Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Normally I'd agree, but we're talking about something that drops Faction Capital BPCs. It sorta feels like the investment required for this should be a bit more than a blob of speed tanked Frigates worth less than a few blinged out mission battleships.

It's not so much that someone beat it, it's that they beat it in a way that's really hard to drop on from a PvP perspective, and really really cheap compared to the rewards.



Anyone who played around with these things on the test server could have told you that fleet was going to get rolled in hilarious fashion. They didn't have nearly enough Logi or DPS and the minimum spawn for the Blood Raiders seems to be at least a few dozen cruisers plus Logi and EWar ships.

Dropping capitals actually works *really* well because the Blood Raider capitals spit right out of the Sotiyo and aren't all that effective. Since there's no Supers that they can drop a Titan seems to chew through the dreads pretty quick.

Supers with bomb fighters are useless against a fleet of hundreds of Punishers orbiting the structure. Not to mention that the punisher fleet can just kill the supers one after another. And not to mention that bringing supers deep into any territory that is held by a big local group is not possible. Same goes for a Dominix fleet. It's not possible, it's not fun and not worth it.

And before someone calls me pessimist: This is the realist speaking, not the pessimist. CONDI, for instance, drops dozens of supers, titans, carriers and fax on ceptor fleets. How do you think they will respond to a super or Dominix fleet slowboating towards that structure? Not that CCP can do something about this, but engaging a Punisher fleet with supers or even a Dominix fleet deep in enemy territory is simply not feasible. Even if you very generously assumed that your fleet drove away the Punishers, you are then stuck there either tackled by the NPC or shooting the structure for another 30 minutes to get the "loot that is worth it". 30 minutes are a long time deep in enemy territory.

To me, the simple solution would be a dynamic response to current conditions. Computational restrictions aside, of course.

For example, from the perspective of the AI:

I'm losing subcaps to T1 frigates. They are kiting me. My counter-kiting mechanics are carriers engaging the kitey ships.

I'm losing fighters. My counter is HAW dreads.

I'm losing carriers, they're taking damage from dreadnoughts. My counter-dread mechanic is dreadnoughts engaging their dreadnoughts.

I'm losing battleships to mixed subcaps. They're kiting. My counter-kiting mechanic is to launch a wave of tackle ships and try to close in.

So on and so forth. Heck, you could even have the BR Sotiyo "probing" the enemy fleets (abstracted concept... you'd see probes, but it would just give their tackle/brawl ships a warp-in on your kiting fleet a few seconds after you see the probes).

You start with your T1 frigate kite cancer, which works great until they launch carriers or sniper-fit battleships. At which point, you either warp off and reship or ideally have a second squad warp in with guns to kill fighters or brawl the battleships.

The AI responds to your battleship brawling by launching tackle ships and pulling range - now your kitey cancer needs to swap over and tackle their tackle so you can keep brawling range on them.

Or if it launches fighters and you start sniping their fighters, it launches HAW dreads. Etc.

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In this regard, no single tactic will ever work. Yes, you will have a tactic that is effective for a time. But over time the AI will respond with a counter-mechanic. Which means you must adjust accordingly. This game is very much rock paper scissors, and there are clear counters to any single choice made by a player fleet... just as there are clear counters to every choice made by the AI.

While right now the thing might be rather limited, CCP has said they can now use this code to create new PvE stuff more accessible to everyone. They could for example make those replace current anomalies with a different scaling ratio. The current citadel sites are essentially the first implementation of their new PvE tool so they don't have to create everything from scratch every time they want to create some PvE content.

Actually, I think there is. Here's another thought experiment:

Lets say ccp plugs the gap of an exploit, like speedtanking while applying damage, or using waves of fighters from afar, or dogpiling the thing with long range titans, etc. Every time the players find an exploit, ccp plugs it in such a way that makes it a challenging fight again.

If we assume that players always find an exploit, then by the above logic there are an infinite number or ways to exploit the sotiyo. This is impossible, ergo the statement that "players can always find an exploit" is false.



The first thought that comes to mind is in the first part, that assumes ccp can always find a plug for an exploit, or always find one that doesn't make the sotiyo go from "challenge" to "almost unbeatable." The way to prove me wrong in this aspect would be to come up with a sound scenario that is impossible to fix without breaching the above conditions.