Windows of vulnerability

Sad to see Jester's Trek stopping. It was an interesting perspective on many things EVE, and I think it contributed to the idea that blogging about EVE is a thing, and hence the start of this blog. Not that I write much here, but still. So I will try something other than a list of things that I did recently, since that wasn't much. It will probably sound much less coherent than it does in my head, but here goes.

Some of the, lets say, discussion around griefing and ganking and such made me think about how the mechanics actually balance that. And I realized that one thing about EVE in this respect is that for all the talk that it is primarily a PvP game all the risk versus reward balancing present takes into account what I really want to call tangible reward. Except ISK is of course not tangible even in universe. I mean ISK, minerals and loot of all kinds, as opposed to killmails, "tears" and the like.

Most anything that gives in-game rewards requires risk. Which is fine, but the problem is, the older the thing is, the more it shows the early timesink design reminiscent of most other MMOs. And that is the worst kind of risk, since there is relatively little a player can to do deal with it, and even if one can effectively survive, the reward is usually lost even if an attempt to attack failed.

Mining and missions being the worst offenders, since they require hanging in space in mostly defenseless and slowly warping ships for long stretches of time. Hauling requiting moving in a defenseless ship through easily camped chokepoints.

Exploration, since it was added later, at least shrinks the window of vulnerability by allowing the explorer to be cloaked most of the time. On the other hand since Odyssey the minigame exists to distract from local and dscan, making the window narrower, but increasing the scope of the vulnerability. Of the most recent, both security tags and I'm assuming similar newly added in Kronos Mordu's Legion belt rats are small, simple encounter that can be completed in a reasonably fast combat ship in a few minutes.

This clearly shows that CCP is aware that the timesink design is a problem and is moving away from it. But unfortunately it seems that can't and/or won't actually remove the already present elements of that. Which is understandable since the reaction would likely be loud and negative, and rebalancing all that content around non-timesink design would require effort CCP probably wants to spend on new things.

What the timesink design does, other that creating an obvious, but boring, path for new players, is empower the gankers, since around any popular mission or mining hub they can find at basically any time a large number of targets just sitting in space. The same goes for highsec wardec corps, if the dec a PvE/mining corp, their targets either have to hang in space vulnerable or effectively stop playing the game the way they want to.

The gankers or wardec corps are vulnerable only for the few minutes, if that, it takes to undock, land on grid and destroy the ships of the targeted players. There is no effective way to retaliate, or even stop them, since if they see a prepositioned defense force that could actually do anything, they can simply choose to attack elsewhere. And their window of vulnerability is so small than no force can arrive in time to do anything. Certainly in the case of suicide gankers, where even the infinite DPS of Concord showing in thirty seconds or less is too late.

And it is largely the same in lowsec and nullsec, certainly below capital level or timer fights. As evidenced by the many stories of roams that roamed for hours without finding anyone to fight, there is nothing pinning a PvPer in place to make a fight possible. Even the most stationary of gatecamps can just scatter or log off with fifteen seconds of warning and the reform immediately once the threat leaves.

What I feel the fighting system in EVE could really use is some slowing down. The level of DPS and repair per second compared to typical buffers barely makes sense in typical fantasy MMO, with humanlike beings and healing magic, but with giant piles of advanced composites that form spaceships it just feels silly. What I would like is greatly reducing DPS while making a ship ineligible for any kind of local or remote repair for a time after receiving damage, combined with some sort of stacking penalty for damage. This would make smaller groups punching up more viable, move logistics to their place outside the direct battlefield and decrease the importance of alpha and absolute focus fire. It would also extend the vulnerability window for small engagements.

Unfortunately this is not ever going to happen even if most everyone agreed this is a good idea, since it would require rebalancing every ship, most modules, basically all PvE… and it took six months each for CCP to balance a class of ships. And people hate change in general. Which is another reason why CCP prefers to pile on new things rather than to fix existing ones unless they are severely broken. Unfortunately, that can only continue for so long.

Counting anomalies

No post in almost three months? How the time flies. I am still playing EVE a bit. And looking at my notes I started to write a post back when I finished training Gallente Cruisers V and flew through some level four missions with a blaster Deimos. Which was kind of fun. Not that I kept doing that, because missions get boring very quickly, but apparently Deimos can tank four Serpentis battleships while not moving at all. Which is kind of silly.

