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CCP Fallout	Posted - 2009.02.23 12:37:00 - [1] We've heard all about wormholes and how Sleepers, the new NPC race, will inhabit these areas of mystery. But what do we really know about them? CCP Incognito fills us in with all the new AI changes that will be coming to NPCs (only Sleepers at this time, don't worry... or panic, as he writes). From high damage, intelligent and multi-targeting to repairing each other and evasive maneuvering, the new NPC AI will prove challenging to every player who encounters one of these souped up ships. Learn all about the new AI by pointing your browsers here. Fallout Associate Community Manager CCP Hf, EVE Online

Perry Amarr The X-Trading Company RAZOR Alliance	Posted - 2009.02.23 12:41:00 - [2] awesome. cant wait to see all the cnr killmails
Silevran Levanadel Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.23 12:42:00 - [3] Edited by: Silevran Levanadel on 23/02/2009 12:42:07 You forgot to link the comment thread to the blog Edit: Damm, too late [URL=http://www.ff-fan.com][/URL] [URL=http://www.ff-fan.com/chartest]Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?[/URL] [URL=http://www.ff-fan.c
Crollster Marines Of A New Dawn	Posted - 2009.02.23 12:44:00 - [4] Sounds like it will be more of a challenge! :)

Chribba Otherworld Enterprises Otherworld Empire	Posted - 2009.02.23 12:48:00 - [5] Oooohhhh. Secure 3rd party service

Pottsey Enheduanni Foundation	Posted - 2009.02.23 12:55:00 - [6] CCP Fallout said One of goals we have worked towards is making PvE combat more like PvP combat. I am still not sure that is a good idea. PvE players by their nature often dont like PvP combat. So adding in the PvP elements to PvE is only making PvE content that PvE people are not going like. Sleepers feel like PvE content made for PvP players, not PvE content for PvE players. Ok thats over simplified and some PvE will like the new PvE content. I am not against the new changes and some of it sounds good I just hope CCP realise if they make PvE to much like PvP against NPCs they are going lose a lot of PvE players. Who are sleepers aimed at? Will the PvE people want to go out and fight PvP like battles against NPC's? Will the PvP people fight NPCs or will they see it as carebare ish. Faction Warfare failed because it mixed PvE and PvP too much. To two need to be keep mostly separate. ____ Telltale sign of their presence is non-linear teleportation (www.eve-online.com/races/theodicy/Theodicy_All.pdf)
Miniturret Amarr Mining Under the influence of Sugar Pals	Posted - 2009.02.23 12:57:00 - [7] seems pretty decent I look forward to tougher smarter rats. side note did a dev seriously just use the term dungeons as a reference in a space based game? "We are not going to change 80% of the NPCs in the game. Your faction-fit Navy XXXX is still going to allow you to run LV 4 missions solo. We haven't changed the NPCs that spawn in belts, nor in any of the classic dungeons, but that may change in future iterations (post-Apocrypha)." shouldn't that read either exploration sites or deadspace sites?
Marnix Gallente Game-Over	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:03:00 - [8] Looks good, but i hope the reward scales upwards aswell. Risk vs reward and all. Also, part of what makes PvP fun is the knowledge that the other guy 'suffered'. He lost something he had to work for. NPCs can act like players all they wish, at the end of the day they respawn without effort. Killing NPCs will never have that feeling of satisfaction for me. NPCing is a way to sustain PvPing, and because of the lack of satisfaction will never replace it. That's also why i hope the reward will stay appropriate... Anyway, wait and see.
Siobhan Ni Gallente Filthy Scum Scum Alliance	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:05:00 - [9] If you really want to make the encounters more like pvp then have the sleepers smack talk in local and ransom you pod

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:07:00 - [10] Just a note on the last paragraph of my blog, this blog was written a couple weeks ago. We are now feature complete and spending the remaining time to release on polish and tweaks.

Marchocias Silent Ninja's	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:07:00 - [11] ...Do the sleepers spam the forums with OMGWTFBBQ-RAGEQUITS? Please say they do! ---- I havenGÇÖt left my flat for over three months, since the council erected an iron door.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:09:00 - [12] Originally by: Siobhan Ni If you really want to make the encounters more like pvp then have the sleepers smack talk in local and ransom you pod Sorry I tried really really hard but design would not let me make sleeper pod players :(

Rivqua Caldari Omega Wing R.E.P.O.	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:11:00 - [13] A question, you mention pvp-alike behaviour. But generally, small gang pvp (ie, not fleet fights) usually means that the enemy is not capable to NoS or fire at you from 80km away (except cruises/heavy missiles). Why not mention that the new NPCs have demi-god stats, where they can cover close to the whole grid without having to move, for example? _________________ - Rivqua - --- R.E.P.O. ---
Arte Damage over Time	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:17:00 - [14] Are all Sleeper spawns the same standard or do they scale up the further into W-Space you go? From what's been reported so far, the sleepers are Chuck-Norris Fan Club officionados that give few people a fighting chance against them. If this is the case for all encounters, I can imagine that only the best ships and most experienced players may end up taking them on and W-Space becomes limited to a select few by its very implimentation. If it's scaled by the mass-limits on the wormholes limiting what ships can get thru, and therefore dictating how hard the spawns will be then it can indeed by a dip of the toe into the Pvp game by exploration, rather than a raging torrent of death that they have no chance against.
Dax Ee'nnach Caldari	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:23:00 - [15] Originally by: Pottsey Edited by: Pottsey on 23/02/2009 12:59:16 CCP Fallout said "One of goals we have worked towards is making PvE combat more like PvP combat." I am still not sure that is a good idea. PvE players by their nature often dont like PvP combat. So adding in the PvP elements to PvE is only making PvE content that PvE people are not going like. I believe this is a misconception. PvE players, by their nature, don't like Player vs Player combat. It is not the nature of the combat, it is the nature of the opponent. IMO, smarter AI will be something PvE players will enjoy. They can get a greater challenge but not have to deal with a player threat.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:23:00 - [16] Originally by: Rivqua A question, you mention pvp-alike behaviour. But generally, small gang pvp (ie, not fleet fights) usually means that the enemy is not capable to NoS or fire at you from 80km away (except cruises/heavy missiles). Why not mention that the new NPCs have demi-god stats, where they can cover close to the whole grid without having to move, for example? The sleepers have a wide range of ships from frigates to battle ships, each having different damage and orbit ranges. only the turrets sit there and snipe you from long range, there are plenty of ships that orbit at 10k or less.


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:24:00 - [17] Originally by: Arte If it's scaled by the mass-limits on the wormholes limiting what ships can get thru, and therefore dictating how hard the spawns will be then it can indeed by a dip of the toe into the Pvp game by exploration, rather than a raging torrent of death that they have no chance against. :) I like that "raging torrent of death that they have no chance against." yes the sleepers scale in difficulty the further in you go.

Alyssa Kaeda	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:26:00 - [18] If and WHEN this new NPC AI comes to normal rats I DO HOPE that the rats also get the very same weapons as players use and no more devhax torpedoes from 100km away or Blasters that hit you from 50+ km or ... or... In the end if it should resemble more a PvP encounter then the rules have to be the SAME for both sides.
Morpheus77 Gallente The Scope	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:27:00 - [19] From what I read in the forums I think that their offence/defense must be balanced. If you need a whole fleet to succesfully engage them, then you limit those rats(and WH space in general) to large corps and alliances. I understand that are not meant to be soloed, but how many small corps or gangs, would put a hard earned fleet to unknown space? The abilities to switch targets, spider tank, tgt approach etc, are a great improvement that adds diversity and a grade of difficulty already. Finally, I would like rats to pod you if they can, instead of having extraordinary dmg output for their size... /
Coltach SlingDraw Corp	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:29:00 - [20] Do these sleepers with their new AI break the rules as much as their dumb AI brethren? Do they spam 100km torpedoes, ecm at falcon ranges, have endless cap, use mwd + move at pre-nerf speeds? I really like they'll be more challenging, but it sounds like you've missed a few points here. As others mentioned, PvE is about gathering resources for PvP and having rats with player resists or above, player damage or above, player EWAR or above without the drawbacks of such fits will do nothing but make alot of people... dissatisfied. The computer is a cheating bastard, we all know and accept, because we have traditionally had advantages over the computer. It sounds like you are taking that advantage away, while ignoring the computers bastardness Will these new rats be as susceptible to EWAR as players, will they cap out like players aso. This is of paramount importance, and you'll have to address this one way or another. PvE fits are about sustainability. PvP fits are about burning out the other guy just 2 seconds before he does it to you. How has this disparity been addressed?

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:33:00 - [21] Originally by: Coltach Will these new rats be as susceptible to EWAR as players, will they cap out like players aso. This is of paramount importance, and you'll have to address this one way or another. PvE fits are about sustainability. PvP fits are about burning out the other guy just 2 seconds before he does it to you. How has this disparity been addressed? We have some changes on the drawing board for e-war, but they didn't make the deadline for feature complete for the releases. you will have to wait until a future release to see them, but we are aware there is a unbalance between the e-war for npc vs players. At some time they will be addressed, but not this release.

