The Rubicon is appparently a small river in eastern Italy. Caesar crossed it, the river being a line beyond which he was in insurrection (according to Wikipedia, at any rate). In crossing it, he made a hostile act towards the Senate under Pompey and uttered aelea iacta est - the die is cast.
So what is the point of no return for CCP with Rubicon? What line have they irrevocably crossed?
It could be the revamp of the utterly mundane, boring, trivial and assinine Certificates system. I think this is great; new players will be able to plan their EVE career without having to pester older players like me for skill plans, and we won't have to be forced to say, as always "EveMon". Anything which brings more people into the game is, I think, a good thing. Even better are things which make people stick around. However, this is hardly a daring act.
What is a daring act is the Interceptor re-balance. I knew something would crop up when the humble, if pissingly annoying, Condor outshone the Crow and Raptor (let alone basically every other interceptor).
The new deployable structures? The jury is still out, as most of these seem to be thought-bubbles.
The Cyno Jammer is a great idea. It is a fillip for the small alliances and lowsec corporations who cannot field a super and want to, perhaps, protect a dread or capital sieging a POS. Lets be brutally honest - PL's fishing fleet is a giant bogeyman which prevents small-scale force projection because, not only do your 3B ISk dreads get blapped in seconds, you cannot protect them from even a fucking cyno velator. I've been there with a cyno velator on field in a Niddy and it's pretty much bullshit for the dread pilots. Hell, even for a subcap fleet, all it takes is a cyno velator and a Titan bridge and you are swimming in 40 AHACs (or, these days, Harpyfleet).
It is of course open to abuse. I can imagine that larger entities willl deploy these to protect their supers during a gank or POCO takedown. You would probably pack them into a carrier's fleet hangar and just anchor the fuck out of them the moment you cyno in to a fight. But either way, it is going to be down to planning, tactics, strategy and situational awareness - not who can log in a super and take a cyno, blap some shlub, and zoidberg their super away. Just light a cyno 150km away, and warp the super down to the fight, gank the dread(s) and zoidberg away.
Is this a Rubicon step? Not really. This provides a few people the ability to do a small amount of damage without fear of being blobbed. It will all come down to the size of the jammer in the hold (expect bubble volumes), the EHP of the structure, the life of the structure, and most importantly, the anchoring time. 120 seconds is going to be too long....instant activation will be too short.
The Siphon is another good idea. It will truly create chaos in k-space....and in some w-space systems where people are creating 50 POS refining factories in C1's to process their moon goo. Being able to find, for example, -AAA-'s C1 refinery system, invade it with a fuckton of haulers and siphons, and take their rent from them will be awesome. One thing shits me more than anything, it is C1 refinery empires owned by the null blocs.
Again, volume, online time and docking radius will be the key here. Perhaps the deep space transpport will come into its own, able to warp away from a POS where you've anchored a siphon (+2 warp strength ftw) and tanky enough to survive the POS guns....if you are quick. But if you cannot effectively leech a deathstar, if the siphon is >4,000m3 and not deployable by cloaky transport, if you cannot quickly and efficiently Loot All its contents before the POS blaps or scrams you, it won't be long before it is as useful as a Target Painting battery. The null blocs will respond as soon as people hit up Dotlan and track down the moons with the good goo and steal all the shit.
In fact, I expect that the moon goo POSs will be getting guns this week, just because. And possibly a shell of protective large bubbles, for good measure. Either way, at least there will be some additional cost and annoyance involved in collecting the cash machine rent from nullsec. It will no longer be a free lunch, but I doubt it will cause failcascades.
The deployable Depot is another good idea. Again, volume, size, scannability and life span will be the key balancing issues. The module itself will be perfect for sieges, camps, itinerant ratters who can deploy a depot at a deep safe, refit, store loot and ships (including the ship that carried it) and harass, annoy, ninja rat or run siphoning rackets.
This will also be awesome for wormhole campers and itinerants, depending on the lifespan...which is OK. After all, most wormholes are deserted 90% of the time anyway, so reducing the need for a POS to a Depot isn't going to reduce target availability. Much. In fact, if you can combat probe these down, it will probably give you loot pinata.Assuming CCP ever fixes the SMA 'bug' ala 'this keeps the economy rolling' bug.
Perhaps the intention of Rubicon boils down to the dissolution of imperium via the devolution of hisec POCOs to players. This will be great for war decs, and will see some interesting shit going down as people roll POCOs in the busy areas near the hubs like ferrets on meth for the first few days, and then fight like rat bastards. Eventually the Goons will own them all, but either way, it'll be a fun ride.
Monday, 30 September 2013
Recommended Reading: Fragmonkeys
I will put a shout-out to a mate's blog: Fragmonkeys.
Johnny Twelvebore, if you look at his employment history, is a former minion of mine, a BUGRY alumnus and generally an all-round nice guy if you don't happen to meet him in Top Belt.
When he came to us in BUGRY, he was painfully new to the game. He had no experience with wormholes, no experience with PVP, and was almost baffled by the idea of griefing, though he would catch on pretty quick. He wanted to learn, and we wanted malleable young flesh to form into bait - after all, you see Trinkets friend derping about at Top belt, you might look him up and reconsider. A week old nub? Om nom nom.
Within a couple of days of joining up, we had sorted him out a training regime: "Covops frigate, assault frigate, battlecruiser for sites, oh, and train remote repair systems level 3 while you're at it, we do this thing caled "RR AF's" and it is fucking awesome."
A couple of days later one of our spais was in Greywolves Alliance. We had seen them in Asesamy jetcan mining and had got a fight or two by nicking their cans, going flashy (as one did, at the time) and trying to bait fights with neutral RR. They were slow learners, but eventually they learned who we were, who of us was active in their timezone, and who was just too painfully annoying for them to PVP.
