EVE Information Portal

A gang deploying an ESS creates the same effect as a gang without an ESS. Ratters dock up either way. The hostile ESS generates no income for the roaming gang but costs 30 million. If the gang leaves with the ESS still deployed then the ratters undock, destroy the ESS, and go about their business. If the gang hangs around, then the ratters log off and go spend time with their loved ones or something. The ESS generates no fights.

After generating zero isk and zero fights, gangs won't waste the 30 million isk. The end result being a straight 5% nerf to ratting income, everyone moves on, and SonicLover's pet project gets forgotten.

If anyone was stupid enough to place an ESS in their own space, you can guarantee that alliance will be torn apart by internal struggles after a single noob-alt in an ibis is seen flitting around, 'stealing' income. "Whose alt is that?" "I saw _____ in system at the same time as NoobAlt!!"

Perhaps this is the conflict SoniClover is hoping to generate. The thing is, this type of conflict already exists, in the form of "sneaky awoxing". Once again, nothing added.

…and…



ESS doesn‘t require you to fight in your PvE fit. Not at all. PvE ratters should be able to dock / POS up and switch to suitable combat ships, maybe even call for reinforcements from nearby systems. (That‘s one of my main concern with the current mechanic of the ESS. A fixed timer doesn‘t cut it. Depending on the situation it is either too short or too long. Right now it‘s too short. ESS can be robbed long before the defenders are able to react. Therefore the „take all“ option should be a payment over time, not a single payment after a timer. For example the attacker could get one tag for every x seconds that he‘s willing to wait at the ESS module.)



No. The idea behind ESS isn‘t flawed at all. It is a good idea, but the proposed mechanism seems to be flawed in several ways.



I‘ve got news for you: NULL SECURITY SPACE is not designed for undisturbed ratting. I don‘t care that inhabitants want to rat in peace. Not at all :-) Your complaint is in no way different from hisec carebears demanding an end of ganking, war decs and other activies disturbing their mission running and mining.

Did you ever live in wormhole space? What you are describing there is daily business over there. People do live together in a POS, sharing a lot of equipment, stockpiling sleeper loot until it can be sold safely in hisec, etc. Drama is an essential part of EVE. If somebody chooses to set up an ESS, there is a certain chance for drama. And that‘s positive. It seems there are not only autistic players in hisec, but in nullsec also, only in a different way. Everybody should have to deal with these problems.

And everyone does, it's called "AWOXing"

I have followed this forum for years, played EVE on and off for a while since 2009 and never felt the need to post. So this is my first post to the EVE forums, and I am using it to say that if CCP goes through and actually rolls out this ESS after this kind of player/customer feedback, it will be an act of developer hubris unseen since the ending of Mass Effect 3. I see this a lot in my line of work, someone comes up with an idea they think is so great that they impose it top-down and anyone who doesn't like it just doesn't understand the brilliance of the idea. Sure people generally don't like change and will normally whine, but there are such things as bad ideas. That's how the ME3 ending happened - the executive producer and lead writer decided they wanted to write the ending themselves and didn't need the input of the other writers, and then would not let any of the other writers see it until after the voice actors recorded it (so by then it was a fait accompli). They bypassed the peer review process that all the other writing underwent because they didn't think the other writers would grasp the creative brilliance, but in reality they were just afraid the other writers might expose it for the crap it was and they didn't want to hear negative feedback on their work product.

It takes moral courage to listen to feedback and walk back an idea, and hopefully the guys at CCP who came up with this have that. Granted the dev's are aware of the "vocal minority" aspect, and no doubt only a small fraction of subscriptions write on this forum, but to just ignore this wave of displeasure because the complainers supposedly don't get the creative genius is a bad idea. Others smarter than me have posted ideas on this thread about how to modify the item if the dev's would lose too much face just shelving it completely, but please don't let it roll out the way currently designed and even more importantly, please don't try to coerce more people into using it by increasing the penalty from 5% to something higher. Turning up the magnitude because your product isn't having the desired outcome usually results in more unintended consequences and customer anger than it does help the "problem" of your product isn't doing what you hoped.

How about this:

• Drop the 5% global decrease in bounties and any ability to increase bounties above 100%
• Make the deployable siphon 20% of all bounties across the whole constellation its deployed in (perhaps even make a hauler sized one that does a whole region)
• Have anyone in range able to take all siphoned ISK directly into their wallet

People not watching intel channels might continue to rat. People stuck in anoms or escalations will probably continue to rat. Attackers get some ISK and a fight if they stick around. Defenders have to go fight you or lose multiple systems of ratting space.

Look, we have already established that even the best ratting systems in nullsec can support at most 4-5 pilots ratting at one time. So for the ratters to deploy an ESS they would have to expect that they can defend the ESS against any hostiles that come into the system. I don't care how you monkey with the payout system or what you increase the timer for payouts to, the bottom line is the ratters have 4-5 pilots in system to defend the ESS vs. a roaming gang which would likely be 5-20 people in PvP fit ships already set up in a proper fleet, and may have a cyno or blops capabilities as well. So in the time it takes for you to get pilots in from other systems and organize a large enough defense fleet the roaming gang will have robbed the ESS blind and moved on.

I mean tbh, I can barely talk myself into ratting so if my options are to take a 5% income nerf or interact with this god awful deployable and possibly get an 20% nerf along with the drama of alliancemates robbing it and hostiles camping it I'm gonna take the 5% nerf. The real question is does nullsec need a 5% bottom-up income nerf and the answer is no.

I simply don't agree with the design philosophy behind it.

Even if there was no passive ratting nerf involved, I still think it's a poor idea. No matter how you monkey the numbers, it's a poor idea.

It's a strange, unnatural creation that no logical person or entity would create within the game itself.

Contrast this to any other income generating activity, in nullsec or even wormhole space.

In either case, your loot is near where you are. If somebody comes into the system, you know it takes them time to find you/scan you down/warp to you. You can then assess the situation and decide what you want to do about it....

In wormholes for instance, you would first see them on dscan, but then you would be watching out for probes, and you would have a rough idea of how long it will take them to probe you down. You can then leave, put your loot in your POS, etc.

With the ESS, it weirdly and inexplicably deposits loot into an ATM Machine somewhere in the system that you then have to warp to retrieve. Do you not see the fundamental difference and weirdness behind this?

What the hell?

I see it different. In the current state of nullsec, a roaming gang of 5-20 people can‘t do **** to provoke a fight. Yes, it‘s possible to gank somebody, and if you‘re really, really lucky you find a gang of locals willing to fight. But this will happen once in like five roamings. At least this is my experience from small scale roamings, twice or three times weekly, in different parts of the nullsec regions.

The sad truth is: if a smallscale roaming gang enters nullsec, all ratters dock up, and all other inhabitants don‘t care at all.

It is simply a necessity that roaming gangs are able to do SOMETHING that hurts the local inhabitants. Right now they are mostly ignored, and for good reasons.

The idea behind ESS – at least as I understand it – is to give nullsec ratters a new deployable that potentially increases their income, but with a price. A part of their income will be at risk. CCPs job is to balance it properly. Risk vs reward.

Whenever there is even a small amount of extra profit, some people are willing to risk more in order to get it. Sometimes they are aware of the risk, sometimes not. That‘s only natural. CCPs job is to balance it such that enough people are willing to take this risk.

Therefore we should only talk about the right balance, and the exact mechanics of the module, not if it should exist at all. There has to be some kind of ESS!

And a TCU doesn‘t cut it, and it‘s quite obvious. No small or mid scale roaming gang could ever do anything to harm a TCU.