Green Aen	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:34:00 - [22] awesome!! one question though what about them shooting drones (switching between them and making them primary) ?
Wolf Cry Gallente Cursed Souls Vort3x.	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:42:00 - [23] The sleepers are gonna kill me
Pliauga Gallente Aliastra	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:47:00 - [24] Originally by: CCP Incognito ... We have some changes on the drawing board for e-war, but they didn't make the deadline for feature complete for the releases. you will have to wait until a future release to see them, but we are aware there is a unbalance between the e-war for npc vs players. At some time they will be addressed, but not this release. Whoa.. hold it, they are immune to e-War? I mean e-War affects them just like current NPCs? ------- "Skynet" is my internet provider, should I be worried?
Myrhial Arkenath Ghost Festival	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:49:00 - [25] Threat? In before the EVE is becoming like WoW whines Seriously though, I'm all for smarter npc's. Please throw them in missions and belts as well. And just to fuel the WoW whines some more, but mostly since I think PVE needs more love...give us (more) PVE encounters that take a well balanced fleet to take on. Dps, logistics, ewar ect. Yes, I mean like dungeons that require a tank, healer, crowd control and dps I'm quite aware that EVE is PVP oriented but in the end of the day we all need to make ISK. May as well promote teamwork to get an edge there. CEO \| Diary of a pod pilot
Nova Fox Gallente Novafox Shipyards	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:51:00 - [26] I heavily documented sleepers the best I could in a two post journal. Basically I have this bottom line. If you spot two ships your size or bigger you better warp asap because you're not winning that one. ============= Pre Order your Sisters of Eve ship today

CCP Ytterbium	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:54:00 - [27] Edited by: CCP Ytterbium on 23/02/2009 13:55:40 Originally by: Pottsey Edited by: Pottsey on 23/02/2009 12:59:16 I am still not sure that is a good idea. PvE players by their nature often dont like PvP combat. So adding in the PvP elements to PvE is only making PvE content that PvE people are not going like. Sleepers feel like PvE content made for PvP players, not PvE content for PvE players. Ok thats over simplified and some PvE will like the new PvE content. I am not against the new changes and some of it sounds good I just hope CCP realise if they make PvE to much like PvP against NPCs they are going lose a lot of PvE players. Who are sleepers aimed at? Will the PvE people want to go out and fight PvP like battles against NPC's? Will the PvP people fight NPCs or will they see it as carebare ish. Faction Warfare failed because it mixed PvE and PvP too much. To two need to be keep mostly separate. As somebody already mentionned it, what most PvE players don't like is facing other players, but quite enjoy if versatile tactics and strategies are required during NPC battles, which is not the case with the current PvE. The goal we wanted for Sleepers was to use PvP elements that bring skill into a PvE encounter, like having several ship classes needed for different roles, a fleet commander calling out proper targets, constant attention to your drones etc... We wanted to bring challenge and most importantly, fun into PvE interactions, which currently are summed up to shoot, destroy and collect rewards. Furthermore, a huge disavantage PvE players have when doing missions in a competitive area (read low/null-security space) remains they specifically have to use PvE ship fits which make them quite vulnerable when they get spotted by player pirates. The Sleeper encounters will take place in unsecured and competitive places as well, meaning your PvE interaction may be disrupted by other players if not paying attention; would you prefer facing Sleepers with a regular PvE fit that stands no chance against other players or being able to attack Sleepers properly in a PvP setup you can also use to defend yourself if other players come along? Also, don't forget that due to the new Sleeper AI, any other evil player pirate warping in to attack you may also be considered a valid and juicy target for the NPCs, meaning you will stand a fair chances if spotted . I hope you will understand that fighting Sleepers is just a complete new way to achieve PvE interactions, where regular mission solo-fittings won't work very well

Jason Edwards Internet Tough Guy	Posted - 2009.02.23 13:58:00 - [28] Quote: One of goals we have worked towards is making PvE combat more like PvP combat AKA removing any differences the game has. Anyone who plays for the pve suddenly cant do that anymore but instead made it pvp only. Yaaay on content nerf. Quote: This has a few benefits. First, new players get a taste of what PvP is like while still doing PvE encounters. Oh... so "new players" are going to be going to wormspace... where local is delayed mode, essentially 0.0... and with new rats that PWNERATE you. How smert is that. ------------------------ To make a megathron from scratch, you must first invent the eve universe. ------------------------ Life sucks and then you get podded.
Fakespace	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:14:00 - [29] So, unlimited rang AND uber tank AND crazy dps AND (current npc-like) immune to e-War ? This doesnt sound like something that has anything to do with PVP to me. Usually you can only do ONE (or maybe two) of these in a pvp setup, so these rats do not behave in any way similar to a player in a normal PVP scenario. But then, maybe what was intended was just getting us to fly pvp fittet ships (and not pvp comparable rats). Originally by: CCP Ytterbium ... I hope you will understand that fighting Sleepers is just a complete new way to achieve PvE interactions, where regular mission solo-fittings won't work very well ok, so the rats doesnt behave like a pvp player would when looking at actual dps/tank/ew, but you have to use pvp fittet ships to kill'em... hmm, sounds ok but then... for me it doesnt realy seems like a gang with pvp fit will have any better chance then a gang in pvm fittet ships (until the ew is overhauled that is) So, what are we left with? trowing mass amount of cheap ships at them until they die, as in early goone-style pvp? I realy realy hope i'm wrong here.
Smagd Encina Technologies Namtz' aar K'in	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:14:00 - [30] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Siobhan Ni If you really want to make the encounters more like pvp then have the sleepers smack talk in local and ransom you pod Sorry I tried really really hard but design would not let me make sleeper pod players :( Phew, so at least they won't contact Pandemic then and arrange a casual triple-doomsday? Good news :)
Krathos Morpheus Gallente Legion Infernal Wildly Inappropriate.	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:14:00 - [31] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Siobhan Ni If you really want to make the encounters more like pvp then have the sleepers smack talk in local and ransom you pod Sorry I tried really really hard but design would not let me make sleeper pod players :( It doesn't matter, if you have no ship, you're stuck in wormhole space and you are forced to sef destruct your pod to get out of there. EVE Knowledge
Celeritas 5k Caldari Perkone	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:16:00 - [32] Originally by: Jason Edwards Quote: One of goals we have worked towards is making PvE combat more like PvP combat AKA removing any differences the game has. Anyone who plays for the pve suddenly cant do that anymore but instead made it pvp only. Yaaay on content nerf. Quote: This has a few benefits. First, new players get a taste of what PvP is like while still doing PvE encounters. Oh... so "new players" are going to be going to wormspace... where local is delayed mode, essentially 0.0... and with new rats that PWNERATE you. How smert is that. Did you even read the blog? - Always be Happy, Never be satisfied.
Coltach SlingDraw Corp	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:17:00 - [33] Originally by: CCP Ytterbium Furthermore, a huge disavantage PvE players have when doing missions in a competitive area (read low/null-security space) remains they specifically have to use PvE ship fits which make them quite vulnerable when they get spotted by player pirates. The Sleeper encounters will take place in unsecured and competitive places as well, meaning your PvE interaction may be disrupted by other players if not paying attention; would you prefer facing Sleepers with a regular PvE fit that stands no chance against other players or being able to attack Sleepers properly in a PvP setup you can also use to defend yourself if other players come along? Also, don't forget that due to the new Sleeper AI, any other evil player pirate warping in to attack you may also be considered a valid and juicy target for the NPCs, meaning you will stand a fair chances if spotted . I hope you will understand that fighting Sleepers is just a complete new way to achieve PvE interactions, where regular mission solo-fittings won't work very well This is where I'm worried. Again, traditional PvE fits are about tanking X damage while dealing X damage, higher always better. The fits required to do this always focus on resists, cap, and damage. Pvp fits on the other hand make use of all the other parts of the game, the speed mods, the neuts and nos, the TD and ECM, the differing ammo types offering range or sig or tracking advantages aso. What seperates PvE fits from PvP fits is the PvP fits is tasked to counter a far wider variety of tactics, for a far shorter time and as such these NPC's do indeed offer more fun. But you say they (at present) are not affected by EWAR, or are affected like normal NPC's. That really screws the PvP fit. You say they are resisteded like mad, and dps like demons. Without the advantages offered by the more diverse PvP fit, it sounds like there's no reason to fit anything but damage, tank and a variety of "get outta dodge" mods
Yakia TovilToba Halliburton Inc.	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:18:00 - [34] Oh noes, you mean in future i can't just aggro the whole room of a mission and go afk while my domi's drones eat the rats ?
Taudia Gallente Sane Industries Inc.	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:24:00 - [35] Originally by: Jason Edwards Quote: One of goals we have worked towards is making PvE combat more like PvP combat AKA removing any differences the game has. Anyone who plays for the pve suddenly cant do that anymore but instead made it pvp only. Yaaay on content nerf. Quote: This has a few benefits. First, new players get a taste of what PvP is like while still doing PvE encounters. Oh... so "new players" are going to be going to wormspace... where local is delayed mode, essentially 0.0... and with new rats that PWNERATE you. How smert is that. How is adding more content a "content nerf"? As far as I'm aware no NPCs that aren't being introduced in Apocrypha will be using the new AI. Furthermore, w-space is entirely and utterly optional, like 0.0 - new players aren't forced to go there, but they have the option. Their chance of succeeding might be nominal but that just means they have the options to adapt to the gameplay or to do something else.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:33:00 - [36] Originally by: Fakespace So, unlimited rang AND uber tank AND crazy dps AND (current npc-like) immune to e-War ? I realy realy hope i'm wrong here. You are. They don't have unlimited range, they do have across the board DPS and resists, No stacking all explosive hardeners and sleeping through the encounter. They are just like current NPC in the e-war side of things. IE they have unlimited cap, but you can still paint them, ECM, warp scramble, and web them. For all but the solo content you will need some remote repairing capability with you. Either a drone boat with repair drones, or a remote rep on the drones, or a dedicated logistics ship. The harder level stuff will require capital ships, and the rewards scale as the difficulty does.


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:34:00 - [37] Originally by: Krathos Morpheus Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Siobhan Ni If you really want to make the encounters more like pvp then have the sleepers smack talk in local and ransom you pod Sorry I tried really really hard but design would not let me make sleeper pod players :( It doesn't matter, if you have no ship, you're stuck in wormhole space and you are forced to sef destruct your pod to get out of there. not quite, you can always get a fellow space pilot to lead you out...