So, we send in Johnny, in a Punisher. You can see his fit here. He lifts from their can, bold brass. "So what do i do now, boys?"
"You wait. They'll send some drake out to shoot at you."
Somehow, our spai alt points him, and begins aggro. He also reports to the Greywolves guys that he's pointed (which he is not, as Johnny didn't fit a point...for the last time ever, I think) and needs help.
Sure enough, out comes a Drake. We jump in our RR AF gang and warp to Johnny, who is swiftly tackled and under heavy fire from the Drake. We leech aggro off him, as one does when RRing, but the Greywolves had learned their mistakes of the past. They didn't spread aggro.
However, even considering the T1 ANP, no rigs, 200mm plate, the repper and T1 guns, with five RR AFs (3 Vengeance, 1 Ishkur, and a Harpy) repping him, he begins wearing down the Drake, who can't bust him. So they bring in an Onyx, a Scorpion and a Harpy of their own. After about 4 more minutes, Johnny goes down, taking 40K damage in the process.
"Guys....I'm shaking from the adrenaline." was all he said.
"Welcome to EVE." someone said.
Thus began the career of Johnny Twelvebore. You can read his own exploits in his own words on his own blog.
Johnny Twelvebore, if you look at his employment history, is a former minion of mine, a BUGRY alumnus and generally an all-round nice guy if you don't happen to meet him in Top Belt.
When he came to us in BUGRY, he was painfully new to the game. He had no experience with wormholes, no experience with PVP, and was almost baffled by the idea of griefing, though he would catch on pretty quick. He wanted to learn, and we wanted malleable young flesh to form into bait - after all, you see Trinkets friend derping about at Top belt, you might look him up and reconsider. A week old nub? Om nom nom.
Within a couple of days of joining up, we had sorted him out a training regime: "Covops frigate, assault frigate, battlecruiser for sites, oh, and train remote repair systems level 3 while you're at it, we do this thing caled "RR AF's" and it is fucking awesome."
A couple of days later one of our spais was in Greywolves Alliance. We had seen them in Asesamy jetcan mining and had got a fight or two by nicking their cans, going flashy (as one did, at the time) and trying to bait fights with neutral RR. They were slow learners, but eventually they learned who we were, who of us was active in their timezone, and who was just too painfully annoying for them to PVP.
So, we send in Johnny, in a Punisher. You can see his fit here. He lifts from their can, bold brass. "So what do i do now, boys?"
"You wait. They'll send some drake out to shoot at you."
Somehow, our spai alt points him, and begins aggro. He also reports to the Greywolves guys that he's pointed (which he is not, as Johnny didn't fit a point...for the last time ever, I think) and needs help.
Sure enough, out comes a Drake. We jump in our RR AF gang and warp to Johnny, who is swiftly tackled and under heavy fire from the Drake. We leech aggro off him, as one does when RRing, but the Greywolves had learned their mistakes of the past. They didn't spread aggro.
However, even considering the T1 ANP, no rigs, 200mm plate, the repper and T1 guns, with five RR AFs (3 Vengeance, 1 Ishkur, and a Harpy) repping him, he begins wearing down the Drake, who can't bust him. So they bring in an Onyx, a Scorpion and a Harpy of their own. After about 4 more minutes, Johnny goes down, taking 40K damage in the process.
"Guys....I'm shaking from the adrenaline." was all he said.
"Welcome to EVE." someone said.
Thus began the career of Johnny Twelvebore. You can read his own exploits in his own words on his own blog.
Wednesday, 25 September 2013
Nidhoggur - a discussion of rebalance
The problem I have is that I have Minmatar Carrier trained to level 5, and a Nidhoggur, and i live in a C5. I tend to be the shlub who warps his carrier in for the second carrier escalation, when there are 2 dreads on field already and it is just a mop-up operation.
Due to the power of the Archon as an armour triage carrier, it is basically the best and most easy-mode of all the carriers for C5 escalations.This is because of several factors.
Firstly, it has the highest base capacitor of all the carriers. I believe the thinking, in EVE's early days, was "Amarr ships use lasers so they need the highest capacitor." and thus the Archon got it, even though there's absolutely no reason for this.
Archon: 64.9 GJ and 36K GJ/s
Nidhoggur: 55K GJ and 36GJ/s
Thanatos: 60K GJ and 36GJ/s
Chimera: 56.3K GJ and 36GJ/s
This impacts on triage because, for example, you tend to fill your mids with capacitor rechargers and lows with capacitor power relays, and rigs are CCC's (T2 in wormholes because, why not?). To compare the utility of armour triage (because, lets face it, no one does shield) we will fit the carriers for C5 sites; DCU, 2 metalevel local reps, and one slot pimp tank and the rest capacitor mods. Highs are 2 metalevel capital RR's, triage I module, and metalevel energy transfer. Rigs are two T2 CCCs and a T1 memory cell. The toon is all level 5, no implants, no boosts.
Due to slot layout, of course, the mix of capacitor rechargers and CPR's changes.There is also a need to bung in power diagnostics on the Nidhoggur and a reactor control Thanatos to make the fit work.
Comparing the stats, as before, with the above philosophy, and just based on capacitor (without which you are useless) the following becomes apparent;
Archon: 97.9 GJ and 524K GJ/s
Nidhoggur: 83K GJ and 497GJ/s
Thanatos: 86.3K GJ and 433GJ/s
Running one armour RR, the cap transfer and one local repairer out of triage, as one may normally do in a wormhole, the cap stability of these three carriers is: Archon 54.7% cap stable; Nidhoggur 51.7% cap stable, Thanatos 40.8% cap stable.
In triage, cap stability drops to Archon 4m 7s, Nidhoggur 3m 15s and Thanatos 3m flat.
