EVE Information Portal

Bingo....but you have missed the point. This was ALWAYS a ploy to attack the players you described.
We will not see the dev describing how a solo drone boat ran the Sansha Blockade, or a Gallente epic arc, L4 Damsel in Distress, Buzzkill, or actually hanging around in the 1st room of Sansha Recon and killing ships for the bounties.

The vast majority of the players affected by this disaster will not even read these posts, because they are casual high sec players who don't read forums So it will proceed as it is onto TQ. Only when these players are then devastated Dec 3 will the real uproar start, but by then it will be too late.

That may be the intent, but (and we don't know until we can test it) it might not negatively affect afk drone boating very much, while at the same time have negative and detrimental affects to a whole slew of other things, from null sec pvp to null and low sec exploration to cooperative gameplay in missions in a security levels ect ect. This is what we're warning about.

If you want to get rid of afking (which imo would be a good thing) there are ways to do this. For some reason some players in this thread think (without thinking) that this change alone will somehow do that (while not taking into account what it could "cost" in other areas).

Hell (again, subject to testing) we in this thread that don't like this change are already theory crafting ways to circumvent the changes.

I do incursions a lot now, and it's just as easy as pie to deal with the "enhanced" AI to the point where we're still doing Vanguards in 5 or less minutes, with no losses ever, and it's every bit as "formulaic" and easy as how people do missions and plexes now. The problem isn't that the new ai can't be overcome, it's that missions and plexes werent' designed with that new AI in mind, creating some potentially very screwed up situations that takes away from PVE rather than adds to it.


Some people think it's that we don't want to adapt, that's not true, I've already thought about what adaptions I'm going to make. For example, instead of triple boxing mach/FoFtengu/FoFtengu in forsaken hubs, i'd triple box Mach/FoFNavy Raven/FoFNavy Raven, with drones assigned to the mach and the Mach with a target painter instead of a tracking comp to draw aggro away from the drones. That's a good 300+ more dps than my current set up can do.

In the current AI i don't use drones because you lose to many, but with this new stuff I mgiht be able to, meaning CCP will be letting me pour more dps out, which means I'm pouring more ISK into the game.

Unintended Consequences can be very profitable :) .

Yes indeed, thanks. Much more clear to me.

The production lines are already rolling.

Once there is a test server with the changes up, I'm sure a lot of stuff will be tested.

This...*points up* ...drone-type afk solo in sub cap ends, missile type solo level 4s for iskies remains.

Is it just me or is taking time to program tweak an AI for NPCs to fix a perceived "lack of challenge" a problem that was only a minor problem for some players who were irritated at other players who second account afk ... seems a bit... distracting. Who asked for this limited AI fix again? Did the NPC solo-types beg for this?

In other words, real ISK grinding with tanked and spidered BSs in WH or 0.0 plex grinding with carriers remains no real problem... but non-allied solo players who grind 25 mill isk per session, or low level noob types who used to accompany corp mates for kicks and giggles and salvage... with drone boats... needed to be fixed...

There are tons of group play non-AI type issues that could use love. Like announce ... "complex spawn triggers are now random... so yeah, good luck" or "spawn wave strengths are now pro-rated / calculated based on the number of player ships and their sizes within a 200km radius on trigger... so yeah... good luck" could require real teamwork to adjust for... but it's done so hey... thank you for taking time to adjust it...

Anyway, to confirm: My Tengu missile boat, orbit a can at 5k and almost afk play by occasionally remembering my second account needs a target change... Still seems to work fine... since the relative strength of the AI boats seem to be on par with what they were... end of rant.

Any suggestion for what content should be tested with a carrier?

All of it, we want carriers to continue being in anomalies so we can findand kill them... but perhaps increase the number of rats that point/scram when your in a capital...

Last stage of ALL the staging points not just Guristas.

First off I want to say that I like your dedication to making eve a better game for everyone, and your zeal for doing it seems to be pretty amazing from what the eve playerbase is used to, so thanks for that.

On the topic of the proposed changes, with regard to tackling ratters in general (and bringing new players on missions/to anoms/etc) have you considered the fact that bar Serpentis pirates, all pirates have something that, when switching to a frigate will either minmatar: target paint (making it basically one shottable by even the elite frigates), amarr: neut (no cap to point or even AB), or caldari: jamming out the frigate (based on the npcs high jam strength vs a frigs low sensor strength). Another point of concern is EWAR and the AIs tendency to prioritize targets who are actively using EWAR (such as scrams, jams, painters, webs, etc) Have you considered the effects of this with tackling frigates in the aforementioned anoms? (example being, warp into a minmatar anom to catch a ratter, scram ratter, instantly locked and painted by all the elite frigs/cruisers in the pocket and killed literally instantly.)

With sweeping changes come a lot of unintended consquiences and I really hope you don't forsake an entire playstyle in this game for what you think is a good (and needed) change right now.

Down the line, making ratters harder to hunt in null simply solidifies the fact that null as it is now, is ironically safer than highsec, simply because people know to be on guard. Making the rats ASSIST the ratters whom they are killing is a fairly laughable solution to this problem.

I suggest making a system whereby if you kill a ratter in any anom, you gain faction standing with said pirates, and at a certain level (+5 possibly?) the rats in said anoms simply will not attack you unless you take criminal action against said NPCs in said anom (along with losing standing for taking a hostile action against said npcs). This would allow you to keep your proposed changes and also alleviate entirely the concerns that face the ratter hunters, while also adding a cool roleplaying mechanic (defending the npcs space as a player, becoming 'blue' with the npcs as you have a long history of having protected them, etc.) I think changes like this are the way you need to take the game to make it a richer experience and I look forward to hearing what direction you end up taking this all, as it has a huge effect on whether or not my alliance exists come winter expansion.

Forgot to mention, this is gonna make bots spike in terms of popularity, not only do you have to not worry about awoxers (lol your own awoxing frig will die before you can warp to the rat) but with pocket concord it's just another layer of security in nullsec, which is definitely NOT needed.

Have you tested any lvl 5 missions yet, many of those are done with carriers.

Plus basically any null sec anomaly bigger than a Forsaken Hub. Most null sec signatures have gates, but some of the escalations (fleet Staging point and the end of Hired Gun for example) are open and allow carriers. Each race is different, but all have at least a few signature plexes that esclate into open areas where carriers can be used.