt as needed. The players will always be able to figure out how it works and then develop an ideal counter-strategy, whatever that strategy may be. All you can do is hope to keep the experience interesting long enough for people to enjoy it a bit before the ideal strategy is found and the farming begins.

And no, "just give it more damage/tank, but not CONCORD level" is not an option. If you make its raw stats high enough that even the cleverest and most determined farmers can't reduce it to a farmable resource then everyone else is going to have zero chance. A level of damage/tank that can challenge the best attempts at farming will be instant death to anything less, and only a tiny minority will even be able to attempt the new content.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#5 - 2017-05-20 03:59:58 UTC
to be fair considering only one of these exist at a time it will only be farmed. there are not going to be casual groups going after them

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Fek Mercer
Native Freshfood
Minmatar Republic
#6 - 2017-05-20 07:09:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Fek Mercer
I think that it won't do to write off every possible pve event in eve as 100% farmable, unless you can give me the logical proof. This is the first time we've had an event that purposefully scales with the people doing it, so why not try and see if there is a way to make it better?
Lugh Crow-Slave
#7 - 2017-05-20 08:04:10 UTC
the only way to make something so that it is not farmable is to put some bull restriction on it like "can only do once every X"

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Do Little
Bluenose Trading
#8 - 2017-05-20 08:46:45 UTC
The players are supposed to win. The AI is supposed to provide an enjoyable challenge. Right now we're training the algorithm. I doubt there is any "deep learning" going on given the time constraints and limited available processing power but it should be possible to train a decision tree to provide an adaptive AI that puts up a good fight before losing.
Rhaegon Aesir
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#9 - 2017-05-20 09:00:46 UTC
I...don't think the AI can "learn" anything, it's not that advanced. CCP programmed it to respond to certain actions in certain ways and that's it. It didn't have any response for massed frigates that was effective, so we got the current outcome. Now it's up to CCP to add a proper response, it won't get "trained" by itself.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#10 - 2017-05-20 09:19:22 UTC
what they needed to do if CCP is listening is call in a bunch of carriers with superiority fighters even with the damage reduction they make a mess out of frigs so long as they are not out running the fighters

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Merin Ryskin
Peregrine Industries
#11 - 2017-05-20 09:33:25 UTC
Fek Mercer wrote:
I think that it won't do to write off every possible pve event in eve as 100% farmable, unless you can give me the logical proof. This is the first time we've had an event that purposefully scales with the people doing it, so why not try and see if there is a way to make it better?


There's no logical proof, just experience with EVE and game design in general. The AI can never be a meaningful challenge in a game like EVE because the AI is not as smart as players. You can give it a complex script to run from, but in the end it's still a script and the players will figure out how the script works. So one of two things happens:

1) The players have the advantage of facing an opponent where they know every move the AI is going to make, and adapting their own strategies to counter the script. It might take a while to figure out the optimal strategy to beat the script, but once it's done farming the content becomes a simple matter of correctly executing the optimal strategy.

or

2) The players have that advantage, but the AI has sufficient advantages in raw stats (CONCORD damage/tank, for example) that even when you know exactly what move the AI is going to pick the AI still wins. The AI "wins" each fight, but because the AI is impossible to defeat nobody wastes time on that particular content.

Scaling doesn't magically escape the problem because the scaling is still run from a script. The players will figure out the optimal number of ships to bring, where the player fleet has its maximum advantage over the AI, and bring it every time. If having 50 ships triggers an escalation then every farming fleet will take 49 ships, or significantly more than 50 ships so they're one ship short of the next escalation trigger. The scaling script may require more work to analyze than, say, the script for a level 4 mission, but in the end it becomes just one more rule in defining the perfect farming strategy.
Lugh Crow-Slave
#12 - 2017-05-20 09:43:24 UTC
basically the only way the AI can keep up with the players is with the devs constantly updating and adapting retroactively and tbh there is better things to do with their time.

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#13 - 2017-05-20 13:17:34 UTC
Ai in any game that does not constantly change is eventually farmable. Players will keep trying different things until something works. Then they will keep doing what works, perfecting the process until the maximum reward is gained from the minimum amount of effort. This is as inevitable as the sun coming up unless the ai changes, look at what players have done with burners and drifters. Constantly changing it to be a challenge is a lot of time, effort and money. And players adapt faster than ai can be written. Don't get your hopes up.

