EVE General Discussion

Every time this has been tried its failed. People will defend alliance assets but they will not defend your personal money moon that contributes nothing towards the alliance.

I experienced the issue being discussed here last night, again. I'll recount it as it describes the issue perfectly.

So last night I'm playing EVE and chatting with my buddy in our personal channel (we were in Atlas and INIT together, now were in different alliances but still hang out together in chat with some other buddies from those days). He tried a bit of ratting and decided it was stupid, so he fired up his high sec incursion alt. He linked his Nightmare in chat and she is beautiful lol.

A while later (he's stopped talking to concentrate on running incursions, and for the record he was on the wait list for 4 minutes, got to love TVP) he says "ok, now that's better" and copy pastes his 31.5 mil wallet ticks.

While he's doing that I had to stop ratting because a Bastion fleet in Navy Harbs came though. Re-shiped into Cynabals and went after them, caught up to them in PFR space and had a 3 way skirmish. Didn't die this time, which is a wonder because i always die. So while i'm forced to quit ratting to defend my space, my buddy is pushing a pirate BS in high sec making more than I can make in Null while being protected by CONCORD and logi ships and not having to defend against anything.....

Now what I did I do instead of going back to ratting after the enemy threat was gone (where i was at least vulnerable to others, creating content)?
Yep,, you guessed it...I fired up the old Incursion alt. Fit for travel (i'd logged off in the old incursion focus) and went 26 peaceful jumps through high sec to reach the incursion, got on the automated watch list and was invited to fleet a whole 2 jumps before my destination.

2 hours later (when it was time to log off for bed, damn work the next morning) I was 252 million isk and 56000 CONCORD LP richer than i was before (of course I gotta wiat for the mom to pop to get the LP, but it's mine no matter what). Even with those 26 jumps factored in, that's better isk than i would have made ratting in null.
I was left with the same feeling as always...questioning WHY was I wasting my time ratting in Null (or rather , why was i MANUALLY ratting in null with a mach when I could have just done afk ishtars in null while I incursioned in high).

If you can read the above and not see a broken thing filled with adverse (ie backwards) incentives, you aren't paying attention.

So you went from a solo PvE activity to a Fleet based PvE activity, and are surprised that it made more isk?

I was in a fleet while ratting (a standing defense fleet). It took fleets of ships (and loses of some of those ships) to maintain the space where the activity occurred (no such sacrifices are needed for high sec incursions). It takes fleets of ships (and loses) to maintain the space.

I went from an activity in non-safe space to an activty in safe space, and poured more isk into my personal wallet doing that while risking something. This is broken when you consider the heart of the game is "risk much, gain much, risk nothing, gain nothing".

Still, the other name of the game is adaptation. So i've (re) adapted. Like so many others I'm going back to making my isk in a place where it's hard to disrupt. Screw earning isk by taking risk. Don't mind the fact that my Mach is taking up space an actual casual high sec player might be using.

If you don't balance around the possible peak or close to it, anyone getting near it will break the system...

The Pacific Time Zone in the US is the worst. Even in nullsec it's hard to get ganked. You have to stay up late to get it. My one nullsec nemesis, a fellow from Vancouver, does not even log in any more.

And I just realized I have not actually run any incursion content since spring of 2011 (not counting the mom-popping fleet in 2012).

I still has drake

I contest that you are doing it wrong. While I agree that HS incursions need to be less lucrative for a ton of reasons, just the way lots of these wealth generators need to be rebalanced, it's silly to make null look all that bad.

Thanks to Phoebe, ratting in null is very safe, approaching the levels of Hi Sec incursion safety. If other people can even make you want to stop ratting, then you are ratting improperly and/or the entity you are a part of needs to get their act together. We live in an age when carrier ratting is not only perfectly reasonable, it is the optimal way to rat in null. Per account, yes you earn less than a HS incursion alt, but considering that when this is scaled up with many players and all of their alts, the net income per unit of effort in null is not all that bad.

If you want to see null buffed, risk has to be re-introduced. Honestly it's pretty similar to Faction War missions, as players have found ways to mitigate 95% of the risk by using bombers; its unlikely they were designed to be done solo and in a ship that has essentially no risk, given how plexes are designed to be contested. Right now it's a buffet, do you want to make risk-free ISK in null, low, or High? Content is stifled when resources are this available, accessible, and of such a high quality.

See my sig.

I have one wallet (on the character that I run incursions with), there could be 7000 other people in that fleet, im running them for my wallet lol.

I don't know why that is hard to understand when I have always talked about individual income matters. When im ratting in null I am also doing something that would not be possible were it not for thousands of other people. But as with incursions, that does not matter at all.

As for fits, my incursion Mach costs a total of 1.3 bil (basically the price of a carrier hull). I've also run them in tech2 fit Scimitars that cost less than 250 mil.

Because it doesn't matter who's wallet you're running it for, it still requires you to have a fleet full of people. I don't know why its so hard to understand that an incursion site is many times more difficult to run than your average nullsec anom.

You say that ratting in nullsec is riskier, but that largely depends on where you are in null. I've been ratting in a carrier in nullsec for about 4 years now, and haven't had to dock / safe up but maybe a half dozen times. I've chosen to keep doing this over incursions because its easier than the hassle of putting up with incursion fleets.