Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the recent dev ideas on sentry guns, people have been raging and cheering. I like the general idea but I also think it won't make much difference by itself. So here are my proposals. All of them have been suggested by me before at various points, though possibly not all together.

1) Sentry guns increase damage over time, just like the idea tossed to the CSM. Having them pop a triage carrier at 4.5 minutes is excessive however, 10-15 minutes for that would be more reasonable. They would also only shoot those who are GCC, not those who are merely outlaws or stole a can. I would also make RRing or otherwise helping someone who is not GCC but is an outlaw not result in GCC.

2) Increase sentry gun range to 250km.

3) Nerf combat probing hard by increasing cycle time and deviation while cutting max range to 4AU and reducing strength (a straight percentage drop would not work, need a gradient of some sort). Additional probing spec skills could be added as well, but these should not bump probing up to it's current state when fully trained. It should still suffer a heavy handed nerf even with new skills maxed. A virtue set should be all but required for consistently successful combat probing but well skilled without should be kind of successful. Low skilled should be unsuccessful and only useful for exploration.

4) Remove combat probes from D-scanner completely, including unsorted mode. Without this combat probing becomes impossible with the above changes.

5) Add a base +25% multiplier to all low sec isk and LP payments over high sec. As an example, a 1M isk BS rat would pay 1.25M in low sec, regardless of the specific system security. Missions would also pay +25% extra for rewards and LP. These changes would be in addition to the standard LP/reward increases attached directly to system security. This change would not apply to level 5 or FW missions as they are low sec only and already pay enough.

6) Make one of the mineral types only available from mining in low sec. My vote is nocxium but it doesn't really matter tbh. This mineral should be impossible to acquire anywhere outside of mining in low sec. That means reprocessing items that use the material in their manufacture have a 100% loss rate when you reprocess. Mining must be the only way to get it.

7) Return the old pod squish sound. I miss it and people are starting to wonder wtf I'm smoking when I mention it.

8) Add low level pirate agents to low sec, possibly as agents in space. I'm thinking lvl 1-3, lvl4's should remain exclusively in null sec with low sec pirate agents being a stepping stone.

9) FW plex capping needs to require the death of all npc's inside. I'm tired of seeing endless triple stabbed unarmed vigils. The NPC's in them also need rebalancing.

10) Forbid the use of fighter bombers and titan jump portals in low sec, supers can still pass through however. BO's covert jump portals are also ok, for now.

The goals of this list of changes are simple:

1) Get rid of the permacamps but still allow limited camping and skirmishes on gates.

2) Increase appeal of low sec to miners and missioners by improving perceived safety, increasing rewards dramatically and removing some of the more annoying elements (like orca camps!).

3) Increase pirating opportunities by increasing number of hearty carebears in low sec (preferably not in 100mn AB tengus, but that's another issue).

It is unnecessary to add a damage increase over time mechanic that has the potential to negatively affect sub-capital ships, when it makes more sense to make the sentries shoot citadel torpedoes at capital ships, and ONLY capital ships.

As for whether or not gate camping should be discouraged, I think it would be better if lowsec PvP revolved more around other things than sitting at a gate, waiting for people to jump in. Adding more entry points into lowsec would remove chokepoints and make it less profitable for pirates to just wait there. They would have to seek out their targets more actively.

Suggestions 1 and 2 would not stop gate camps, it would just require one or more drone ships to spread the gate gun dps. engagements on gates are usually not very long so the increasing gate gun dps wouldnt really make a significant difference to the fighters.

suggestions 3 and 4 would bring back unprobeable ships. the way taht ist balanced now is nothing is completely unprobeable but some are very hard to find. reducing their scan stregenth would make them impossible. also, barges are not one of the closeto unprobable ship types. dropping them off dscan would mean a huge nerf for every wh dweller out there. it would essentially break any security that a wh dweller could put up for their mining operations.
(unless they are flying truely massive recon defense fleets for their mining operations)

with the changes to 3 and 4, 5 would also become a thing of the past, even tough a mission in lowsec pays better, having to run camps, (which 1 and 2 would still not stop) a pve fit ship would not be able to see that pirate finding out where the mission runner is. the risk for mission runners becomes greatly increased not only in the mission area (where npc ewar for you) but also at gates, be cause we all know how well pve fits fair against pvp fits.

6 means that only large groups that camp systems can mine these minerals, as gate guns dont reach out to the belts, lowsec mining will not be the fan favorite, i forsee only larger alliances putting up the required defense fleets with the pilots who can easily regain their sec in null.

7-8-9-10 i agree with, though 10 i have reservations about the fighter bombers. currently Moms can only use Fighter bombers, so in lowsec they would be completely defenseless. had they another defense i would agree totally. Titans should not be able to portal to/from lowsec

goals-
1 this would not change much, there would simply be more people in them/ rotations of characters at the gate.
2 there is no change to the actual safety and no changes to the perceived safety. belt security is still nonexistant and now its harder to figure out if there is someone hunting you.
3 also not going to happen much. will happen some, but not enough to put a dent in the perceived carebear paridise population

I think you all need to take a moment and think about what I wrote a little more.

1 and 2) I didn't say I want to completely eliminate gate camps, only kill off the perma camps. They should be smaller and temporary, waiting for good targets to strike at rather than killing anything and everything that passes through. The goal isn't to make the gates safe, I only wish to force a change to slightly less annoying tactics.

3 and 4) Eve does not allow unprobable ships anymore. It doesn't matter what your sensor strength/sig radius is. It is set so that a max skilled prober can probe anything. Obviously this will need to remain the case after my proposed probing changes. Note that I didn't give any actual numbers other than a maximum combat probe range. All ships must remain probable for a top end prober regardless of what is done but low skilled probers should not be able to engage in effective combat probing. Being an effective combat prober should be a genuine specialty and require a substantial time commitment.

5) People used to run missions in low sec all the time and not in giant low sec coalitions. What changed is the probing system. That killed off traditional missioning in low sec over the course of a few months. If effective combat probers become rare, I think we'll see a return of low sec missioners. The reward buffs are merely to sweeten the deal a little.

6) Nothing wrong with people controlling low sec pockets to mine or ninja mining in empty systems. If you force people to mine in low sec some or the entire eve economy shuts down, I assure you, people will mine there.

Killing every little ole frigate or shuttle that passes through reduces the number of players willing to travel through low sec. This is bad for the general eve population as well as the pirates doing the ganking. Unfortunately many "pirates" are just too short sided to realize that.