This is why pvp is higher quality content that keeps players for longer. Players constantly adapt to eachother all the time. Its quick and free 'content updating'.

So whilst periodic pve updates are good for bringing a bit of life to the game, it's a bad idea to rely on it for content. Especially in a game like eve. NPC's are best used for setting the stage for players to interact.

EVE FAQ "7.2 CAN I AVOID PVP COMPLETELY? No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided"

Daichi Yamato's version of structure based decs
Lugh Crow-Slave
#14 - 2017-05-20 13:32:57 UTC
Daichi Yamato wrote:
NPCs are best used for setting the stage for players to interact.


This and the new BR sites do just this. The real challenge isn't beating the rats it's beating the other groups after the same prize

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
FT Diomedes
The Graduates
#15 - 2017-05-20 17:27:58 UTC
Working as intended. CCP designed a PVE site that anybody could attempt to run. It's accessible content for everyone. Not just players like me with 200m+ SP and ten years experience playing the game. It doesn't require 250+ Machariels. It doesn't require Capitals or Supercapitals. Literally anyone can do this site. And that is a great thing. Especially once the other pirate factions start putting up their own Sotiyos and there are potentially 5 of these sites up at the same time.

CCP should add more NPC 0.0 space to open it up and liven things up: the Stepping Stones project.

Rivr Luzade
Coreli Corporation
Pandemic Legion
#16 - 2017-05-20 18:36:41 UTC
Lugh Crow-Slave wrote:
Daichi Yamato wrote:
NPCs are best used for setting the stage for players to interact.


This and the new BR sites do just this. The real challenge isn't beating the rats it's beating the other groups after the same prize

I doubt that. If these shipyards can get farmed by Punishers, there's no incentive for someone else to fight that. Similar as Entosis stuff it's just not worth it.

UI Improvement Collective

My ridicule, heavy criticism and general pale outlook about your or CCP's ideas is nothing but an encouragement to prove me wrong. Give it a try.
Lothros Andastar
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#17 - 2017-05-20 22:07:04 UTC
Rivr Luzade wrote:
Lugh Crow-Slave wrote:
Daichi Yamato wrote:
NPCs are best used for setting the stage for players to interact.


This and the new BR sites do just this. The real challenge isn't beating the rats it's beating the other groups after the same prize

I doubt that. If these shipyards can get farmed by Punishers, there's no incentive for someone else to fight that. Similar as Entosis stuff it's just not worth it.

Bring your supers with bomb fighters to kill them all. Or bring a domi fleet with Warrior II's
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#18 - 2017-05-20 22:20:32 UTC
There is, rivr. Pirate bpc's.

Whilst the npc's can be beat by punishers, the punishers can be beaten by players. And thats how escalation starts.

EVE FAQ "7.2 CAN I AVOID PVP COMPLETELY? No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided"

Daichi Yamato's version of structure based decs
Lugh Crow-Slave
#19 - 2017-05-20 23:57:39 UTC
Rivr Luzade wrote:
Lugh Crow-Slave wrote:
Daichi Yamato wrote:
NPCs are best used for setting the stage for players to interact.


This and the new BR sites do just this. The real challenge isn't beating the rats it's beating the other groups after the same prize

I doubt that. If these shipyards can get farmed by Punishers, there's no incentive for someone else to fight that. Similar as Entosis stuff it's just not worth it.


Those bpcs are pretty worth it

BLOPS Hauler
The 16.8km Bubble
grgjegb gergerg
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#20 - 2017-05-21 02:46:19 UTC  |  Edited by: grgjegb gergerg
What if each Sotiyo has increased resistance to what killed the last one? Little ships kill it, the next one gets decent webs and smaller guns. Capitals kill the next, and it switches out for anticapital stuff, but loses some of the webs and small guns. If a completely balanced fleet shows up, not much would happen.

Each kill modifies the station a little. Maybe have a RNG choose some of the fitting tendencies as well? But at least it would be a little interesting to probe the station, figure out what it's using, and figure out a way to counter it.

And as players use tactics less, the station drops those counters in favor of what it's adapting to. Then players switch back, and the Sotiyo switches back. On the plus side, this tactic relies on rats dying, and they're MEANT to die, so that's not horrible.

Depends on how NPC guns work, I guess. Might be a lot of work, considering the % of EVE players who engage the things.
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