Never Not Primary the Skiff

The weekend started out fairly typically for Isogen 5.
I logged in on Saturday afternoon to find 2-3 people online with Foedus out scanning in the chain.  It wasn't too long before Foedus calls out that he's spotted some NOHO (a well known and sizeable WH corp) pilots moving around in a LS at the end of our chain and asking if I was up for losing some ships if he finds their home.
I have no illusions regarding our corp's ability to go toe to toe with NOHO but I'm always up for a fight and it was an off peak time for them.
Given that they live in a C6 magnetar, the likelihood of us getting a kill before we all died was also reasonably high if we got into a brawl due to the high DPS buff so I logged in my Gnosis and said 'sure, why not?'.
Wasn't long before Foedus scanned through 4 WHs from the LS into Polaris (NOHO's home system) and 3 of us started to make our way up the chain while he scouted.
We also invited Glyndi from Honeybadgers to come along since he was near a LS that was connected to NOHO's static so he'd meet us there.
The residents on NOHO's static were Quantum Origins and they also had 2-3 pilots online so we held the fleet 2 holes out of Polaris and I moved my own scout into the Quantum Origins hole to keep an eye on them.
It quickly became apparent that Quantum Origins were having some sort of scrap with NOHO as there was a frig wreck on the Polaris entry hole and Foedus shortly announced that there was a QO Wolf asking for a 1v1 in Polaris local.

This complicated the situation a little.

Around this point, NOHO made the situation even more complicated by warping a Hulk and a Skiff to their ore site and starting up a mining op in the middle of all this.  Only NOHO...
Given the rarity of the chance to kill NOHO miners in their home system and that the ships fighting on their hole were of minimal value, Foedus made the call to wait until their fight was over and then going after the miners.
And so we waited.... and waited some more...
The Wolf pilot ended up having a Deimos buddy and the 1v1 turned into a drawn out 2v2, then another 1v1...
To make things even more annoying, the Hulk pilot had left the ore site at some point and was now idle in a POS.  The Skiff was still mining away happily though and Foedus was still hungry for some miner blood so we continued to wait for the hole to clear.

About 45min later Glyndi, who has been sitting patiently in the connected LS, calls out that a QO Leopard just jumped past him into their hole.  Spotted.
Almost immediately I see the Deimos and Wolf warp to the LS so I tell Glyndi to bail, which he does, obviously forgetting to bookmark the hole.
The Leopard pilot hits the POS and swaps immediately to a Vigilant, warping it to join his mates on the LS.
This tasty target is enough and we go for it.
We had another corp mate log in and join us by this point and our fleet is now 2 Ishtars, a Zealot, a Caracal and my Gnosis.
We jump the fleet in and warp it to the LS, obviously landing just as the QO ships are warping off.  Fast tackle is overrated.

'Hulk is back at site, warp to NOHO hole!'

In the meantime, the Hulk had re-joined his Skiff friend and was again at the ore site.
At this point there is still a NOHO Vexor sitting on their hole, along with who knows how many cloakies, but whatever, we came here for a fight and we were gonna get one started by killing their miners!

Our whole fleet warps to their hole, jumps through and warps right past the Vexor sitting there to our premade bookmarks for the miners.
We kill the Hulk without incident but the Skiff is 50km off.  As the Hulk goes down, 2 NOHO response Ishtars warp in at range and drop curators.  My Gnosis is hardly fast and there's nothing I can do against the Ishtars so I make the warp back to their static hole, hoping to find something close range like the Vexor to shoot there, leaving the rest of our fleet to catch and kill the Skiff which they manage to do.

At this point I also see a new ship on dscan in the QO hole with my scout: 

'Kronos on D.'

It looked like the Vigilant pilot had swapped into it but I don't give it much thought as it could be someone new, or just the ship he likes to log off in, and I move my scout back to watch the LS.

My Gnosis lands on the Polaris static by now and finds it clear.  Disappointed, I jump out to see if the QO guys are around and find to NOHO Vexor orbiting at 20km on the static side.  Game on!!
I point it, overload and do my best to get into web/scram range in time but he notices and moves away from me, easily out speeding my slow ship.

'Er, Kronos on the lowsec...'
'Kronos jumped out...and back...'
'Guys, get to this lowsec!'

My scout is still watching the LS hole and to my very high amazement, the QO Kronos had warped to it, double jumped himself and was now just sitting there while I'm shooting a stupid NOHO Vexor on the Polaris hole and the rest of our fleet is finishing off the Skiff's Pod and scrapping with NOHO Ishtars.
I haven't decided yet if its bait or stupid but either way, I kinda want to shoot it!

I decide I don't REALLY care all that much about the Vexor and given that it is not pointing me, I hit warp to the LS and call for the fleet to get there at best speed.
Sometime around this point it occurs to me that the Astarte command ship that had been on dscan the whole time was probably boosting...
I land on the LS hole and tackle the Kronos.
It shortly tackles me back, followed closely by the rest of our fleet landing, along with a QO Wolf and Deimos;  bait it is.  The battle is joined!
It's extremely obvious that the fleet we have can definitely not kill a bastioned Kronos so Foedus grabs his diplo hat and calls NOHO in to help us kill it and they form up some Ishtars and other kitey ships, along with a Scythe for reps, to assist.
We quickly force the Wolf off the field and force the Deimos to jump out but by the time NOHO get there our Caracal is down and the Zealot and my Gnosis were pushed into structure and forced to jump, leaving the 2 Ishtars holding down the fort while we go 1 jump over in LS to rep in a station before re-joining the fray.

By the time I get back, NOHO have pushed the Kronos through to lowsec and I land as it jumps back into the WH so I follow and engage on that side.
NOHO spend some time trying to kill the Deimos in LS but he also jumps back and when NOHO re-join us we have enough DPS to finish off the Kronos and kill off the Deimos who had also been repping like a champ.

Fun fight indeed!

10/10 would tackle Kronos on LS again.

Miners:
http://isogen5.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=24937617

Kronos:
http://isogen5.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=24928323
(Cruor is unrelated, was from QO's scrap with NOHO earlier)

Marauding Through Space

Marauders were my very first 'end game' target ship. 
When I first joined EVE's ranks back in 2009, a buddy of mine who got me into EVE was running a Golem for level 4 missions and I was in awe of its power while I was still skilling the T2 shield mods on my purger rigged Drake.
One day I was going to fly one of those sweet ships and blow up all the things with them!

Well, my initial newbro naiveté wore off pretty quickly as I learned how things in EVE work and found out that the Golem was pretty sweet for missions but it wasn’t really THAT great.  It also cost a whole lot, couldn't be used in PVP and was actually worse at the C2 wormhole sites I was getting into at the time than my Drake.
And so, my training focus shifted heavily into cruiser hulls and it would be years before I looked at battleships again.
When I did finally start training battleships, it was all about the Vindicators and Bhaalgorns that were popular at the time and my early fixation with Marauders were long forgotten as they were not on par with their pirate faction brothers.

However, Marauders were buffed pretty heavily by CCP in their balance pass, some time ago now, and their use has grown again, even in WHs.
Running C4s, and even C5s, solo with their new bastion mode has become reasonably common and Marauders have returned to their spot on top of the PVE food chain.
When people started running C5 sites in their new bastioned Marauders, I was reasonably skeptical as there had never really been a ship that could handle the neuts and DPS of class 5 wormhole sites before but the reports of it being possible were not isolated and 'how to' videos and guides started cropping up so clearly it was possible.
I ran the numbers (on paper) myself some time ago and it actually seemed to be pretty simple to fit out any of the 4 Marauders to be able to tank the sites with minimal fit pimp and no fleet boosts while still putting out 1000-1100 DPS a piece.  Sweet!
I decided to train Marauders V on my main, bought and fit out a Paladin and... never undocked it.
At the time I basically couldn't be bothered running PVE in a ship that was far, far slower and lover ISK/hour than my tried and true capital escalation fleet and so left the Paladin in Jita.

However, I finally decided to go ahead and try it out last week and so undocked in my shiny Marauder for the first time.
I pulled the basic fit for it from one of the guys I know who runs sites in Marauders, pimped all the mods by 1-2 meta levels (T2 damage mods? come on!!) and went to run the two Core Garrisons in our home hole.
I threw my fleet booster into fleet for good measure since I have one so may as well and went to town.

Not gonna lie, warping a 2+ bil battleship into a C5 site by yourself with no backup was a little butt puckering the first time around but hey, seems to work for other people!

Turns out my concerns were completely baseless and the Paladin had no issues at all handling the sleepers.
The hardest wave tops out at around 1900 incoming DPS which it turns out my Paladin could tank, fairly easily, on a single b-type repper.
However, I was more worried about the neuts but they were also fine with my cap level never dropping below 50%.
I did manage to cock up my mid site rewarp on the first site to get on top of the last wave which meant I had to kill it from 80km away but since scorch is a fair and well balanced ammo type, this wasn't really a problem.
Honestly, the whole process with links was much easier than I expected.  I feel that even if I'd fucked up a trigger I would have been fine on tank.