In the meantime the CSM election came and passed. I even voted, although mostly on Sugar Kyle, because blogs I suppose. Not really clear on what other candidates represent. Not that it matters that much, I suppose.

I still mostly do invention and manufacturing of T2 modules. Between work, other games and even occasionally having a life I just don't have time to do much more than update the queues and transport materials and stuff from Dodixie. It is not much, but I still like reading about EVE, and somehow feel that it wouldn't make sense to read about it without an active account. A single one.

At least I won't be surprised by the industry changes. Release schedule apparently is going to change, and I still am not quite sure, how that is going to work? Will the complete industry changes from the dev blogs be release in June, or will they be phased in? I could search for that, but then I could just wait. At least since I am not manufacturing anywhere near Jita, and not that close to Dodixie either I should be hit too hard by the cost increase.

I wonder how this will effect material efficiency research. It is a one time cost, so especially for cheaper items it should be fairly easy to max out the blueprints. Right now what is mostly stopping that is waiting times, since you have to get pretty deep into null to get freeish slots, and otherwise the slot is just waited for weeks.

Hopefully it won't crush my tiny income stream, because where else can I even get ISK while playing fifteen minutes per day? Although how much ISK do I need to play fifteen minutes a day? I suppose I am hoping that one of these days I will have more time and play more EVE.

Although I did play a bit more, and spent relatively a lot of ISK recently, when I remembered that since I have Gallente Cruisers V, I could just get a T3 cruiser. So I did. At first configured it for nullified cloaky exploration ship. Even got a bit into null, but then I got stressed and came back before even launching my probes.

So I got back and reconfigured it for highsec combat-exploration. And then remembered that they changed it so that you can't enter combat sites with a T3 cruiser. But I mostly wanted to clear some anomalies, including the new ghost sites. I still keep a running count of anomaly by type and the number of faction spawns that appear. It is still very low. Looks like about 2%. What is even the point, really. Unless this varies by anomaly level more than I would expect. It is possible, but it is difficult to find enough anoms in highsec to be get good numbers.

I still plan to go to lowsec eventually in something reasonably cheap and work on my situational awareness. But I don't really want to go there in a T1 frigate, because it can't do anything other than die, and I would at the same time prefer to at least do some PvE. I have used a T1 cruiser and an assault frigate before, but that goes into tens of millions. Which is not that much.

I don't think I even cashed out on the loyalty points I got from those times I did do L4 missions. I just can't deal with how horribly broken the loyalty stores are. With the baseline ISK cost bigger than the price of equivalent T2 items most faction items are useless even before you get into the whole tag nonsense. I know that you can just use a calculator and cash out on whatever gives most ISK/LP, but come one.

The way things are going it is unlikely that this will improve. Or anything related to missions. I still think missions break the core design of EVE, since most everything else is finitely available, and hence at least possibly subject to competition and overcrowding (even asteroid belts get completely stripped in super populated systems), and missions just gave infinite ISK and loot at the press of a button. But that just means that leaving them in the state that they are is even worse.

Ticking down

The longest training in my Skill Queues Online yet is going to finish soon! Well, it is not quite that bad, I don't just update the skill queue. Usually I also update the invention/manufacturing slots! And recently, as I wrote before, I stated to do some missions again. Not the most engaging gameplay, perhaps, but I still like starships.

In any case Gallente Cruisers V has about a day left. Although I did poke my missioning Deimos plan in EFT and I think I need another two weeks of training gunnery and stuff to make it more viable. Hopefully. I don't really have a feel for how much damage is mitigated by distance versus signature and speed, so it is quite possible that having more effective tank on the HAC than on my current sniper Megathron would not be sufficient if I actually go for a blaster boat. A sentry Ishtar seems to be more traditional for missioning in Heavy Assault Cruisers, but what would be the fun in that?

Not that I expect the missions to suddenly become that much more fun, but a new ship class is a new ship. And at least with a microwarpdrive the flying between acceleration gates will get very much reduced, and a cruisers aligns and warps faster than a battleship. So that would be nice.

