Catching the uncatchable
3rd November 2013 – 3.28 pmAlso posted on the EVE Online forums.
It seems reasonably clear that, in EVE Online, the rewards for certain activities are intended to get higher the more risk those activities entail. The level of reward also reflects the security status of the system the activity is performed in. A little reflection shows that the risk/reward structure coming from a system's security status is based on the risk of unscheduled capsuleer interaction, or PvP if you prefer. To show how this is the case consider planetary interaction, where there are richer resources under less competition in the lower security spaces, but where the only risk to reaping that reward is being caught by another capsuleer.
Before the industrial ship rebalance, a planet gooer pilot needed to make compromises: fit for survivability, or fit for capacity. Do you fit warp core stabilisers to help your ship escape an attacker, or expanded cargoholds to make fewer trips? On top of that was the choice of ship. Basic Tech 1 variants are cheap but liable to explode; you can afford to lose them, but you almost certainly will lose a few. Or a gooer could opt for the sturdier, cloakable, and inherently safer Tech 2 transports at the cost of two orders of magnitude more ISK. You're less likely to lose one, but it will sting if you do.
Now, with the introduction of the Epithal, there is no compromise to be made. Gooers have a ship with a vast bay, specific to the task and unmodifiable by fitted modules, leaving spare slots for a tank and room for four warp core stabilisers, all in a ship that is cheap enough to be disposable anyway. Carry more goo and get it home safely, in all classes of space where you should, by definition, be at risk from other capsuleers but no longer are.
I appreciate the desire to create tailored ship classes. I also appreciate that well-flown ships should be able to survive. And I am not decrying my lack of targets just because I see less explosions. My opening remarks hopefully show that planet gooers should be at risk from other pilots, precisely because they are the only risk planet gooers see for their increased reward. The design of the Epithal flouts this principle.
A simple fix, to restore the risk/reward structure that seems integral to the EVE Online, would be to reduce the number of low fitting slots on the Epithal. Strip the low fitting slots available down to two as a maximum, or perhaps just the one. After all, it probably doesn't need them anyway. The ship does what it is designed to do without any fitting, boosted now by skill training instead.
An alternative, if an extension to the meta game is preferred, is to introduce a new module, one that could even benefit more than the haulers-versus-gankers struggle I've outlined. Create a mid-slot module that acts as an infini-point against ships with warp core stabilisers fit, however many are on the ship, but does nothing against ships that have don't have any fit. Such a module would determine fitting choices for both gankers and haulers alike—as well as those faction warfare pilots frustrated by button-pushers—prompting questions and compromises for both.
Do you fit warp core stabilisers to the brim of your low slots, hoping that a ship with a standard disruptor or scrambler is waiting? Or do you gamble on someone hoping to catch you with WCS and go naked, fitting for agility? And does the attacker fit the WCS infini-pointer with a view to catching gooers, or other sneaky ships that don't intend to fight, or fit standard disruption for more standard encounters? Or fit both, relinquishing valuable utility fitting slots to ensure you catch your prey?
Of course, 'otherwise doing nothing' is not a great design for any module, so perhaps the WCS infini-pointer could act as a sub-standard webifier module if WCS are not fit, having maybe 50% the effect of the standard Tech 1 variant. This would make the module useful in conjunction with fitting a normal warp disruptor, but still not as efficient. And if the WCS infini-pointer is given the shortened range of a warp scrambler but without the ability to cut off micro warp drives then the chance of the target ship's capture is still not guaranteed, particularly when bearing in mind a non-WCS ship could be boosted in to warp sooner if webbed instead of warp-disrupted.
The WCS infini-pointer module may seem unbalanced, and may well actually be unbalanced, probably with some unintended consequences waiting to be found. It is just a first pass at an idea to keep space dangerous. But I don't think it breaks more than it fixes. Fitting both the new module and a standard scrambler isn't as good as combining a scrambler with a webifier, and not as expensive—in ISK or fitting compromise—as needing to fit two three-point faction scramblers to catch a basic Tech 1 industrial ship, which, frankly, seems perverse. Being caught by multiple ships with a spread of fitting would be no different from being caught by multiple ships with multiple points of warp disruption. And there always remains the option for a planet gooer to fit an ECM module or carry ECM drones to escape a lone ambusher. Or, you know, forget the module and just strip the Epithal of some low fitting slots.
43 Responses to “Catching the uncatchable”
"To show how this is the case consider planetary interaction, where there are richer resources under less competition in the lower security spaces, but where the only risk to reaping that reward is being caught by another capsuleer."
Some risk factors for doing PI in wh, as I would evaluate them:
Get your epithal caught at the POCO.
Get your epithal caught making a run to k-space.
Inherent risk of whatever further transport in k-space you do.
Risk of getting your POCO's blown up, without a wardec.
Risk of getting your POS blown up.
You appear to be arguing that only the first is a reasonable potential risk. If so, and none of the other things is risky, then apparently w-space isn't risky at all, and so PI in w-space shouldn't be risky either. A real in-depth look at PI risk factors in w-space compared to elsewhere would examine all the above factors. (p.s. there are, in actuality, a fair amount of stealth bomber/dictor teams, or solo dictors, roaming w-space looking for gooers, as an adaptation to the recent changes. When a change is made that favors the hunters of indy pilots, the inevitable refrain to any indy pilot who dares to complain about it is "HTFU or GTFO, adapt or die carebarrrreee!". I'm not saying that to you, just pointing out that would indeed be the parallel reply to you here, and perhaps that's the reply on the EVE-O forums that you're seeing.)
