Supercapitals, Ponies and Rainbows.

[Numtini]

who's never set foot in nulsec.

People who are getting their arses kicked in nullsec should go easy on the random put-downs. If you were as pro as you think you are you wouldn't be losing. You would also be able to spell the word.

I was referring to the fact that this "jump bridges are an I win button" meme was basically the panic du jour on the message boards, blogs, and twitter starting last December, promoted almost exclusively by empire and lowsec players who'd never actually used a jump bridge.

If you're pimping that meme even post-nerf and you're in nulsec. Well that's just sad.

[Reg]

Why would players who have never used jump bridges, whose lives are completely unaffected by jump bridges want to see them nerfed? Is it some kind of vast conspiracy against 0.0 players?

[Numtini]

Why would players who have never used jump bridges, whose lives are completely unaffected by jump bridges want to see them nerfed? Is it some kind of vast conspiracy against 0.0 players?

You got me, mixture of nulsec envy and opinions being like assholes? Removing jump bridges was brought up at the last meeting of CSM 5 which I think had only 1 nulsec member and they heartily endorsed it. Obviously nulsec players weren't happy, particularly logistics people. But the objections were met with rabid frothing on the main Eve forums, on blogs, and in the CSM election. The two memes that really took off were the fantasy that fleets regularly moved from one side of the northern coalition to the other through jump bridges or that fleets used jump bridges to hop ahead of fleeing ships and cut them off.

The funniest suggestion I heard was an empire candidate for CSM advocating making Jump Bridges require fuel, change the amount of fuel by the size of the ship, and allow them to be damaged and shut down. All of which have always been how jump bridges work.

It was a big factor in the nulsec alliances putting a lot of emphasis on getting candidates into CSM6.

[Amaron]

Why would players who have never used jump bridges, whose lives are completely unaffected by jump bridges want to see them nerfed? Is it some kind of vast conspiracy against 0.0 players?

A lot of people want to move into nullsec but don't.  Thus they suggest changes with no real knowledge of what they are talking about.  Basically they are just trying to think up ways to make nullsec more hospitable.   Doesn't mean they are correct but their intentions are usually at least better than people satisfied with the super alliance blobbing.

[Reg]

Fair enough. It's pretty crazy that CCP actually paid attention to them though.

[ajax34i]

IMO they need to figure out a way to balance the manufacturing rate for supercapitals to the loss rate, and then give them a really obvious Achille's heel (that can be targetted / shot at even when facing a supercap blob or overwhelming numbers, so that there's a chance for a subcap fleet to destroy a few of these things).

[Numtini]

Fair enough. It's pretty crazy that CCP actually paid attention to them though.

The entire thing with CSM 5 and CCP Greyscale was weird as hell. Reading the notes, there was a discussion on how to make force projection, particularly by capitals, more difficult. "the CSM referenced player discussion of changes to make capital deployment more strategic and less tactical, and asked Greyscale how, in his personal opinion, the problem could be addressed. Greyscale: The harder we can make logistics, the better for the game viewed as an abstract system." There was a long discussion of how to nerf alliance logistics, a CSM then suggested removing jump bridges and nobody objecting, CCP Greyscale replied "Sweet!"

The result was that jump bridges were significantly nerfed and absolutely nothing was done to supercaps or caps which defacto made caps and supercaps even more significant.

[Stabs]

Why would players who have never used jump bridges, whose lives are completely unaffected by jump bridges want to see them nerfed? Is it some kind of vast conspiracy against 0.0 players?

I can't speak for players who have never used jump bridges but the reason I want to see them, jump freighters and cynos nerfed is that I think it's a worse game if people can easily route around danger (gate camps). It also makes nullsec industrial gameplay less worth it as it's a much better option to buy in Jita and move stuff in than it is to mine, research and manufacture in nullsec poses and stations.

Effectively all that stuff provides convenience at the price of shrinking the universe.

[Goumindong]

Is it a worse game if there are fewer nulsec players and they do less stuff because logistics sucks ass so that a handful of low-sec players can go on roams and maybe catch a handful more people?

I say maybe because logistics increases flow, and that means it increases flow through choke-points. If you decrease by killing bridges you indeed do open up new opportunities that are not at choke-points but you also reduce your opportunities that ARE at choke-points.

And the choke-points are the easiest places to get to.

