Revelations 2

[dwindlehop]

From http://myeve.eve-online.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=458

Escalation Sites...

...are not rewarding enough. You slog through approximately a zillion NPCs and get a basic cargo expander for your troubles. Not cool. Sure, there’s a chance you might get to the final escalation and make a big pile of cash, but on the whole the rewards aren’t in line with the risks, particularly in lower security systems.

To rectify this, we’re adding a chance of getting commander spawns (your Arch Angels, Dark Bloods and so on) to the end of all escalation sites, as well as reviewing and occasionally revising the difficulty of certain sites. Hopefully this should make them a little more worthwhile. If you want some easier exploration combat, though, you may be interested in

Encounters...

...which are new exploration sites that we’re adding in. They’ll be similar to escalation sites but without the escalation – lots of shooting, chance of a good reward, but less difficult and significantly more numerous and easier to find. Which leads nicely into the

Onboard Scanner...

...which will be used for finding Encounters. This will, when it arrives, be a built-in scanning device, present on all ships, that will let you search for exploration sites without any additional equipment. It won’t be particularly powerful, and it won’t let you scan for anything other than cosmic signatures, but it will be enough to find common sites like Encounters. It’ll also be needed before we can

Remove Asteroid Belts...

...and replace them with exploration content. This is a big deal and will not be happening in the immediate future. We know it’s a big, sweeping change that will affect most of you in one way or another, but we think it’s a good idea if it’s done properly.

What we’re currently considering is removing all belts and seeding a whole load of new mining exploration sites. The “common” ones will be easy to find with the Onboard Scanner, so you won’t need any special kit to find them. The rarer ones will still rely on hard-to-find exploration sites, although what counts as “common” or “rare” obviously depends on the security status. The frequency of Encounters will be increased too, and faction/officer spawns added into them to give similar profit potentials to hunting NPCs under the current system.

This will reduce server load (far fewer items being tracked), make mining and belt ratting a tiny bit more interesting, and give us the ability to make both these activities more interesting still by adding cool but non-intrusive triggers to the relevant exploration sites. It will also run the risk of making NPCers and miners far less vulnerable to those wishing them harm, which from some perspectives at least is a bad thing, and something we’ll be considering carefully before implementing anything. Finally, it may also add some much-needed challenge to the “macro miner” mini-profession. (Warning: irony detected.)

And all this talk of moving things to exploration leads us nicely to

Static to Exploration...

...which is of course the long-discussed move of existing static complexes into the exploration system, eliminating the majority of fixed-position complexes from the game.

This is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, but we’ve been holding off doing so until we were sure that the exploration tools were ready for such a big change. That time has now come, so we’re releasing the brakes and setting things in motion.

For Revelations 2, we’ll be removing all “normal” deadspace complexes from static spawns and adding them to exploration distributions. This means everything from 1/10 to 10/10, but does not include any COSMOS complexes for now.

Complexes will be distributed all across space. High Sec will have 1/10-4/10, Low Sec will have 3/10-7/10 and Null Sec will have 6/10-10/10. In addition to this, we’re well aware that a lot of investment in territory and infrastructure has been driven by high-end complexes. As a result, all constellations which currently have a complex of difficulty 7/10 and above in them will have a special distribution. This will give a very high chance that a hidden complex, of the type or types already present, will spawn somewhere within that constellation.

\o/

I approve of all of this. I really really hope that the built-in scanner UI gets a rework similar to the effort that was put into the probe scanning UI. My only concern is a tiny niggling worry that maybe the exploration complexes will feature static timers much like the present static complexes, but I really don't know enough about exploration.

I know there's a lot more Revelations 2 info out there, but I can't be bothered to render an opinion yet. Also, sometimes the devs make it difficult to distinguish summer content (i.e. Rev 2) from December or 2008 content when they give interviews.

[Nevermore]

The change to belts will be Revelations 3 at the very earliest, and will go through an awful lot of design and testing work. I'm mentioning them now because they're related to other changes that will arrive sooner, and to get the idea out in the open so everyone can get to grips with the concept and flag up potential problems before we start working on it in earnest. We're certainly very aware of how big this change would be.

[Yoru]

Every time quitting ever crosses my mind, they do stuff like this. 

[LK]

No more static asteroid belts? That's hot.

[Fordel]

So before I can rat/mine/complex, I have to mash the scan/explore button to find a random spot that was generated for that day/hour/Time ?

[JoeTF]

It has potential for being huge failure.

[Simond]

As opposed to such stunning successes such as unkillable super-capitals and the new fleet system which spontaneously generates lag? 

