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I am extremely comfortable with the idea of level 4 missions in high sec being impossible to solo. I am also comfortable with the idea of agents moving and or becoming less profitable as more and more players complete missions from the same agent. Would love to see Dodixie's agents pack their bags and base from a player built null station for a while.

You should be able to range tank citadel torps though. That's what I've always done anyway. Pretty easy to keep out of range. Citadel Torps are really short range, and it shouldn't take a whole lot of effort to keep range on an outpost. It isn't like it is mwd'ing towards you.

I've just realised something.

On large scale software projects, you have engineers dedicated to feature releases & sections of the codebase. But those features are specced by product owners who are experts in their fields, in this case game designers.

Do CCP really have engineers in effect doing game design with seemingly little feedback from game designers?

The latter are the people who should be in communication with the playerbase, not engineers -- unless it's digging into the details of a bug. Seems weird-as, to me, but explains a heck of a lot.

I like this AI change!
BUT may dear CPP you will have to make drones/fighters more survivable to give at least time to withdraw them to host-ship.Without this hunting with drones will be just economically unsound.
Please note this problem.

The warp in spot for the maze and fleet staging point (among others) is within torp range. You can warp at range for fleet staging point, but the maze 5th room is only accessable vvia gate from the 4th room.

You may want to risk a ship like a machariel or rattlesnake for that, I don't.

Curses, no longer can I (as a domi pilot) release the hounds and nip off to make a tasty beverage

Long-awaited changes folks, nice work

CPP.How about module that repair drones/figthers on board of ship?

My tinfoil hat theory is that CCP really does have a plan. MMO content is expensive to create and players tend to burn through or exploit it fairly quickly.

IMHO, instead of relying on content, CCP's changes (tiericide, missile changes, NPC AI, FW, upgrades, etc.) are designed to drive the PvE crowd into a PvP (or PvP-lite) mentality so that they're more likely to move to low and null sec, fight each other, and generate their own content (aka "emergent gameplay.")

My predictions for the future is that level 4s will require a friend or two to complete efficiently, that mission fits will need to fit e-war or counter-e-war modules, and that NPCs will rely less on numbers and more on quality (e.g. mission runners will need to buffer tank for short fights instead of endurance tanking.) Dying to NPCs will become likely as well (in order to get carebears comfortable with the idea of losing ships.)

Few comments :

1) As was already stated you will probably need to adjust high-end DED sites where we have to deal with super torpedoes.
With target switching capability those sites will become wasted content. It is already taking too much time to do them and if they will require over pimped fleets with full logi support we won't be bothering with them any more.

2) About drones in general :
Them drones love to use their MWD when webbed.
drone + web == dead drone
There is no way around it. No amount of skill or effort will allow you to save that drone.

Fun facts :
Medium drones have bigger signature than frigates.
Heavy drones have signature of a cruiser.

Now multiply that by mwd sig bloom, close-to-zero tanking capability and single-digit-IQ of that drone.
There is a reason why there is no point in using drones in wormholes ( without gang ).

Heavy drones are already gimped in pve. This change will make them terribly inefficient ( even more than they are now ).
Forcing all drone users to use only sentries will not be considered as good design.

Keep in mind that constant recalling/redeploying/reassigning drones is *not* fun game mechanics.


Proposition :
- no webs on drones ( all other forms of ewar are fine )
- light drones targeted by frigates only ( no destroyers )
- medium drones targeted by short range cruisers only
- heavy drones targeted by short range cruisers/battlecruisers
- no more than 4 normal rats ( 2 elite ) shooting at single drone at the same time

I am a bit conflicted about this change. On one hand i agree you should work towards more interesting PVE, but i also see a few problematic things about this.

Firstly, some DED complexes such as the various 10/10's and the Fleet Staging Point 3 previously mentioned in the thread have citadel torpedoes which do absurd amounts of damage. For now these complexes can be done using a dedicated tank ship requiring high resists (~85-95%) in up to three different damage types at once along with a good amount of HP. Very commonly the ships used to tank these complexes are either T2 or T3 cruisers which rely partly on their small signature radius. Commonly used remote repair ships are Dominix, and the obvious T2 logistics. If however the NPCs were to switch targets, all members of the party would be required to take turns tanking.

You can see how it becomes a problem to at the same time have very high tanking and remote repairing capabilities. The cruisers will hardly be an adequate choice, seeing their minimal repair capability. Logistics, while having good capability when it comes to remote repair, suffer from a tank far too weak for tanking. The Dominix, a widely popular PVE ship, can be fit to excel at remote repairing or alternatively to have a decent tank. With its bloated signature radius however, the Dominix can hardly be fit to tank and repair at the same time on top of having to be cap stable on top of all that.

Not only does your tank need to reach these extremely high resistances, in the Blood Raider 10/10 complex for instance it has to do so without using any capacitor at all due to the excessive capacitor neutralizing involved. On the other hand, the Guristas 10/10, The Maze, requires your tank to have high resistances in not only kinetic and thermal, which are the damage types dealt by Guristas, but also EM, which is dealt by the citadel torpedo.

So, while the impact of this change will be minimal on complexes such as the 6/10, which are easy to solo, the 10/10's and certain other complexes will become practically impossible, barring perhaps for a large group of RR battleships. The 7/10 and 8/10's will take much longer to run (the former can already take hours with its five rooms) when all ships of the group are required to fit high tank, and to stay close to each other, severely diminishing their DPS.

In general i am not opposed to making the NPCs more intelligent, however before such changes are made you have to take a close look at some of the existing PVE content, and the effect this change would have on it.




On to my second point. While i live in nullsec i often scan wormholes in search of easy ways to other parts of K-space or the occasional possibility of ganking some poor sod running sleeper sites in a shiny ship. However, when i do find someone ratting, i have to consider not only if i can match my target in a fight, but whether i can take the sleeper fire should they switch to me.

With the proposed changes to normal NPC AI, this will become something to worry about in K-space as well. Say i was roaming around in a Cynabal, and came across a Tengu running a Serpentis sanctum. Currently with EMP doing the optimal damage type against the Tengu, and the slight advantage given by my flight of ECM-300's, i can reasonably assume to be able to tank his damage long enough to take him down. If however the NPCs in the anomaly were to switch to me on landing, and worse yet the frigates scramble and web me, i would be dead in a matter of seconds.

Again, in general i am in favor of making NPCs more intelligent, but this is yet another change that will make ratting in nullsec safer.