Marnix Gallente Game-Over	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:41:00 - [38] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Fakespace So, unlimited rang AND uber tank AND crazy dps AND (current npc-like) immune to e-War ? I realy realy hope i'm wrong here. You are. They don't have unlimited range, they do have across the board DPS and resists, No stacking all explosive hardeners and sleeping through the encounter. They are just like current NPC in the e-war side of things. IE they have unlimited cap, but you can still paint them, ECM, warp scramble, and web them. For all but the solo content you will need some remote repairing capability with you. Either a drone boat with repair drones, or a remote rep on the drones, or a dedicated logistics ship. The harder level stuff will require capital ships, and the rewards scale as the difficulty does. Will the solo content be 'worth it' though, or is a solo player better off continuing to stack those explosive hardners to get his ISK?
Zothike Deep Core Mining Inc.	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:42:00 - [39] Look great and i'll do WH but seems it's the biggest PVE challenge in EVE but as it seems it will need a lot of hours of pilots and with losses (even desastrous losses possible) with struggles possibly of PVP kind inside WH and outside WH to bring out the loot, that can be possibly destroyed or/and "looted" + infrastructure needed to build T3 part I wonder the amount of t3 "ore" you can bring out of a WH from a run, but i hope a lot to be able to make lot of t3 part to make them affordable because if t3 part must be sold like 300m each part near nobody will buy and it will make risk/reward/hours spent not worth the effort at all and sleeper will go back to sleep as nobody will bother them
Krathos Morpheus Gallente Legion Infernal Wildly Inappropriate.	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:45:00 - [40] Originally by: CCP Incognito Edited by: CCP Incognito on 23/02/2009 14:36:31 Originally by: Krathos Morpheus Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Siobhan Ni If you really want to make the encounters more like pvp then have the sleepers smack talk in local and ransom you pod Sorry I tried really really hard but design would not let me make sleeper pod players :( It doesn't matter, if you have no ship, you're stuck in wormhole space and you are forced to sef destruct your pod to get out of there. not quite, you can always get a fellow space pilot to lead you out... If you have a fellow space pilot to lead you out, the rats should focus on him instead of podding you anyway (no threat from no modules), so the pod killing rats still have no sense. On second thought... if the wormhole from where you came has not collapsed yet, you can still get out of w-s without companion, right? Then the pod killing could damage you. EVE Knowledge
FlameGlow Legio Octae Rebellion Alliance	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:46:00 - [41] Yay, new NPCs! Now smarter and with twice the cheating in them. Really, wtf? If they're so smart, why can't they follow the normal game rules like players for a change? _____________ I don't care what is nerfed, as long as it's not my "undock" button.
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:51:00 - [42] The AI blog is out! Waited a long time for this. Well a couple of weeks at least. Threat-based multi-targeting, collective support, and evasive manoeuvring are all really welcome changes to the otherwise moronic AI scripts. Together they will certainly open up new strategies and behaviour for the players to counter. All in all, this should provide a challenging environment for players to do PvE in. It's not all that I wanted to see, but I recognise that is what you can realistically deliver in the time available. What I'm not so happy about is the dramatic scaling up of the damage, repair, and e-war capability of the Sleepers. To some extend I understand that some scaling up of those attributes is necessary. Even with only the AI changes, the AI in the Sleepers will be quite limited in its capabilities, and human players should be able to defeat them. However, going on the remarks on these forums, the Sleepers are now so difficult that anything except a gang doesn't stand a chance against them. One on one is possible but very difficult, anything beyond needs a blob of some size. I tried to get some first hand experience last weekend, but the broken map meant that I couldn't experiment with it first hand. Given the time setting up a gang takes in the game, this will put the content beyond a large portion of the player-base. What I'm worried about is that with the apparently god-like attributes of the Sleepers, the balance is somehow lost, and that players will associate that with the AI. Although attractive from a masochistic point of view, making AI over-powered does not make for fun gameplay. It also loses an important aspect of using AI in games, and that is believability and immersion. The capabilities that the Sleepers have are possible for players to achieve as well. They can have high damage output, or do neuting, or have a solid tank. The difference is that they can't do all of that at the same time. If Sleeper are capable of doing so, however compelling the background story to them, a lot of players will not find them believable within the game context they are used to. In fact, by having entities outside the game context breaks the immersive qualities of the game. Instead, would it not be much more enjoyable for Sleepers with lots of gank to have almost no tank? Or Sleepers with lots of neuting, to have less gank? Players are aware of these setups because those are the choices they are faced with themselves, which makes them more recognisable and thus more believable. For example, I wouldn't mind Sleepers with player-like resists, and a good mix between tank, gank, and e-war. But if it has all of the above, I lose interest. Perhaps I'm just not into boss-fights. And the irony is that to a large extend the improved scripting AI of the Sleepers means that they have less need of uber-stats, less that the old common NPCs anyway. I can not help but wonder if this isn't the result of some over-zealous attitude. Ofcourse it sounds cool around the office to say they you've written AI that is so difficult that it makes players weep behind their computers. No doubt it will produce some backslapping at the EVE bar (Circus has closed I hear). But a good enjoyable game that doesn't make. And it isn't the AI that's difficult, it's the Sleepers attributes. You no doubt, as I, would have prefered to have AI on hand that would remove the need to have inflated NPC stats. But that's not possible in the short time you had available. But to then turn to, when you boil down to it, blatant cheating on the Sleepers' stats, is an unnecessary step, an unbalanced step. An the sad thing is that by doing so, people will now use that to slag off the AI, to which it is not really related. And when people start to slag off AI, I kill a kitten. So, please, think of the kittens! -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Coltach SlingDraw Corp	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:54:00 - [43] Originally by: CCP Incognito You are. They don't have unlimited range, they do have across the board DPS and resists, No stacking all explosive hardeners and sleeping through the encounter. They are just like current NPC in the e-war side of things. IE they have unlimited cap, but you can still paint them, ECM, warp scramble, and web them. For all but the solo content you will need some remote repairing capability with you. Either a drone boat with repair drones, or a remote rep on the drones, or a dedicated logistics ship. The harder level stuff will require capital ships, and the rewards scale as the difficulty does. I'm going to be very clear on this, i shouldent, everyone knows it, but i'll do it anyway: CAP. IS. LIFE. That they have unlimited cap effectively makes nos/neut useless. That heavily nerfs some of the most effective PvP ship and gang configurations. That they have unlimited cap breaks every bit of balancing done to player capabilities through the years. NPC's always had unlimited cap, but that was offset by their very limited capabilities. Lastly, will these NPC's be as numerous as their K-space brethren, will we be warping into the usual gang of 23 frigs, 19 cruisers, 11 BC's and 8BS? (or for the level 1 equiv, 40 frigs, 8 dessies?)

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 14:57:00 - [44] A note there has been this thread running for a long time now (20 pages to date) and most of it has been the ideas and discussion that has gone into making the new AI what it is. A lot of the questions that are been asked have been answered there, but it is a lot to read so I will try and summarize the discussion as questions are raised.

Kim Telkin Caldari Kingfisher Industries	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:01:00 - [45] One question: Will they run away?! That, IMHO is the single biggest difference between PvP and PvE. In PvP when you realize your tank is broken, you're not doing any damage to your target, and they didn't bother to warp scramble you: you turn and run. Please please let the sleepers do the same? Or at least some of them, some of the time. Or at least think about adding it in the next expansion.
MuffinsRevenger EmpiresMod	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:02:00 - [46] Basicly, you made NPC's that are uneccisarily annoying to fight. Great. Nothing against clever tactics, remoterepping or clever calling of targets (apart from the fact that it forces everyone to use high end ships rather then allowing diffrent roles ofc), but it seems to be stacked together with a bunch of other annoying fetures, together with it not beeing counterble by the same means that you would in PVP (Jamming, dampning, Nos/neut/Ecm-drones, range restrictions) I have nothing about rats with high ressistence and firepower, thats fine in itself but not when coupled with making it complicated and more annoying then anything else in the first place Woulden't actually making them "avrage" in terms of tanking, but having diffrent types have diffrent amounts of damage output and representative amount of fragility built into them, while having them use clever tactics, be Alot more fun to fight? I defenatly think so
Mrs Snowman	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:08:00 - [47] Originally by: CCP Incognito They are just like current NPC in the e-war side of things. IE they have unlimited cap, I see, so how exactly is this like Pvp? You say in the blog that your trying to teach players that like to PvE about PvP... and yet, you have NPC's which are stronger harder and faster than regular players and they have unlimited cap! seriously, could you be kidding yourself (and us) any more? Also, your using an aggro system to help the NPC's decide their target. Yes, we are well aware of this system thank you, its been featured in every RPG MMO existing today. The difference being in those RPG's there are skills and abilities to generate aggro, thats what a tank does. why?.. well because classes which do DPS are often the weakest but their damage output is so high that they generate the most aggro, and so, they must learn the ability to control/limit their damage output so that the tank takes the aggro, Its a very involved system were you need good team work and communication. This system is a succesfull and a proven system in all MMO's so I can see why you decided to copy/paste. However, in the case of Eve we have no 'aggro generating' modules or skills, so ships that 'tank' wont be generating the 'aggro' which your DPS ships would generate. This just makes the enemy insanly hard because nothing but brute force works... So again, CCP your creating the BLOB mentality. This AI wont teach people about pvp, all it will teach people about is blob warfare. Im very disapointed, I was hoping that the "AI" system would be something new, fresh and unique to CCP. It all seems a bit rushed. So in conclusion, your new NPC's are basically cheating with infinate cap, Neut's and NOS will be usless and your using an old aggro system that fails since there are no specific aggro generating modules. Great

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:13:00 - [48] Originally by: Kim Telkin One question: Will they run away?! That, IMHO is the single biggest difference between PvP and PvE. In PvP when you realize your tank is broken, you're not doing any damage to your target, and they didn't bother to warp scramble you: you turn and run. Please please let the sleepers do the same? Or at least some of them, some of the time. Or at least think about adding it in the next expansion. Not Yet, it is something that has been discussed and we have some paper napkin drawings of how it would work. nothing concrete yet.

Shadowsword Epsilon Lyr Tau Ceti Federation	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:24:00 - [49] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Fakespace So, unlimited rang AND uber tank AND crazy dps AND (current npc-like) immune to e-War ? I realy realy hope i'm wrong here. You are. They don't have unlimited range, they do have across the board DPS and resists, No stacking all explosive hardeners and sleeping through the encounter. They are just like current NPC in the e-war side of things. IE they have unlimited cap, but you can still paint them, ECM, warp scramble, and web them. For all but the solo content you will need some remote repairing capability with you. Either a drone boat with repair drones, or a remote rep on the drones, or a dedicated logistics ship. Cruise missiles doing thousands of damage on resisted shield/armor sound fairly like near unlimited range to me. Across the board DPS and resists is cool because I feared Amarr ships would be **ed, like against guristas or angels, but surely logistic ships and drones will get the whole focus and die fast. Or are we going to need like 5-6 plated logistic ships for any medium difficulty sleeper spawns? They'd best give huge quantities of loot in that case, enough to build, like, 1 T3 cruiser/hour, or the main content of apocrypha will be, for the vast majority of players, updated graphic effects... And, about neuts, it just shouldn't be used by npcs. Because the only real counter to it is to fly passive-tanked missile ships, and nothing is more boring. cap boosters don't cut it because that's only a few minutes worth of countering, at most. Amarr ships already have their Nemesis, and that's tracking disruption. From all the infos you're giving us, it looks like the standard WH exploration gang is going to be one Vulture in a safe giving bonuses and X drakes with 18-20k omni-tanked shield each. Quote:** ... The harder level stuff will require capital ships, and the rewards scale as the difficulty does. What? I thought the WH systems were so far away from normal space you couldn't cyno in caps? ------------------------------------------

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:25:00 - [50] Originally by: Mrs Snowman Originally by: CCP Incognito They are just like current NPC in the e-war side of things. IE they have unlimited cap, I see, so how exactly is this like Pvp? ... So in conclusion, your new NPC's are basically cheating with infinate cap, Neut's and NOS will be usless and your using an old aggro system that fails since there are no specific aggro generating modules. Well NPC have always had infinite cap so nothing has changed there, though we do want to address this issue at some time. I would like ever one that has a NA-say to try it in sisi, we are gathering feedback from all players. A lot of people here are taking the new AI and sticking on the current NPC ships. The new ships are different than what is in K-Space (like that term...). The sleepers don't have shields for one and they don't self repair. So hit and run tactics are valid, but if you try to bull doze them with brute force you lose. (not quite true, they will self repair them selves but only if you are out of the grid for a while) You have to rethink how PvE works, brute force attacks will be playing into there strengths. While different tactics that don't work against K-space NPC could work against sleepers. In short if you try to use the same-old same-old tactics against sleepers then you will have problems. Think out of the box and you will win.