Addressing the special question: does the epithal seem a bit overpowered? Well, it's certainly a better option that what gooers had before. It's not any more powerful than the new Miasmos, Kryos, or Hoarder, so there's no problem there. Essentially, there are a ton of other subcaps that have been repeatedly buffed over the past 10 years, but T1 haulers have languished, getting less and less reasonable over time. In the end, your suggestion is pretty reasonably limited, as when a gooer is caught, all he has to do is put the PI back in the POCO, and he loses only the cheap disposable ship, as you've noted. I don't disagree with you, but I also don't really see why you really care about the issue, if you don't think the gooer loses anything of value either way, you've shot your own argument in the foot, in respect to it's relevance and importance, no? Basically if a random third party agrees with your argument, they would say, yeah, the epithal is a bit OP, but it doesn't really matter, it's not even worth a few hours of dev time to fix it at this point.
Each of the risks you list is a risk made by other capsuleers, and the first three are almost negated with the introduction of the PI haulers, excepting having to haul through null-sec k-space and the risk of bubbles.
if you don't think the gooer loses anything of value either way, you've shot your own argument in the foot, in respect to it's relevance and importance, no?
Previously, it was a choice between an expensive ship that is likely to survive or a cheap ship that isn't. Now a cheap ship with more cargo capacity is more likely to survive than the expensive ship with less capacity. The design aim was to increase ship choices, but the result has been to make one class of ship clearly superior to even its Tech II counterpart.
"Each of the risks you list is a risk made by other capsuleers, and the first three are almost negated with the introduction of the PI haulers, excepting having to haul through null-sec k-space and the risk of bubbles."
I think we're at this point in pretty firm agreement that the risks of w-space are made by other capsuleers, as we've each said it many times.
"The design aim was to increase ship choices, but the result has been to make one class of ship clearly superior to even its Tech II counterpart."
There is no Tech II specialized PI hauler.
p.s.
"There is no Tech II specialized PI hauler."
But I'm surprised that you're asking for the creation of such a ship, it will warp faster than an interceptor, be nullified like an interceptor, and carry 3 charon's worth of PI with the tank of a Moros. But if that's what you want, I'll batphone Fozzie and get it into the production queue.
But I'm surprised that you're asking for the creation of such a ship
I'm not, sorry for the confusion. I was referring to the previous versions of the T1 industrial ships having T2 counterparts that played the more specialised roles.
The previous choice was T1 hauler, T2 blockade runner, or T2 deep space transport. One was cheap, one could cloak and was agile, and one had cargo capacity and increased warp core strength.
Now the T1 hauler has greater capacity than the deep space transport and can add warp core stability without sacrificing that capacity, and its ability to warp clear means it doesn't need to cloak like the blockade runner. The options have been reduced to a single, extremely cheap ship. Personally, I see that as an imbalance.
"The options have been reduced to a single, extremely cheap ship. Personally, I see that as an imbalance."
I don't think you're understanding my counterargument to the above statement. Put simply, it is this:
With zero lowslots, the epithal would still be by far the best option to do PI transport between POCO and your POS, in wh space. Since your analysis and proposed fix doesn't affect or change what you've identified as the imbalance, your analysis and proposed fix aren't relevant.
My secondary counterargument would be that the specialized PI hauler should indeed be the best PI hauler, so I don't agree that it's an imbalance.
To restate my position more clearly, let me again say that I agree that 4 lowslots on the epithal does seem like an awful lot, and one might as well fill them with 3-4 wcs.
With zero low slots, you may choose to use a blockade runner if there isn't much goo to collect or move around. Or if you lose a few Epithals in a month to solo ambushers and get fed up replacing them you may choose to use a deep space transport, sacrificing some capacity for survivability.
And, yes, a good comparison would be to view the Epithal as a ship designed with +3 or +4 warp core strength by default, and consider how powerful that seems.
"With zero low slots, you may choose to use a blockade runner if there isn't much goo to collect or move around. Or if you lose a few Epithals in a month to solo ambushers and get fed up replacing them you may choose to use a deep space transport, sacrificing some capacity for survivability."
No, I would never do either of those things.
Reducing the low slots of the epithal would affect my decisions on logistics between w-space, and k-space though, which I forgot to mention previously, and I would likely return to moving some PI to/from k-space in blockade runners again.
Thanks for the discussion. It seems like we agree that the specialized haulers, in general, have too many low-slots.
I am a carebear and sometimes roaming hauler ganker who lives in a low class wormhole. I do a lot of PI and love the Epithal. I have two variants - a triple stabbed shield tank version with cloak and a 19k EHP armor tanked version with AB, scram and 2 webs.
I fly the latter almost exclusively in the hope that one day a bomber, recon, or cloaky T3 will try to gank me and I can hold it in place long enough to get my cloaky Proteus alt to the fight. Hasn't happened yet but the hope of this "player interaction" happening is one of the few things that makes the PI tedium slightly tolerable.
There are options other than T3's to catch stabbed Epithal's - Hics (especially after the Rubicon warp speed changes), Dics, 2+ T3's with scrams, 2+ bombers with scrams, drag bubbles on pocos. Sure these all take more effort than roaming solo in a cloaky Loki and the damned discovery scanner makes it harder to set a trap but there are still ways.
I just don't think that the Epithal is as OP as you believe and that having the low slots at least also give the ship a PVP option.