[Endie]

So before I can rat/mine/complex, I have to mash the scan/explore button to find a random spot that was generated for that day/hour/Time ?

On the other hand, before Mr Piratical can gank you, he must do the same thing.  Good thing if you're watching local.

[Fordel]

I guess I don't understand what the system is trying to achieve. Are the new exploration points random and dynamically generated? Can anyone access them?

I don't get how Click -> Warp To Belt 5 is different from Scan Belt 5 -> Warp to Belt 5.

[Nevermore]

Apparently one of the reasons why they want to do it is it's supposed to lessen server strain somehow.

[Krakrok]

It sounds like they are trying to instance all the belts which seems lame. "Let's take the static world and instance everything!!1!" It's also a nerf of 10/10 complex running because the complex will be in a different place every time you want to run it which seems like a good idea.

I'd say the change is probably dictated by server architecture and population more than anything else.

[Fordel]

That's the part I don't really get, nothing is actually instanced this way.

[ajax34i]

To me it sounds like they're trying to reduce the number of belts, as in you'll have one or two of these asteroid exploration sites, maybe, per system, with a lot of systems with 0.  They probably looked at how many belts/roids they have vs. how many are being mined, and decided they're populating too many roids.

In addition, it sounds like they want to implement triggers, as in "NPC's come gank you" (and not predictably like with the roid rats).

[Furiously]

And the cynic says, and move more 10/10 stuff to BOB space :)

[Slayerik]

The belt thing seems like a heavy handed way of dealing with macro miners, but I could be wrong.

[Tragny]

You think so? I don't see how it could help with that, as they'll just macro the scanning part, too, I would imagine. I'm a little leery as it just seems like a source of tedium(see Fordel's comment).

[Yegolev]

Well my immediate thought was whether or not I would be able to scan anything worth mining in a Mack, and if not then what would I need?  This was followed pretty quickly by the idea that ice will be moving to zerosec, or at least somewhere I don't really want to fly a barge.

[ajax34i]

There aren't enough details available about how they'll do things to be able to tell exactly what they want to do with it.  They could severely nerf mining, they could end up making it "fun", they could get rid of macro miners by making us all compete and shoot them, shrug.  Dunno.

[Yegolev]

I don't mind shooting other miners so much, but combat ships make me sweat.  Yeah, too early to tell, but I think injecting "fun" into mining is going to mean being shot at more.  My Mackinaw can defend itself against rats in .6 ice belts, but that is immensely different than defending itself in .5 or lower.  If I can scan using the Mack, that helps so I don't have to wrangle two ships or (shudder) gang with someone.  But if the fighting is harder or smarter (players), seems like a forced-gang situation to me.  Last I checked, no one liked barge escort duty.

[ajax34i]

Yeah, the only way to make mining more "fun", in my opinion, is to make it either less tedious, or more effective (you get more minerals per hour).  People mine purely for the results; the experience doesn't matter, and in fact they'd rather do without it if they could somehow get the minerals faster in other ways, heh.  So if they expect to make mining "fun" by making "an experience" out of the process, rather than giving us less tedium or better results, it's gonna suck.

[Morat20]

Hmm. It'd be interesting if miners could fire up a vessel packed to the gills with scanning equipment, and scan for really nice asteroids -- hard to find without specialized mining skills. Then bookmark the location, hop into a mining vessel that could be configured to be damn hard to probe out (at the cost of mining output) and head out there.

Much more work for pirates to come gank you -- but still doable. And if you were in a gang, you could still fit full on mining barges with escorts and strip your mini-field bare -- but the pirates could find you very quickly.

I wouldn't mind scaling risk versus reward, and having the ability to find better fields through skill and fittings. As it is, pirates just warp from field to field looking for someone to bash.

[ajax34i]

I think it would be novel, sure, but honestly, in EVE, mining is a profession where you want to get industrial quantities of minerals consistently.  As an individual miner you might have fun dancing with asteroids, but a corp or an alliance needs x billion Trit per week, and they need it to be easy to get.

I think that the ability to find better fields is fine and all, but the ability to mine regular fields better is much better.

[Yegolev]

Risk versus reward is part of the problem as a non-alliance miner (me).  I am unwilling to take my Mackinaw into lowsec, period, because I just don't have the option of replacing it at this time.  I'd be back in a T1 barge if I lost the Mack.  No, I think the way to go would be to pump up the output, in which case I would not mind at all fitting a survey ship to hunt down some roids.  If they basically double the work I need to do by hiding the roids, they should double (or more) the output when I do finally get my lasers going.