Steve Thomas	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:36:00 - [51] Originally by: CCP Ytterbium Edited by: CCP Ytterbium on 23/02/2009 13:55:40 Originally by: Pottsey . . Furthermore, a huge disavantage PvE players have when doing missions in a competitive area (read low/null-security space) remains they specifically have to use PvE ship fits which make them quite vulnerable when they get spotted by player pirates. . No one I know of uses anything that is remotly a PvE optimal fit when doing missions or exploration in Low sec. they fit to deal with that mission in mind but they also fit knowing that they will deal with players who will (try to) scan them down and hit them in the mission. The problem with running missions in low sec is that other players who try to hunt you down know they can pop into the mission or exploration sight your in and pod you because your already haveing to tank the npcs damange. But then if you actualy played the game in low sec you would have already known that. . . But on the whole missions that are more than Fit X fly to missions if needed fire smartbombs to clear the point you land in pop drones minimise the screen so you can go back to watching the CSI marathon when the boombs stop pause CSI so you can scoop loot, rinse repeat will be interesting. . . until we figure out how to go back to doing that all over again because its still scripted AI. **. . . . . . . .** Stop freaking worrying about why things the developerd did 5 years and more ago no longer make sence.
Pytria Le'Danness Placid Reborn	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:41:00 - [52] Edited by: Pytria Le''Danness on 23/02/2009 15:42:49 Originally by: Yakia TovilToba Oh noes, you mean in future i can't just aggro the whole room of a mission and go afk while my domi's drones eat the rats ? Currently that is still possible - I actually ran a whole Serpentis Extravaganza on SiSi just to test the NPC AI. I do hope that the new AI is applied to all NPCs some day simply because running missions is boring. I do it because I need the money and it is less boring than other options like mining. However CCP has a history of just adding new content and then forgetting about it (Faction Warfare anyone?) and the consequences. A lot of stuff comes pre-nerfed or half-finished with the promise "We'll do it later" that never gets fulfilled. So now we have some Ueber NPCs (Hey! Who ate my U-umlaut?) that cheat AND act somewhat intelligent, and missions that are optimized to be challenging for the average player with dumb rats. PLEASE, when you upgrade the remaining NPCs - stop their cheating too and adapt the misions! Apart from that, I am very eager to test the Sleeper AI. If it becomes a challenge to fight them due to their "better thinking" - great! First encounters on SiSi however point more into the "we gave NPCs insane stats, cheats AND a better AI" direction. Oh well, we'll see. Corporation RP channel: "PlacidReborn"
Sidrat Flush Caldari Life is Experience Rally Against Evil	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:44:00 - [53] It occured to me that W-Space will not ever be the regular ISK printing machine that solo level 4's are currently. It's also not really valid PvP, but you will need a pvp fit (nos/neuts excluded, although bringing one or two with you will help versus real players) Personally I think you should have created a new volunteer division that would (randomly) place a volunteer in a sleeper ship, or a group of 3 volunteers in a team to work together, without any information available as to who the characters are in what corp/alliance it should reduce the possibility of abuse and scandal. I only say reduce though. The additions are good. If I could get on the test server I would definately try them out of course, but I think we have enough information from this thread and others around that should give us clues as to how we fight the Sleeper rats. A good piece of information was that they are shieldless, so there's only (that should be in inverted quotes right?) armour and hull to break through. As long as their targetting duration is player like then hit and run tactics seem the surest way to break them down. I'm kind of looking forward to it, but the pve expansion seems more like a potentially long and costly (or insanely rewarding) expedition that needs to be planned out as well as can be expected. -------------------------- Life is about memories the more the better.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:46:00 - [54] Originally by: Shadowsword Cruise missiles doing thousands of damage on resisted shield/armor sound fairly like near unlimited range to me. .... What? I thought the WH systems were so far away from normal space you couldn't cyno in caps? Ok range is in kilometers, and damage is in well damage. 1000 damage doesn't affect range at all, missiles still have a velocity and flight time. Therefore the range is flight time * velocity. and you can see the missiles burn out when they exceed there flight time. Who said you needed a cyno to use a wormhole?

Zerakix Minmatar LEAP Corp	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:49:00 - [55] Originally by: CCP Incognito The sleepers don't have shields for one and they don't self repair. So hit and run tactics are valid, but if you try to bull doze them with brute force you lose .... In short if you try to use the same-old same-old tactics against sleepers then you will have problems. Think out of the box and you will win. So we setup up a cloaked ship near the sleepers have it pick targets warp the fleet 10km from it and then lock a the preselected targets fire an alpha on one target while aligning and warping off once we take enough damage and repeating till they are all dead?? Park a few domis at the warp out point kitted out for pure repping and have them fix the fleet up before they warp back in? I know they spider tank but will they stop once all the visible ship warp off? I fail.
Aeo IV Amarr Xomic OmniCorporation	Posted - 2009.02.23 15:59:00 - [56] Originally by: CCP Incognito Well NPC have always had infinite cap so nothing has changed there, though we do want to address this issue at some time. I'm sorry, but if I can't neut the NPCs, they shouldn't be able to neut me, that doesn't make any sense, not that NPCs ever have, what with their unlimited cap and ammo and extremely large ranges, and then they drop **** that isn't even related to what they're flying. Either limited these NPCs in the same way that players are limited, or find some other way of limiting them. And do try to remember the computer isn't bound by lag as players are.
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:00:00 - [57] Originally by: CCP Incognito Well NPC have always had infinite cap so nothing has changed there, though we do want to address this issue at some time. I would like ever one that has a NA-say to try it in sisi, we are gathering feedback from all players. A lot of people here are taking the new AI and sticking on the current NPC ships. The new ships are different than what is in K-Space (like that term...). The sleepers don't have shields for one and they don't self repair. So hit and run tactics are valid, but if you try to bull doze them with brute force you lose. (not quite true, they will self repair them selves but only if you are out of the grid for a while) You have to rethink how PvE works, brute force attacks will be playing into there strengths. While different tactics that don't work against K-space NPC could work against sleepers. In short if you try to use the same-old same-old tactics against sleepers then you will have problems. Think out of the box and you will win. I do appreciate the work you put into making the Sleepers more intelligent, thus necessitating the players to use different and more PvP like tactics. However, a lot of options I have in PvP are not (yet) available with the Sleepers. Neuting and Nossing are the most used examples, but they show the overall problem the Sleepers have at this point. If I were to treat a fight with the Sleepers as a PvP encounter, I would use vastly different tactics then I would if I would engage players, as far as I'm able to tell. The difference is that while things like e-war works on players, Sleepers are invulnerable to that. Now, most of that is because the AI changes are still a work in progress. I'm hoping more changes will be forthcoming soon. But what I'm worried about is that to on top of these extra capabilities, you also gave their weapons the ability to do unto us what we can't do upon them! And while I appreciate that just sitting there and tanking the Sleeper's DPS is no longer an option, you've brought this about by giving them capabilities and invulnerabilities beyond what is possible for players to use. In a couple of words, you have the Sleepers cheating. Now, to a certain extend, we human players are wily and will find a modus vivendi on this and find a tactic to beat the Sleepers. But that will not lessen the fact that a lot of players will simply not bother with a fight they see as stacked against them anyway. And I think that's a high price to pay for all the effort put in the AI and the wormhole contents. And I wonder if it is necessary to pay the price at all. With the more intelligent scripting, giving the Sleepers player like capabilities, increase somewhat for their lack e-war scripting, would also make for a good and fun fight. That combined with their practical invulnerability to e-war would still make them a force to be reckoned with, without having to go overboard on their capabilities. Perhaps it all boils down to my view of what balance is, and yours. So maybe it will come down to a modus vivendi after all. (Also, I have tried to experience the Sleepers on Sisi, but with the map currently broken, I've not been able to scan down a wormhole (not even a small deadspace in fact!), so I'm currently not able to personally test the level of balance with the Sleepers. Which is a shame, because I really want to see how they behave 'in the wild'.) -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:00:00 - [58] Originally by: Zerakix Originally by: CCP Incognito The sleepers don't have shields for one and they don't self repair. So hit and run tactics are valid, but if you try to bull doze them with brute force you lose .... In short if you try to use the same-old same-old tactics against sleepers then you will have problems. Think out of the box and you will win. So we setup up a cloaked ship near the sleepers have it pick targets warp the fleet 10km from it and then lock a the preselected targets fire an alpha on one target while aligning and warping off once we take enough damage and repeating till they are all dead?? Park a few domis at the warp out point kitted out for pure repping and have them fix the fleet up before they warp back in? I know they spider tank but will they stop once all the visible ship warp off? That is quite inventive... I am not going to go into if this tactic will work or not, hop on sisi with some friends and give it a try. Also not all sleepers are the same, some have remote repair, some don't, some do. guess you would have to pick your targets based on that. Or maybe the ones that warp scramble first... But you are on the right track, think out side the box and I am sure that you will get rich. I like a quote from security, might not have it exactly right: "It is easy to build a security system that you can't break, but there is always someone more smart, clever, or lucky than you" It applies to AI also, we can build a AI that we can't beat, but a group of players will come in, think of something we didn't and turn it into a farming site.

Aganola Amarr Ten Below Zero	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:02:00 - [59] Edited by: Aganola on 23/02/2009 16:05:04 EPIC FAIL! Lets see now: * ability to jamm * ability to scramble * ability to neut * ability to spidertank * godlike resists (sleeper) * godlike damage (sleeper) * target switching * drone aggro... :P + they pretty much have unlimited cap, etc etc... :P IF I want to PVP then I go and get PVP ... this is supposed to be PVE!!! Ok. Rats shouldn't stupid as hell but this is like making them having more IQ than a regular goonie!! WT(F)H? Unless you'll do dumb them down a bit, this will suck... hard... and you'll have a lot of "I Quit" stuff on the forums in no time... I just warned you...!
Misaniovent Ministry of War	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:10:00 - [60] Do the Sleepers follow the same rules that everyone else does? That is to say, are they affected by previous changes in the mechanics of the game? My understanding is that they are extremely powerful, but are they "updated" whereas normal NPCs are not quite aware of previous changes?