I would rather CCP spent time finding some way to disable or delay the discovery scanner in WH space so as to bring back the feel and fear of the unknown. It is too damn safe and boring now and I say that as someone who spends a good part of my playtime care-bearing.
Love your blog - the fear of having you appear one day in my hole keeps me clicking that D-scan button and (sigh) watching the discovery scanner :)
Thanks, Rammstein. And Thanks, mjTomasi.
I don't mind bait haulers. I almost fell foul to one recently, but they screwed up their timing. But that's a tale to be told. The issue that I see is that you can act as bait, tank the attacker, and still get away when help comes.
Personally, I see requiring two ships to catch a basic T1 industrial ship perverse, and setting up drag bubbles will be seen on d-scan, as will a HIC, given even minimal piloting skills beyond waking up and pointing a ship at a POCO.
I agree that needing two ships to catch a T1 hauler is a little perverse but at least it provides a new challenge for the hunter. Unfair challenge maybe but Eve is not been fair in my experience.
Wouldn't finding a skilled way to do it reliably with one ship bring greater satisfaction to the hunter? Maybe bumping - haulers take a while to align - or use the new SOE cruiser with dual scrams or double scram T3 - refit if need be at Rubicon space yurt out of DScan range or cloaky Sabre at the customs office?
The Rubicon warp speed changes are going to make interceptors and interdictors deadly in all space as they will be on top of larger ships in seconds before they have any hope of aligning and warping. This should also help.
Even if the Epithal had fewer low slots so that you could scram it reliably then all you get is and easy hauler kill and the planet goo'er loses not very much in return. I know i feel "safe" in my three stab Epithal and often get careless - spend longer at customs offices that I should, I even do PI with open active connections. This enhanced feeling of safety could work in favor of a skilled hunter.
Never not rely on the power of dumb. Even since the discovery scanner I have managed to gank people who insist on mining with open connections, haul the same route repeatedly in a Bestower, get polarized on a HS hole, and return to finish a null sec exploration site despite me being in local for the last hour. I doubt some of these people would see your Sabre or bubble on DScan.
Using my wits to catch someone being dumb isn't much of a feeling, to be honest.
Maybe both of you are right. Either I gimp my fit to catch these new breed of ships, try to make more friends, or just let planet gooers run free and accept that I'm not losing anything anyway.
I've yet to be tackled at a POCO. The reason for this is pretty simple: I don't warp straight to the POCO, I bounce somewhere.
I've snagged a few POCO-runners. The ones that use many stabs and or blockade runners are of course hard to catch, but there are solutions for that to. HIC's, is one example. The only thing stopping how much effort I put into it is how bored I am. Or possibly how much I want to tick off the locals.
Yes, it is possible to catch the new haulers, with solutions like using HICs, or higher-alpha ships, or multiple pilots. They don't really seem like good solutions for catching a T1 hauler, though.
And, as you note, there were already piloting options for avoiding being caught, which then required concomitant piloting skills from anyone wanting to catch them. Now the answer to facing the technical problem of a ship fitting a rack of warp core stabilisers is to bump them.
I totally agree on the premise you (seem to) have that the new specialized haulers are 'to good'. This is the problem with fixing things that are not (really) broken. The haulers where fine as was. They are just lorries for crying out loud!
"They are just lorries for crying out loud!"
Thousands of years in the future, "just lorries" will be driven by robots. It sounds like you are arguing that I should be able to collect PI from my POCOS with cheap, easily disposable robots, while I'm off in Jita carousing with Exotic Dancers. I think that's bad for gameplay, but the Dancers(male and female both) agree with you.
Not arguing that at all. I strongly think that there should be very few non-effort ISK-faucets in the game. (If any at all.) What I was trying to convey was my opinion that putting effort into 're-balancing' said lorries would better used re-balancing other things.
Good complaint, Penny. I have made the same complaint myself. Indeed I tried to warn my CSM about it before Odyssey. As I said then:
This thing will do for the planet-goo game roughly what the Venture did for the gassing game -- make it very hard for the wandering monsters to kill anybody. ...
I would suggest to Rise removing at least one low slot from each of the specialized Iterons, and I think even 2 is not unreasonable. If you don't need cargo expanders, having 4 lows means you get everything you really want. 3 slots is most of what you want. 2 lows creates an interesting choice.
The old balance was that a single general-purpose fit hunter, if it managed to get in scramble range of a T1 industrial, would be able to kill it unless the industrial was heavily gimped for its primary mission of hauling.
The new balance is that it requires a hunter to fit two scramblers, thereby gimping it for doing anything but hunting stabbed-up ships. Or, you can hunt with two people, thereby eliminating 90% of the hunting which goes on, because almost hunting is done solo. Or you can hunt in a non-cloaky ship, which is good way to get killed if you roam more than a wormhole or two from home.
Thanks for the link, VK.
It does seem to me that if you add a specialist bay to a ship that cannot then be modified with modules, the fitting slots that were previously used to fulfil the specialisation then become unnecessary.
And your final paragraph distills my argument nicely. I don't see why a space-van should be able to survive and evade a gunship quite so easily.
"I don't see why a space-van should be able to survive and evade a gunship quite so easily."