All in all, running the site by myself in a single ship was a pretty refreshing change from the standard escalations fleet.
However, when it comes round to it, that's the issue I was feeling the entire time:  why am I running WH PVE in a C5 and not in an escalation fleet?
I understand that not everyone has access to a corp that runs capital escalations but if they do then there's zero reason to ever find yourself running a C5 site in a Marauder.
Still, it was actually reasonably fun for PVE and I do think I'll be optimizing my fit a bit now that I know how it handles and trying out a few more sites out of interest.

I also feel that the Marauders might actually be in a reasonable place for certain PVP scenarios and I'll be looking into some PVP fits too.
It's possible there's still nothing there but I'll report in if I make any progress.

Wormhole Farming and You

The main argument supporters of the proposed range spawning changes have been making is that it's currently too easy for carebear farmers to just roll their holes and be 'completely' (realistically the correct word there is 'mostly') safe while they run sites all day, every day.
Well ok, it is pretty easy to roll C5/6 holes at the moment and while a competent enemy can prevent you from doing so, realistically most groups can and do close holes into their system that they do not want pretty regularly.

That said, is this a bad thing?  Let's discuss.

The crux of the conflict here I believe to be a fundamental clash of mindsets.
The people who hate farmers and automatically support any and all changes that hinder them, regardless of who else they also hinder, hate the fact that these people won't fight them and that they're hard to catch.  They consider them a waste of space in WHs and believe they have no right to be there.
On the other hand the have the farmers who just want to be left alone and their ideal desired level of interaction with other WH groups is as close to zero as possible.
This kind of difference in world view is pretty global and can be found in all areas of EVE, be it AFK cloaky gankers vs. botters in null, incursion runners vs. war deccers/gankers in HS or in WHs where it's the PVPer vs. the PVEers.  It's nothing new or unusual.

Are farmers actually a problem in wspace?
I'll go over this from a few angles.

Do they take up too much room?
Well, farmers generally live in C5 space as it is a bit more secure than C6 space (due to the nature of rage rolling and how many C5s and C6s there are.  There are also historical reasons that we won't get into...) while providing the same income when running escalations.
Ask anyone in WHs how populated C5s are.  Their answers might vary a little but none of them are going to claim that it is full, as it certainly is not.
I'm not sure exactly what the real number of empty C5s is but if I was to hazard a guess I'd say that somewhere between 25% and 50% of C5 systems are completely empty, ie:  have no active POSs, so C5 space is certainly not full.
Likewise C6s are also nowhere near maximum occupancy, C4s are probably closer to 75% empty and classes lower that this may be used for PVE but the corps there are not the 'farmers' we're looking at here.
This means that it not like the farmers are taking up room that would otherwise be used by PVP groups.  Anyone who wants to move into C5 space can do so, even with more or less free selection of what static they would like.
The rarest C5 systems are C5s with C2 static which is what my corp currently lives in and we were still able to find a perfectly good one with no occupants when we moved in a few months ago after maybe a week of searching.

Do farmers actively reduce content levels in WHs?
To me this is an easy no and I can't understand why anyone would claim otherwise.
They're not pushing people out of wspace, as discussed above, so the only comparison to look at here is do farmers bring more or less content to wspace than another empty C5?
Well I've killed farmers before, haven't you? 
I've killed them running sites, I've killed them rolling holes, I've killed their scanners, I've blown up their POSs, I've killed their haulers, I've even stolen their ships out of their POSs.
That all sounds like content to me.
What was the last bit of content an empty C5 brought you?  Well PVE, sure.  A bit ironic perhaps...
Bottom line is PVE farmer corps do actively bring content to wspace.  Sure it's not as much content as active PVP groups but it's a hell of a lot more than an empty system.

Do farmers hurt other groups in wspace?
Well they're certainly not going to shoot you if that's what you're worried about!
I had a think about this and I came up with two ways in which it could be said that farmers actively hurt other WH groups.
The first is that if there is a farming group in your chain while you're out scanning, it's very possible that their WH will no longer be there when you head back with your scout, leaving you stranded.
This has happened to me personally maybe a half dozen times in my entire WH career and while yes, it's can be annoying, it didn't really inconvenience me all that much and rolling their WH is well within a corp's rights.  Hell, I've actively collapsed scanners in and out of many a WH.
The second way is that if all the farmers suddenly left the game then it would probably drive sleeper salvage prices up a bit as there would be less people running sites.  It would basically only affect melted nanoribbon prices since blue loot is locked to NPC prices and farmers do not generally run mag/rad sites.
That said, PVP groups run site pretty often too and I doubt the prices would be terribly affected.  Still, it's a consideration.

Where does this leave us?
Well, so far we have discovered that farmers are not preventing PVP groups from coming to wspace, they provide real content and they have minimal negative impact on other WH groups.
So far, I'm not seeing the problem.

Let's look at it for the opposite direction and take a look at what impact the proposed changes will, or will not, have on farming groups.
As a brief summary, the proposed change is that heavier ships will spawn further from a WH the heavier they are.  The important ranges to note are caps spawn at base 20km, battleships at base 10km and orcas in the middle.
Basically what this means is that it's much harder and far riskier to roll holes with heavy ships and they spawn outside jump range and you need to get them back onto the hole to jump back.
Does this actually affect farmers though?
Well, I guess it does mean they can't roll holes as safely but do they need to?
I've run my share of sites in the past and I've even been on two PVE 'expos' before where all we did was run sites.
Our process did involve closing all incoming WHs and critting our static so yeah this would have been affected.
However, I've run many more sites in whatever home hole I was living in at the time and the process there was far simpler; warp to site, run it.
Sure, I'd put mass on WHs if I was on alone or I knew there were hostile groups in the chain but I never really bothered with much security.
The reason for this is that by FAR the most common way of getting jumped while running sites is to have someone roll directly into you and the is something you can't avoid no matter how much preparation you do and how many precautions you take.
I'd say at least 90%, probably more, of site ganks happen because someone with enough guns rolls into a system where someone happens to be running sites and this is something the proposed change will have zero effect on.
In fact, the changes will make this even easier as there will be less warning for new incoming WHs due to the K162 spawning mechanic changes.
 That said, this change will result in far fewer PVP groups actively rage rolling which means farmers will actually be safer than they are now.

So ok, in summary the changes would have up to 10% impact on PVE farmer corps.  This is very minor and can be further negate by using systems with low class statics that are easily massed with BSs ect.
To the farmer haters out there, is this enough to make up for the far greater hassles and limitations this will put on active PVP groups?
I say it isn't even remotely close.

Personally I have never understood the hatred of farmers by so many in wspace.
I mean sure, I get that they don't give you fights but there's not much any mechanics change can do about that.
People also seem to be of the opinion that is things become so difficult for farmers that they can't continue to function that they will somehow turn into PVPers or be replaced by PVP groups.
This just is NOT the case.
If CCP went today and deleted all farmers from WHs with a magic button and banned them from wspace their systems would not magically attract bloodthirsty pirates.  They wouldn't suddenly see the light and join an existing PVP group.  They'd just leave and go run incursions or rat in nullsec.

The alternative to farmers is not a PVP group, the alternative is an empty system.
If you need further proof of this, go look at what happened in C6 space around late 2011 and 2012 when several C6 PVP groups decided to evict everyone who didn't fight.  C6 space still has not recovered from the barren wasteland it got turned into.

WH Changes: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Well, we've been asking for it and so here it is; the first major changes to wormholes since 2009.
However, now that they're here, are they actually good?  Well, that depends on who you ask so let’s discuss the WH changes coming in the Hyperion expansion.

For those who have been living under a rock, the dev blog can be found here:
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/into-the-known-unknowns/

This dev blog outlines 6 major changes that CCP are looking to implement in the next expansion.
Some of these are excellent changes that we've wanted for a long time while others? Well, not so much.


So let's start with the good.

1.  Bookmark copying changes.
This is the smallest change of the bunch with CCP upping the limit on how many BMs can be copied at once and speeding up the whole process.  The final numbers are not yet confirmed but Fozzie advised it's looking to be in the 20-30 BMs at a time range.
This change has little impact on single corps due to the corp BM system but I'm sure the alliances out there, WH or otherwise, will appreciate it.

2.  Dual static C4s.
C4 space has been the butt end of many WH jokes in the past due to its horrendous kspace access, poor resources and generally empty chains and dual statics have been asked for by basically everyone who isn’t a giant carebear living in C4s purely to run solo sites with marauders for more or less as long as I can remember.
This change will open up much bigger chains in general and make C4s and C4 statics premium real estate for PVP centric corps who like having large chains to hunt in.
I expect the C4s with C4 and C2 statics will very quickly attract many corps.
This one is my pick by far for the best change coming.