If you're out for "good fights" or even the ability to constrain production strategically you're going to always be going after choke-points. Living in 0.0 before jump bridges logistics was pretty much only dangerous at chokes.

In short, how does making combat less likely and life more painful enhance the game?

Note, jump bridges only allow you to navigate around gate camps in your territory and that means its easier to set up your own camps that can't be avoided by the enemy[since you don't have to fly through their camp to head them off at the pass]

[Comstar]

It didn't nurf logistics.They all use Rorquels and Jump Freighters and Titan bridges anyway. 

[eldaec]

Am I understanding that part of the problem with supercap blobs that they can reinforce one another with shield and armor repair?

It is part of the issue, but the main thing is that they have millions and millions of HP, and the capability to destroy ordinary capitals in seconds. Supercarriers were explictly designed to lay waste to ordinary capital fleets.

When they were rare, it would take fleets of a few hundred sub-capital ships to take down *one* supercap. Now they roll in groups of several dozen you really can't do much about them.

Preventing remote repping is probably part of the solution but in a fleet of 50-100, it really won't make much difference on its own.

[Fordel]

Why would players who have never used jump bridges, whose lives are completely unaffected by jump bridges want to see them nerfed? Is it some kind of vast conspiracy against 0.0 players?

Vast conspiracy no, but there totally are players on both ends of the 0.0 divide that would love nothing more then to shit on the others gameplay however they could. 

[Setanta]

IMO they need to figure out a way to balance the manufacturing rate for supercapitals to the loss rate, and then give them a really obvious Achille's heel (that can be targetted / shot at even when facing a supercap blob or overwhelming numbers, so that there's a chance for a subcap fleet to destroy a few of these things).

I would resub if I could jump into  torpedo carrying rifter and launch it down a supercap's exhaust vent.

It'd only require a separate hitbox strategically placed on a supercap - preferably at the end of a long trench that ran the length of the SC...

[Numtini]

They should make it vulnerable only to blasters 

[Kageru]

The other problem with the Titan DD is it is very lag friendly. If you have enough sub-caps to seriously challenge a super-capital fleet then the system will start to lag. That starts to equalize the difference between DD and other weapons as the timing becomes lag related. In one battle the Titans DD and the sub-capitals artillery were pretty much firing at the same rate but with rather different effects. Lag also makes it rather hard to kill something that has an insane hit point pool and the possibility of incoming reps.

Another element often overlooked is the human element. 100 super-caps can drop into a system pretty much without warning. The smaller number of players, generally more trusted, and bridging giving them a huge mobility advantage. Meanwhile trying to suddenly form and gather the 300-400+ people you'd need to present a challenge to that force is slow and impossible unless your organization is monstrously large and highly active. And the jump bridge nerf did make that even less likely as travel is a bit slower and some harassment can make it even more so. Super-caps are just a massive multiplier of people available, which is of course why PL adores them so. It's also good in terms of protecting your own space which has allowed small numbers of pilots to hold massive space empires.

Plus the fact you need to hold space to fund and make them tends to lock out potential challengers which strongly encourages stagnation.

The whole system is borked and it was obviously and inevitably borked. Super-weapons in a PvP game are just a bad idea from the start, and attempts to balance them are largely hopeless.

[IainC]

I can't speak for players who have never used jump bridges but the reason I want to see them, jump freighters and cynos nerfed is that I think it's a worse game if people can easily route around danger (gate camps). It also makes nullsec industrial gameplay less worth it as it's a much better option to buy in Jita and move stuff in than it is to mine, research and manufacture in nullsec poses and stations.

Effectively all that stuff provides convenience at the price of shrinking the universe.

There is no 'nullsec industrial gameplay' because it's practically impossible at any kind of scale without importing from Empire. You will not get the quantities of trit you need to feed a decent sized manufacturing operation in nullsec because nobody mines Veldspar in 0.0. Even if they did, your refining slots are in one station while the very limited manufacturing slots are in a different one and everyone in the alliance is trying to use the 4 slots available in a 'production station'. There are more manufacturing slots available in the Jita system than in all of Delve. I saw a back of the envelope calculation on Goonfleet when this discussion was going on back in December that if every single manufacturing slot in every station in Deklein were given over to only missile production, they would just about keep up with the daily demand from ratting in the region.