Stop comparing t1 haulers to real life vans/lorries! As was pointed out just a few posts above, if you want realism, haulers would ALL be cloaked, ALL be driven by robots, and ALL cheap cheap cheap. Botting against rules of game? Unrealistic. Cloaky haulers costing 150m isk? Unrealistic. In this realistic world, PI would be picked up from the poco in small lots in a small robot cloaked frigate, very often, and the only reasonable means of interdiction would be with more robot frigates, this time attack frigates. CCP doesn't want that, so we have unrealistic hero ships doing jobs in seconds or minutes instead. An unrealistic hero ship is NOT a van or a lorry, it's a magical space submarine of cargo hauling doom.
The epithal is not, then, a space-van which is much too hard to kill. It's a magical space submarine of cargo-hauling doom with a few too many low-slots.
We don't want so much realism as to swallow the game. So, no minirobots fighting each other while we are asleep. So, yes: we are in the realm of magical space submarines.
There was a balance between hunters and prey before Odyssey. There is a new balance after Odyssey. We compare the two on aesthetic and economic grounds and find the new balance wanting.
That's exactly what I just said; so obviously we agree.
Saying that an industrial ship is a space-van is not arguing for realism, it's making an analogy. And a basic Tech 1 hauler is meant to be just that: a cargo hold strapped to an engine, in the same way that a freighter can be considered equivalent to a container ship.
If you would like a different analogy: I don't see why a magical space submarine of cargo-hauling doom with a few too many low slots should be able to survive and evade a magical space submarine of unethical weapon-toting mass destruction and overwhelming EWAR technology quite so easily.
Congratulations, you've come to the conclusion for epithals that we low-sec residents have been crying about for over a year. Namely that an activity that is built to promote conflict (FW plexing or planet gooing) should not be able to avoid all reasonable risk with no impact to efficiency (in both cases through the use of warp core stabs).
In the case of stabbed FW farmers, I've got a dual-scram slasher that I've had dozens of kills with. The same doesn't really work so well for w-space though.
Although my w-space PI alts have much more carefree lives now with their 2-stab, nano, DC2 fit, I completely agree that the lack of risk breaks the system.
"If you would like a different analogy: I don't see why..."
I much prefer your second analogy, thanks ;)
But, asking "why" isn't the way to go.
1. I don't know why.
2. CCP does know why, and if they told you why, you'd still dislike the current situation just as much, you'd just know how and why they went wrong, from your point of view.
3. Maybe CCP actually doesn't know why, committees sometimes blast out compromise versions of ideas, and no one ends up really knowing why anything on that compromise version is the way it is--it's just what people were able to agree on. I doubt CCP would come out and say that, but anyone who's worked on a joint project has had that experience.
@araziah: FW and PI are built to promote conflict, equally as much in your viewpoint...what? In your opinion, are nullsec sov mechanics and level 1 missions in highsec also equally built to promote conflict?
Why not just change your argument to "ANY ACTIVITY IN EVE should not be able to avoid all reasonable risk with no impact to efficiency . " You reach the same conclusion in this case, without having to argue that PI is just like FW, which is a little weird.
New idea: Wait til nov 19. Obtain yurt. Roam. See a gooer. Get out of dscan range. Refit to 5 points of warp disruption. Kill the gooer. Refit back to normal fit.
I suggest cloaky interdictors... nullified cloaky interdictors.
Ok ok, I can dream, can't I?
An option I first considered was a new strategic cruiser propulsion subsystem, which would allow the ship to generate a small warp bubble around it, of perhaps 10 km radius.
That would probably be too powerful, though, particularly if it wasn't then linked to the recalibration delay suffered from decloaking, as it would effectively let T3s sneak up and immediately trap a target.
Rammstein, the yurt idea has merit, but I think the way wspace killers will use it is the reverse of your suggestion. Epithals are very time-sensitive; they go out and goo and they are done in the course of a minute. Whereas if you find wrecks, there is often a considerable amount of time to maneuver before anything is going to happen.
So, roam in the +4 or +5 warp disruption fit. If you find something interesting that's a not a Epithal or Venture, yurt/refit/go.
I really can't be bothered to refit further to catch crappy T1 industrial haulers. And I say 'further' because I already adapted my fit from a warp disruptor, to a warp scrambler, to a +3 faction warp scrambler, mostly in order to catch those pilots who gimped their own ships' capability in favour of survivability. Now their capability is not being gimped in fitting a rack of warp core stabilisers, and it is my combat ship's fitting that will need to be gimped to stop them. No, that's wrong, and I won't do it.
I can see this heading back to wondering why I care so much about popping ships that are so cheap to be disposable, and if I care so much then why don't I adapt my fitting appropriately. It's not that I care about catching them, it's more that I consider something wrong that I can't.
I'm in an all-purpose combat ship, but still a combat ship. I come across an industrial ship that, for a long time, was flimsy and prone to explode with the slightest provocation. It serves as a cheap thrill to see if I can make that ship explode. I was either helped along should the ship be fit for capacity, as the expanded cargoholds compromised the ship's hull; or I was thwarted by the extra warp core strength of a ship that could carry little more than a grapefruit. Either way, I took my shot and moved on, and whatever the conclusion it was nothing more than a basic encounter.
Now I find that the industrial ship can carry all it wants without compromising its structural integrity, whilst having a warp core strength envied by deep space transports. My minor encounters now almost inevitably result in the industrial ship's escape, to the point where this occasional minor thrill is gone.
I'll try for an analogy. Consider contemporary arcade driving games, where there are advertising boards placed within the environment. You drive your car faster than normal, and occasionally find a billboard you can blast through, smashing it to pieces and giving you a little message about how many you've destroyed. It's got little to do with driving, apart from the minor skill required to aim at some of the more awkwardly positioned billboards, and adds nothing of real value to your gaming experience beyond getting a cheap thrill of destroying property.