3.  More and new roaming WHs.
CCP are also increasing the spawn rate of all WH originating roaming WHs to further increase available connectivity and interaction.
Again this is a great change people have been wanting for a long time.
There are also brand new roaming holes being introduced that can spawn in any class WH and lead to any class WH or nullsec.  These new holes will have high total mass but will have extremely low jumpable mass, restricting them to frigate and destroyer hulls.
I'm a bit on the fence with these new holes to be honest.  I don't really think the add anything meaningful to wspace and while yes, they make it real hard to lock your system down as they are effectively unclosable, frigate fleets are not a thing in WHs and I highly doubt these holes will have much of an effect on that.
I would much rather CCP just add normal mass roaming WHs to C4-6 space as they are currently only in C1-3 space.
Still, more connections are great so overall the change is good.

4. WH anomaly rebalance.
I guess this was inevitable at some point, even if I think it is largely not needed.
The anomaly rebalance is pretty good overall with no major holes in it.
I'm not going to go through every system type completely as you can just read the changes in the dev blog but here are the highlights.

- Black holes getting a large revamp.  Turret penalties completely removed, agility penalty halved, missile bonuses added for velocity and explosion velocity. 
This is good news for black holes as they have been utter garbage since forever.  Should lead to interesting missile kite comps from its residents that visitors will need to be prepared for.

- Magnetar is getting a target painter effect reduction to offset how popular they are for PVE.

- Red Giant is getting a damage bonus to bombs.

- Pulsar is getting a bonus to neuts to make Chimeras more killable there.

- Wolf Rayet is getting its armour resist bonus changed to armour buffer bonus as well as having its small weapon damage bonus doubled. 
This is one I don't like at all really.  The resist bonus was not an issue here at all.  The only thing I can think of to warrant this change is if they are also planning to buff capital reps in the near future which may have needed this change.  The small gun bonus has always been irrelevant since it's only useful IN the system and if you can't follow your enemy through holes with your fleet comp, you're not going to fly that fleet comp very often.  Additionally, with the new roaming frig only holes, Wolf Rayet residents are going to be hit super hard if frig gangs become a thing.

- Cataclysmic Variable if having a remote cap transfer amount penalty introduced to nerf spider tanking.  Very good change which should make the unkillable pantheon Archon fleets that people who live in these holes a thing of the past.

Overall these changes are well handled and, in particular the Black Hole changes, should level out a few of the bumps in the current WH weather.


So there we see the 4 good changes in this expansion, not let’s look at the bad.

5.  Mass-Based Spawn Distance after Wormhole Jumps.
This is the black sheep of these changes.
Basically, CCP want to make every ship spawn out of immediate jump range of a wormhole with the heavier the ship, the further away it will spawn.
There have already been two 40 page threadnaughts on this change on the WH forums and both have had very minor support from a few players who basically just want to watch wspace burn and huge levels of opposition from all sorts of WH groups who hate this change because it will effectively destroy our way of life.

This change makes it impossible to roll wormholes quickly and leaves your rolling ships stranded up to 25km away from the WH with no way to jump back.
It means smaller groups cannot roll holes with any level of security as they cannot protect their ships from larger attackers.  It means that if a small group rolls into a large group they cannot fight, they can't just role the hole and continue looking for content but they are instead stuck with a hostile static that they can do nothing with or about until the larger group rolls it or it times out.
It also means people can no longer chain roll for content, people cannot use mass to effect fights on WHs to their favour, combat rolling becomes a thing of the past, committing caps to kspace fights becomes a non-event and committing caps even to fights in your static gains an unacceptable level of risk.

As for those saying this is a good change as it will make rolling fleets easier to catch, you're looking at it completely wrong.
Yes, if the change goes in and people make zero changes to their rolling process then it will make them super easy to catch.
But do you really expect that to be the case?
People are inherently risk averse any this change will just make them NOT role the hole if there's any chance of being caught which will give you even less chance to kill them than now since they won't even leave the POS.
Yes, there will be stupid people who are careless but those people are super easy to kill even now so this change still has no benefit for you there.
Catching collapsing ships is really not that hard right now, you should learn how to do it rather than complain about it.

I don't understand why CCP feel this change is needed or wanted.  Fozzie advised that the change allegedly came from a player and that it was later brought up by Chitsa in his CSM term but I have never heard anything even remotely this absurd raised on the forums.

This is by far the worst change proposed for WHs. 
If it goes through it will dramatically change WH living and will force people to from larger groups for security as small groups in WH space will have no way to maintain their system's security against larger forces.
While it hits small groups super hard, it also impacts large groups negatively as they will not be able to look for PVP in the manner that they do with chain rolling and will not be able to coming cap groups to fights through WHs.
Not to mention the giant pain of just routinely rolling your chain to get a fresh one.

I continue to urge CCP to fully scrap this change and if you have not posted in the feedback thread yet, I would suggest you do so.


Luckily there is only the one really bad change but it does leave us with one ugly change.

6.  K162 Signature Appearance
People have been rightly complaining about how easy it is to spot new WHs every since the sensor overlay rubbish was introduced.
In order to address it, CCP are looking to change the WH spawn mechanics to only spawn when someone jumps through a new WH, rather than when they initiate warp to it.

Really?  Is this issue really that hard?
I mean, sure, this changes the problem but it doesn’t really address it.
Bottom line is that the issue is the sensor overlay and it picking up new sigs immediately.
This level of free and instant information is just NOT what WHs are about and the entire system should never have been introduced in wspace.
Unfortunately, CCP are not willing to even consider changing it now that it exists so here we are with this half way measure.

The correct solution here is to leave WH spawning as is but put a delay on the overlay picking up new sigs, something in the 5-10 minute range is all that is needed.
Note that the delay should be only on the overlay, NOT on probes.
This would leave the current system as it is for the most part but would reward people who take the extra step of actively scanning to check for new sigs.
It really shouldn't be that hard but CCP seem insistent on over complicating the matter and so here we are with their ugly change for it.


Overall, these changes are all overshadowed by the horrible change that is mass based range spawning for WHs.
I would rather have none of these changes than for that change to go through.
I really do think it will have a hugely negative impact on all forms of WH life.
I know CCP are still discussing it in light of the hugely negative feedback so here's hoping they come to their senses.

Sticky Situation

So looks like CCP are dedicating the next expansion almost entirely to wormholes.
This is very welcome news if for no other reason than the fact that it shows CCP are actually looking at WHs in some manner.

There are 6 changes being made which vary from largely irrelevant to WH life changing in scope and they are similarly varied is quality.

The changes are:

1. Dual static C4s
2. Spawn range changes based on mass
3. New frig only WHs
4. K162 spawn changes
5. WH anomaly re balancing
6. BM system changes

Corresponding feedback threads can be found at the top on the WH forums.

I'll be doing a full review soon but for now I'll just say that 4 out of 6 isn't too bad.
(It is in fact well above average given CCP's track record.)

They're Touching Them Again...

So it looks like the PR department of CCP has scrubbed out once again.

Apparently there are changes being made to WHs that change how far away from a WH a ship spawns based on its mass, with the upper limit currently being up to 40km (which is hilariously outrageous!).
The first I heard of this was in this forum thread:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=362811

Based on the post, the change has already been deployed to SISI where it was found by several people.
There was no forum post, no dev blog, no nothing.  Just a straight release to the public test server.

Not even looking at the change itself, this immediately raises so many red flags in regards to CCPs development, testing and release cycle, not to mention PR, that it's no longer even funny.

As near as I can tell CCP didn't ask anyone if people wanted this change, didn't ask anyone for feedback and didn't tell anyone it was coming until it was publicly released on the test server.
Once again a change is being put in place in WHs that has MAJOR impact on day to day w-space life without so much as an afterthought given to asking us what we think about it.

To make matters even worse, this change is absolutely atrocious and the VAST majority of the feedback has been hugely negative.
Further to that, perhaps the most ironic thing is that this come right after several months of heavy feedback being given to CCP by players and CSM regarding changes we DO want in WHs, none of which have been looked at yet.

For those who don't know, I work in IT testing for a company that has a wide user base that we work very closely with to cater to their needs while we constantly update our product so I am acutely aware of how annoyed customers are when we change something in a way they don't like or do not communicate any upcoming changes well in advance.

In typical fashion, CCP has noticed the looming threadnaught of hate on this issue and Fozzie, seeming losing the dice roll, piped up a half dozen pages into it that the changes are preliminary and not yet set and that it's a ways off yet.  The usual back pedal nonsense to try cover a PR cock up.

Here's some free advice CCP:
Do not release changes to SISI without any warning.  Typically, changes get put on SISI not that long before release and as players, we generally assume that anything on SISI is in final testing stages and that it WILL go onto the live server with minimal further change.
Any major changes should be posted either on the forums or in a dev blog WELL before they are released onto SISI.

I urge the CSM to tell CCP to show it with this change.
It isn't needed, it isn't wanted, and it is very bad for WH life.

Once More into the Breach

Once More into the Breach

So looks like the Jack Miton clan is homeless again :(
Unfortunately, Rolled Out is in the final stages of shutting down for good and I find myself once more with assets scattered across EVE and apps pending approval on all my toons to my alt corp.