Building in POSs is a royal pain in the arse, not only do you have the POS logistics and overhead to add cost and risk to your operation, the way that POS modules work and interact makes inventory management and any kind of diverse production base hugely difficult. You will still have to import fuel from Empire anyhow especially if your POS is off-race for the ice in your region. Same goes for invention datacores and any other materials that aren't locally native - good luck getting Morphite if you don't live in the Drone regions or off-race carbonides never mind the rarer stuff that you use shit-loads of for ship production such as Nanotransistors.

In short you are full of shit. You bleat about how jump bridges make logistics too easy and damage local production without realising that there is no alternative to importing from Empire for anyone. You have no clue about how the game works beyond some idiotic and simplistic talking points but you have no idea of what you're actually talking about.

[VainEldritch]

Preventing remote repping is probably part of the solution but in a fleet of 50-100, it really won't make much difference on its own.

This puts CCP in a bit of a pickle - what can they do?

1. Massive supercap nerfage at a fundamental level? Those receiving the shaft will create a shitstorm which, given recent events, CCP can do without.

2. Introduce a counter? A supercap-busting superdreadnought?

Super?

How the devil do game developers manage design themselves into these situations - perhaps some of the developers on here can enlighten me?

[Fordel]

Well you are assuming CCP thinks all these things are a problem. 

[Kageru]

One of the off-hand comments from the tournaments was that sides evicted from null-sec "inevitably bounce-back". CCP are distracted and / or delusional with a side order of incompetent.

The correct time to address super-capital proliferation was in the design phase when someone should have asked, "what if one side gets a fleet of these things?".

[IainC]

Well you are assuming CCP thinks all these things are a problem. 

CCP definitely does think that supercaps are a problem, they just don't have a good way to deal with it at the moment. The peculiar issue with supercaps is that they aren't simply a ship that sits in the corner of your hangar gathering dust when they aren't getting used, your character or at least a parking alt is locked into them which makes nerfing them into uselessness problematic. They need a defined and specific role that they currently don't have - Supercaps in the kind of numbers that PL and co tend to drop throw out enough DPS to kill two to three Dreadnaughts a minute while being practically unkillable. Titans are a little better since the change to DDs - killing a single subcap every ten minutes isn't that huge by comparison - but they again become broken when deployed in the numbers that we routinely see these days. They do at least have another role with the bridge module but no-one would want to dedicate a character to them if that's all they did.

[Kageru]

They knew from the QEN that super-cap proliferation was a problem. After the buff production was exploding and losses were only a tiny fraction of new ships rolling off the lines. Super-cap fleets were inevitable at some point given that trajectory. Yet they wait until the balance of political power in null-sec is broken, and many factions simply out of the game, before they do anything about it. Which also means the amount of resources invested into super-caps is massive which they have to consider as part of any nerf.

Still, it will be fascinating to see what they (eventually) come up with. I don't think there really is a fix without basically re-thinking the whole sovereignty model. And I'm not sure they have the focus or energy to do something on that scale.

[Stabs]

I can't speak for players who have never used jump bridges but the reason I want to see them, jump freighters and cynos nerfed is that I think it's a worse game if people can easily route around danger (gate camps). It also makes nullsec industrial gameplay less worth it as it's a much better option to buy in Jita and move stuff in than it is to mine, research and manufacture in nullsec poses and stations.

Effectively all that stuff provides convenience at the price of shrinking the universe.

There is no 'nullsec industrial gameplay' because it's practically impossible at any kind of scale without importing from Empire. You will not get the quantities of trit you need to feed a decent sized manufacturing operation in nullsec because nobody mines Veldspar in 0.0.

This is a circular argument. No one mines Veld because there are plenty of easy logistical options from Jita that work out more cost effective. Take away the logistic crutches and people would mine Veld as they do in W-space.

if every single manufacturing slot in every station

So POSes

Building in POSs is a royal pain in the arse

If people had to do it they would and they would be compensated by high prices. People DO build in POSes in W-space.

In short you are full of shit. You bleat about how jump bridges make logistics too easy and damage local production without realising that there is no alternative to importing from Empire for anyone. You have no clue about how the game works beyond some idiotic and simplistic talking points but you have no idea of what you're actually talking about.

Look, all this "no clue" bollocks is just chest beating. I understand very well what harsher logistics would do to the game and it's something I would prefer. I get it that you would prefer easier logistics, maybe a teleporter straight from Jita, but not agreeing with you does not make me some kind of mental defective. It's a question of taste. Some people like Marmite.