I still plan to try that "PVP" think people are writing about, but I am apparently affected too much by risk aversion. I have about 1.4e9 ISK enough to throw away a bunch of even assault frigates or T1 cruisers, much less T1 frigates, but I just hate to see that number going down. Not that it is that actually much, considering I pay for subscription and have been playing for over a year. That is what happens when you can't be bothered to make dedicated research alts.

That is in theory what the missions are for. I'm not focused enough to get a hundred million per hour or whatever people claim, but twenty-thirty million appears maybe reachable. Although the variance between missions seems kind of high. At least with the new Mobile Tractor Units looting is finally not tedious, and with a Noctis even salvaging is fine, since all wrecks are pulled into a ball inside salvager range.

I tried to cash in the loyalty points from Federal Administration, which I have been doing missions for because ages ago I picked them for reasons between liking the name and having stations in the place I wanted to base myself. It turns out that their Loyalty Store is not really great. With almost no blueprints, I should have gone for the traditional ammo and implants. Although I should probably have gone for that even if there were blueprints. But since I bought all those Caldari Commondore tags since last time I posted here, I wanted to use the for something.

So I bought fourteen Federation Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane. Because why not. At least they seem to have some sort of volume in Dodixie. Although so far not one of them sold, because I don't update the prices all the time. Or mostly ever. I keep forgetting. And I don't have or want a dedicated market alt, either.

Anyway, since at least that got rid of the accumulated loyalty points I looked for a better nearby agent to do missions for. Rodan Shipyards appears better. More blueprints! Loyalty Stores unfortunately appear as broken as when I first started playing. What is even the point of most of those modules? Why is the base ISK cost larger that the price of equivalent T2 module, before you even count the cost of tags and loyalty points? The answer is obviously because CCP rarely touches anything that already exists, to the point where basic ship rebalancing becomes the primary content of the "expansion".

But I did not have standings with Rodan Shipyards for L4 missions. Or for L3 missions for that matter, but those came from Gallente standings I have from that time when I grinded out standings for jump clones. Not that doing storylines actually contributed to that, since apparently the nearest storyline agent of the faction triggers, not the corporation, so all those standings went somewhere else, but at least faction standing came in handy now.

But that sill left only L3 missions. So I grabbed my good old Myrmidon battlecruiser and updated it for skills I got in the meantime. The fit from that time was, well, it worked back then. Why did I have both a tracking computer and a target painter? Anyway, I built a basic rail and drones cap stable Myrmidon and started doing missions. Now that I think about it I went all the way to eight doing L3, because I got a battleship fairly recently. Which was when I got burned out on missions.

At least getting to five should be fairly quick. Especially since now I have T2 rails, and even T1 sentries seem to be pretty powerful. Dumb NPCs are dumb and are burning straight into me, which means than cruisers got pretty much full sentry DPS for great results. And that is without any drone buffs beyond Myrmidon inherent bonus. Enemies are dying so fast that they are not even getting through my shields most of the time. And of course I am ignoring loot and salvage.

I am still playing basically alone. Because I am both apparently vaguely antisocial, and also playing on a fairly erratic schedule. Also of course joining a corp in EVE without coming from an external community appears somewhat, let's say, unreliable. Also I did get kind of used to the CAS chat, and you can't return to that. Without creating an alt, of course.

Theoretical numbers

Is the CSM election really getting somewhat close? I joined EVE just in time to be able to vote in the last one, which means it is almost a full year. Go figure. Of course, I'm still reading more than playing. The skill queue is ticking along at least. I mean, the worst thing about good old Progress Quest was that you had to actually keep it running to "progress", and in EVE you don't even have to do that, just log in once in a while to update the queue.

Although despite the fact that I finally started Gallente Cruisers V and could leave it alone for three weeks I recently started to play a bit more than updating my manufacturing and a Dodixie run for materials. Mostly I just did play a bunch of level four missions in my trusty Megathron.

I played with EFT a little, and apparently a HAC with T2 medium guns can get better DPS that a T1 battleship with T1 large guns pretty easily. Although I guess if is spent that month training T2 large guns rather than T2 cruisers it would different. But cruisers are faster and more agile, and with Rubicon changes they warp faster too. While the difference is not that big for missions, which are one-two jumps away most of the time, it is the most boring time. And a blaster brawler somehow seems more exciting that a sniper battleship. Although most likely not more effective.