Without getting long winded, the basic story with Rolled Out is that the US time zone guys were largely ex nullsec players and most of them decided to head back to nullsec a few weeks ago.
This lead to a sharp decline in our US time zone activities and we basically became an AU time zone only corp.
Honestly, the reduction in numbers was perfectly fine by me since I prefer flying in small gangs and doing things with low numbers.  However, many of the remaining members were not interested in being a small WH corp and the bleed to other larger corps continued until the call was made to fully disband and move on.

I considered briefly leaving my assets in the Rolled Out hole and using it as my own personal base of operations but given it is a C5>C5 Magnetar, it is premium real estate and it would be highly likely someone would come and claim it so I moved out my cap fleet and dumped my assets wherever our chain opened in highsec.

The decision of where to go next is now needing to be answered and I basically have three options; stay solo for now, join a large corp, join a small corp.

Working solo is something I am fine doing but empty comms get lonely and having a few friends around to help out doesn't hurt so I'm setting that option aside for now.

So what about joining a large corp?
I'm well known, have good pilots, I'm sure I could find large corps that would have me which leaves the question, do I want to be in a large wormhole corp?
SKY/ROLO were my return to large corp life and while I did enjoy the company, had some great people in both corps, I must admit that the 'high end' WH life style no longer appeals to me like it once used to.
I don't like flying in blobby fleets at all and any 'Joint' op, which seems to be most of them in C5/6 space now, is an automatic pass for me these days.
So I fine that the answer here is no, I do not want to be in any large WH corp.  Unfortunately C5/6 space has become the exact political playground that people used to flock to WHs from NS to avoid and I want no part in it.  At least for now.

So that leaves me with a return to small corp life and when Bronya announced he was reforming SUSU, I couldn't be happier.
SUSU was one of the most fun groups I have ever flown with in my first stay there and if the second iteration is anything close to similar, I have high hopes for the times ahead.
I'll be re-joining SUSU once I finish sorting out my assets after the move out of ROLO and look forward to it.

I wish all the best to the ROLO guys and girls, they were a great bunch to fly with and I'm sure we'll meet again.
For now, I am rolling out.

Fly Fun,
JM

When Rolled Out Roll Out

This weekend was a busy one for Rolled Out, if not as exciting as it could have been.
I logged in on Saturday morning reasonably early to find that we had been invited by Disavowed to join them and a few other groups in an effort to evict one of the Blood Union/Quantum Explosion home system C6s that they had used to launch some recent attacks on other C6 PVP groups.

I am not entirely sure what sparked the recent shift in Blood Union's activities but rather than their usual site ganking of PVE farmers, they had turned their attention to performing full scale evictions of PVP entities in high end wspace and have been doing so with the help of Lazerhawks.
Doing this is their prerogative but given the close knit nature of the upper end WH entities, people do notice when one group starts bullying the others and it's gotten to the point where the Bat Phones of the past no longer actually need to be rung, they just tend to happen.

Their first target was RCC who they successfully evicted, primarily because RCC happened to be in the process of moving systems anyway and no real defence, other than the usual elite forum PVP, was mounted.
This weekend their next target became Whale Girth who did not fold as quietly.
There were all sorts of rumours and threats made after the RCC eviction which included BU/QEX threatening anyone and everyone who assisted RCC with an eviction of their own.  Now, threats like this are made reasonably often by those with power and BU are certainly a group capable of acting on such a threat.
However, making this threat rang the Bat Phone all on its own and when Whale Girth got invaded, half on the non-Russian WH groups came to defend the WG system while the other half was called on to attack the BU home system C6.  We were part of that second half.

The BU system only had 2 moons in it with heavily armed POSs on each and when Lazerhawks rolled into their allies and reinforced them with 3 caps and a dozen or so subcaps we called for a log off until numbers were brought in later in the day.
In the end NOHO, who were in the WG system defending them, talked to BU leadership and a 24h cease fire was called with all evictions cancelled and we went home.
Evictions are bad for WH space in general and this was the best possible outcome for all involved in my opinion but it did leave many upset about what they saw as a diplomatic blue balling.
In any case, Rolled Out moved back home and as it was hitting 2am for the AU TZ, most of us went to bed.


On Sunday I logged in around lunch time to find my corp reinforcing some random C3 POS as they were determined to find a fight this weekend.
The POS only had 10 hours of stront in it but waiting around for the timer is boring and we had no real interest in it so we moved on.

The day was spent looking for trouble in our chain and while some random kills were found, it did not yet satisfy our hunger for kills this weekend.

A few hours before downtime, someone found a twitch stream of a guy running C3 sites with some alts who was openly revealing his HS entry point when he made trips there to refit.
Now, this is quite possibly the stupidest thing you can do in wspace.  There were only a few of us online and we decided to teach this guy that lesson.
There was no route from our home system but Sith was in HS and he started heading over in his cloaky Proteus while I logged on my Tengu alt and also headed over.
Unfortunately for us, another group had the same plans as us and got there about 5min before us.
Sith managed to tag the streamer's Typhoon with his Prot and bail as the 3rd party landed 4-5 ships so he ended up on the kill mail.
I had been slightly behind and had arrived in system with my Tengu by now and wanted to play so I jumped into the C3 and had Sith fleet warp me at range to the site the Streamer had been running.
I landed 60km or so off the 3rd party Megathron, Ishtar and Sleipnir and picked up some transversal.

The Ishtar and Sleip were shield tanked so I knew my main threats were neuts from the Sleip and Mega.  I tested if the Mega had a neut by getting within heavy neut range of it and it did not so I felt reasonably safe.
The Ishtar was faster than my 100mn but it had no webs or any real non drone DPS so it wasn't really a threat so I went to town on it.
I set a closer orbit than normal on it as I needed to be able to web it to stop it from getting away.
As the Ishtar hit armour, I realized my mistake.  I knew the Ishtar and Sleip didn't have webs but I had completely neglected the Mega and it DID have a web, which I had just managed to get in range of...
At this point I switched all my attention to getting away from the soon to be lethal web and the Ishtar got out in deep armour.
I had hit web range at around 60% shield and it began dropping fast as the web let the Sleip catch right up to my ass.  Luckily it only had a NOS, no Neuts.
I was also very aware of the heat damage on my mids being around the 80% mark but I had to risk 2 cycles of heat on the AB to pull range and I managed to do so as I hit 5% shield.
Close one, but safe.

After that I regenerated some shield and crashed the HS hole through their HIC bubble, podding the streamer on the way who had just landed in his pod since he had no other way out.
We considered doing round 2 but we only had 2 combat ships plus an Onyx that has made its way over versus their 6-7 ships so we didn't go back and Sith headed home.


After DT I decided to run a home site as I had fit out a Vindicator earlier and needed to recoup some isk reserves.
As I was on the last wave with 8-9 sleeper BSs left, the few others that had logged on rolled the static and the scout immediately called that escalations were being run next door in the new static.  This was the blood we were after all weekend and a ping was made and the fleet scrambled.
(I got very distracted at this point and nearly lost my Moros in the PVE site as I wasn't paying attention to it!  Pretty sure it has structure damage.)
My main was not in the site but I had Archon, Moros, Loki stuck there for at least 5min.
I scrambled my main into his PVP Legion (Ew, I know...) to join the attack, I wasn't missing this, while trying the finish off the site as quickly as possible.
I managed to get my PVE ships off grid as the call to warp to the static was made and hastily reshipped my booster into a covops for an additional scout to take with us while logging off my other 3 toons while they were still in warp to my POS.

The call was made for our Flycatcher to jump in and warp to the hostiles as our caps (Moros, Naglfar, Nidhoggur) were in warp to the static which he did, bubbled them and warped off to safety before they knew what was happening.
Our fleet jumped, closing the WH behind us, warped to the site and made short work of the 2 Moroses and 2 Thannys that were trapped there after their Loki bailed.

Final tally was a tad over 12bil.
http://rolledout.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=23712736

It was a fairly simple gank but the execution was very smooth, props to Josh Tsutola for 1st rate scouting and Garothar for his bubble work.

With the fight over and the locals posing no real threat to our light fleet, the focus turned to extracting our caps to a jumpable LS/NS.
The locals has critted their static while running sites so we finished it off with our HIC and looked for a route.
(At this point I also logged in an alt at home and went to salvage the site I had run earlier.  Girl’s gotta earn a living!)
Their static was a C5>C3 which lead to HS and it also had an incoming C5 which had a NS that was 1 jump to LS for the pilots with jump skills and only needed 1 mid-point for the pilot with JDO level 1 *cough*-Braxus-*cough*.  Perfect.
Well, almost perfect.

Turns out that the C5 with the NS exit was occupied by our very favourite Russians, Quantum Explosion.
It was now around 3 hours after down time and while this isn't prime time for Russian groups, it's not a bad time for them and there was some activity in their hole with at least a stealth bomber and 2 T3s moving around.
Obviously moving 3 unsupported caps without web support (our Lokis couldn't assist as they'd be collapsed into NS) through a hostile WH with actives is not ideal but we didn't want to give up the exit so we went for it anyway.
As our caps entered warp to the QEX hole, a hostile Legion was reported on the connection, right on schedule!
The call was made to proceed and all 3 caps jumped into the hostile system, irrevocably closing the exit behind them, and hit warp to the nullsec hole.

