Player Features and Ideas Discussion

As someone in a nullsec alliance who benefits more from siphons being useless than useful, I have to say I agree with the OP.

Siphons are an interesting dynamic as it forces POS owners to actually chceck on their POS to kill siphons. Yes they usually do that with a series of alts, but if the alt is constantly in the POS it's not earning money, meaning there is sort of an incentive not to just create an alt for every POS.

Yes the POS owners have displayed the player qualities that make EVE great: devious cunning combined with an intricate understanding of game mechanics.

No this does not make it an "exploit", the content has a flaw anyone can use and players are simply using it. However anyone defending this as "outsmarting" anyone is really naive.

I am a terrible EVE player and it would take me considerably longer to think of this tactic or any others that are similar on my own, if I ever thought of them at all. However now I do not need to engage brain like the first people who discovered the trick as it's on most guides, forums, it's now common knowledge etc.

So now you don't need to think at all due to broken content and common knowledge to render the siphons totally useless. This isn't outsmarting anyone any more then dropping an AoE doomsday on someone was: it's just bad content.

I think siphons that target specific things are a great idea, especially if they are larger so it limits the number you can carry and the ships you can use to deploy them. If they are introduced it means that in order to fully protect yourself you need to log alts on at POS every day a t a minimum, which is fine as then it's doing what it is intended to do: provide small organisations a way of hassling, but not defeating, larger ones.

That is the best idea for Siphons ever! The end results would be hilarious to those POS managers not paying attention.

Please CCP we need a dedicated moon goo siphon and a dedicated fuel block siphon, you're the best CCP your pal Brewlar.

I agree with the OP, if you're going to steal something why would you ever steal the item that has a lower value? I applaud the cleverness the POS owners are using to counter siphoning units. However, the current mechanic doesn't make sense. Heck we don't even have to be able to choose what materials the siphon unit steals as long as it steals the most valuable item being produced. Also, why does the siphoning unit have the character who deployed it name on it? If your gonna steal something at least make it to where the thief doesn't leave his name and number on a piece of paper.

I realize that most of these complaints can be either countered by using an alt or more siphoning units. However, I am asking for an improvement to a currently convoluted system that just "doesn't make sense". Sure, there's ways to work around it, but wouldn't it be awesome if it just worked how common sense dictates it should?

Either way, that's just my opinion. I don't really use the things too often, but I love the idea of them. Hopefully they'll be improved upon in a patch and rekindle my thieving heart.

Because that's what being a thief is. You steal things, you put no effort into making them, processing them, working on them. These units, from what I recall, were a way for smaller groups of people to "stick it to" the large corporations that own a crap ton of space who don't guard their assets properly. You make it sound like thieves are a brave bunch of warriors looking for a good fight. I really don't think these units were put in the game to generate fights, I think they were put in to make people actually guard their assets instead of coming by once a week to pick up their moon goo like"lazy men".

I prefer covops gameplay though, so this is just a personal preference.

So you want a war party to come in and blow up all the defensive structures. This does not qualify as "sneaky" to me. I also understand where you're coming from. It is unlikely that you can have people guard 24/7 but if you had people come by once every three to four hours just to check if everything is OK, then most problems would be solved. People who put up a lot of guns and never come back but once or twice a week to pick up their moon goo are the ones who have problems.

The hundred million isk a month seems fairly small in comparison to the amount of isk being made off R64 moon goo. So not much sympathy there from me. I see the OPs post as a fix to something that is not currently working as common sense dictates it should. I understand where you're coming from though. People found a way to fight back without actually having to fight, good for them. I believe that the way it's being done doesn't make any sense. I will agree that siphoning units are fine price wise though. They're selling at about an average of 15mil in dodixie, which I think is a fair price. So a price decrease isn't really needed.

Tl;Dr: I disagree but see where you're coming from and respect your opinion.

Sorry, forgot to get the quote chain going there.

It's a game, not a career. Things are supposed to be fun, you shouldn't have to perform chores.

So why do people not have to pay a fuel cost to run the siphons? Why do they get to run for free? They don't have to do any real setup, they don't have to fight, they just fly along and in under 30 seconds you are set up with no further costs. Rinse and repeat moon after moon for risk free passive income. Even if only half of them stick, you're quids in.

And while an R64 does generate good income, you have a lot of sunk costs and have to use freighters to ship to volume of materials about to make decent income off of it, and it takes considerably more to set up. The whole "but moons makes so much moneys!" is just a load of bull from people who act like the combined moon goo income is high compared with their solo income, but it's not solo income, it takes a lot of people to support and maintain. There's a reason why renting is so popular, an it's because moon goo income is not scalable to groups. In truth, it would be better to strip it out completely and have it collectible in smaller portions as solo ventures.

Yep.

So you're saying it is/would be harder for large entities and coalitions to maintain control over the flow of moon minerals, thereby breaking up the cartel dynamics that have been in play for years?

*AHEM*

Working as intended.

*Snip* Removed reply to a deleted post. ISD Ezwal.

It just doesn't make sense "to me" that it works that way mechanically.

If CCP says: "Nah, we like it this way, and it totally makes sense that a high tech piece of equipment designed to steal things is stealing the crappy materials over the good materials" Then whatevs. That's their call.

Yes, flying into a 50,000 character coalitions space, bypassing gatecamps, defense fleets, lighting up intel channels, etc., flying up to a gunned tower with defense modules that have a random (between 1 and 30 second) lock delay time (god help you if you lag a bit), anchoring a module, and looting said anchored modules at a precisely predictable location EACH F****** TIME is RISK FREE.

Definitely less risky then being faceless member #47239 of huge coalition X and following orders like a good little munchkin.

While coalitions may deserve credit for securing their space, of the two (the siphoner versus random faceless coalition member #47239), the siphoner takes a far greater risk in his day to day operations. Risk averse my a**.