EVE General Discussion

Changes that I'd like to see in Incursions after having run them for a little while:

1. Make them mean something

It's nice that incursions have been happening but they haven't actually... done anything. I like that the sansha are stupid and stubborn enough to continue to waste energy / ISK / and time on brutally failed attempts to invade but, seriously, something needs to change.


2. Increase the risk factor to equal the payout

In all of the vanguard incursion sites I ran I only experienced one ship loss. I suspect, although I'm not certain, that a newly replaced logi pilot was AFKing or simply not repping. The funny thing is, we lost a ship, and still had no problems finishing up the site. This wasn't even a 'shiny' fleet or anything. Sites are too easy for what we get out of them. Either make vanguards stronger - requiring really expensive ships with a lot of SP invested into them (including logis so no more logi 4s) or reduce their payouts.


3. Introduce randomness to incursion sites

Part of the reason sites are so easy is because they are constantly the same. Anyone can go to a website that has "Fleet Command" instructions and literally put together a pick-up group of strangers and successfully run vanguards. That's crazy to me. Even other MMOs weren't that easy to raid at first. Now they are and for those random stranger groups they give out less rewards than the standard run. EVE should follow that.

That's my quick list.

Just to expand on the first point because that's the issue that bothers me the most: Incursions feel to me as if they were going to be some sort of introduction to a new element of EVE online - a move towards greater rewards for working together in the game other than PvP and sovereignty. I thought it was a great first step but, now, it's just continuing as it is. As it is, it is too easy and too predictable.

People running incursions aren't thinking or really paying much attention. Someone can FC an incursion simply by opening up a website in the background and following it word for word. That's wrong at so many levels for the reward generated.

I would like to see the sansha give up or pull out or rethink their effort. It makes no sense to continue to do the same thing over and over and over and failing so bad for such a protracted length of time. I would love to see incursions iterate with each "expansion" so that every six months or so people actually have to learn how to run them again. This learning phase would likely last a month or two and then the incursions would be "farmed" as they are now.

If rewards scale downwards with the number of successful completions then those who try to learn incursions will be greatly rewarded whereby those who wait until the learning phase is over and jump onto the bandwagon will find that their rewards are roughly equivalent to something like Level 4 mission running. I think that's a fair ISK / hour mark for something that is being farmed with very little risk.

The larger incursion sites should pay out a little more and could do with some more complexity in how they react. They are still fairly easy to do and I regularly see fleets with a lot of badly fit ships and low skill pilots. I don't mind that, in fact, I like it a lot, but the payout needs to be lower since the risk is much lower as well.

Please, at the very least, change up incursions every six months to interrupt the 'farming' of them. Once anything reaches a farm mode then it's time for a change or time to introduce something better while reducing the efficiency of the ISK per hour.

this was the idea i suggested many strip mining cycles ago ... (with some edits)

1) rework sizes for max number of pilots in a fleet
VG - 8
AS - 14
HQ - 28
MOM- 50

why? smaller fleet sizes = faster fleet forming, improves the waiting time to play time. subscribers like more play time and not wait time. however this will increase the difficulty of a site run. sansha reppers now repair at 10% of their original capacity.

2) contesting site isk/LP should be shared according to total damage % dealt into site. this will help lower skilled fleets to enjoy the game instead of being constantly run over by fleets oversized with highly skilled DPS. is this a nerf to elite fleets? i do not see it that way, on the other hand, by doing so, a fleet will know how much more/less dps they did in a contest.

will this introduce more poorly skilled players into incursions? fact--> we are all poorly skilled once, it is up to the FC to select and form his fleet and sort out who he should have on his team. if he chooses a lesser skilled to run with, the fleet will have to live with it or hop to other fleets. most private fleets will not have a problem as their key is to run with familiar and trusted pilots.

3) with down sizing of fleet size, total sansha DPS output dealt to playerbase should decrease accordingly to ensure playability of sites

VG - -10% sansha total dps
AS - -15% sansha total dps
HQ - -20% sansha total dps
MOM- -25% sansha total dps

4) with reduced DPS, ALL sites should introduce an extra special spawn that must be destroyed for site completion. new spawn introduced i will suggest be triggered after 2nd last site trigger is in effect.

the spawn will consist of 1xsmartbomb armed sansha cruiser (SB strength = 2.5x of a T2 medium SB @ 25km radius effect going at a 10 second interval), 1xsensordampener armed frig, that can target 2 simultaneous targets to cause 500% t2 scripted sensor dampening effect @ 15s interval range of 50km, 1xremoteshieldrep armed cruiser that will effect 500% remote rep capabilities of a med T2 remote shield rep on 1 target @ 15s interval. this spawn is a unique grp and will move in a formation no further than 5km from each other.

this spawns per sites:

VG - 1 spawn
AS - 2 spawns
HQ - 3 spawns
MOM- 4 spawns

yes the repping capability might prove to be a challenge for beyond VG sites, and it is this therefore that will "prove" as a checking "trigger" of the minimum amount of dps a fleet should have and therefore the rep % should be tweaked according to real fleets nominal dps, the 500% i have suggested is an arbituary value it could be 1000% or 200% for all i know.