Let take a short break here to consider how this must have looked for QEX.
The majority of our corp plus allies had spent most of Saturday attacking one of their main C6 bases.
We then had an agreed upon 24h cease fire, which for those counting had basically either just expired or was about to expire, with the agreement that all evictions were cancelled.
And now here we are, by pure coincidence, throwing 3 capitals into another one of their systems!
Awkward...
Cease fire or no cease fire, I would not expect anyone to sit idly by while 3 hostile caps crashed into their system.

Quantum Explosion seemed to hesitate here for a bit, unsure what exactly was going on, and our Nag and Nid made it into warp to the nullsec.  Unfortunately our Moros, who was last to jump, did not make the warp before a Tengu and Legion decloaked and tackled him.
He attempted to drop a mobile depot to fit warp core stabs but it was quickly destroyed by the 2 T3s before it onlined.
At this point, the other 2 caps had arrived at the NS and the Nag had made its exit, being of no help here, and had mid massed the NS hole on its way out, raising serious concerns regarding the ability of the NS hole to take both remaining caps even if the Moros was let go.
Our Nid was still lingering on the WH side of the hole and the last ditch suggestion of fitting a rack of stabs off his depot and coming back for the tackled Moros to allow him to fit stabs off the carrier was made on comms.
In the 3-5 minutes since crashing into their hole, QEX ships had started to pop up on dscan. 
'Moros on D.' 
'Armageddon on D.' 
'Archon on D.' 
'2 more Moros on D...'
The welcoming party was coming, and it wasn't friendly.

Never the less, Fido immediately dropped his depot and fit his stabs.  'YOLO!' was heard on comms and his Nidhoggur initiated what may well have been its final warp back to the stranded Moros.
On landing, both caps hit align back to the nullsec and Braxus scrambled to fit his stabs.
'2 stabs'
'3 stabs'
'Warping!'
The Moros had been successfully extracted and the Nid followed right after.

On landing on the NS the mass question was raised and the Moros offloaded its valuable modules and cargo into the Nid as it would be jumping first, being the much lighter capital.
The mass held and both caps made a safe exit to nullsec to much praise on comms, cloaking up at a safe to wait for their cyno extract.

All in all it was a great finish to the weekend.
10/10 would roll out again.

JM

Time For An Intervention

Ok, it's time we had a chat wormholers.
No this does not apply to all of you but to those it does, cut this shit out.

The thing I'm talking about is talking in local in WHs.

For the past few months I've been seeing my local chat window flash more and more often when scouting chains and it's really starting to piss me off.

Waving hi in local to me when you see me jump in is about the dumbest thing you can do.  It immediately alerts me that there is someone else present and it also tells me that said person is not smart and most likely a total noob.
I guess you feel clever that you spotted me in some cloaked ship parked off a WH?  Ok, congrats.  Now how about instead of alerting me, and anyone else who might be visiting your system, that you're around, how about you use your advantage of knowing I'm there to try kill me?

There are VERY few good reasons to speak up in local chat in a WH and all of them involve the other people in the WH already knowing that you're there.
Information and surprise count for a hell of a lot in wspace and every time you speak in local you are losing information advantage and losing credibility as a competent pilot.

While this is sadly no longer as true as it used to be, wspace has always attracted a higher caliber of player due to the inherent difficulties of living there and as such, I expect better than to have random scrubs wave at me in local.
I don't tolerate it from people I fly with and I immediately lose respect for anyone who does it without a very good reason.

Just don't do it.

Confidence, Estimations and Risk

Confidence, Estimations and Risk

Risk is an inherent and key part of all aspects of EVE.  Each time you undock a ship you are taking the risk that there exists someone with the means and willpower to blow it up.  People who survive in EVE learn through experience and knowledge what risks are worth taking, when to take them and how to avoid them.
EVE is one of the only games where you can very easily lose everything you have with no way of getting it back and it is this real risk that makes EVE what it is.
One of the first rules all capsuleers will hear and need to learn is 'do not fly what you cannot afford to lose' yet how people go about defining and maintaining this rule varies wildly across the reaches of space.

I find EVE requires developing a balance in your risk taking.  These days, especially in wormholes, it is not hard to replace ships, even pimped out T3s and capitals, since ISK is not hard to make but I still do not go and blindly throw my Proteus into every fight I can, even if I can replace it at will.
I don't consider myself to be risk averse but no one is expected to whelp multibillion ISK ships into no win scenarios if the scenario can be avoided or if lesser or more suitable ships will do the same job or even better.

So how do you know when to fight?  There are a lot of people who make the call to always fight and while I certainly appreciate this approach, and tend to take it myself, you need to at least know what you're getting yourself into and what tool to bring for the job.

When deciding if to fight, you can make two mistakes. A) You can under estimate your opponent, or B) you can over estimate them.
Underestimating the enemy is an obvious mistake and tends to lead to you waking up in a station going 'what happened?'.  You can avoid underestimating your opponent by scouting properly and assuming they know what they are doing with the ships they have.
As a general rule, I find if you assume people are at least 80% competent in the use of their space ships, you will almost never overestimate them since in realty, most people are far worse than 80% efficient at piloting their ships.
Unfortunately, assuming people know what they are doing is what leads us to overestimating people, since a lot of them do not.
Overestimating is a different kind of mistake, but it is a mistake none the less.  It doesn’t lead to your death but what it does lead to is missing fights; not engaging and generally scaring away people by bringing way too many ships to the point where people won't engage you. 
I find I fall into this trap a lot.
As I mentioned before, I like to assume people are able to fly their ships to 80% efficiency.  I also know the ships I fly quite well and tend to know what they can and what they can't handle so if I'm facing odds that I know I can't handle at 80% enemy competency, I tend to be more careful than I should be and it generally ends with me sitting in space wondering why they won't engage me or why they ran away, since in reality, the 4 BCs that I brought 3 guys in T3s to blow up instead of just my Proteus were T1 fit and being flown by 4 month old toons that could in no way fly them at 80% efficiency.  Oh well.

So how can you make accurate estimations on the enemy's abilities so that you can get good fights out of them?  Well, the most important one is to know who your enemy is.  Are they a 3 year old, large wormhole entity full of bittervets in T3s with 100mil SP? Yeah, they might know what they are doing.  Are they EVE Uni or Brave Newbies in assorted T1 junkers?  Well, these corps are designed for rookie pilots, they don't have maxed skills and 90% of them will have T1 guns, T1 tank and poorly fit ships.  This kind of context matters a lot. 

In SUSU we found this out a few times with Brave Newbies.  The first couple of times we tried fighting them we brought guardians, tech 3s, ewar support, the entire wormhole PVP package in what we considered to be suitable numbers for fighting a force of T1 cruisers, BCs and BSs outnumbering us about 2-1. 
At the time we were annoyed that they wouldn't fight us but in hind sight, the call not to engage us at that time was spot on.  As their CEO put it in local 'There's no way we can break 4 Guardians'.
Eventually we figured it out and went in to pick a fight in T1 cruisers with minimal (ie 2) T1 logi support and they gave us a great fight.

In this day and age everyone and their mother flies T3s in wormholes but not all of those people are willing to really risk them in combat. 
I hear large WH entities complain a lot about people not fighting them but they all do exactly the same thing.  They roll out their 25 T3s and 5 Guardians and start kicking in doors.  Well think about it, what kind of fights is such a fleet actually going to find in w-space?
The answer is very few.
You'll get to gank the odd site running group and you'll get to have big fights against other large groups just like you with the exact same fleet comp on the rare occasion you're both kicking in doors at the same time but as for the randoms you run into? Yeah, not going to happen.
It's plainly obvious to everyone except for the groups who do this why people won't fight them but with very few exceptions, these groups will never ship down or actually offer reasonable fights.
Take what KILL did a while ago to REPO as a typical example.  They got mad that REPO wouldn't fight them, placed an eviction fleet into their system and then demanded REPO fight them or get evicted.
Now, REPO are no scrubs and they did go and fight but given they were severely outnumbered, the result was about the same as if they'd sat in their POS and self-destructed.

At the end of the day, most people do actually want to fight but they do not want to fight with zero chance of winning.  Can you really blame them for that?
I find it extremely useful to have some way to interact with forces you can't fight head on.  Personally I use a 100mn Tengu for this role as it's a ship that I will willingly throw into virtually any and all situations, even blindly, since it has a very high survival rate if I find myself in too deep.  You can throw it solo against 20+ ships quite safely and while it does require paying attention and some pilot skill, it lets you mess around with forces you can't brawl with and at least interact on some level.
It doesn’t have to be a Tengu either, any decent kiting or sniping ship will do for giving your larger neighbors something to chase.
Obviously no ship is unkillable and I have lost 5-6 Tengus in PVP but in the end it always comes down to flying what you can afford to lose.