[Stabs]

How the devil do game developers manage design themselves into these situations - perhaps some of the developers on here can enlighten me?

The guy making a new ship wants his ship to be used. So he's likely to make it better than what's already out there. This is something all Live teams in all MMOs tend to do, they tend to see themselves as designers and creators of content rather than custodians and maintainers of current game look and feel.

These pressures could be countered by managerial oversight in accordance with a Grand Design. For instance, you could allow for a quota of inflation allowing speed, tanking, damage to increase by 10% per year each. It's almost never done that way, instead it's done on a case and case basis by feel.

In Eve I believe new content is also referred to their economist.

Now add to that the fact that a virtual world is a highly complex system prone to emergent gameplay. So some relatively innocuous seeming change like adding a class of frieghter that can cyno jump can have a huge impact on gameplay that may not have been fully foreseen. And that some unforeseen consequences are happening around other unforeseen consequences influencing each other in multiplicative ways.

So in short devs don't usually know how deep their changes will go, don't have controlling the system holistically as a priority and may not have an overall scheme/effective supervision at all. Thus over time a lot of new content, all pitched to be a bit more competitive than previous content will distort the system very powerfully.

[IainC]

This is a circular argument. No one mines Veld because there are plenty of easy logistical options from Jita that work out more cost effective. Take away the logistic crutches and people would mine Veld as they do in W-space.

No-one sane would mine Veld if they had access to Arkonor or Bistot. They absolutely wouldn't mine it in the quantities required for an alliance scale manufacturing program. For it to be worthwhile the local price of Trit would have to increase to the level of much higher tier minerals and if Trit cost as much as Mexallon or Zydrine then manufacturing would cease because no-one could afford to buy things made for that price.

Look, all this "no clue" bollocks is just chest beating. I understand very well what harsher logistics would do to the game and it's something I would prefer. I get it that you would prefer easier logistics, maybe a teleporter straight from Jita, but not agreeing with you does not make me some kind of mental defective. It's a question of taste. Some people like Marmite.

You don't understand it though. You think that nullsec production could continue without easy importation and you are demonstrably wrong. That you continue to believe it after having it explained to you just demonstrates that you are in fact as dumb as you first appeared. There is simply no way that industry anywhere without logistics can possibly exist as there is no region in the game that can provide all the raw materials, datacores or sufficient quantities of ore to feed its residents. It is simply impossible. You think that the only impact would be higher prices for locally produced goods in nullsec but there would be no locally produced goods in nullsec. 0.0 alliances would stage in lowsec close to Empire market hubs as that would be the only way to ensure enough supply of ships and materiel for any kind of conflict.

That you handwave the actual issues away while you spout vapid talking points such as 'blobbing', 'harder logistics to save nullsec industry' and 'force projection' just shows your ignorance.

The guy making a new ship wants his ship to be used. So he's likely to make it better than what's already out there. This is something all Live teams in all MMOs tend to do, they tend to see themselves as designers and creators of content rather than custodians and maintainers of current game look and feel.

These pressures could be countered by managerial oversight in accordance with a Grand Design. For instance, you could allow for a quota of inflation allowing speed, tanking, damage to increase by 10% per year each. It's almost never done that way, instead it's done on a case and case basis by feel.

In Eve I believe new content is also referred to their economist.

Now add to that the fact that a virtual world is a highly complex system prone to emergent gameplay. So some relatively innocuous seeming change like adding a class of frieghter that can cyno jump can have a huge impact on gameplay that may not have been fully foreseen. And that some unforeseen consequences are happening around other unforeseen consequences influencing each other in multiplicative ways.

So in short devs don't usually know how deep their changes will go, don't have controlling the system holistically as a priority and may not have an overall scheme/effective supervision at all. Thus over time a lot of new content, all pitched to be a bit more competitive than previous content will distort the system very powerfully.

When you don't know anything you should shut up rather than be wrong at length. I can assure you that MMO live teams actually do 'holistically' design stuff with reference to everything else in the game - even CCP do spreadsheet analysis to compare macro-data such as ship balance. Sat next to me right now as I type this is a guy who did exactly this for EQ and SWG. I spoke to CCP at the summit in December and they explained their balance process to us at length. There isn't a major MMO out there who lets one guy design something like an entire ship class and put it into the game with the stats and effects that he wants it to have without reference to the balance team.

