EVE General Discussion

Since the patch, there has been a drastic difference in the number of Rogue Drone Sentient spawns when doing combat sites. My corpmates and I are getting these spawns at least 1/5th to 1/10th as often, compared to before the patch. I don't make this claim lightly. Combined my corp has accumulated over 100 hours of data since the patch. Last month we ran over 1,000 Drone Patrols.

Is this intended?

When each ratter finishes a site, they make a corp BM (with their name-Time) on any Sentient wreck so that it can be looted while they move to the next site. While warping to the next site they add the BM name to our shared spreadsheet, with change tracking, so that us looters can't "forget" to log their BMs. They have been in the habit of making BMs for Sentients for over a month now. (And after the patch they are REALLY motivated to remember to BM them because they've noticed the lack of spawns.) Us looter/salvagers (work at home with personal monitor on Eve) collect the loot, verifying that the ratter isn't padding their numbers with false BMs, and make a portion of the profits.

Same system, same maxed out military index, similar enough ship setups that all make 40-60 mil per hour.

I have access to the API of the people ratting and have looked at their ratting ticks. Sentients give an extra 8-11mil in a single tick, and are pretty easy to find. Their ticks show that they are doing the same amount of work, but getting 1/5th (or worse) as many Sentient spawns.

Yesterday there was 3-4 ratters on at a time for 10 hours, and we didn't get a single Sentient. Last month our lowest Sentient count under the same circumstances is 4, going as high as 10, and we hit that scenario more than half of the days last month...


I would wager 5Bil that Rogue Drone Sentient spawns are considered escalations, or are some how affected by the patch changes (but CCP_Fozzie didn't know that they were connected in such a way). Seems that moderate means 20%, and the developer inverted the intended chance.