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:10:00 - [61] ARRGGGGG NPC HAVE NEVER BEEN INVULNERABLE TO ECM!!! sigh.. All the e-war works on npc, you can jam a sleeper quite easily. even nos and neuts have a affect on NPC, yes they have infinite cap. that doesn't mean that nos and neut don't have an affect on them. People have been assuming that because they have infinite cap that nos doesn't work on them. People have assumed that because you can't defend against a Gurista jamming you that the reverse is true. It is not, you can jam a NPC and make it stop attacking. I did a test and used a drone boat with heavy drones. I used 4 ecm drones, and 1 ogre II against 3 sleeper frigates. I put 2 ecm drones on each of two two sleepers, and then killed the last frigate with the remaining drone and medium guns. then recalled 2 ecm drones and launched 2 more ogre and killed the second, then wasted the third. I was using mostly T2 modules and T1 rigs in a T1 ship. It was initially touch and go on the tanking but pulled through fine once 2 frigates where under ECM. This was a lower end encounter.

Kim Telkin Caldari Kingfisher Industries	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:11:00 - [62] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Kim Telkin One question: Will they run away?!... Not Yet, it is something that has been discussed and we have some paper napkin drawings of how it would work. nothing concrete yet. Thanks for the reply. I guess I'll swap that scrambler for an ECM mod or such. Still looking forwards to this (:
Zothike Deep Core Mining Inc.	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:15:00 - [63] how much (let say in %) does the sleeper overall strenght will be nerfer for the final tranquility realease ?
King Hopy Interstellar eXodus Minor Threat.	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:16:00 - [64] People stop whining until you try them. Wormhole space is not supposed to be so that you can solo in it or farm it. If you take losses to complete the sites it will be compensated in the reward (unless others are more clever and dont take losses). Also as has been said you can ECM rats as it is. You can also neut them, it doesn't empty their cap but it makes them repair less. Don't try to make CCP turn wormhole space into another carebearland with no risk. If you dont like the rist involved guess what.. you dont need to enter w-space.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:16:00 - [65] Originally by: Kim Telkin Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Kim Telkin One question: Will they run away?!... Not Yet, it is something that has been discussed and we have some paper napkin drawings of how it would work. nothing concrete yet. Thanks for the reply. I guess I'll swap that scrambler for an ECM mod or such. Still looking forwards to this (: No problem. Also if you get on sisi join the channel 'wormholes' and a GM/QA will spawn a wormhole for you to play in. As have been brought up there is some bugs in the new scanner code and until then the wormholes channel is your way to get into testing them.


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:18:00 - [66] Like I said above. Join 'Wormholes' on sisi and a GM/ QA will move you to wormhole space. Also be aware there is a pending bug fix for part of the drone problem. the drones where generating double the threat they should have been so the NPC where seeing them as the most desirable target. Should be patched this week on sisi.

An Anarchyyt Gallente Battlestars GoonSwarm	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:19:00 - [67] Edited by: An Anarchyyt on 23/02/2009 16:20:16 Even if they don't run away....can I still use a Warp Scram to shut off their MWD? I haven't seen this one covered yet. Originally by: CCP Wrangler Second, a gentile is a non jewish person
Shadowsword Epsilon Lyr Tau Ceti Federation	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:20:00 - [68] Originally by: CCP Incognito It applies to AI also, we can build a AI that we can't beat, but a group of players will come in, think of something we didn't and turn it into a farming site. Something just came into mind. If the hardest encounters require caps to do, they'll be insanely rewarding. They'll have to, as putting ships like that inside a space that could be cut off any time from friendly space is dangerous. But once inside, those sites can be be farmed 24/7, once you know how to do them, and if you don't need to get out. And it would be relatively easy to get the goods out with a few blockade runners. So, is there not a huge risk that those sites would become paradises for isk-farmers, like some 10/10 complexes in the south? And speaking of those, you have to be aware by now that a certain alliance is doing RMT on a industrial scale. Why haven't you put a stop to it yet? ------------------------------------------
Aganola Amarr Ten Below Zero	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:22:00 - [69] Ok... I've read again and I would like to point out a few things that I think are flawed in logic... 1: "One of goals we have worked towards is making PvE combat more like PvP combat." - IMHO there is a reason why PVP is PVP and PVE is PVE... Diffenrent skills, different level of combat tactics... making PVE harder will eventually suck out a lot of peps from PVP because there will be "more loot, same effort"... 2: "First, new players get a taste of what PvP is like while still doing PvE encounters." --If the NPC hardening happens this will render FW useless since the danger is the same minus the PVP part... 3: "which means that when the victi... um, player gets jumped by another player he has a fitting that will allow him to fight back effectively, or at least run away." -- He/She will already have his/her hands full in keeping the PVE in bay... this will only be helpful, if the NPCs would switch to the intruder too in a "why don't you let us dish it out alone" kind of menthality... 4: "This means that NPCs will take longer to arrive at orbit distance, but they will have a high transversal velocity the whole way in. It also looks bloody cool!" -- No it doesn't (look cool)!

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:26:00 - [70] Originally by: Aganola ... -- He/She will already have his/her hands full in keeping the PVE in bay... this will only be helpful, if the NPCs would switch to the intruder too in a "why don't you let us dish it out alone" kind of menthality...

Alora Venoda GalTech Whiskey Creek Alliance	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:37:00 - [71] ok so if these encounters are supposed to be like PvP... which PvP would that be exactly? 1. 10 ships to gank a single hauler at a gatecamp... no 2. call in a bigger blob and/or capship hotdrop when your gang attacks them... no 3. run away when they don't have 100% chance of victory... not likely 4. use baiting, logon traps, scouts, etc to setup an ambush... not likely 5. gank or sniper setups with no tank... doesn't sound like it 6. etc... my point is that PvP in EVE is almost always more like sharks vs minnows rather than dog vs dog. so you need to qualify the statement with something like "They will be more like fighting players in terms of weapons and combat tactics such as switching targets, logistics, etc." on another note... with the introduction of a threat mechanic, we will be needing some ways to "pull threat off of other ~~party~~ fleet members" and also to drop aggro, etc... otherwise everyone in the fleet will need to sport hefty tanks, which is not usually the case in PvP. ~~~~ ~~~~ ~~~~ Take away the risk and it would make flying around in space utterly pointless. Take away the flying around part and you make EVE into a space themed spreadsheet application.
Fergus Runkle Minmatar Truth and Reconciliation Council	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:39:00 - [72] Edited by: Fergus Runkle on 23/02/2009 16:40:23 Originally by: CCP Incognito ARRGGGGG NPC HAVE NEVER BEEN INVULNERABLE TO ECM!!! sigh.. Erm, are you sure ? I thought all officers were immune to all forms of e-war? and though you may be technically correct in saying that npc's have never been invunerable to ECM, practically do the npc's not have insanely high sensor strengths ? on the order of a couple of hundred ? sure it maybe possible to jam them, in reality its quite different.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:42:00 - [73] Originally by: Fergus Runkle Edited by: Fergus Runkle on 23/02/2009 16:40:23 Originally by: CCP Incognito ARRGGGGG NPC HAVE NEVER BEEN INVULNERABLE TO ECM!!! sigh.. Erm, are you sure ? I thought all officers were immune to all forms of e-war? and though you may be technically correct in saying that npc's have never been invunerable to ECM, practically do the npc's not have insanely high sensor strengths ? on the order of a couple of hundred ? sure it maybe possible to jam them, in reality its quite different. Officers may have sensor strength that high, but generally your run of the mill npc has the same sensor strength as a T1 ship.