This is where the other attributes of the three carriers begin to weigh in. The Thanatos gets more DPS out of triage and buffed energy and armour transfer range. The Archon gets better resists, which flow through to better local rep efficiency, which in effect allows the Archon to tank longer on its triage cycle. It however suffers from short cap and armour transfer ranges, which is only a problem if you get bumped off your friends.
The Nidhoggur has a beastly RR capability. With metalevel reps in Triage you repair 4400 armour every 2 seconds - this is nominally a 15K DPS tank for the lucky sod getting the reps. It is just a pity you cannot use that rep power to sustain your fleet mates due to your weak capacitor - you can cap yourself out almost instantly. It is much more useful to rep sustainably for longer versus provide a glorious 3 minutes of burst tank and then be capped out. likewise, your local tank is weaker and capacitor is weaker, rendering you a softer target than an Archon.
Discussion
The differences in the carriers aren't really well thought-out. It comes down to capacitor more than anything; the Archon gets a double-whammy bonus due to the resistances and higher base capacitor and higher capacitor recharge, which combined is synergistic towards being the best armour carrier in terms of tanking, remote repair and providing capacitor to fleet mates.
True, the Nidhoggur has a potential remote rep capability which should make it the go-to carrier for small-fleet engagements, hot-drops and the like. Sadly, you can see why it is used for repairing POSs and the like; it repairs a hell of a lot very fast, but you want to avoid tripping the triage button because you may very well die inside 3 minutes.
This is symptomatic of a balance issue. People train into Archons because they are more effective, not due to the racial bonus philosophy attached to the ships, but due to an arbitrary capacitor amount built into the hull which has nothing more to do with carriers than some vestigial concept early in the history of EVE where Amarr ships just simply had the best capacitor. True, extra armour resistances help, but you would still be more effective at your job than a Nidhoggur simply due to capacitor, and that's taking into account the Nidhoggur's massive rep bonus.
It gets even more ridiculous when you consider the Thanatos. When i were a lad, before supercarriers, Thanatos were the DPS gank carriers. You used to fear half a dozen Thanatos dropping on field, with their 25% DPS buff to fighters. The Nyx has proliferated, and the availability ot T2 rigs increased until you rarely see Thanny drops like you used to - but at least with some Archons providing the RR backbone you are the DPS wing of a Slowcat blob. But aside from Slowcat, you'd be best retraining to an Archon than bringing a Thanny to a wormhole or trying lowsec small-fleet triage. You've got less triage use than a Nidhoggur, due to 37.5% less RR strength, and less capacitor life.
Solution
I think the solution is to flatten the capacitor differences between the carriers, and differentiate them more based on their racial bonuses and design philosophies. This would see the base capacitor of all the carriers raised to close to Archon levels, to allow more sustained triage operation. Note, also, the above is based on T2 CCC's; you would be fairly mad to drop a T2 rigged capital in k-space.
It is clear that with T1 rigs, no carrier is cap stable through a triage cycle. That's fine, and indeed it may be how it should be, requiring compromise and restraint from the pilot, versus just hitting perm-running everything forever. Nevertheless, the Archon gets a full minute more capacitor than any other carrier, and under Triage, a minute is a shitload of tanking and RR, and a world of difference in terms of micromanagement and stress for the carrier pilot. It is far more problematic to be managing your capacitor on a second by second basis while RRing than to have to fidddle more with your stront bay than your reps.
Rooks and Kings have a few triage carrier videos which show what a capable, cool-headed, experienced carrier pilot can do. But they use the Archon; swap that for a Nidhoggur or Thanatos and I would argue the video would be at least one minute shorter and far less glorious.
If all carriers could, with T1 rigs, get 3m 30s of capacitor with 3 mods running (2 RR & Cap or RR + Cap + Local) then the differences in the ships would be down to pilot skill, racial bonuses, and hull bonuses.
I would argue that this would still see the Archon king of the hill for most armour triage, RnK style. However, for raiding style hot drops you'd pick the Nidhoggur with its stronger RR, or the Thanny with better DPS.
The Chimera and shield capitals, or a shield Nidhoggur? Totally different debate.
Due to the power of the Archon as an armour triage carrier, it is basically the best and most easy-mode of all the carriers for C5 escalations.This is because of several factors.
Firstly, it has the highest base capacitor of all the carriers. I believe the thinking, in EVE's early days, was "Amarr ships use lasers so they need the highest capacitor." and thus the Archon got it, even though there's absolutely no reason for this.
Archon: 64.9 GJ and 36K GJ/s
Nidhoggur: 55K GJ and 36GJ/s
Thanatos: 60K GJ and 36GJ/s
Chimera: 56.3K GJ and 36GJ/s
This impacts on triage because, for example, you tend to fill your mids with capacitor rechargers and lows with capacitor power relays, and rigs are CCC's (T2 in wormholes because, why not?). To compare the utility of armour triage (because, lets face it, no one does shield) we will fit the carriers for C5 sites; DCU, 2 metalevel local reps, and one slot pimp tank and the rest capacitor mods. Highs are 2 metalevel capital RR's, triage I module, and metalevel energy transfer. Rigs are two T2 CCCs and a T1 memory cell. The toon is all level 5, no implants, no boosts.
Due to slot layout, of course, the mix of capacitor rechargers and CPR's changes.There is also a need to bung in power diagnostics on the Nidhoggur and a reactor control Thanatos to make the fit work.
Comparing the stats, as before, with the above philosophy, and just based on capacitor (without which you are useless) the following becomes apparent;
Archon: 97.9 GJ and 524K GJ/s
Nidhoggur: 83K GJ and 497GJ/s
Thanatos: 86.3K GJ and 433GJ/s
Running one armour RR, the cap transfer and one local repairer out of triage, as one may normally do in a wormhole, the cap stability of these three carriers is: Archon 54.7% cap stable; Nidhoggur 51.7% cap stable, Thanatos 40.8% cap stable.