The driving game gets a new patch. You think nothing of it. At least, not until you find your billboards have been replaced by those that flip down just as you are about to drive through them, or are strong enough that your car just bounces off without destroying them. You persevere and continue to try to destroy the billboards, but each time you fail. Before long, you give up, and although the driving game itself is unchanged you kinda miss the little thrill you got from occasionally slamming bonnet-first through advertising hoardings, and each one you pass by reminds you of what you once enjoyed.
I've Blown up multiple Epithals since their release and from what I can tell it's often one of the following reasons:
- People don't always fit them pure WCS.
- People don't tank them well because they feel save with all WCS.
- You can still bump them (mentioned like 100x already).
- Bubbles!
With the upcoming warp speed changes I feel like any kind of hauler will be put in a much worse position. Where you had to follow an industrial in warp and maybe sometimes arrived at the POCO before it, any Covops frig (triple scram + rocket Buzzard!) or interdictor will totally tackle those haulers regardless of where they warp. Heck, even those Cloaked T3's will be in a great position warping ahead of that.
Either way, my alt is sitting on that static in a cloaked interdictor, just waiting for those gooers to warp off. 100% pod snatch rate as well on those!
-Tren
Manticore/Nemesis:
High: Left as an exercise for the reader
Mid: prop, 3 x scram
Low: Cap regen
Rigs: also cap regen?
Force Recon:
High: Left as an exercise for the reader
Mid: prop, 3 x scram, sebo, cap booster
Low: anti drone tank
Rigs: 3 x targeting system stabs
Drones: yes
Rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock.
You are welcome.
'You are welcome'?
You can take your condescending attitude and stick it right back up your arsehole. I kept my cool on the forum thread in the face of outright abuse because I wanted to address the issue, but I don't have to take this kind of shit from pusillanimous fools on my blog.
You, sir, are a fucking idiot. You have not understood my argument, and you have not presented a solution. Fitting combat ships to do nothing but catch basic industrial ships is exactly what I do not want to do. Catching haulers is a pastime, a distraction, not my main goal when I am in space. Even considering that, I should be able to catch them because it is precisely my kind of action that makes space dangerous for them in the first place.
Did you hear about 'rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock' on The Big Bang Theory and do you think repeating here makes you sound nerdy smart? Or maybe you just sound like the sort of pretentious, contemptible know-it-all that everyone secretly hates. It used to be a game of rock-paper-scissors, before the change, when the ship fitting affected the capacity, agility, and warp core strength of the hauler in mutually exclusive ways, which then affected how ambushers would fit their ships. But now, as you clearly haven't being paying attention, the fitting of the hauler does not affect its carrying capacity.
There is no meta-game to catching the haulers any more. Either you fit specifically to catch them or they get away. I am not fitting to catch a crappy hauler. Take your ridiculous fits and your self-righteous attitude and get lost.
+ 1
I don't always fly ships specifically to catch stabbed PI haulers in w-space, but when I do I don't.
"Carry more goo and get it home safely, in all classes of space where you should, by definition, be at risk from other capsuleers but no longer are."
I've been seeing more and more epithal kills in my corp with the triple-scram SB fit given above, another one just 5 minutes ago. Those SB's can kill epithals quickly and efficiently, and a lot of people are flying them, so epithals are indeed still at risk--how much less risk depends on what percentage of gooer-hunters are still flying non-triple scrammed hunting ships. It's maybe up to 50/50 at this point, but I doubt it's settled down to equilibrium yet. In the main, PI is safe not because it's difficult to catch them, but because a lot more people do PI in wormholes than roam around specifically trying to catch them--in my experience.
"There is no meta-game to catching the haulers any more. Either you fit specifically to catch them or they get away. "
"Now I find that the industrial ship can carry all it wants without compromising its structural integrity, whilst having a warp core strength envied by deep space transports."
Let's take a fresh look at this situation; let's all step back and look at the mathematics of the situation without thinking about real life metaphors or emotional attachments to gameplay. Being as detached and objective as I can:
Old situation: Haulers have to make a choice between more safety, or more capacity. Hunters can use their normal fit to catch most haulers.
New situation: Haulers no longer have to make a choice between safety and capacity. Hunters now have to make a choice between catching haulers and being nerfed for most other tasks, or staying with their old fit but being unable to catch most haulers.
What we're seeing is that much of the element of fitting choice has been removed from haulers, which you say is a bad thing, and added to hunters, which you also say is a bad thing. I have a hard time seeing how this is no longer a 'meta-game', just because an element of choice has passed from one party to another. Looking at this, I can see a possible justification for CCP's changes, saying that PI hauling is intrinsically more boring than hunting, and that they should have a specific ship to do it in quickly and efficiently, making that limited fitting choice the aiming point for interesting choices for the hunters, who already had way more choices in what to hunt, how to hunt them, etc, and now have one more choice, instead of giving haulers the choice between 2 choices, neither one seeming all that appealing.
/end thought experiment, back to analyzing the results from my normal and limited perspective
Basically, you're saying that these changes have removed some of the fun from hunting in wh's. My questions to you, Penny, are this:
Which is more fun for you, in your mind's eye if you've never done either: hunting gooers in a triple scrammed stealth bomber, or actually doing PI for the same amount of time?
Which is more fun for you, as above, hunting wormholes in a strategic cruiser in general, after the epithal buff, or actually doing PI for the same amount of time?