The key to finding good fights has three main components. 
Firstly, you need to have confidence in the ship you are flying and you need to know what it can handle.  This is something you will need to learn from experience.
Secondly, you need to be able to make estimate regarding your enemy and what they can handle.  Will they run away if you bring logistics? Do they have backup? Can you deal with their Guardians?  This also takes practice but being able to anticipate how your enemy will deal with a situation is very valuable.
Thirdly, you need to take risks.  PVP without risk is not really PVP.  Killing a lone Drake with 5 Proteus with 3 Guardians for support has no risk and hence is not exciting and barely counts as PVP at all.  On the other hand, slugging it out against an equal force is always going to be more satisfying, win or lose.

Bottom line is this:  When in doubt, shoot it.  Is it bait?  Shoot it, see what happens. 
The amount of things you shoot should not change.  What should change is what ships you bring to each situation.
Enemy has us out numbered in brawlers and we have no logistics? Kiting time.  Enemy is in T1 ships with no support? Better leave the tech 3s in the hanger.  Time to go shoot a bait Gnosis? Where’s my 100mn Tengu.
In the end, situational awareness and knowing when to ship down makes better fights for everyone.
Sadly, shipping down is a concept most people in wormholes have forgotten.

As always, don't fly what you can't afford to lose.

CSM Minutes

Seriously, Just Stop

So the CSM minutes has been released and they contain an alarmingly high level of bad ideas for wspace.
I will be going through the full wormhole related section below, the full minutes can be found here:
http://cdn1.eveonline.com/community/csm/CSM8WinterMinutes2014.pdf


Wormhole-related topics
With Fozzie, Greyscale, Bettik, Masterplan


1)  WH effects.

"Chitsa brought up the topic of Black Holes. He said they’re not worth living in at all, and suggested making them provide industrial bonus effects. When asked what the current effects were like, James described them as “putting on a blindfold and going roller-skating on an ice rink”. Fozzie says that CCP could consider changing them, but they would also want to consider changing other systems, such as Pulsars and Wolf Rayets (mostly due to inability to buff capital reps because of those systems). The CSM expressed their support."

The first paragraph is presented as a discussion on Black Holes but it is in fact much more than that with the sneaking in of Pulsar and Wolf Rayet effects so let’s break it down.
Short of a few deranged loons, no one anywhere ever likes Black Hole systems and they are almost universally empty and avoided.  The idea of turning them into mining/industrial systems is an interesting one and I see no real issue with it.

So that's the good, now for the bad.

Here we see another prime example of CCP tacking on changes we do NOT want onto changes we DO want.
So we're going to change Black Holes? Ok cool, lets change Pulsars and Wolf-Rayets too while we're at it!
Wait, what?  Why?
The 2 are in no way related what so ever and yet have been lumped together here as if they were one and the same.

Allegedly, CCP want to change Pulsars and Wolf Rayets so that they can make fleet boosts apply to capital local reps.
Um, ok.  I guess.  Nope, you lost me.
Let's assume that fleet boosts actually need to apply to capital local reps, though personally I don't see why.
Would making that change make capitals over powered in these 2 WH systems?

Let’s start with an Archon in a C6 Wolf Rayet. 
Currently a well fit Archon can perma tank roughly 27.7k with fleet boosts (just the resist ones), without overloading or popping drugs, which in effect means you need at least 3 dreads to kill it outright through its reps if the pilot is good.
If you want to go the neut route, you would need 2 full neut Bhaalgorns to make it unstable running just its local tank or 3 if you want to fully cap it out without it running local tank.
For comparison, you need 1 less dread outside of a Wolf Rayet to kill the same Archon, number of Bhaals doesn't change.
So what changes if you buff the tank by the rough 35% that applying the other 2 fleet links would add?
Well to put it simply, you need either 1 more dread or 1 more Bhaalgorn to kill the Archon.
Ok, so there's clearly an effect but surely the whole point of making boosts apply to caps is to make them better right?
I hardly think this change is game breaking in any way, especially considering how much stronger Dreads were made in their buffs while Carriers have remained unchanged.

So what about C6 Pulsars and Chimeras?
Here you have the issue on the other side of the equation with cap regen being buffed by the Pulsar while actual tank is unchanged.  As such, a Chimera in a Pulsar doesn't inherently tank any more than anywhere else but it can afford to drop cap mods for more tank which ends up having a similar effect.
Currently, a Chimera can tank around 20.6k while needing 3 Bhaals to neut it out under tank (or 4 without running tank), or you can tank 26.5k and drop the number of Bhaals by 1.
Note that I'm talking about fits you're actually likely to run into, not 40bil officer fits that can, and should, get much better stats.
If you buff the tank by 35% you actually get a very similar result to the Archon in upping the numbers needed to kill/neut it by with the same fits.
That said, there is one big difference between the Archon and the Chimera in that the Chimera can be fit in a way where it has low tank but so much cap regen that it is virtually immune to any amount of neuting which means that it becomes very difficult for low DPS small gangs to kill as they can't cap it out.
I understand why people may complain about that but I really don't have an issue with it.  If you want to engage carriers in a Pulsar, you need to bring a combination of neuts and DPS which I don't see an issue with.

All in all, Pulsars and Wolf-Rayets are currently very well-functioning system types that are balanced and have a good level of upside and down side.
They do not need any changes, even if cap reps are buffed.


2.)  K162 Delay

"CCP Bettik then suggested a mad science idea, where incoming wormholes would not spawn the signature for the K162 immediately, but instead it would be delayed for an amount of time. James disapproved strongly of the idea, and expressed that such an advantage should be balanced by being unable to leave the grid until the signature is spawned.  Chitsa got excited and strongly approved of the idea.

CCP Bettik then explained that there are two options, where they could just delay it on the sensor overlay, but not to probes, or they could delay it for everything, including probes. Chitsa suggested a delay of three minutes, while CCP Fozzie proposed it could be a variable number of minutes. Chitsa was supportive of the idea. Malcanis suggested that the delay could go down to 0 minutes. Chitsa expressed that such mechanic would increase wormhole PVP as well as reinforce wormhole space as a harsh space to live."

This has been done to death in the threadnaught on the WH forums and I've posted about it before so I'll merely summarize here.
Yes, there should absolutely be a delay on the overlay for K162 WHs.
No, there should absolutely not be a delay on being able to probe newly spawned K162s.

The Ideal situation here would be to disable the overlay entirely in wspace and go back to how things were before.


3.) More Valuable WHs

"Chitsa proposed the idea of making some wormholes more valuable than others. For example some wormholes could have dual statics or increased chance of outgoing connections. Greyscale agreed that it would be something interesting. Chitsa expressed that such system would be great as players would need to find out by themselves as to which system is more valuable. James proposed the effect could even be a roaming effect. CCP and CSM were in general agreement that it is something worth looking into."

This is a really bad idea.
As soon as you make some systems inherently 'better' than others you end up with a massive arms race and will end up with a few huge groups holding the systems and no one else being able to get anywhere near them.
If you want proof of this, go back and take a look at what happened in nullsec with Tech moons.


4.) Lowering WH Income

"CCP suggested making w-space systems less profitable the more POSs there were in the system. James explained that this was effectively true already, as there is no way to increase income and the more players, the further income needs to be split."

Another terrible idea, well handled by James.


5.) I Don't Even...

"Greyscale asked what would happen if K162 wormholes did not spawn a signature, and was strongly rebuffed as this would vastly reduce the number of connections available in w-space."

6.) C7 Space, AKA:  AFK Cloaky Central

"Masterplan proposed adding some more systems without any moons. This was well received as well. Chitsa mentioned that such idea was already discussed a while back and it was called C7 space.
Greyscale then proposed making ships not disappear on logout in this new space."

Just Stop.
What exactly would be to point of this new C7 space?
A place where you can't anchor POSs, can't log off, can't live out of an orca... seems like a fantastic place to never go!
Even assuming you could log out normally, what would adding these systems bring to WHs?
I would need to hear some extremely good reasons why this space is needed before I'd be on board.
There are tons of empty existing WH systems, no need to add more.


7.) The Take-Away

"In summary, Bettik said his take-away was the geography needed a bit of a shakeup, rather than just the content. Chitsa agreed with the idea of shakeup as wormhole space has not had its fair share of shakeups compared to other spaces."

I have no idea why this was the take away CCP got but whatever.
Does WH geography need a shakeup?  I don't know.  It's certainly true that it hasn't had any shake ups since its introduction.

It may seem like I'm super conservative and don't want any changes to wspace but it's actually not true. 
I would love some changes to wormholes but I am not willing to sacrifice the great system we already have in order to get them.
The simplest most effective way of shaking up the WH geography would be to add more wandering connections which is something people have been asking for from the very beginning.

Currently C1-3 WHs have wandering connections from kspace and wspace, C5-6 systems have wandering connections from kspace and C4s have none.
I would propose adding wspace wandering holes to C4-6 and wandering kspace connections to C4s.
This can't be hard to implement for CCP, it wouldn't break any existing functionality and is easily manageable by adjusting the spawn rates if they become problematic.


All in all I don't think either CSM rep handled these issues very well with Chitsa being particularly bad at it.
I hope the next round of WH CSM reps do a better job.