In triage, cap stability drops to Archon 4m 7s, Nidhoggur 3m 15s and Thanatos 3m flat.
This is where the other attributes of the three carriers begin to weigh in. The Thanatos gets more DPS out of triage and buffed energy and armour transfer range. The Archon gets better resists, which flow through to better local rep efficiency, which in effect allows the Archon to tank longer on its triage cycle. It however suffers from short cap and armour transfer ranges, which is only a problem if you get bumped off your friends.
The Nidhoggur has a beastly RR capability. With metalevel reps in Triage you repair 4400 armour every 2 seconds - this is nominally a 15K DPS tank for the lucky sod getting the reps. It is just a pity you cannot use that rep power to sustain your fleet mates due to your weak capacitor - you can cap yourself out almost instantly. It is much more useful to rep sustainably for longer versus provide a glorious 3 minutes of burst tank and then be capped out. likewise, your local tank is weaker and capacitor is weaker, rendering you a softer target than an Archon.
Discussion
The differences in the carriers aren't really well thought-out. It comes down to capacitor more than anything; the Archon gets a double-whammy bonus due to the resistances and higher base capacitor and higher capacitor recharge, which combined is synergistic towards being the best armour carrier in terms of tanking, remote repair and providing capacitor to fleet mates.
True, the Nidhoggur has a potential remote rep capability which should make it the go-to carrier for small-fleet engagements, hot-drops and the like. Sadly, you can see why it is used for repairing POSs and the like; it repairs a hell of a lot very fast, but you want to avoid tripping the triage button because you may very well die inside 3 minutes.
This is symptomatic of a balance issue. People train into Archons because they are more effective, not due to the racial bonus philosophy attached to the ships, but due to an arbitrary capacitor amount built into the hull which has nothing more to do with carriers than some vestigial concept early in the history of EVE where Amarr ships just simply had the best capacitor. True, extra armour resistances help, but you would still be more effective at your job than a Nidhoggur simply due to capacitor, and that's taking into account the Nidhoggur's massive rep bonus.
It gets even more ridiculous when you consider the Thanatos. When i were a lad, before supercarriers, Thanatos were the DPS gank carriers. You used to fear half a dozen Thanatos dropping on field, with their 25% DPS buff to fighters. The Nyx has proliferated, and the availability ot T2 rigs increased until you rarely see Thanny drops like you used to - but at least with some Archons providing the RR backbone you are the DPS wing of a Slowcat blob. But aside from Slowcat, you'd be best retraining to an Archon than bringing a Thanny to a wormhole or trying lowsec small-fleet triage. You've got less triage use than a Nidhoggur, due to 37.5% less RR strength, and less capacitor life.
Solution
I think the solution is to flatten the capacitor differences between the carriers, and differentiate them more based on their racial bonuses and design philosophies. This would see the base capacitor of all the carriers raised to close to Archon levels, to allow more sustained triage operation. Note, also, the above is based on T2 CCC's; you would be fairly mad to drop a T2 rigged capital in k-space.
It is clear that with T1 rigs, no carrier is cap stable through a triage cycle. That's fine, and indeed it may be how it should be, requiring compromise and restraint from the pilot, versus just hitting perm-running everything forever. Nevertheless, the Archon gets a full minute more capacitor than any other carrier, and under Triage, a minute is a shitload of tanking and RR, and a world of difference in terms of micromanagement and stress for the carrier pilot. It is far more problematic to be managing your capacitor on a second by second basis while RRing than to have to fidddle more with your stront bay than your reps.
Rooks and Kings have a few triage carrier videos which show what a capable, cool-headed, experienced carrier pilot can do. But they use the Archon; swap that for a Nidhoggur or Thanatos and I would argue the video would be at least one minute shorter and far less glorious.
If all carriers could, with T1 rigs, get 3m 30s of capacitor with 3 mods running (2 RR & Cap or RR + Cap + Local) then the differences in the ships would be down to pilot skill, racial bonuses, and hull bonuses.
I would argue that this would still see the Archon king of the hill for most armour triage, RnK style. However, for raiding style hot drops you'd pick the Nidhoggur with its stronger RR, or the Thanny with better DPS.
The Chimera and shield capitals, or a shield Nidhoggur? Totally different debate.
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
Elocution
It is becoming apparent that one reason I find EVE so enthralling to play, and demanding to play, and exhausting is that i pay attention, constantly, to lots of things. Some of the things are what is being said by others on my comms; my problem is assuming everyone else has even a tenth the capacity to multitask and parse information.
Example, after last night's abortive ISK making adventure, we wanted to run the same site again and quad escalate it again before it de-spawns. This got interrupted by a hole collapse failure, resulting in a Leeroy Jenkins run from Darkspawn territory through Curse in a Geddon (now stranded), which morphed into a retardedly complicated shopping adventure, not only for ship bits but for implants.
I stayed on comms and opened up Pyfa and worked through theorycrafting Rail Tengu (meh, better but not prizes below 2.5B), Rail Proteus variant of my alt's current 128K EHP 150 DPS blaster Proteus which looks good, and recreting a HAM-AC shield Loki with 800 DPS and 88K EHP for 420M ISK. Which looks like I will do it, because fuck it, people expect half the DPS, shit's gong to get wild.
So I'm suffering through inane debates, people blathering and blathering about whatever the fuck, people not able to understand what a CCC is or what a Memory Cell is - the typical shit where you ask people to go shopping for you while you're halfway out of deep shit in Nullsec and want to save time.
I do this theorycrafting while pumping D-scan and keeping tabs on where everyone is, what ship names and types I see are known and familiar, etc. We already had a venture come mine - blithely - in our hole already without anyone noticing it, and me only twigging that it wasn't ours because the name wasn't 100% right. 90% right, coincidentally, not 100%.