Washell Olivaw	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:43:00 - [74] Originally by: CCP Incognito ARRGGGGG NPC HAVE NEVER BEEN INVULNERABLE TO ECM!!! sigh.. In the current game they more or less are due to sheer numbers. Not much point in jamming a couple NPC's when you've got 30 of them attacking you. It's a mindset, give it time to change. Originally by: Signature Everybody has a photographic memory, some people just don't have film.
Armoured C Gallente Federation of Freedom Fighters Executive Outcomes	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:44:00 - [75] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Siobhan Ni If you really want to make the encounters more like pvp then have the sleepers smack talk in local and ransom you pod Sorry I tried really really hard but design would not let me make sleeper pod players :( intresting since they target my pod and warp scrambled and webbed it ..... also we just had a small 20 man fleet go out to take on a pocket and we all died... even with 6 logistic at the helm doing a good job until they dropped 20 frig and cruiser and pretty much we lasted almost 2 minutes _ with every single enemy warp scrambling, webbing and insta killing. do you not think the aplha on these is just a little strong, that 6 logistics aiding a mega being shot by these lots was able to die? there is a fleet being forumed after SISI current downtime to actually take on the complex which is located with inside 2 wormholes here This week EvE Life: Wormhole Wars 01/Feb
Mrs Snowman	Posted - 2009.02.23 16:49:00 - [76] Originally by: CCP Incognito In short if you try to use the same-old same-old tactics against sleepers then you will have problems. Think out of the box and you will win. Yes, I think your message here is loud and clear sir! However I put it to you that these tactics in noway what so ever resemble pvp. Just thought I'd point that out to you.
An Anarchyyt Gallente Battlestars GoonSwarm	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:00:00 - [77] Actually, we've been pretty successful with Sniper setups so far. Originally by: CCP Wrangler Second, a gentile is a non jewish person
An Anarchyyt Gallente Battlestars GoonSwarm	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:00:00 - [78] Originally by: Armoured C intresting since they target my pod and warp scrambled and webbed it ..... They also scrammed a wreck. So... Originally by: CCP Wrangler Second, a gentile is a non jewish person
Armoured C Gallente Federation of Freedom Fighters Executive Outcomes	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:04:00 - [79] Originally by: An Anarchyyt Originally by: Armoured C intresting since they target my pod and warp scrambled and webbed it ..... They also scrammed a wreck. So... AI where is it ? This week EvE Life: Wormhole Wars 01/Feb
Ehranavaar	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:26:00 - [80] let us not forget the truly important thing about this new AI. we know exactly whom to express our feelings on the subject come the next party at the top of the world
Draconus Lofwyr Gallente M. Corp Mostly Harmless	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:30:00 - [81] Originally by: CCP Incognito IE they have unlimited cap, but you can still paint them, ECM, warp scramble, and web them. This is the biggest unbalance, and as long as this exists, it will be death to a PvP feel. The ability to nute or nos your target and keep them from being able to retaliate is a major tactic and if pirates and rats can do it, I damn sure want to be able to return the favor. DL The NEW M.Corp Data Hub - Check it out!
Ki Tarra Caldari Ki Tech Industries	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:40:00 - [82] Originally by: CCP Incognito ARRGGGGG NPC HAVE NEVER BEEN INVULNERABLE TO ECM!!! sigh.. Don't worry, there are a few of us players who know that. The reason you don't use ECM on K-Space rats isn't because it doesn't work. It is because they spawn in such large numbers that it is pointless. Why bother fitting an ECM module to take out a single rat, when you can fit a hardener to reduce the damage from the remaining 20. Now if Sleepers are balanced closer to a 1v1 relationship with players instead of the 1v30 ratio that you can easily handle with K-Space rats, then fitting ECM will become a more useful tactic. However, if Sleepers are still balanced so that they vastly out number the players that are supposed to engage them, then ECM will remain impractical.
oh moma	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:42:00 - [83] aldo the ideeas of new things in eve are generaly to improve the gameplay i must say this: the game is geting so boring. Most of my friends (that used to play eve for years) quited the game. i see myself geting in the same situation. imo eve universe needs a system expansion at least 3 times the current one. it's to crowded.it's cool that u want to make pve guys taste pvp action at some level but remember this: at some point even pvp players like to chill out and do a full pve simpleminded action. just my 2 cents.
Draconus Lofwyr Gallente M. Corp Mostly Harmless	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:46:00 - [84] Originally by: CCP Incognito Officers may have sensor strength that high, but generally your run of the mill npc has the same sensor strength as a T1 ship. I call BS on this, there are several missions, (blockade lvl 4 for one) where I have been targeted by frigates at over 350k (i don't know of any t1 frigates that can target at that range since they aren't being remote boosted currently) and a dual range boosted domi cant target past 200k. There needs to be a extensive re-evaluation of what you at CCP feels is normal and what is ACTUALLY possible. until these perception differences are corrected, you will be creating ships that can not be countered. DL DL The NEW M.Corp Data Hub - Check it out!
Ki Tarra Caldari Ki Tech Industries	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:47:00 - [85] A question regarding the Sleepers: are their attributes going to be listed in the data dump, or should we expect them to be excluded to keep their capablities unknown?
Ki Tarra Caldari Ki Tech Industries	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:48:00 - [86] Originally by: Draconus Lofwyr I call BS on this, there are several missions, (blockade lvl 4 for one) where I have been targeted by frigates at over 350k (i don't know of any t1 frigates that can target at that range since they aren't being remote boosted currently) and a dual range boosted domi cant target past 200k. Targeting range is not the same as sensor strength.
Draconus Lofwyr Gallente M. Corp Mostly Harmless	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:50:00 - [87] Originally by: Ki Tarra Originally by: Draconus Lofwyr I call BS on this, there are several missions, (blockade lvl 4 for one) where I have been targeted by frigates at over 350k (i don't know of any t1 frigates that can target at that range since they aren't being remote boosted currently) and a dual range boosted domi cant target past 200k. Targeting range is not the same as sensor strength. I know this, but it was an example to disprove the statement that the rats are not capable of anything a standard t1 ship can do. If they can target at this range, what else can they do that is far above the standard ability of ANY player owned t1 ship? DL The NEW M.Corp Data Hub - Check it out!

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:50:00 - [88] Originally by: Ki Tarra A question regarding the Sleepers: are their attributes going to be listed in the data dump, or should we expect them to be excluded to keep their capabilities unknown? TBH I have no clue.

Manfred Rickenbocker The Elliance	Posted - 2009.02.23 17:50:00 - [89] The only thing that seems to upset me in the whole equation is the use of nos/neut by the NPCs, particularly neuts. The idea behind neuts is that you have to sacrifice your own cap to kill another ship's cap, and with infinite cap in these NPCs, its not the loss:loss trade off that PvP fits actually have to account for. If these critters are going to be doing as much damage as you say they are, they should not be able to mess with the cap of a player's ship. ------------------------ Peace through superior firepower: a guiding principle for uncertain times.
Viktor Del'Grande	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:00:00 - [90] Hi, i have a few questions: Are they affected from tracking disruption the same way as players are affected from it? Is their optimal range and falloff behaviour the same as at the players? Or are these attribute like the cap infinite? There are NPCs out there which shoot you with blasters from 50km+ Are they the same way affected by sensor dampening (targeting range) as players? Or do they have infinite targeting range .. or maybe 250km? I have fought some sleepers in a gang with 2 MSes and a carrier and a moros + some BSes. We were maybe 30 people in the gang and we got heavy losses at the smaller (BS and smaller) ships. I lost my falcon as we got respawn. This was on thursday 02/19. We have to ask whick kind of e-war works against them, because the e-war is not the same as against players.. you know .. nos/neut cap and so ... Best Regards Viktor Del'Grande
Kayn Otar Samurai Syndicate	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:02:00 - [91] Originally by: Ki Tarra Originally by: Draconus Lofwyr I call BS on this, there are several missions, (blockade lvl 4 for one) where I have been targeted by frigates at over 350k Targeting range is not the same as sensor strength. But it makes a huge difference if you are trying to re-cloak a stealth bomber.
Ki Tarra Caldari Ki Tech Industries	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:02:00 - [92] Originally by: Draconus Lofwyr I know this, but it was an example to disprove the statement that the rats are not capable of anything a standard t1 ship can do. You mean like how they never run out of cap, or how their E-war has a fixed chance of success regardless of what the target is, or any number of other things that are specific to NPC mechanics.
Ki Tarra Caldari Ki Tech Industries	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:07:00 - [93] Edited by: Ki Tarra on 23/02/2009 18:08:06 Originally by: Viktor Del'Grande Are they affected from tracking disruption the same way as players are affected from it? Is their optimal range and falloff behaviour the same as at the players? Or are these attribute like the cap infinite? There are NPCs out there which shoot you with blasters from 50km+ They certainly have the same tracking mechanics. As an example, this type of NPC will attack at long range, but won't actually hit until it gets up close. It is hard to tell if tracking disruption affects those attributes as expected. With K-Space rats it is probably not worth trying as you end up using a full module to neutralize only one rat.
Jowen Datloran Caldari Science and Trade Institute	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:10:00 - [94] So... they do not self repair, but they spidertank Odd behavior. ---------------- Mr. Science & Trade Institute
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:18:00 - [95] Originally by: Ki Tarra Originally by: CCP Incognito ARRGGGGG NPC HAVE NEVER BEEN INVULNERABLE TO ECM!!! sigh.. Don't worry, there are a few of us players who know that. The reason you don't use ECM on K-Space rats isn't because it doesn't work. It is because they spawn in such large numbers that it is pointless. Why bother fitting an ECM module to take out a single rat, when you can fit a hardener to reduce the damage from the remaining 20. Now if Sleepers are balanced closer to a 1v1 relationship with players instead of the 1v30 ratio that you can easily handle with K-Space rats, then fitting ECM will become a more useful tactic. However, if Sleepers are still balanced so that they vastly out number the players that are supposed to engage them, then ECM will remain impractical. Or you pick and chose you engagements? You know, like in PvP? -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Marnix Gallente Game-Over	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:21:00 - [96] Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane Originally by: Ki Tarra Originally by: CCP Incognito ARRGGGGG NPC HAVE NEVER BEEN INVULNERABLE TO ECM!!! sigh.. Don't worry, there are a few of us players who know that. The reason you don't use ECM on K-Space rats isn't because it doesn't work. It is because they spawn in such large numbers that it is pointless. Why bother fitting an ECM module to take out a single rat, when you can fit a hardener to reduce the damage from the remaining 20. Now if Sleepers are balanced closer to a 1v1 relationship with players instead of the 1v30 ratio that you can easily handle with K-Space rats, then fitting ECM will become a more useful tactic. However, if Sleepers are still balanced so that they vastly out number the players that are supposed to engage them, then ECM will remain impractical. Or you pick and chose you engagements? You know, like in PvP? Because being lucky if you get 3 fights a day PvPing isnt enough, you gotta have the same luck with PvE now?
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:25:00 - [97] Originally by: Marnix Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane Originally by: Ki Tarra Originally by: CCP Incognito ARRGGGGG NPC HAVE NEVER BEEN INVULNERABLE TO ECM!!! sigh.. Don't worry, there are a few of us players who know that. The reason you don't use ECM on K-Space rats isn't because it doesn't work. It is because they spawn in such large numbers that it is pointless. Why bother fitting an ECM module to take out a single rat, when you can fit a hardener to reduce the damage from the remaining 20. Now if Sleepers are balanced closer to a 1v1 relationship with players instead of the 1v30 ratio that you can easily handle with K-Space rats, then fitting ECM will become a more useful tactic. However, if Sleepers are still balanced so that they vastly out number the players that are supposed to engage them, then ECM will remain impractical. Or you pick and chose you engagements? You know, like in PvP? Because being lucky if you get 3 fights a day PvPing isnt enough, you gotta have the same luck with PvE now? No you just don't engage a full fleet of sleepers with a frigate is what I'm saying. There's only one alliance I know of that engages regularly with a full fleet of frigates, with the expected results. For all the lulz, I think even they gave up on that idea ... You know, use your head? -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
An Anarchyyt Gallente Battlestars GoonSwarm	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:26:00 - [98] Lets assume it was 1v30. 1v29 is actually better than 1v30. Originally by: CCP Wrangler Second, a gentile is a non jewish person
Serenity Steele Dynamic Data Distribution Ministry of Information	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:43:00 - [99] Originally by: CCP Ytterbium "The new NPCs may optimize their approach to maximize transversal in order to avoid to be instantly destroyed by player volleys. I'm gonna call it: "Shark NPCs." ≡v≡ Strategic Maps in Eve-Online Store \| eve-maps.com
Armoured C Gallente Federation of Freedom Fighters Executive Outcomes	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:51:00 - [100] yeah they were moving about 2l a sec so they did that very well This week EvE Life: Wormhole Wars 01/Feb

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.23 18:58:00 - [101] Originally by: Viktor Del'Grande Hi, Are they affected from tracking disruption the same way as players are affected from it? Is their optimal range and falloff behaviour the same as at the players? Or are these attribute like the cap infinite? There are NPCs out there which shoot you with blasters from 50km+ Are they the same way affected by sensor dampening (targeting range) as players? Or do they have infinite targeting range .. or maybe 250km? They should be, I would have to spelunk the code to be 100% sure. It should have the same affect as it does on players, one thing to be aware of is the npc have different ranges and falloffs than most pc ships.