5) most of the above seem like more of a debuff to sansha spawns, therefore i will like to suggest all sansha spawns recieve their own combat booster/buffing BS hulled ship (non attacking passive entity) that will do the following non stacking bonuses:
VG - +200% shield HP
AS - +120% shield HP
HQ - +80% shield HP
MOM- +50% shield HP
this combat booster ship should be rendered invulnerable with shield resistances of 99%. and EHP +1000% of normal sansha spawn. it may be plausible that this unit will become prime target in mom/HQ fleets.

with the increased HP, the role of the sansha remote repping ships should now be nerfed to only rep @ 10% capacity.

6) with the increased overall EHP of sansha + extra spawn. it is only natural that the site will now take ALOT MORE time to complete than usual. and therefore it is only logical that bounties of ISK/LP increase, and by that i would mean

100% of bounties across VG
110% for AS sites
120% increase for HQ site
150% increase for MOM site.

MOM site no longer drops loot. but all MOM site pilot now recieve a tradable special insignia token that can be exchanged for special concord named items (that could be the random loot from the SC + some insane amt of LP?). CCP may choose to make this item seasonal?

7) reconfiguration of a incursion cluster

each incursion spawn should now be as follows
VG - 80 sites (spread over 10 to 12 systems)
AS - 12 sites (spread over 5 systems)
HQ - 6 sites (spread over 3 systems)
MOM- 2-3 sites (spread over 2 systems)
CCP may choose to add 1 TITAN site?

and there is now only 1 hisec site, 1 losec, 1 nullsec. and each site can spawn over 3-5 adjoining constellations instead of 1.

50% of all initial spawned VG must be destoyed at least once to spawn AS sites, or wait 5days for AS auto spawn

100% of all initial spawned AS must be destoyed at least once to spawn HQ sites, or wait 7 days for HQ auto spawn

100% of all initial spawned HQ must be destoyed at least once to spawn MOM sites, or wait 9 days for MOM auto spawn. when MOM sites spawn, constellation wide all stargate, stations and VG/AS/HQ site-warpgates will be harrassed by a splash of 5-10 orkashu myelens, they do nothing but harrass players (and concord) with ecm. server restarts will spawn the rats if they are destroyed. players will now see concord and sansha random spawns fighting on each other over warp gates

all MOM sites must be destroyed to end the incursion and trigger LP payout. and MOM sites withdrawal time is set to countdown in 9 days. which means an entire incursion spawn will last maximum 18 full days.

when MOM site spawns, VG sites will reduce spawn rate to up to 40 sites instead of 80, AS and HQ sites will despawn.

with the reduced fleet sized groupings, it is hoped to encourage more pilots to try AS/HQ sites.

with the increased number of pilots going into incursions, it is only logical that sansha now sends in more troops to occupy "our" space.

the above changes is hoped to encourage, a more focused fleet activity rather than just bulldozing thru sites. overall i would say difficulty of sites is increased. while survivability of sites is also up.


any thoughts any 1 ?

Such as?

goto losec/null incursion space ? it will definately be pawnographic :p

Incursions should be low sec only.

Make them like they are in 0.0....mean as ****

Get a few carebears being ganked by NPC rats at gates and let the tear flood begin!

I know I cried a little, mostly from embarrassment, when I had my sphincter ripped in half trying to get through an incursion constellation in my cane and watched it melt in mere seconds...by red pluses of all things!!!

I think more hisec players should benefit from this character growing experience.

I think it's fine the way it is.

in addition to post #544

if an incursion spawn (total of 100 sites fully spawned after 9 days) is not being countered by player based forces by the 14th day (at least 80% of sites must be attacked/overrun succesfully, there should therefore be a "meter" to show how many of the 100 sites have been over run by players).

a full spawn of OTA+NCO will appear 250km off every system warp/star gate, a full spawn of assault will appear 250km off every NPC station, 3 random roaming HQ sansha fleet will spawn on the 15th day and randomly warp about planetary customs offices and start destroying them, they will also randomly destroy concord gate guns, station guns, etc. the spawn will have a initial targetting delay of 120seconds (or otherwise player aggressed).

if players/NPC are aggressed by sansha in hisec, concord will spawn a 10 ship fleet to randomly combat the sansha (the concord spawn will ultimately die, CCP will need to tweak the spawn to ensure this).

when the random HQ fleet spawns, the system star is the only safe warp to spot to avoid the random HQ attacks.

on the 18th day if player intervention does not qualify to defeat the sansha system incursion. all player and NPC structures will be destroyed. (this includes outposts constructed by players ! hahahaha hows this for a game changing mechanic?)

3 days after the complete decimation, NPC structures will respawn. like an incursion progress bar, a decimated system will show a similar bar to indicate rebuilding by concord (LOL)

players will need to rebuild their shxt. CCP may choose to allow concord insurance reimbursement for these ... (or instead of ISK, CCP may choose to evemail player "concord have recovered the remains of your structures and properties ... " and leave a messy stash of minerals, rubble, scrapes, salvage etc in the nearest NPC hangar. items in hangar will return back as freight containers filled with them stuffs)

how this for some extension?

some times it kinda pains me that players have to give CCP ideas instead of just play a well scripted game LOL ( ok ok i know ... this sentence sounds abit too much? ok ok sorry i know programmers work their axxes off)

Sansha gate camps in HI sec would be great +1

http://community.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&nbid=28587 seems to be a more quick fix bandaide. The 10% nerf to Vanguard payouts looks striaght outa CCP Soundwaves' Ten Ton Hammer interview. Expect on either the 24th or a little later when drone bounties ISK faucet DWARF incursion payouts ALL BOUNTIES will see a 10% across the board reduction as Hyperinflation really takes a bite... Interesting times indeed