So when I, bizarrely, see 8 sisters combats shitting up my overview, and call it, I would expect people who are otherwise engaged on market alts and minutes away from getting their dicks deep into shithole in cap escalations, to just trust me when I say "combat probes in the C5" and to know what that means.
It does not mean "I probed down an instance of combats in a C5". It does not mean "this is happening in a random C5 down the chain" (we don't have one). It means, this is a piece of vital information you all need to act upon immediately - including people browsing the rig catalogue in Amarr and not parsing CCC = capacitor control circuits.
Having to repeat myself two times, to clear up it is in our C5, it was a set of Sister's Combat Probes, yes I definitely saw them even though 3 seconds later you do not, is where fatalities occur.
I am not sure if it is just because we're all so old and jaded and full of ourselves, or people are distracted or we are accustomed to having the sole static being a C2 which we often totally dominate and control from the instant we get it.
Whatever it is, when I was last with people who dismissed fleeting glimpses of probes, who did not report oddly-named ships with names which were 90% similar to a corp ship (or even 100% similar but the owner was offline, hence, a false flag), who debated even for a second whether the intel was false - they lost the farm. When it's 8 Drakes in a C3, its laughable. 4 caps in a C5 is not.
I'm sure I pissed people off when I said "There are questions, and then there are retarded questions. This was a retarded question." but the fact remains, a C5 spawned into us, our escalations were cancelled and the shoppers in hisec had a choice - scuttle home or risk being trapped outside the bunker while a gunfight's going on inside. Asking whether the smoke grenade tossed in the door is going to blow up? That's retarded.
Surely my elocution isn't to blame?
Example, after last night's abortive ISK making adventure, we wanted to run the same site again and quad escalate it again before it de-spawns. This got interrupted by a hole collapse failure, resulting in a Leeroy Jenkins run from Darkspawn territory through Curse in a Geddon (now stranded), which morphed into a retardedly complicated shopping adventure, not only for ship bits but for implants.
I stayed on comms and opened up Pyfa and worked through theorycrafting Rail Tengu (meh, better but not prizes below 2.5B), Rail Proteus variant of my alt's current 128K EHP 150 DPS blaster Proteus which looks good, and recreting a HAM-AC shield Loki with 800 DPS and 88K EHP for 420M ISK. Which looks like I will do it, because fuck it, people expect half the DPS, shit's gong to get wild.
So I'm suffering through inane debates, people blathering and blathering about whatever the fuck, people not able to understand what a CCC is or what a Memory Cell is - the typical shit where you ask people to go shopping for you while you're halfway out of deep shit in Nullsec and want to save time.
I do this theorycrafting while pumping D-scan and keeping tabs on where everyone is, what ship names and types I see are known and familiar, etc. We already had a venture come mine - blithely - in our hole already without anyone noticing it, and me only twigging that it wasn't ours because the name wasn't 100% right. 90% right, coincidentally, not 100%.
So when I, bizarrely, see 8 sisters combats shitting up my overview, and call it, I would expect people who are otherwise engaged on market alts and minutes away from getting their dicks deep into shithole in cap escalations, to just trust me when I say "combat probes in the C5" and to know what that means.
It does not mean "I probed down an instance of combats in a C5". It does not mean "this is happening in a random C5 down the chain" (we don't have one). It means, this is a piece of vital information you all need to act upon immediately - including people browsing the rig catalogue in Amarr and not parsing CCC = capacitor control circuits.
Having to repeat myself two times, to clear up it is in our C5, it was a set of Sister's Combat Probes, yes I definitely saw them even though 3 seconds later you do not, is where fatalities occur.
I am not sure if it is just because we're all so old and jaded and full of ourselves, or people are distracted or we are accustomed to having the sole static being a C2 which we often totally dominate and control from the instant we get it.
Whatever it is, when I was last with people who dismissed fleeting glimpses of probes, who did not report oddly-named ships with names which were 90% similar to a corp ship (or even 100% similar but the owner was offline, hence, a false flag), who debated even for a second whether the intel was false - they lost the farm. When it's 8 Drakes in a C3, its laughable. 4 caps in a C5 is not.
I'm sure I pissed people off when I said "There are questions, and then there are retarded questions. This was a retarded question." but the fact remains, a C5 spawned into us, our escalations were cancelled and the shoppers in hisec had a choice - scuttle home or risk being trapped outside the bunker while a gunfight's going on inside. Asking whether the smoke grenade tossed in the door is going to blow up? That's retarded.
Surely my elocution isn't to blame?
Monday, 16 September 2013
Your hourly rate is...fuck all
There's a lot of talk made about the mountains of ISK to be made by escalating C5 wormholes. Well, I can tell you that it's in many cases a load of hogswash.
Jack Miton (who multiboxes these) has posted the recipe online. Now, I won't say he's misleading anyone with the methods he has posted on the Eve-O forums, but certainly he's missed a few key ingredients:
It takes money to make money. If you can't afford the T2 rigs for your Archon, at least put the T1 on there. Nothing shits me more than the "T2 or go home" crap. Especially if it's a 55 day train for, eg, a T2 triage module. people were doing C5's with T1 rigs and T1 triage for years, what is with this attitude nowadays?
Be prepared to be unprepared. If you've scheduled a ratting sit-in and there's too many holes, with too many potential hostiles, then just give up on it and go run Incursions. They need no teamwork, no preparation, no risk.
I hope we get better because we aren't going to make any real mountains of ISK on the real server this way, just lose lots of fighters and waste 2 hours closing up the wormholes and debating amongst ourselves what ought to have been sorted out on the test server already.
Secondly, this has really revealed that the nerfs to links have made Loki webs a little less awesome. it might be enough to actually render web Lokis inefficient for nubs. So maybe we need an armour Rapier or two web Lokis.