Venkul Mul Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.23 19:09:00 - [102] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Fakespace So, unlimited rang AND uber tank AND crazy dps AND (current npc-like) immune to e-War ? I realy realy hope i'm wrong here. You are. They don't have unlimited range, they do have across the board DPS and resists, No stacking all explosive hardeners and sleeping through the encounter. They are just like current NPC in the e-war side of things. IE they have unlimited cap, but you can still paint them, ECM, warp scramble, and web them. For all but the solo content you will need some remote repairing capability with you. Either a drone boat with repair drones, or a remote rep on the drones, or a dedicated logistics ship. The harder level stuff will require capital ships, and the rewards scale as the difficulty does. 1) NPC number are still usually higher than players numbers, so most "usable" EW become useless; 2) some of the old NPC are totally immune to EW, included target painters, I hope no new NPC has that ability; 3) as things currently stay with WH space I doubt the reward will meaningfully scale with risk, as for it to scale the T3 cruisers would cost billions, but then the number sold would be very limited.
Fakespace	Posted - 2009.02.23 19:25:00 - [103] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Viktor Del'Grande Hi, Are they affected from tracking disruption the same way as players are affected from it? Is their optimal range and falloff behaviour the same as at the players? Or are these attribute like the cap infinite? There are NPCs out there which shoot you with blasters from 50km+ Are they the same way affected by sensor dampening (targeting range) as players? Or do they have infinite targeting range .. or maybe 250km? They should be, I would have to spelunk the code to be 100% sure. It should have the same affect as it does on players, one thing to be aware of is the npc have different ranges and falloffs than most pc ships. yay, i was wrong (see previous post) Anyway, please do spelunk the code for this So, basically only nos/neut problem remains? Everlasting npc neuts (can be handled with cap transfer and targetswitching/warouts and so) Nos-ing an npc gives a couple of cap-boost, and reduce the npc's repair a %. However, these npc's dont repair now do they? Will nos now reduce the npc's abillity to remote repair? Anyway, we can work with this, and not to hard to overcome i guess... as long as the npc's ranges and falloffs arnt to crazy ofc (for dampeners). Finally, wouldnt if make more sence to use "standar" ship rangees and falloff's? Just so people wont be forced to use "new npc non-pvp" fittings, removing the whole point?
Marnix Gallente Game-Over	Posted - 2009.02.23 19:26:00 - [104] Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane Originally by: Marnix Because being lucky if you get 3 fights a day PvPing isnt enough, you gotta have the same luck with PvE now? No you just don't engage a full fleet of sleepers with a frigate is what I'm saying. There's only one alliance I know of that engages regularly with a full fleet of frigates, with the expected results. For all the lulz, I think even they gave up on that idea ... You know, use your head? Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane Or you pick and chose you engagements? You know, like in PvP? Solo and small gang PvP comes down to ganks, running, and a few lucky fights. You know, what you don't want for PvE?
Thebro Nobrunder Schrodinger's Renegades	Posted - 2009.02.23 19:28:00 - [105] I have certainly been annoyed at frigates targeting me at 100+km. I'm pretty sure they shouldn't be able to do that. But, good work! I hope the npc's get smarter and smarter. I for one welcome our new npc overlords!
Gadrin Demarr Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.23 19:34:00 - [106] First off, I was happy to read the dev blog! Updates to the AI are direly needed and it will be very interesting to see what tactics people can come up with against these monsters! To all those who are complaining that its unfair that the Sleepers have uber-stats: You know, these guys are supposed to be the bad ass alien mofos from an unknown universe. I don't think they were meant to be "fair", they were meant to strike fear into our hearts! I look forward to get myself omgwftpwned. That said, however, it is of course important that clever usage of in-game mechanics is rewarded. If a completely sound tactic fails only because "oops, they happened to be immune" for no particular reason, that is kind of immersion breaking. Hopefully this is just something that will be fixed soon and we will be able to use all our tricks to turn the table against them! About the PvP vs PvE discussion: I must say that when you say that "PvE should be PvE, and PvP should be PvP", I really do not understand what you are saying... If by "being PvE" you mean something completely predictable which present little to no challenge but simply rewards you for taking your time to sit through it (compare grinding low lvl mobs in wow), then I wouldn't call that PvE. I'd call it booring and fundamentally flawed. Some people may enjoy push-over fights but most prefer a bit of a challenge. It makes the victory all the sweeter when you finally prevail. Personally I'd like to see the stale and older-than-wow (which is frakking old and uninventive) PvE content to be revised with new ideas: Real ship fitting and real characters with strengths and weaknesses. I'd like to be getting real escort missions in normal non-deadspace space which may be intercepted by real players or AI pirates all the same! Real assassinations where I am required to track and follow a target far away using my locator agents before someone else happens to pop him. Something which blends into and enriches the normal gameplay by creating interesting scenarios for the players (all of us) to interact with instead of the static sandbox PvE playground. Something different from the old "go here, kill that" or "go there, bring that". Anyway, an improved AI is at least a step in the right direction. Great work! I can't wait until this stuff works its way down into the regular content! (well, uber-stats and cheating excluded then of course)
Surana Rens	Posted - 2009.02.23 19:42:00 - [107] Originally by: Gadrin Demarr Personally I'd like to see the stale and older-than-wow (which is frakking old and uninventive) PvE content to be revised with new ideas: Real ship fitting and real characters with strengths and weaknesses. I'd like to be getting real escort missions in normal non-deadspace space which may be intercepted by real players or AI pirates all the same! Real assassinations where I am required to track and follow a target far away using my locator agents before someone else happens to pop him. Hey! Those are great ideas. Would that type of thing be too hard to add? Devs?
Venkul Mul Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.23 19:48:00 - [108] Originally by: CCP Incognito A lot of people here are taking the new AI and sticking on the current NPC ships. The new ships are different than what is in K-Space (like that term...). The sleepers don't have shields for one and they don't self repair. So hit and run tactics are valid, but if you try to bull doze them with brute force you lose. (not quite true, they will self repair them selves but only if you are out of the grid for a while) You have to rethink how PvE works, brute force attacks will be playing into there strengths. While different tactics that don't work against K-space NPC could work against sleepers. In short if you try to use the same-old same-old tactics against sleepers then you will have problems. Think out of the box and you will win. Hit and run = spend lot of time and from what I have seen of combat screenshopts they warp disrupt like crazy If you are convinced it will work and be fun
Louis deGuerre Gallente Public Funded War Targets	Posted - 2009.02.23 20:01:00 - [109] We're in the septic tank now !
An Anarchyyt Gallente Battlestars GoonSwarm	Posted - 2009.02.23 21:01:00 - [110] Originally by: Venkul Mul Originally by: CCP Incognito A lot of people here are taking the new AI and sticking on the current NPC ships. The new ships are different than what is in K-Space (like that term...). The sleepers don't have shields for one and they don't self repair. So hit and run tactics are valid, but if you try to bull doze them with brute force you lose. (not quite true, they will self repair them selves but only if you are out of the grid for a while) You have to rethink how PvE works, brute force attacks will be playing into there strengths. While different tactics that don't work against K-space NPC could work against sleepers. In short if you try to use the same-old same-old tactics against sleepers then you will have problems. Think out of the box and you will win. Hit and run = spend lot of time and from what I have seen of combat screenshopts they warp disrupt like crazy If you are convinced it will work and be fun Frigates as tacklers? What a shocking development that has surely never happend. Originally by: CCP Wrangler Second, a gentile is a non jewish person
Ordais	Posted - 2009.02.23 21:46:00 - [111] This wont work. If you want to make PvE like PvP, then the NPCs need to be like real ships, meaning they need to have ALL the weaknesses as players. Otherwise, you just have a cheating AI, and this is nothing like real PvP. They are not affected by NOS or NEUT for example, so if i go in there with a curse...i do exactly "nothing" to them....tell me HOW is that like real PvP?...
J Valkor Caldari Provisions	Posted - 2009.02.23 21:58:00 - [112] All the crying about not being able to farm sleepers is great. Good job CCP. That half the posts are by pilots that never read any other material on them is even better. ALL ECM BUT CAP WARFARE WORK ON THEM. Get on SISI and try them instead of whining about it. They don't have bounties you know.
Viktor Del'Grande	Posted - 2009.02.23 21:59:00 - [113] Originally by: CCP Incognito .... They should be, I would have to spelunk the code to be 100% sure. It should have the same affect as it does on players, one thing to be aware of is the npc have different ranges and falloffs than most pc ships. Thanks for the answer CCP Incognito! Best Regards Viktor Del'Grande
ArchenTheGreat Caldari Husarian Loyalists	Posted - 2009.02.23 22:01:00 - [114] Originally by: CCP Incognito ARRGGGGG NPC HAVE NEVER BEEN INVULNERABLE TO ECM!!! sigh.. I know I am nitpicking but it's not everyday when you can correct a dev. There was a time around 2004 when NPC were immune to jamming. I know because I tried to use Blackbird on a mission and failed miserably. I think you introduced jammable NPC with changes in ECM (randomizing jamming).
Nova Fox Gallente Novafox Shipyards	Posted - 2009.02.23 22:26:00 - [115] Any chances of hunter npcs? You know the kind that sorta chase you though warp and possibly call reinforcemtns if you took it to a repair camp? ============= Pre Order your Sisters of Eve ship today
Imnar Blade	Posted - 2009.02.23 22:36:00 - [116] Dunno about the rest, but I've found NOS to be quite useful in regular PvE. It lets me drop a Cap power relay in favour of an overdrive, and still have just over 29 mins of cap with all guns blazing and my tank running full time. Oh actually I do have one comment on the rest. B45t4rd5
Merdaneth Amarr PIE Inc.	Posted - 2009.02.23 22:43:00 - [117] Originally by: CCP Incognito Webs are needed for frigates, target painters and dampeners are still useful, and ECM will still shut down a npc from attacking. The changes we want to make int he future to E-War is to make the NPC less capable when it comes to jamming, and sleepers don't use Jamming. As an Amarr ships only player I'm somewhat concerned that it seems like Sleeper NPCs will be immune to Tracking Disruptors and Energy Neutralizers and Nosferatu's (just like regular NPCs are now). From what you say it seems like all racial ECM expect Amarr-based Electronic Warfare will work against sleepers. ____ The Illusion of Freedom \| The Truth about Slavery