If hunting is still more fun than doing PI, either or both of the above hunting options, than perhaps the new state of gameplay is not quite as imbalanced as you think. Obviously, ISK-making potential gets factored in to the gameplay balance as well, either directly or indirectly through market forces. (If PI is now more fun for you than hunting, then feel free to hit me up for some tips on getting started up--obviously I don't expect this to be the case, though)
I don't mean to be offensive or upset you further by posting on this topic again, but I'm just trying to point out that at this point the discussion seems to have shifted more from being about absolute lack of risk, to being about the changes making things less fun; and that you've only looked at the activity being more or less fun from one side, as yet--and that this activity has two sides. As someone who does a fair amount of PI, I'll say that the epithal makes PI more fun than doing it with the old, underpowered t1 haulers was. Comparing it with a DST is misleading, the DST are trash and they never got used even before Odyssey. Balancing ships for PVP when both sides have similar goals and choices is tough enough, think about the task facing CCP when balancing the situation here, where there are two sides engaged in asymmetric conflict, and both sides want their task to be fun and challenging, but not too challenging; where some people will always want things to be left as they were because they found that fun; and some people will always want change because they think things will get stagnant otherwise. I think overall Fozzie/Rise are doing a great job rebalancing, but they'll never please everyone--and if you're unhappy with them now, just wait until they rebalance your Loki :/
I'm afraid I didn't read the forum post or comments, sorry, and sorry for the abuse.
Yeah I just watched that episode recently and thought it was neat. My girlfriend finds it to be an education on dating scientists/engineers (maybe she means "contemptible know-it-all that everyone secretly hates").
That response is exactly what I would have said to anyone in chat saying they were having trouble catching haulers, maybe I've been spending too much time in noob chats.
I believe the Epithal deserves a paper to its rock. It sounds like catching basic industrial ships is an after thought for you. It is not a fucking after thought to the hauler pilot.
The Epithal is specific to the task, people would laugh if I used anything else. Yes it is a cheap ship but I'm typically hauling more than 20Misk worth. Would it make you feel better if the ship was worth 20Misk too?
How many uses do you think the Loki should be able to fill all at the same time? Good tank, good dps, warp cloaked, combat probes, and immune to bubbles but still you want to be able to catch every single non-combat ship with no compromises? You aren't even considering flying a different ship because of this.
It's like you're saying you are missing blackbird kills because of ECM, but refuse to fit ECCM simply because you are in a T3 and killing blackbirds an after thought.
Anyway, I'm going to go cry about my fucking idiocy now.
If it makes you feel any better I just lost an Epithal. 2 bombers, 3 scramblers total. Guess they took it more seriously than I did, and I appreciate that.
It's not that I think my Loki should be able to catch every ship, no. And there is evidence in at least one post of mine, which I don't expect anyone except me to remember, that I refitted a combat ship with ECCM when anticipating an encounter with a Blackbird.
I do, however, expect my Loki, a capable combat ship, fitted with close-range autocannons, a sensor booster, and a faction scrambler, to be able to catch basic industrial haulers more often than not. I'm not expecting to catch Blockade Runners, or Deep Space Transports (however little they are used), or cov-ops, or to take down an Orca solo before reinforcements or ECM chase me off, although I try and occasionally succeed.
None of those posts, or any other available example, contain complaints about warp core stabilisers, inherently slippery ships, or ECM. Even when a basic Badger gets away from me, when I am trying to bump it, I accept the result. This really isn't a complaint about anything but the changes to the T1 haulers making a basic ship being able to fulfil its primary function and evade an encounter with a pretty capable combat ship without compromising that primary function in any way.
I don't blame you, or anyone else, for using the Epithal, much as I don't blame anyone for using the ridiculous discovery scanner. (I use the discovery scanner myself, but always with a tinge of regret that it even exists.) You'd be foolish not to. That doesn't mean its redesign doesn't have its shortfalls. With its fitting not affecting its primary purpose, nearly all of the meta-game of fitting is now removed from piloting haulers.
And straying off-topic, yeah, the Big Bang Theory is a fine show. I know that the characters aren't exactly realistic, but I see them more as a conglomeration of types, somewhat tempered to be more audience-friendly. What I really like is that, occasionally, the gloves come off the characters and their unappealing sides really come out, like Raj being obnoxious, or Kripke being disgusting.
Anyway, sorry that I threw some frustration your way. If you've know read some of the other replies, I hope you can understand why I got het up.
What we're seeing is that much of the element of fitting choice has been removed from haulers, which you say is a bad thing, and added to hunters, which you also say is a bad thing.
I'm actually saying that it is bad that combat ships need to fit specifically to catch haulers, a ship class that really should be vulnerable to most combat ships, and in such a way that the fitting makes the combat ship sub-optimal for almost any other circumstance. I'm not insinuating that adding fitting choices to hunters is bad.
I can see a possible justification for CCP's changes, saying that PI hauling is intrinsically more boring than hunting, and that they should have a specific ship to do it in quickly and efficiently
That's fine, although a poor design decision if the case. Instead of making a boring task quicker, it would be much more preferable to make it less boring.
I also reject the idea that PI hauling is intrinsically more boring than hunting. Some people haul as a choice, a choice that they would prefer to hunting, which itself they don't find interesting. They are different tasks, for different mindsets. And as part of the choice, hauling is influenced by the risks involved, and how those risks are mitigated by fitting decisions. Taking those fitting decisions away from the hauler and eliminating many of the risks would then, I would argue, make hauling more boring, by making each run the same.