It has also revealed that the Nidhoggur is, as advertised, sub-par as the primary carrier. This isn't due to the capacitor (you can fix that, even with T1 triage and T1 rigs), the tank, or the remote reps. It's merely the shit energy transfer range.
Jack Miton (who multiboxes these) has posted the recipe online. Now, I won't say he's misleading anyone with the methods he has posted on the Eve-O forums, but certainly he's missed a few key ingredients:
- Everyone must actually have the ships, the skills, the fits, the capabilities that they advertised. If you need two web Loki's, you better have them. If your carrier doesn't have rigs...well, we won't even go there.
- Everyone needs to know what everyone's roles are. It's pretty disheartening to hear "does your Loki have target painters?" half an hour into the first escalation wave. If you aren't sure, then why did you drop your carrier into the site?
- Be aware that the guys in the second dread and the second carrier are having their time wasted too; if you can't get this right after two weeks of fuckassing about on the test server then it's probably worth fuckassing about for 2 more weeks to get it right.
- Don't change your plan. If you were set to double escalate, don't drop a BS in "to deal with the frigs". If you do this, make sure it can actually deal with the frigs.
- Budget for closing holes. If you are going to plan to do sites and you've got 4 wormholes to close, then you clearly need to nut up and close them and not be afraid of potential nasties.If you are going to close them, then you need to be efficient.
It takes money to make money. If you can't afford the T2 rigs for your Archon, at least put the T1 on there. Nothing shits me more than the "T2 or go home" crap. Especially if it's a 55 day train for, eg, a T2 triage module. people were doing C5's with T1 rigs and T1 triage for years, what is with this attitude nowadays?
Be prepared to be unprepared. If you've scheduled a ratting sit-in and there's too many holes, with too many potential hostiles, then just give up on it and go run Incursions. They need no teamwork, no preparation, no risk.
I hope we get better because we aren't going to make any real mountains of ISK on the real server this way, just lose lots of fighters and waste 2 hours closing up the wormholes and debating amongst ourselves what ought to have been sorted out on the test server already.
Secondly, this has really revealed that the nerfs to links have made Loki webs a little less awesome. it might be enough to actually render web Lokis inefficient for nubs. So maybe we need an armour Rapier or two web Lokis.
It has also revealed that the Nidhoggur is, as advertised, sub-par as the primary carrier. This isn't due to the capacitor (you can fix that, even with T1 triage and T1 rigs), the tank, or the remote reps. It's merely the shit energy transfer range.
Wednesday, 4 September 2013
Marauders = Eunuchs
So, the latest update on the marauder rebalance shows the power of whiny incursion bears to sway CCP's balance team (team flip-flop).
I agree the idea of 4500++ DPS solo active tanks for marauders in bastion mode was, well, probably a bit stupid. That came about from the egregious 30% non stacking-penalised resist bonus given out with the Bastion module (ie; a free DCU).
Instead of 30% free DCU, now their active tanks have been ripped out, castrati style, leaving them with wimpy active tanks unless you have a Bastion module. With the bastion module, you'll get a 100% rep bonus for your Eunuch Marauder. So, given most single LAAR/LAR fits tank about 580 DPS cold you'll now have close to 1200. This is faction BS level tank, no more, no less.
Suddenly, your PVP options have narrowed. Sure, no hella tank undock game ruination (unless you go stupid pimp) but also no realistic MJD tactics. You can't solo tank enough with 1200 DPS active tanks to make it worth flitting out to 100km and sniping.
The T2 resists help most for incursions, where it's a buff to RR. This does move against the tide of resists being nerfed, which is odd. However the only real RR PVE is incursions, and most incursion bears deploy Vindicators for uber DPS and 90% webs, and occasionally a Kronos when someone actually knows what it is. The Kronos in bastion mode was going to break the RR gang milieux of Incursion armour BS. Now they get to just not fit the Bastion module and get better T2 resists, so they can fit less tank, more gank, better damage projection and voila, the ultimate Incursion ship will be born.
That's what EVE needs, is a way for Incursion bears to eke another 5M per hour out of Incursions.
The cost of this is a smashed crab of a PVP concept now. I admit, it was a little OTT before, but they could honestly have fiddled down the Bastion module's resist bonus or just scrapped it and kept the local tank bonus, aiming to put it in the 2-3K active tank field all in (links, implants, ship). Webs were going to be fitted anyway in PVP (you need to knacker scramming frigs) and it was always going to be a small-med gang ship.
I'm not sure about the marauders anymore. There was a while there where finally we seemed on the path to a T2 battleship which didn't have problems at doing its job. I am preparing myself for Black ops ships to blow goats when they get touched.
I agree the idea of 4500++ DPS solo active tanks for marauders in bastion mode was, well, probably a bit stupid. That came about from the egregious 30% non stacking-penalised resist bonus given out with the Bastion module (ie; a free DCU).
Instead of 30% free DCU, now their active tanks have been ripped out, castrati style, leaving them with wimpy active tanks unless you have a Bastion module. With the bastion module, you'll get a 100% rep bonus for your Eunuch Marauder. So, given most single LAAR/LAR fits tank about 580 DPS cold you'll now have close to 1200. This is faction BS level tank, no more, no less.
Suddenly, your PVP options have narrowed. Sure, no hella tank undock game ruination (unless you go stupid pimp) but also no realistic MJD tactics. You can't solo tank enough with 1200 DPS active tanks to make it worth flitting out to 100km and sniping.
The T2 resists help most for incursions, where it's a buff to RR. This does move against the tide of resists being nerfed, which is odd. However the only real RR PVE is incursions, and most incursion bears deploy Vindicators for uber DPS and 90% webs, and occasionally a Kronos when someone actually knows what it is. The Kronos in bastion mode was going to break the RR gang milieux of Incursion armour BS. Now they get to just not fit the Bastion module and get better T2 resists, so they can fit less tank, more gank, better damage projection and voila, the ultimate Incursion ship will be born.
