Warfare & Tactics

BLAH.
You know what? You don´t even need to probe ogb down. They mostly sit on station and if you agress them you will get blobbed to hell (+station guns, what means that you need to reship to kill it) or the ogb docks and the pilot belonging to it too because he has no clue how to fight without or even funnier: His ship fit would never wok without ogb.
Implants on th other side are fine. Pods are very vulnerable. Ask Santo Trafficante :D
Plus instalock dessies in a fight or intys are pods worst nightmare.

We know man, we know.

I'm not the guy who made a length post composed of numbers pulled directly from my anus.

My god. It's like several years of development in statistical science never happened. Your suggested methodology is incredibly poor and suggests you are either dishonest or don't understand rudimentary sampling principles.

By your methods, I conclude that only a bare handful of Eve players have multiple accounts and almost all of them are industrialists or alliance leaders, with >90% of Eve's pvpers having a single account and a maximum of three characters. It turns out that if you ask people you know how many alts they have, your sample is neither random nor representative and is highly unlikely to generalize. Who knew (aside from anyone who understands basic stats)?



Crosi responded to claims I never made and was dismissed appropriately.



I never claimed anything of the sort. On the other hand, Crosi made a rather extraordinary claim about the untapped market for eve online. Perhaps you ought to direct your criticism of speculative remarks towards him.

Imagining that new - or veteran - players are turned off by OGB is no more preposterous then stating that a few dozen special snowflakes will make or break CCP. In business - for every person who is vocal and complains there are at least nine more who vote with their wallets and simply don't return. Why would this be different? CCP should always be looking to broaden the player base. Eve is difficult and yada yada yada - but it's better to have 50 people with 2 accounts each then 25 with 4 each. As they've spent quite a bit of time on the tutorial - it's safe to say they do care.

As has already been shown, the benefits of boosts are unbalanced compared to the risk/effort vs reward.

The proof is irrefutable, and we understand CCP enjoys income from 2nd accounts, and we understand people like the added power level boosts add to their fleetmates, it doesn't change the facts: Boosts are too much in their current state.

probe links
kill links
If you go fight someone on their turf then expect links

I only use links for pve

Each warfare link has a power level similar to an entire pirate implant set.

Snake Implants 1-6 give a 24% boost to speed to ONE SHIP.
Rapid deployment gives a 30% boost to EVERY MEMBER OF THE FLEET.

Furthermore, with your pirate implant set, you are limited to one major set of boosts.
With links, you can have boosts akin to a Snake Set, a Crystal Set, a Halo set, and more, simultaneously, provided to every member of your fleet.

Frankly, links are way out of balance with the rest of EvE's mechanics. This is irrefutable to anyone that actually looks at the numbers. Paying for a second account does not justify an overpowered mechanic. Months of skill training does not justify an overpowered mechanic. Links truly need to be balanced. This may be a nerf of their bonus magnitudes. This may be a nerf to their safety (move them on grid). This may be a hard counter to links (link disruptors).

Here are some deployable structures I think would help balance links:
A.) A device that you anchor in a system (like an ESS) that disables all fleet bonuses within the game.
B.) A device that you anchor in space that disables all fleet bonuses on grid.
Here is a link to the F&I Thread elaborating them.

Comet
Slicer
Firetail

And it's not a Rifter, but since you hold Amarr in high regards should still work:

Dramiel

Skill > isk. However - boosted vs unboosted will win 95% of the time. A monkey could do it.

Got to admit I didn't read the entire post but got thru most of the first pages and saw that people advocating for links talk about fighting outnumbered.

That's cool, I get what you're saying but there are guys who use links to boost their 1 vs 1 frig fights and they are unstoppable then. You cannot claim it's a decent mechanic.

When you get into a fight you often have no way of telling if the guy is linked. Sure - if you are one of the 3 people in the system and dscan shows that other ships are a rifter and a loki you can be pretty sure the other guy is linked to hell. But when you get yourself into a system with 10+ in local and the system is around 50AU in radius then how? How will you tell if you're going against a linked dude?

Links should either show on the KMs so the guy using them cannot claim to be a pro in solo, or be visible in game (graphical effect or sth) so you can gtfo when you see them. Or at least come prepared.

When you get jumped by a blob you see some warning on dscan. You can react to that. Links are just nasty surprise and a game breaker. Argument that you can bring your own links is a bit weak for me. It discourages roams, because links are easier to use near your home system, and actually hurts the overall experience. If nothing else - they make the game more tedious, exhausting and boring.