JM

Stop Touching My WHs

Stop Touching My WHs


So the latest and 'greatest' idea from CCP regarding K162 WH detection is the perfect example of why I'm a huge advocate of as few changes in wspace as humanly possible.

Here is the full proposition as posted by Fozzie here:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=331782

Hey everyone. Team Five O has been working on a few concepts for improvements to wormhole mechanics and we wanted to run one idea by you all to start some discussion in the community. This idea has already been discussed with the CSM, and we don't currently have specific plans to implement it but we think it's at least worth getting discussion started.

We have been thinking about and discussing the way that the Sensor Overlay has affected Wormhole life, mainly in the ease with which players can now observe new wormhole signatures appearing (which often indicates that the entry of hostile players may be imminent).
We investigated what would be involved with delaying the appearance of signatures on the sensor overlay, but that solution is somewhat unsatisfactory since players could always return to the old trick of spamming probe scans to check for the new sigs. Basically, the Sensor Overlay had only made the existing problem more visible, and it would be better if we could get right to the source.

The potential change would be to delay the appearance of the signature beacon when K162 dungeons spawn. This would prevent the dungeon from appearing on probe scans or the Sensor Overlay for up to a few minutes.

This change would make life in wormholes a bit less safe, and increase the sense of real danger that unknown space should include. The flipside is that actively hunting for pvp in wormholes should present more targets that have a slightly shorter notice to your arrival.

The delay could take a few potential forms, either a set timer of a couple minutes, a timer that has random elements or even one that is variable depending on the amount of mass that passes through the wormhole.

This would obviously be a very significant change to wormhole mechanics, and we think it may be a very good opportunity to shake up wormhole life and further encourage the best parts of the wormhole experience.

I'd like to repeat that this change is currently not planned for any specific release, but we would like to start community discussion on the idea and see where it goes.

Let us know what you think in this thread, and we'll be watching closely.
Thanks!
-Fozzie

Ok, so let's break it down in a timeline.

- Life pre overlay meant you had to drop probes to see any sigs and had to watch for new sigs using probes if you wanted to see them.  No one was complaining about this well functioning system.

- Odyssey happens, sensor overlay introduced.  Now you don't need probes to see new sigs, they show up right away automatically.  This change a) wasn't asked for b) wasn't like by basically anyone in wspace c) was hugely demanded for removal from WHs.  All in all a big success.

- Now CCP seem to want to do something about it, ok fine.  So what's the solution?  Is it to put things back to how they were pre sensor overlay? No, apparently not.  Apparently it is to roll the change back even further and make it so that you can't even use probes to detect new incoming WHs for an unspecified period of time.


I have no idea why CCP keep trying to 'fix' or 'make better' WH core mechanics when there's never really been any issue with their core mechanics.

Here we have them adding a very bad feature in the overlay that wasn't asked for, wasn't checked with the community prior to implementation and was universally hated in WHs after release and then instead of simply removing it like we're asking for, adding a new feature again in a detection delay on K162s that, again, wasn't asked for and isn't liked by roughly 75% of people that have been responding to the thread and various polls.  At least this time they asked us about it first so, progress I guess...


Let's look at the proposed change itself and what it would mean for WHs.
The change is pretty simple, it's just adding some period of time after spawning where a new K162 exit WH cannot be detected on the overlay or even with probes.

Assuming the delay is not something absurd like half an hour, this might seem like a small change but in reality, even if it's 30 seconds it is a major change in WH security and makes it completely impossible to have any security in a WH apart from raw numbers of pilots.

The main concern is obviously for people who PVE.
The only WH PVE I've done in years is C5/6 capital escalations and while the risk is increased there too, I'm going to argue that this is the smallest issue of all activities.  The reason for this is that the number of corps that can even warp a fleet into a C5/6 site is quite low and the number of those that can kill a site running fleet is even lower.  It's also very difficult to warp back to your POS when a new WH spawns when you're scrammed and/or in siege/triage so if a group that can fight you does happen to connect, you're likely going to be fighting, delay on sig detection or no delay.

The affect this has on other classes is much more profound. 
If you roll into a C2 and see a Drake + wrecks on scan, how long does it really take to be on grid with it? 1 min? 2 min? 5 min if you're really slow, there are 30+ anoms and you take a smoke break half way through looking for it?
If people running low class sites can't watch probes for new sigs they have very little chance of escaping if a new hostile WH connects to them.

Let's not even get into what this does to the already laughably dangerous activity of WH mining.


This also has an effect on PVP operational security.
If you're bashing a tower, camping a system, conducting a fight whatever, you have no way of knowing when a potential 3rd party connects to you.
Obviously, in a PVP scenario you may well want to take the fight anyway but a non zero amount of time to prepare is generally nice.


Sure, a part of me wants to go along with this change and say 'fuck it, I don't do PVE anyway, let's just kill anyone who does'.  Thing is, you can catch people already anyway, it isn't that hard.
Adding a probe detection delay on incoming WHs is a typical CCP style of change that adds a feature to address an issue in completely the wrong way.

I guess I should be glad CCP seem to be listening and noticed that WHers hate the new overlay but they need to actually fix the issue in the way that we're asking for, not by taking it way too far and doing what they think we're asking for.

Yes, the auto detecting sensor overlay needs to be removed from WHs.  No, a probe detection delay does not need to be added.


All in all this is exactly why I'm always against any changes being made to WH space.
Hell, even in the best case scenario where CCP remove the scanner overlay from WHs and leave probe detection without a delay, where do we end up?  Exactly where we were 4 years ago, in a well functioning wspace.


JM

This House is not a Home

This House is not a Home

The issues of living in a POS and POS mechanics have been the hottest topic around the wspace water cooler for some time now.
WH dwellers live exclusively out of POSs, or nothing at all, as it is their only option but POS mechanics are old and have not kept up with the modernization of EVE life.

The suggested fixes to the matter of POSs have varied wildly from 'don't touch it, you'll break WHs' to 'scrap it entirely and give us modular POSs with docking' and everything in between.
Personally, I lean much closer to the 'don't touch it' end of the spectrum as I simply do not trust CCP to redo POSs well and maintain the feel of WH living if they fully redo them.
For instance, I do not want docking of ANY sort anywhere near my WH home and I consider removing the POS force field mechanic a deal breaker on any changes.

That said, POSs very clearly need an update so I'm going to go over what I consider to be the major points that need addressing.  I am going to be venturing slightly into the corp management/roles area since it is very closely linked to some of the major POS issues.
Unfortunately (or possibly fortunately?) I have zero experience on running any sort of industry out of a POS so I will only be touching lightly on it but given how often I hear people complain about it, the image of POS industry I have is that it is also in need of major review and updates.

Note:  These items are not in any particular priority order.


POS Setup

Anyone who has every set up a fresh POS knows how time consuming and tedious it is to do.  There has already been a small pass done by CCP on this a few years back when they removed anchoring timers on most mods and reduced onlining timers but it is still very poor.
This area needs improvement in 2 ways:

1.  There needs to be an onlining queue where you can queue up as many mods as you want and they'll go and online in that order without you needing to wait for one to finish and then hit online on the next one.  Would function similarly to the skill queue and would make onlining a POS way simpler.

2.  You should be able to save POS setups in the same way you can save ship fittings.  In order to use one, you would need to online the tower and set its layout.  Then if you go to anchor a mod at it that is on the loaded layout, it would automatically go to the predefined location as per the layout and anchor there without each mod needing to be manually placed.


POS Security and Access

This is the big one for most WH groups.  Security on current POSs is so limited that it actively limits how much a group can grow until it hits an inevitable security wall of too much risk.
Currently the only security you can put on a POS is a force field password and you can set 3 levels of corp role based access to storage mods and even if you have the role based access setup, the people with higher level access will have access to the items/ships in the lower access storage as well as the people with the highest level access having total access to all your POSs, including pulling fuel and tearing down towers.  Clearly you can't give a 3rd of your corp starbase configuration level access.
This forces large WH corps to set up many 'personal' POSs that are secured by force field password and are shared by a small group of people, at most, that know  and trust each other.  Many large enities have upwards of 50+ such POSs in their home WH which in a 200-300 man corp (about as large are WH corps get) is extreme to absurd levels.

The way I see it, POS security should work in a similar way as chat channel access currently works.  If you have a module level allowed usage list it would allow corps to specify exactly who has access to view and/or take from a particular SMA/CHA or use production mods ect.
Ideally this should be able to be set on the POS level and then further altered on the module level so that you don't need to set it manually for each and every module.

Personal SMAs that work in the same way as personal CHAs are also very much needed.

If proper module level security was implemented to POSs it would allow a far greater number of people to live out of the same POS without risking all their stuff to people they don't know.


Refining Array

Currently the maximum yield you can get when refining ore at a POS is 75%.  Now, I haven't refined or at a POS or elsewhere in over 4 years so this doesn’t really affect me in the slightest but it does seem like this is a super extreme penalty for refining outside of a station.
I do not know what CCPs original reasons for this may have been but I don't see how upping the yield to somewhere in the 90-100% range would hurt anything.
Currently even C1 corps are choosing to build Rorquals in their WHs for the sole purpose of compressing ore so that they can haul it out to high sec to refine it.  Many of those corps then haul to minerals back into their WH for further industrial use. This kind of tedious work around should not be needed for manufacturing items in WHs.