I looked around the planets around the system I base myself in. Apparently the effective tax rate for many POCOs is actually, even with three levels in Customs Code, lower than it was before in highsec, at just 9%, even before you factor in the lowered base costs. So I build a basic P1->P3 robotics factory world, because why not. I don't even sell those directly, just feed my production with it. Not a very efficient PI setup, because I can't be bothered to update it every day, and it eats quite a lot of P1 resources. I should make or find and understand a spreadsheet that would show what the actual good P1 price point is. But can't really be bothered to.

Also placed a buy order for some Caldari Commodore tags. The return on faction modules is a bit questionable, or at least volume is, but faction ammo and implants are boring. And since I do about one mission per day anyway I don't really need volume, just something to use up the LPs. I don't even blitz the missions, because I like shooting spaceships.

Intermittent

Still not quite dead! Although I think I am spending more time reading about EVE than playing it. But I don't think it would be fun reading about it if I didn't play at least a little. Even if what I mostly do is push the skill queue and invent and manufacture mostly T2 hybrid guns. Not even enough to plex the account, just accumulating a little ISK so that if I ever actually want to do something, I could fit a ship to do it with.

One thing I did do is get an interceptor and fly to Syndicate to find a station with free material efficiency research slots. Rubicon changes make take much less stressful, even compared to doing it in a covops frigate. No bubbles! Although I saw on the killboards someone with much the same idea, and they still go caught in PF-346.

I still chose to go for it, because that one was hours before, and there were no kills noted since then. But apparently the gatecampers had nothing better to do, since when I passed the gate the exact same people were sitting there. At least they moved to cover the bubbles, so I jumped through without issue.

So now I got a bunch of blueprint with some ME points for Gallente frigates and some of the hybrid guns. No significant gains, since they are still not really worth it to manufacture themselves, and for T2 production the cost of T1 component is not really significant. But it is something.

Skill training continues in haphazard manner, as I don't actually want to commit to purely industrial character, since that would be giving up of sorts. I went for third level mastery on Thorax. Even though masteries aren't any more sensible that certificates are, it just seems neater. I wonder if sensor compensation skills, or whatever they are called, actually have any noticeable effect? Not that I plan on getting jammed, but you never know.

I passed through lowsec a bunch of times on my way to free-ish copying slots, and apparently low level anomalies, which were added to lowsec in Rubicon, don't bunch up there as much as I would hope. Apparently people are completing them, I guess.

Unfortunately I get discouraged from trying anything somewhat risky because my connection keeps randomly dropping. Usually for less than a second. I know this is not EVE fault, because IRC resets as well. Recently it got a little worse. Maybe due to lower temperatures. In any case, it is somewhat irritating when flying around highsec, in low/null it could be a really dumb way to lose a ship. And losing a ship though out-of-game event is somehow more annoying than otherwise. I wish EVE client-server could just reestablish the socket without full relog.

Prices do go up

This time I'm posting before a month has passed! Barely. Things remain similar. I wonder how long will I keep at it, just barely playing EVE to iterate T2 production and update the skill queue. Still, numbers going up is kind of nice. In a way. And a single subscription is not really significant.

I passed a billion ISK, so I stopped updating sell orders very often. Mostly because I'm manufacturing in Everyshore, and selling in Dodixie, and while crossing regions only needs five jumps or so, it is still good ten minutes. With Rubicon changes it should be faster. I even almost trained Interceptors at some point. Anyway, the other reason is that I just don't feel I need any more ISK quickly, so the sell orders can just sit there. And it even turned out that the prices did eventually went back up and hit my sell orders.

One of them was bought up in bulk, so I guess that was the price rising in Jita and someone doing arbitrage. Or maybe someone just needed seventy T2 medium railguns. Two other did sell a few at a time, so that was a genuine local upwards price movement. It is obvious that this must happen, because all prices would land at material costs very fast, but it doesn't feel that way if one is getting 0.01 ISKed all the time.

Incoming Rubicon changes look interesting. I wonder what siphons will do to moon material prices. I read somewhere that they were nerfed, or made more recently, after tests, because they would destroy moon mining otherwise. They still might. We shall see. Warp speed bonuses look really nice, finally small fast ships will feel fast.