I figure a pirate could still scan out a mining barge of all things, so I still say that lowsec is still not appealing if they do this.  If I can hide using jamming drones or some such, that might work.

[MahrinSkel]

Increasing your output won't increase your income, if everyone else has the same improvement.  On the other hand, it will mean cheaper T1 ships and modules.

--Dave

[Kail]

People mine purely for the results; the experience doesn't matter, and in fact they'd rather do without it if they could somehow get the minerals faster in other ways, heh.  So if they expect to make mining "fun" by making "an experience" out of the process, rather than giving us less tedium or better results, it's gonna suck.

Personally, when I mined, it was because I was busy doing something else (writing a paper or something) and couldn't devote my attention to the game.  Head to 0.9 space, turn on mining laser, come back in forty-five minutes, sell, repeat.  My rate of income, therefore, wasn't really my primary concern; I spent most of my time mining Scordite and crap just because I didn't want to fly around looking for something more valuable.  It was just a way to make a few pennies while I was doing something else.  Therefore, anything that increases the amount of work I have to do while mining is going to decrease the amount of minning I do, unless they somehow manage to make it genuinely interesting (and good luck with that).

Making asteroid belts scannable, fine, whatever.  As long as I don't have to master some arcane scanning system or drop a three million ISK module onto my industrial, I can live with it, but I can't really see it making things much more interesting.

Making asteroid belts rarer, ugh.  I was already running into competition with bots and strip miners, where half the system would already be cleaned out before I got there.  If this encourages more people to move away from mining in the same area as me, great, fine, but if it means more competition, I'm not looking forward to it.

Making asteroid belts swarming with rats, no thanks.  My industrial is in no way able to handle belt rats (has something like one high slot; if I put a weapon in there, I'd have nothing to mine with).  So I'd probably end up mining in frigates/destroyers (which means much more frequent trips back to station), and putting my industrials back in the box.

[Viin]

If they allowed deployable semi-autonomous mining drones that could produce as much minerals as a good miner (and put them in a can, not your cargo hold), plus some deployable sentry guns, it would make mining a lot more fun (and more of a industrial task than a macro'ed activity). Add in autonomous pickup and delivery of minerals, and the game moves to being more about controlling space (ie: keeping rats and pirates out of the area) and less about how many mining lasers you can run at once on a BS for 8 hours straight.

[Yegolev]

Increasing your output won't increase your income, if everyone else has the same improvement.  On the other hand, it will mean cheaper T1 ships and modules.

--Dave

I see what you are saying there... it still might be worthwhile to reducing the time required to mine X amount if I am going to now spend X minutes doing survey work.

Oh, and I agree with Kail for the most part although I am a professional miner.  Just replace "3 million isk module" with however many isk a Mackinaw and two ice harvesters goes for these days (450mil IIRC).  I'm all for doing something while I mine, but I'm not OK with making a tedious task harder or increasing the risk to my ship.

[LK]

Make mining a mini-game? Puzzle Pirates style?  You can increase input by participating, or you can set it on auto and get the base amount.  That's a thought ... I mean if you turn an activity where you just sit there into an interactive one.

[Krakrok]

If they allowed deployable semi-autonomous mining drones that could produce as much minerals as a good miner (and put them in a can, not your cargo hold), plus some deployable sentry guns, it would make mining a lot more fun (and more of a industrial task than a macro'ed activity).

See, now that would be awesome. Instead we get POS warfare and titans. Bleh.

[MahrinSkel]

Word is that Constellation Sovereignty will be part of Revelations 2, as part of a new Sovereignty system.  Only one array requiring higher Sovereignty is available right now on Sisi, a fixed Cyno Generator that requires Sovereignty level 2 (hold sovereignty and keep that POS up for 35 unbroken days).  Constellation Sovereignty starts at level 3, and requires 3 outposts in the same constellation, one of them something called a "Constellation Capital" (which will require/grant Sovereignty level 4 in that system, no clues on exactly how that's done).  Word is that in addition to player-built stargates, it's going to allow powering up POS's with arrays that give more powergrid and CPU, as well as putting guns near outposts and gates.

There's also a new skill for taking control of up to 5 POS cannon (and all guns will now need to be anchored outside of the shield) and firing them on your target (about the same firepower as a Siege mode dread).  And there's supposed to be new automatic gun AI with different settings.  Also a Structure Repair *array*, which makes you wonder if there will be other repair arrays for POS.  Right now, if a Mothership or Titan takes structure damage, it's impossible to repair it.

--Dave