That's what EVE needs, is a way for Incursion bears to eke another 5M per hour out of Incursions.
The cost of this is a smashed crab of a PVP concept now. I admit, it was a little OTT before, but they could honestly have fiddled down the Bastion module's resist bonus or just scrapped it and kept the local tank bonus, aiming to put it in the 2-3K active tank field all in (links, implants, ship). Webs were going to be fitted anyway in PVP (you need to knacker scramming frigs) and it was always going to be a small-med gang ship.
I'm not sure about the marauders anymore. There was a while there where finally we seemed on the path to a T2 battleship which didn't have problems at doing its job. I am preparing myself for Black ops ships to blow goats when they get touched.
Refresh, damn you
Aside from the surprise joy of hearing people whine about the command ship changes (didja read the patch notes, fucktards?), the mega-eyeroll at the admittedly poorly telescoped name changes for energy transfer arrays by people crying about EVE being "dumbed down", I am hanging out for EVE-Kill and z-board and Battleclinic to kludge in some gorram Bastion modules into their database so I can see some gorram fragging marauder killmails with 1M damage taken.
:_:
:_:
Tuesday, 3 September 2013
What's in a name?
Sudden Buggery got name petitioned (aka 'support ticketed' these days) when we deprived someone of a shiny ship and the only way he could respond was to game the name. We spent 6 weeks in discussions with devs and game masters as EVECorporation158356234. It didn't stop EVECorporation158356234 functioning as a coherent unit and depriving even more people of shiny ships. The conclusion of the discussions was that Sudden buggery retained its name and proud history.
I got another of my corporations ticketed today. This time, I don't think I will be 'discussing' the name with anyone, and will take my sugar lumps and move on from Minmatar-Amarr Man-Boy Love Association (MABLA).
It was a wild ride with 42 kills and 4 losses and 97.3% ISK efficiency. RIP offensive corporation name!
On to the next off-piste corp name.
I got another of my corporations ticketed today. This time, I don't think I will be 'discussing' the name with anyone, and will take my sugar lumps and move on from Minmatar-Amarr Man-Boy Love Association (MABLA).
It was a wild ride with 42 kills and 4 losses and 97.3% ISK efficiency. RIP offensive corporation name!
On to the next off-piste corp name.
Monday, 2 September 2013
Marauder Theorycrafting
For the past 2 or 2.5 years there's been a nebulous coalition of shitpoasters and theorycraft wizard adepts on the EVE-O forums who've been running with a bunch of zany ideas. One is an escort carrier based on the Orca, the other has been mini-dreads.
As a w-space denizen, both are attractive possibilities. Escort carriers would allow smaller triage-capable reps, Orca refitting, small-scale ship hangar and the like. Mini-dreads are attractive for w-space for the interminably boring POS sieges which we get subjected to in lower-end space where you cannot feasibly import a dread. Having something tanky which can siege up and blat guns or RF the stick has been pushed for a while.
Marauders are being buffed and at least the theorycraft adepts pushing for mini-dreads have been satisfied. There are, however, some other ramifications which a mate and I have been discussing which should see Marauders turn from a third-rate PVE boat into a top rate PVE boat, and no doubt, soon see some pretty epic videos drop on YouTube.
Gate camping
The resist and rep bonus (coupled with another 15% buff to local reps coming with Odyssey 1.1) will see marauders used to bust lowsec gate camps. I don't have EFT or Pyfa, but it's obvious that with a free EANM or 1.5 Invuls worth of resists in Bastion Mode and insane tank, you'll be pulling around 3500 DPS tank, EWAR immunity and ZOMG falloff. Vargurs can already fire capless guns to 120km with Falloff and pull close to 1,000 DPS. There's going to be some pirates for the first week or so who really, really wish they had read the patch notes. Epic.
Station camping
Undock games, I hope, will forever be ruined by the bastion module. A 3500 DPS active tank and ridicu-mass for hard bumps, and you can play docking games all day long and make everything stupidly boring. I suspect, in this case, the king will be the Paladon or Kronos, who can fit up se-bos to catch stuff on undock, turtle up, gank the enemy and then dock in utter safety. Not so epic, but I won't miss station gaymes.
One further point to note is that this will result in some pretty stupid stuff for FW griefers in, eg, Hek. I wouldn't be surprised to see marauders on undock tanking the Police and the hapless players trying to GTFO station. Not so epic.
PVE-ness Mega Penis
Right now the kings of missioning are Machariels, Rattlers, Scorp Navy Issue and Caldari Navy Ravens. The Macha in particular can perform as well as the Vargur in most situations, although you do have to typically drop twice the ISK to make it work. For people who like to kite, the Macha will stilll be favoured. But why would you, when you can MJD mission more efficiently with a Marauder or any flavour, and get an easy permatank justby clicking on your Bastion module?
It will take a little while for people who do missions to move over; after all they've probably got pimped CNRs with A-type boosters and other bling. They also have to train into Marauders, which isn't as simple as getting racial battleship 5. But it won't be more than a month and a half before Marauders really squeeze out their competitors in the Level 4 mission scene.
Similarly, Marauders will have plenty of use in Incursions, assuming they don't get neuted to hell and back and fail to tank.
We should also see Marauders soloing C3's easily, and probably also C4 sites in wormholes. Which is great news for people wanting to hunt them. Being stuck in the same spot for 80 seconds will make them horribly vulnerable...but busting a 3500 DPS tank isn't going to be easy, either. You will also need scrams to stop them blinking away and EWAR immunity means no TD's to keep you safe from their guns, no Falcon jams...it's going to be brutal. Epic.