And apparently they are adding low level anoms to lowsec. Some time ago I tried to do anoms in highsec to measure how often factions drops do drop, but those are rare. Recently they feel even rarer for some reason. Or maybe I spend too much less time flying in circles. In lowsec the anoms are usually there, but they are too difficult to be ran quickly, and some are too difficult to be run solo in a ship that can paid for by running anoms if it is lost.

But, if many fewer people will do anoms in lowsec they will accumulate there, and then it will be possible to complete them rapidly in a relatively cheap ship. Perhaps even a PvP fit cruiser. Not that would matter at all if I get dropped by a Loki or some other silliness. Or a gang.

Metallurgy delayed

I didn't post anything for over a month? Strange. I meant to, because in my notes there is at least a title of a post. Somehow I never found time to write about that. It was Metallurgy, I meant to write about the time when I tried to go into Syndicate nullsec to find a station with a short queue on material research. And I did, and tried to research ME on some rig blueprints only to realize they require Metallurgy. Which I didn't have, or so I thought. So I raced to the nearest station with skillbooks somewhere on the edge of Solitude. And once I bought and tried to inject it, I found out that I do in fact had Metallurgy, at level zero.

At some early point of playing EVE I bought every cheap science skillbook, or actually most every skillbook which was cheap and injectable without level five prerequisite. But I didn't train some of them. I didn't think back then that I was going to research ME on anything. And definitely not in a chained way on a POS, which is where the percentages would matter.

So there I was, pointlessly flying through NPC null. At least I didn't die. CovOps cloaks are nice. I hear that in the next expansion there is going to be a T1 frigate with a CovOps cloak. Which is nice, I suppose, especially if it will cost the same as navy frigates. Because I doubt it will cost as much as pirate ships, considering Sisters have agents in highsec, and missions are infinite. Which is a fundamental disconnect with core design of EVE, but there you go.

Anyway, researching ME on those blueprints wasn't really worth that much, because I didn't set up full production for those rigs anyway. Got scared by the costs I guess, hundreds of salvage pieces per rig add up. And I am getting close to first billion ISK. Mostly through basic T2 small hybrid gun production. Recently started to make some drones.

I keep forgetting to update the planetary production. I wonder how the Rubicon change here will turn out. Unless war declaration system is shaken up I fear that POCOs getting dominated by large alliances is something that will happen. Limited wars should really be a thing, limited to a system or a constellation that is. It would at least tie stakes to something.

In the meantime I built a missioning battleship. A rail Megathron. Basic one, not enough ISK to throw at a navy battleship. Also a Noctis. It seems to be doing reasonably fine, although obviously I am getting ISK at lower range for L4 missioning. Still, twenty million per hour is a lot considering how much can you get from ratting in lowsec, at least without enough backup to bring a battleship there. Or having a T3 I guess, although that seems risky, because someone would coordinate to jump that.

Alas, fundamental flaw of PvE in EVE is that it is designed as a time sink. Which is the nature of the subscription base game, but it means that one remains exposed to attack for much too long. And in lowsec these days someone will attack, usually within minutes. Occasionally seconds, if at a warpable location, like a belt or anomaly.

I doubt this will be resolved. Even if there were resources to rework PvE in EVE, which there clearly are not, it is not easy to designed a system which would actually work and be fun. Giving up a time sink, or at least moving the time sink from something requiring being exposed to something secure, with only short smash-and-grab operations, would help immensely. And it would be much more similar to PvP as well, which I am lead to believe consists mainly of waiting for other people, whether enemies or fleetmates, to show up.

I still ignore PvP. Or other people in general. Actually I don't play EVE all that much recently. I pay for the subscription and update skill queues and manufacturing though. It is somewhat relaxing, seeing numbers go up. And I am interested in the development process, still hoping that the promises of new space and such things will go somewhere. And it would just not be the same if I wasn't playing the game, at least minimally. I still like starships. Maybe I should one of these days get a bunch of simple frigates and go on a quasi-suicide lowsec roam. Or, how much DPS do you need to need to bring down a bubble, anyway? I find that I dislike drag bubbles. Do the owners get notified if those get shot at?