[Goumindong]

I spoke to CCP at the summit in December and they explained their balance process to us at length

I would love to hear what this is, because they seem frankly terrible at balancing.

[tgr]

I was going to talk at length about how manufacturing in a POS sucks complete donkey cock, and how the bullshit about needing roles to actually be able to start (and thus, I believe, stop) jobs is a trust nightmare, let alone the act of things being stolen, is why POS manufacturing isn't as prevalent as you think it would be. I've done it, and it sucks so much cock it isn't even funny. And we're not even talking about how much fun it is to do all of this while the system is being under siege by an efficient blops gang, we're talking about just doing this in a normal day to day manner.

You being full of shit and having no clue doesn't make you mentally defective, it just makes you wrong.

[VainEldritch]

I spoke to CCP at the summit in December and they explained their balance process to us at length. There isn't a major MMO out there who lets one guy design something like an entire ship class and put it into the game with the stats and effects that he wants it to have without reference to the balance team.

 

Meh... so given infinite faith in the ability of CCP's balance team to spot a massive turd like this bobbing around in the sov' Jacuzzi causing people to scream and leap out, I imagine they now are either about to show us their ace-in-hole or are thinking "fuck, pass the net".

[Fordel]

The only way your ever going to meet Veld demands from 0.0 alone, is mechanically (as in game rules) making the Veldminers immune to 0.0 space. Like the actual players who 'make a living' off of shitrocks, they are just not capable of and/or have no interest handling the rigors of 0.0.


Of course, I doubt there are many legitimate miners anymore these days, can't compete with the bots in high-sec for the most part.




While on the topic, did they ever nerf mission salvage as a mineral source?

[tgr]

The only way I would even consider mining would be in hisec (unless mining literally shit money on a stick), because at least then I could've been mining while I was watching a movie, programming, reading a book, cleaning the apartment etc, without having to watch local and intel like a hawk. And let's not even get into how much fun it is when there's one or more afk cloaker in system, especially when they're known for being blops-backed.

Make mining normal minerals like PI and you might start seeing something happening in null that isn't bot-infested.

[Numtini]

This, btw, is the same discussion that ensued post CSM-5 on blogs and twitter. Literally the same. Same talking points. (Well other than that the NC is unassailable because of their jump bridges.)

[eldaec]

There is no real need to make mining like PI when PI is already like PI, and enough people enjoy mining (for some reason) to generate minerals.

CCP have plenty of design room to make up new industrial resources suitable for 0.0 of course.

[Stabs]

Sat next to me right now as I type this is a guy who did exactly this for EQ and SWG.

a guy who did exactly this for SWG.

SWG.

LOL!

[tgr]

LOL!

Imagine me, if you will, giving you the evil eye for using "LOL". The evil eye.

[Goumindong]

There is no real need to make mining like PI when PI is already like PI, and enough people enjoy mining (for some reason) to generate minerals.

CCP have plenty of design room to make up new industrial resources suitable for 0.0 of course.

I don't actually think if that is true. The majority of low ends come from the drone regions and the rest of the low ends probably come from macro miners.

I mean yea some people enjoy mining, but the quantity of trit that is consumed is so high that if it really was all generated by mining there would be have to be thousands of players simply mining all day in hulks.

The problem of "not having 0.0 production" is kinda dumb. We are dealing with commodities without branding, rules of comparative advantage state that there is essentially no way that you can create 0.0 production. Re comparative advantage: think of regions like nations. Comparative advantage states that if trade is possible specialization will create optimal production even if one region has an absolute advantage in producing all types. It is nearly impossible to create a situation where a relative advantage is not created. [Krugman's Nobel winning work is not applicable here].

Before carriers and jump freighters there was not 0.0 production. Everything was shipped in in freighter ops.

In short: It doesn't matter what you do to 0.0 either fully produced materials will be shipped in or raw materials will be shipped in because a relative advantage in the production of certain goods will always exist forming the basis of the majority of the income of the region.

edit: short explanation

[IainC]

Sat next to me right now as I type this is a guy who did exactly this for EQ and SWG.

a guy who did exactly this for SWG.

SWG.

LOL!

Your point was that companies don't do this. My point, based on industry experience and first-hand knowledge is that they do. Whether they do it well is a different topic. You are still making up stuff that you don't know anything about though.