Siege Green
You'll also start seeing a lot of shit fit small POSs in w-space come under threat from Marauders. Without the need for logi, and with total EWAR immunity from the typical temporary camping dickstar small Caldari tower, your options in w-space for safe POS fits which will deter attacks have narrowed significantly. Given enough time a gang of Marauders could...well, maraud all sorts of POSs.
The initial theorycraft idea of mini-dreads saw the solution as a 500% damage modifier so that POSs could be dropped faster. What we got, however, was something that is immune to shit fit smaller POSs and their ECM batteries. You only need watch out for the neut, and you're fine. Epic.
Elite PVP
It will be interesting to see the way the MJD bonus pans out. I've got ideas, and certainly they should be relatively obvious to most people, but it will be interesting to see what, eg, RnK, Shadow Cartel and AHARM do with Marauders and their MJD. I expect some niche adept epicness.
Conclusions?
The metagame had been shaken up by a magnitude 8.0 epic drop. I admit I read the stats on the Bastion mode and bought 2 hulls immediately. The price went up 30% inside 4 hours. People are speculating wildly, as they do, but in my opinion this is just the beginning. What impresses me is that these ships have exceeded their prior role as PVE chariots and expanded into all forms of PVP as well. That's a neat trick.
Next stop? Black Ops, or maybe the escort carrier. Cloaky-warping HICs, I think, might be a little ways off as a solution to supercap proliferation...
As a w-space denizen, both are attractive possibilities. Escort carriers would allow smaller triage-capable reps, Orca refitting, small-scale ship hangar and the like. Mini-dreads are attractive for w-space for the interminably boring POS sieges which we get subjected to in lower-end space where you cannot feasibly import a dread. Having something tanky which can siege up and blat guns or RF the stick has been pushed for a while.
Marauders are being buffed and at least the theorycraft adepts pushing for mini-dreads have been satisfied. There are, however, some other ramifications which a mate and I have been discussing which should see Marauders turn from a third-rate PVE boat into a top rate PVE boat, and no doubt, soon see some pretty epic videos drop on YouTube.
Gate camping
The resist and rep bonus (coupled with another 15% buff to local reps coming with Odyssey 1.1) will see marauders used to bust lowsec gate camps. I don't have EFT or Pyfa, but it's obvious that with a free EANM or 1.5 Invuls worth of resists in Bastion Mode and insane tank, you'll be pulling around 3500 DPS tank, EWAR immunity and ZOMG falloff. Vargurs can already fire capless guns to 120km with Falloff and pull close to 1,000 DPS. There's going to be some pirates for the first week or so who really, really wish they had read the patch notes. Epic.
Station camping
Undock games, I hope, will forever be ruined by the bastion module. A 3500 DPS active tank and ridicu-mass for hard bumps, and you can play docking games all day long and make everything stupidly boring. I suspect, in this case, the king will be the Paladon or Kronos, who can fit up se-bos to catch stuff on undock, turtle up, gank the enemy and then dock in utter safety. Not so epic, but I won't miss station gaymes.
One further point to note is that this will result in some pretty stupid stuff for FW griefers in, eg, Hek. I wouldn't be surprised to see marauders on undock tanking the Police and the hapless players trying to GTFO station. Not so epic.
PVE-ness Mega Penis
Right now the kings of missioning are Machariels, Rattlers, Scorp Navy Issue and Caldari Navy Ravens. The Macha in particular can perform as well as the Vargur in most situations, although you do have to typically drop twice the ISK to make it work. For people who like to kite, the Macha will stilll be favoured. But why would you, when you can MJD mission more efficiently with a Marauder or any flavour, and get an easy permatank justby clicking on your Bastion module?
It will take a little while for people who do missions to move over; after all they've probably got pimped CNRs with A-type boosters and other bling. They also have to train into Marauders, which isn't as simple as getting racial battleship 5. But it won't be more than a month and a half before Marauders really squeeze out their competitors in the Level 4 mission scene.
Similarly, Marauders will have plenty of use in Incursions, assuming they don't get neuted to hell and back and fail to tank.
We should also see Marauders soloing C3's easily, and probably also C4 sites in wormholes. Which is great news for people wanting to hunt them. Being stuck in the same spot for 80 seconds will make them horribly vulnerable...but busting a 3500 DPS tank isn't going to be easy, either. You will also need scrams to stop them blinking away and EWAR immunity means no TD's to keep you safe from their guns, no Falcon jams...it's going to be brutal. Epic.
Siege Green
You'll also start seeing a lot of shit fit small POSs in w-space come under threat from Marauders. Without the need for logi, and with total EWAR immunity from the typical temporary camping dickstar small Caldari tower, your options in w-space for safe POS fits which will deter attacks have narrowed significantly. Given enough time a gang of Marauders could...well, maraud all sorts of POSs.
The initial theorycraft idea of mini-dreads saw the solution as a 500% damage modifier so that POSs could be dropped faster. What we got, however, was something that is immune to shit fit smaller POSs and their ECM batteries. You only need watch out for the neut, and you're fine. Epic.
Elite PVP
It will be interesting to see the way the MJD bonus pans out. I've got ideas, and certainly they should be relatively obvious to most people, but it will be interesting to see what, eg, RnK, Shadow Cartel and AHARM do with Marauders and their MJD. I expect some niche adept epicness.
Conclusions?
The metagame had been shaken up by a magnitude 8.0 epic drop. I admit I read the stats on the Bastion mode and bought 2 hulls immediately. The price went up 30% inside 4 hours. People are speculating wildly, as they do, but in my opinion this is just the beginning. What impresses me is that these ships have exceeded their prior role as PVE chariots and expanded into all forms of PVP as well. That's a neat trick.
Next stop? Black Ops, or maybe the escort carrier. Cloaky-warping HICs, I think, might be a little ways off as a solution to supercap proliferation...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)