Offline POSs

WH space is littered with old abandoned towers long left to rust in space, their owners long gone and not likely to return.
This topic comes up reasonably often among WH denizens, many of whom want to be able to unanchor and scoop the dead towers.
Personally I don't feel you should be able to just straight up take them but I do agree that removing them should be easier.
I would suggest that an offline POS tower should have zero shields so that you only need to chew through its armour and structure points to blow it up.
Admittedly this is not a super important change but it would clean up the streets of wspace somewhat and unclutter our dscans.


Self Destructing in Force Fields

This shit has to go, enough said.
If not outright banning it, James Argent recently suggested that any SDed ship inside a warp disruption bubble should give a kill mail to the bubble's owner.  This is an idea I like a lot in the alternative to just banning SD inside a POS.


So apart from the admitted industrial changes I'm sure are needed, that's actually the end of my list.
Honestly, I don't think that the 'POS problem' is anywhere near as big as people make it out to be.  Most of the issues are small items with the big ones being POS setup and POS security.
The security changes are sorely needed and I would urge CCP to prioritize them over everything else but I am also quite sure they'd be the hardest for them to implement.

In summary, I actually really like the POS system.  It just needs a few user friendliness upgrades and a real security system.  Apart from that, I'll take a space stick with a force field over any modular POS with docking/mooring/whatever-else-that-isn't-a-force-field any day of the week.

JM

Damage Projection? How Does It Work?

Damage Projection? How Does It Work?

So this is an argument that has been around forever.  Which ships have better damage projection?  How useful is damage projection?  Why are you killing me from all the way over there?  These are all questions that come up regularly in space fights and the answers to them vary wildly depending on who you ask.

In WH space, the debate basically comes down to this:  Is a Legion better than a Proteus in a fleet fight?
Pretty much all Proteus pilots, myself included, consider a Legion to be a low tank, low DPS junker that has no place anywhere outside of HS incursions.
On the other hand, there are hard core Legion pilots who swear by them and always talk about the Legion's sweet, sweet damage projecting goodness.

So let’s take a look at the 2 ships and see what we find, specifically in terms of damage projection in an extended fight.
(I will be ignoring any implants.)

I'm going to start with tank actually since how we look at it actually does affect damage output of the Legion.
A Proteus is almost always fit with a plate, 2 EANMs, 1 explosive plating/hardener and 3 trimarks for tank and it gets around ~150k EHP with this setup.
A Legion can be tanked the same way and it actually gets about ~5k more EHP with this setup.  The issue is that if it is tanked like this it can only fit 2 heat sinks.  The alternative is dropping the hardener (thermal in this case) and fitting a therm rig.  This keeps the resist profile acceptable and allows for 3 heat sinks but drastically drops the EHP to ~117k.  Personally I don't feel this drop in EHP is acceptable, especially in fleet fights, and since the 2 heat sink fit's tank compares so nicely to the Proteus, I'm going to use that fit as a base line for the rest of the comparisons also.

Raw DPS wise, these ships are not even close.  Proteus tops at 1033 DPS with Void while the Legion tops at 640 DPS with Conflag.
Given the vast paper difference in DPS, the only way to properly compare then is indeed at range as the Legion pilots say so let’s give it a go.

Void vs Conflag:
Here the Proteus does more DPS to 7km where the Legion takes over out to 13km or so, after which the only thing doing damage are the Proteus's drones.

IN MF vs CN AM:
OK, here we see the Proteus taking top damage out to 10km AND actually retaking the top DPS after 15km, albeit mostly due to drones.

Null vs Scorch:
Ok, this pairing is probably what the Legion pilots are on about I suppose.  Still, the Proteus does the most DPS (and we're talking 780 vs 450 here mind) out to 17km where the Legion again takes over and is hitting for 450dps out to 35km.

We can pretty clearly see that yes, the Legion does have more range than the Proteus, though that should be pretty obvious when directly comparing blasters to pulse lasers.
So what about other scenarios where both ships are not using the same type of ammo?
Well, let’s load Null into our Proteus and see what happens to all of the other Legion ammos.
Conflag? Nope, Proteus always does more DPS. IN MF? Still nope, Proteus always does more damage!

Ok, where does this leave us?
Well, the Legion pilots are right; the Legion does project DPS better than the Proteus.  But only with scorch.  And only outside of 17km.  And only assuming the Proteus pilot doesn’t move closer to the target.
But in the end, yes, in a large fight where the targets are spread out across 50km+ of space, you're probably better off with a Legion for damage projection, even if there is only 450 of it.

So is that it?  Proteus relegated to small scale brawls, time to train up Legion subs for fleets?
That day may come with the upcoming T3 nerf, BUT IT IS NOT THIS DAY!!

Due to the recent-ish long range medium gun changes, Proteus pilots everywhere can rest assured that anything the Legion can do, they can do better.
That's right, let's talk about rails here.

What happens if you shelf the trusty neutron blasters and strop some 250mm rails on your proteus?  How does the scorch matchup look now?
In short, laughable.
250mm rail Proteus does more damage than a scorch Legion at all ranges with a single tracking enhancer and everywhere apart from 34-35km with a triple mag stab fit.
Additionally, loading spike ammo lets you hit for 400dps out to your lock range.  Now there's some projection for you. 

I'm looking at a tracking sub fit so there are no drones which tops out the DPS at 705 with 3 damage mods or 620 with 2.  Adding drones ups it to 860dps but the tracking sub is really needed.
Still, at 700dps implanted and more than fine tracking with Javelin ammo, the 2 damage mod fit gives you a ship that can still respectfully brawl as well as providing the best projected DPS available in any armour T3 fleet.

So what about a beam Legion?  Well, you can fit them and the DPS is slightly higher than the Rail Proteus but the fitting on the Legion is much worse so you need to use ACR rigs and the ammo for the Beams is not as versatile as the hybrid ammo so the Legion loses out pretty badly in the comparison.

TL;DR:  Don't fly Legions people!


Does this mean that the blaster Proteus is dead?  Not really. 
While I would now argue that a rail Proteus is the best thing you can bring to large scale fights, the fact remains that very few WH fights take place at ranges beyond the 17km range under which the blaster Proteus is undisputed king.
There is also the fact that the tracking on the 250mm rails is just shy of god awful, forcing the use of the tracking sub system, a tracking enhancer and a tracking computer to compensate for it which means you lose the versatility and added DPS of drones as well as a web.

Never the less, I have swapped out my blaster boat of choice for the rail version for now and will be flying it for the foreseeable future to see how I like it.

Here's the fit I've been running:

[Proteus, JM - Flying Dutchman]
1600mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
Corpii A-Type Adaptive Nano Plating
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Centum A-Type Energized Explosive Membrane
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Tracking Enhancer II

Corelum C-Type 10MN Microwarpdrive
Republic Fleet Warp Disruptor
Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script

250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M
250mm Railgun II, Javelin M

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Proteus Defensive - Augmented Plating
Proteus Engineering - Power Core Multiplier
Proteus Propulsion - Localized Injectors
Proteus Offensive - Dissonic Encoding Platform
Proteus Electronics - Friction Extension Processor

I have only had one opportunity to take it out so far but it has already impressed me with how it behaves on the battlefield.

Ironically, the first thing I did with it was brawl at point blank with it on a HS WH against a Harbinger and 2 Drakes because the residents in our static decided to attack me there while I was moving to HS.  In this scenario it was very apparent that a blaster Proteus would have been better but I still managed to push all 3 ships through to HS without any problems at all so it still held its own just fine.

We then went to kill some other Drakes and a Harbinger running C2 sites in a random WH 11 jumps away from our HS.  This fight showcased the damage projection of my new toy beautifully as I was able to follow and point the Harb which was attempting to flee while still applying full DPS to the primaried Drake.
The fight also showcased the surprise factor a rail Proteus provides since no one expects it.  Near the end of the fight a Falcon warped in at 70km to try save the last Drake.  He completely ignored my Proteus, likely since I wasn't pointing the Drake, so I was able to lock it, burn to my 54km point range and kill it before it noticed what was happening.
The other thing this fight highlighted was how much I absolutely HATE EC drones and why I never fit the point range sub on my blaster Proteus as we lost points on the first Drake and the Harbinger due with myself and the cloaky Proteus we also had both getting jammed by EC drones.  Damn Harbinger was in structure too...

On our way home one of our guys in a frig called out that there was a Tornado moving around in out C2 static with the HS and I found it sitting 50km off the HS WH when I jumped in which happens to be well within my point range and well within my gun range so rail Proteus bagged another one on its way home.  Point range sub DOES have its uses!

All in all I am happy with the performance of the ship so far any will be using it in place of my blaster Proteus for the time being.

Fly rowdy,
JM


PS:  It should be noted that the Loki is by far the worst T3 for damage projection but it makes up for it by being an excellent support ship and having very versatile close range gun and ammo choices.