I ask you: is PI hauling actually more fun, or is it really just less tedious?
Which is more fun for you, in your mind's eye if you've never done either: hunting gooers in a triple scrammed stealth bomber, or actually doing PI for the same amount of time?
Which is more fun for you, as above, hunting wormholes in a strategic cruiser in general, after the epithal buff, or actually doing PI for the same amount of time?
I don't do PI, and probably never will, but from my indirect experience it seems that collecting planet goo takes a few minutes at most, as you bounce from one planet to the next. With the specialised holds, it must be really quick now. To hunt 'for the same amount of time' would barely get a ship in to a target system and outside the tower, and that's with all the scanning already done and bookmarks to the tower created.
Hunting for me in general involves scanning out of the home system, scouting the next system, scanning that system if no one's around, getting to the next system, and repeating. Even with quick scanning skills it can take half-an-hour before seeing another pilot. The only time I've got in to action quickly is when colleagues have been on-line, scanned and left bookmarks, and have a target in their sights when I appear. I imagine a session of collecting planet goo would take five minutes or so from log-on to being safely back in the tower. There just isn't a time-for-time comparison.
Disregarding the time comparison, I wouldn't go hauler hunting in a triple-scrammed bomber. The likelihood of finding an active PI hauler would be minimal, and I would be in a ship that would be good for little else. It wouldn't be fun.
Hunting in w-space after the Epithal introduction is noticeably less fun, because if I see such a hauler I am unlikely to stop to see if it does anything, precisely because the chance of catching one is minimal. On many days, stumbling in to a hauler getting ready to collect goo was about the only interaction I would find, and I would wait for just the chance to chase it. If it got away, fair enough. If it did nothing, also fair enough, albeit dull. But now, why even bother watching it? There will only be so many that slip away from me before I give up even trying. That will reduce the number of viable targets, and make w-space hunting less interesting and less fun.
"I'm actually saying that it is bad that combat ships need to fit specifically to catch haulers, a ship class that really should be vulnerable to most combat ships, and in such a way that the fitting makes the combat ship sub-optimal for almost any other circumstance. I'm not insinuating that adding fitting choices to hunters is bad."
If fitting choices don't make your ship less viable for the thing you're not fitting for, than it's not much of a choice--which is my answer to your argument above, and also seems to be your critique of the change to Epithals. Perhaps we should agree to disagree on the "fitting options" part of this debate, as I'm not sure I see either of us moving at all on it.
"That's fine, although a poor design decision if the case. Instead of making a boring task quicker, it would be much more preferable to make it less boring."
Got any ideas to improve it? Let CCP know if you do :)
"Taking those fitting decisions away from the hauler and eliminating many of the risks would then, I would argue, make hauling more boring, by making each run the same."
If the arguments are going to be this centered on fitting decisions for hauling or the lack thereof, perhaps you should shift your initial target for feedback to freighters and JFs, which don't have any slots whatsoever; and leave the epithal for later, as it has 9 or 10 slots.
"I ask you: is PI hauling actually more fun, or is it really just less tedious?"
That's a false dichotomy. Take a fun activity, add tediousness, it is now less fun. Whether its lines at Disneyland, breaking down at the side of the road on a leisurely drive on a scenic route, getting stuck behind a ton of RVs on that same route, playing EVE on a slow and laggy computer on a bad internet connection, or going out with a beautiful lady who keeps talking about the same subject, adding tediousness removes fun, reliably and predictably. To talk about them as if they are unconnected is not accurate.
"I don't do PI, and probably never will, but from my indirect experience it seems that collecting planet goo takes a few minutes at most, as you bounce from one planet to the next. With the specialised holds, it must be really quick now. To hunt 'for the same amount of time' would barely get a ship in to a target system and outside the tower, and that's with all the scanning already done and bookmarks to the tower created."
Your indirect experience, as is often the case, is not an acceptable substitute for actual experience. Harvesting PI takes between under a minute to well over a minute per planet, depending on whether the planet is a straight extraction planet or a complicated factory planet. If you have 4 accounts with 3 pilots each doing PI with lvl 5 IPC, that's 72 planets, which could easily be 2+ hours of PI transport, although that 3 hours is only every few weeks, as most days you don't actually have to pickup from your extraction planets, and I don't know of many people who would run 72 planets in a WH with all 72 being factory planets--I don't know many people who run 72 planets at all, for that matter, but I do know more than one, and I know them pretty well.
"That will reduce the number of viable targets, and make w-space hunting less interesting and less fun."
While that's not intrinsically a good thing, that all goes into the balancing of fun, looking at it from both sides thing, that I mentioned before. Let's go at from yet another angle. Are YOU a good target for hunters? You're harder to catch than an epithal, with lower align time, cloak, etc--although without those evil stabs. Apparently you got caught by a bait procurer backed up by a large fleet, yesterday, but excepting bait tactics like that, it doesn't seem like your ship is a good target. Are the cloaky Stealth Bombers that are now the best way to catch epithals, according to some people, viable targets for you? If they are, then I say "go forth and hunt them", there's a new ship for you to hunt, people roaming in stealthy bombers which are nerfed for any other purpose, making them perfect targets for you, replacing those stupid slow epithals as targets, with even more fun new targets! If cloaky ships aren't a good target for you, then perhaps we can come to a compromise, where we remove the low slots from epithals, and also remove cloaking from wormholes--that way you get the additional targets you want, plus even more new targets. Talk about a win-win situation.
No, that's not a serious suggestion, just a way to point out that cloaks and stabs have some analogous utility, enabling ships which fit them to have additional options in deciding which fights to take, and which to not--which I imagine you'd respond to by saying you're flying a tech3 cruiser, not a t1 hauler, at which point I again counter that if you're suggesting that Fozzie implement t2 and t3 versions of the epithal, I agree, that would be awesome. I really don't want to go around in circles, but I feel like debating ship fitting choices has a real danger of ending up that way, as there are inherent circles already present in ships systems and designs as they exist now, ready and waiting to channel new arguments down them as soon as they form. If this reply didn't contain some points besides the pure ship fitting debates, I'd delete it instead of hitting 'submit comment'
That's a false dichotomy. Take a fun activity, add tediousness, it is now less fun.
It's a valid question. If you take a tedious activity and reduce the time spent doing it, that doesn't necessarily translate it to becoming fun. I don't find queueing fun, however short the queue is. Being stuck behind a slow car is never fun, however little time is spent behind them. Your examples seem to imply that PI itself can be fun, being the scenic drive, but hauling the PI around is tedious, getting stuck behind a slow vehicle. I might agree. I don't find hauling fun, just a necessary activity sometimes. But making the time spent hauling short doesn't magically make it fun, it just makes the tedious part shorter.
My question, modified, stands: was PI hauling tedious before and, if so, is it now simply less tedious? Or has the Epithal actually made it fun? If so, what about the ship makes it fun?
Your indirect experience, as is often the case, is not an acceptable substitute for actual experience.
You asked for my opinion, my own experience notwithstanding. I provided it.
If cloaky ships aren't a good target for you
I have never complained about a target fitting a cloak.
just a way to point out that cloaks and stabs have some analogous utility, enabling ships which fit them to have additional options in deciding which fights to take, and which to not
And what fights would a stabbed hauler pick?
"My question, modified, stands: was PI hauling tedious before and, if so, is it now simply less tedious? Or has the Epithal actually made it fun? If so, what about the ship makes it fun?"
Ah, I see what you are driving at now. Right, just as the slower warp speeds of battleships might make flying battleships for pvp less fun post-rubicon, for some, with the less fun part being concentrated in the 'warping the battleship around to get to the actual location where the fighting occurs', for those who don't actually enjoy just traveling in a battleship for 15 jumps; the reason that I think epithals make doing PI more fun is that they reduce the tedious part of PI, the hauling large quantities of it around part, shorter. PI for me is a many step process, starting with extraction planets and purchasing some p1's, and ending with the production of POS modules and fuel blocks. When you can pick up all the PI from a factory planet's POCO in one go it doesn't feel like queueing, when that same trip takes 4 trips it does. That feeling of 'queueing vs not queueing' can't be boiled down to ISK/hr, it is what it is. I don't generally get that specific, but if we're seriously going to talk about what makes things fun, it will never be completely logical.
"You asked for my opinion, my own experience notwithstanding. I provided it."
Yes, I remember, that was only a few hours ago. Let's imagine that I had asked you the canonical question about opinions, "which flavor of ice cream do you prefer, chocolate or vanilla". Your response, hypothetically, was "I've never had ice cream, but I watched a movie about it, and chocolate ice cream made the protagonist fly through the air like a Rifter! Woo!" I would probably reply, "yea, indirect experience is no substitute for actual experience. Chocolate ice cream doesn't actually make you, a normal human being, fly through the air like a Rifter, maybe a CNR at best, but a Rifter, no way". If you then replied "you asked my opinion, and I provided it", I would be speechless, as I would normally now go to an analogy about Ice Cream there but we'd already be in the midst of just such an analogy. Luckily that's hypothetical, and we're actually talking about PI. (insert joke about PI a la mode here)
"I have never complained about a target fitting a cloak."
I never dreamed you would. --And if I did, I was cloaked at the time, so there's no way you could know about it, and neither do I.
"And what fights would a stabbed hauler pick?"
Probably ones in which his corpmates happened to be nearby in a Loki, two Proteus strategic cruisers, an Ishtar heavy assault cruiser, a Broadsword heavy interdictor, and a Falcon recon ship; to pick a random example completely at random, with no use of my browsers cut-and-paste function except for some judicious cutting and pasting.
(all humor intended in a friendly and not snide way, apparently I had too much chocolate ice cream today)
p.s. Let me just add that travel in EVE is quite tedious; but I still believe that to remove travel from EVE would be to destroy it. If EVE had one market like WoW instead of every station having its own market, insta-teleports to wherever you want to fight or mission, etc, it would be a much lesser game.
So, when I say that doing PI in an epithal is more fun than doing PI was pre-epithal, and that perhaps that added fun balances out the fun that hunters have lost, in some respects, that's not the same as me saying that if I were in Fozzie's shoes, I'd think I'd done a great job with the epithal design. There's more to design than maximizing fun for all players; EVE is a great MMO not because it's more fun than most other MMOs, but because it's more real. (for a certain sense of 'real' and 'more', magical submarines of doom and all) Perhaps PI was better when it was a bit more tedious, ask me in a year.
The real question(s) here is "which playstyle deserves to have its fun buffed the most, in this and other respects", and then parallel questions such as which playstyles need ISK generation buffed/nerfed, which playstyles need their influence buffed/nerfed, etc. Those are hard questions, and I don't know enough about EVE to think I know the answers. I'm just pointing out some little facts that I see on the edges of those questions.