Merdaneth Amarr PIE Inc.	Posted - 2009.02.23 22:45:00 - [118] Originally by: J Valkor All the crying about not being able to farm sleepers is great. Good job CCP. That half the posts are by pilots that never read any other material on them is even better. ALL ECM BUT CAP WARFARE WORK ON THEM. Get on SISI and try them instead of whining about it. They don't have bounties you know. Great news if at least tracking disruptors work now against the Sleeper NPCs. ____ The Illusion of Freedom \| The Truth about Slavery
Merdaneth Amarr PIE Inc.	Posted - 2009.02.23 22:53:00 - [119] Originally by: CCP Incognito All the e-war works on npc, you can jam a sleeper quite easily. even nos and neuts have a affect on NPC, yes they have infinite cap. that doesn't mean that nos and neut don't have an affect on them. People have been assuming that because they have infinite cap that nos doesn't work on them. People have assumed that because you can't defend against a Gurista jamming you that the reverse is true. It is not, you can jam a NPC and make it stop attacking. ECM has always worked on NPCs, webifiers have always worked, warp disruption may have worked but was unneccessary, dampeners never seemed to work, and tracking disruption certainly does not. Got this confirmed that it was intentional game design after bug reporting it on when testing out new FW NPCs. With the old AI model its easy to understand why Tracking Disruption wouldn't work, otherwise one TD could simply disable one hostile NPC battleship. ____ The Illusion of Freedom \| The Truth about Slavery
Avernus Gallente Imperium Technologies Sangre Azul	Posted - 2009.02.23 23:20:00 - [120] Question for you; Is cycle jamming a viable tactic? Previously (been a while since I NPC'd), NPC's could insta lock you, there was no delay, so cycle jamming wasn't an option. Do W-Space NPC's have lock times?
LooknSee	Posted - 2009.02.23 23:34:00 - [121] So you're making PvE more like PvP. Alright, cool. But the effect of this system will be to give PvP players a reason to PvE, not the other way around. No hisec carebear is going to go into wspace where there is a very real possibility that they might have to self destruct their pod/implants to get back to known space. Game over, nothing else that follows matters.
Avernus Gallente Imperium Technologies Sangre Azul	Posted - 2009.02.24 00:36:00 - [122] Originally by: LooknSee So you're making PvE more like PvP. Alright, cool. But the effect of this system will be to give PvP players a reason to PvE, not the other way around. No hisec carebear is going to go into wspace where there is a very real possibility that they might have to self destruct their pod/implants to get back to known space. Game over, nothing else that follows matters. Ofc, that same hisec carebear may have the thought to put away his high value clone and jump into a different skin. ^could matter^
McDaddy Pimp THE INTERNET. Goodfellas.	Posted - 2009.02.24 00:39:00 - [123] Originally by: LooknSee So you're making PvE more like PvP. Alright, cool. But the effect of this system will be to give PvP players a reason to PvE, not the other way around. No hisec carebear is going to go into wspace where there is a very real possibility that they might have to self destruct their pod/implants to get back to known space. Game over, nothing else that follows matters. GOOD. Finally PVP players can do sum PVE without being bored to death. To all those whiners, just stick with your exciting lvl4s if you dont want to lose ur HG Crystal and CNRs
LooknSee	Posted - 2009.02.24 01:08:00 - [124] Originally by: Avernus Ofc, that same hisec carebear may have the thought to put away his high value clone and jump into a different skin. ^could matter^ Unlikely. They won't want to sacrifice the training speed by clonejumping out of their +5's. One would think that the attribute respec system would mitigate that to some extent, but it won't matter. Players will take anything they can get; they don't like to meet a game design halfway. If they train at 2400 SP/hr now with +5's and you tell them they can rearrange their stats such that they'll be able to train 2500 SP/hr with only +3's, they won't care. All they'll see is that they can now train 2700+ with +5's.
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.24 01:25:00 - [125] Originally by: Merdaneth Originally by: CCP Incognito All the e-war works on npc, you can jam a sleeper quite easily. even nos and neuts have a affect on NPC, yes they have infinite cap. that doesn't mean that nos and neut don't have an affect on them. People have been assuming that because they have infinite cap that nos doesn't work on them. People have assumed that because you can't defend against a Gurista jamming you that the reverse is true. It is not, you can jam a NPC and make it stop attacking. ECM has always worked on NPCs, webifiers have always worked, warp disruption may have worked but was unneccessary, dampeners never seemed to work, and tracking disruption certainly does not. Got this confirmed that it was intentional game design after bug reporting it on when testing out new FW NPCs. With the old AI model its easy to understand why Tracking Disruption wouldn't work, otherwise one TD could simply disable one hostile NPC battleship. If the Sleepers have player-like sensor strength, why would damping not work? Let me be clear about this, if my triple damping Arazu doesn't actually work on the Sleepers, I will be sorely disappointed, because that was an angle I was working on. With the dampers nerfed to oblivion in PvP, I was hoping to still find some use for those damping skills you see ... because lets face it, those Arazu still looks damn fine ... and hunting down straggler Sleepers, damping them down, and killing them at leisure sounds like fun to me ... -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.24 01:33:00 - [126] Originally by: LooknSee Originally by: Avernus Ofc, that same hisec carebear may have the thought to put away his high value clone and jump into a different skin. ^could matter^ Unlikely. They won't want to sacrifice the training speed by clonejumping out of their +5's. One would think that the attribute respec system would mitigate that to some extent, but it won't matter. Players will take anything they can get; they don't like to meet a game design halfway. If they train at 2400 SP/hr now with +5's and you tell them they can rearrange their stats such that they'll be able to train 2500 SP/hr with only +3's, they won't care. All they'll see is that they can now train 2700+ with +5's. Those players that are totally risk averse may not want to do wormhole PvE. So what. No game design can please all players, especially the ones that don't want to participate. There is a choice here. Take some extra risk and gain the benefit from it. As long as those two are balanced, who cares about the risk averse grinders? Let them do what they want, and provide me with additional content. Personally, I'm beyond caring about +3's, +5's or how many skill points I acquire per hour. I've got plenty of both already. I just want to have fun playing the game. -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Mikalya Amarr Viziam	Posted - 2009.02.24 01:37:00 - [127] Edited by: Mikalya on 24/02/2009 01:37:23
galphi Gallente Unitary Senate Unitary Enterprises	Posted - 2009.02.24 02:05:00 - [128] I've always thought the biggest problem that lowsec ratting and mission runners have is that their ships are setup to do the mission, which involves not having any pvp fittings. Changing the missions into something resembling a training ground for PVP would be great, it'd educate people more on how to pvp and get more people involved :) It'd mean balancing all the missions again but frankly they need overhauling anyway (dynamic missions!)
Nytemaster The Perfect Storm Controlled Chaos	Posted - 2009.02.24 02:49:00 - [129] Edited by: Nytemaster on 24/02/2009 02:49:55 Originally by: Pottsey Edited by: Pottsey on 23/02/2009 12:59:16 CCP Fallout said "One of goals we have worked towards is making PvE combat more like PvP combat." I am still not sure that is a good idea. PvE players by their nature often dont like PvP combat. So adding in the PvP elements to PvE is only making PvE content that PvE people are not going like. Sleepers feel like PvE content made for PvP players, not PvE content for PvE players. Ok thats over simplified and some PvE will like the new PvE content. I am not against the new changes and some of it sounds good I just hope CCP realise if they make PvE to much like PvP against NPCs they are going lose a lot of PvE players. Who are sleepers aimed at? Will the PvE people want to go out and fight PvP like battles against NPC's? Will the PvP people fight NPCs or will they see it as carebare ish. Faction Warfare failed because it mixed PvE and PvP too much. To two need to be keep mostly separate. I have to disagree with you Pottsey and if you would see it from a different angle you may see the rewards this gives the player community about a better AI. Non PvPers are generally afraid of PvP not because it is hard, but because they generally experience it firsthand and the outcome is severely sour and unfair. They see no way to tackle a problem due to lack of experience and knowledge about PvP. This proposal will not only give people more challenge, in PvP but will allow some of us who like to PvP a setup that can do both at the same time. It also can slowly work players into better ships so that they are good PvPers and gain the confidence on their skills. We all know that PvP and PvE are two totally different animals. They are so vastly different that you need a totally different mindset for each. PvE and PvP won't ever be so similiar as to substitute one for the other, it will still have it's own flavor. Right now PvP and PvE are totally different foods.
Raketefrau Caldari Di-Tron Heavy Industries Atlas Alliance	Posted - 2009.02.24 03:17:00 - [130] Edited by: Raketefrau on 24/02/2009 03:22:26 n/m, already answered.
Hon Kovell Gallente Neh'bu Kau Beh'Hude Ushra'Khan	Posted - 2009.02.24 03:18:00 - [131] Will the new AI consider whether it can hit or hurt the target? e.g. A webbing frigate may be the most important target but if it's orbiting too close for turrets to hit then another target is a better choice. Or if the most important target is a dread that will take hours to kill shoot something else first. (And ECM the main threat if you can.) Will the AI consider 'targets of opportunity'? i.e. if a secondary target drops transversal to zero and can be killed with one shot then do so before switching back to the primary. Related to the last - when the AI works out targets does it consider how hard they are to kill? i.e. 1 Megathron + 1 Thorax. Thorax is half the threat in terms of damage but can be killed quicker. Kill the Thorax first then the bigger but harder to kill threat of the Megathron. Alternatively, if the Mega can be killed just as fast then shoot it first.
Gal'drea	Posted - 2009.02.24 03:27:00 - [132] Edited by: Gal''drea on 24/02/2009 03:28:16 I agree with most of this. The current "problem" with PvE is that it is too far removed from PvP. It's not that PvE needs to make people lose their CNR, but that a PvE setup CNR cannot PvP. Sleeper AI will make PvE groups much more capable of handling themselves in PvP situations. However! These differences between NPC stats and players have got to go! Most specifically, targetting ranges (frigates targetting at 100km+) and locking speed (you can't sensor resolution damp them), along with infinite cap... are some of the last barriers between making a PvE experience which can instruct and help PvE characters be more involved and prepared for the eventuality which is PvP. CCP, please consider these changes! Player fit ships and stats are challenging enough! You can even keep above normal DPS and tank, even faster than usual speeds, but the basic E-war should FULLY apply. Half a job is none at all. edit: I wouldn't mind seeing a few CNR wrecks as well... all in the name of learning, right?
CHAOS100 Widowmakers	Posted - 2009.02.24 03:51:00 - [133] I hope you are not making them to appear to be "like pvp" and on the mean time have unfair advantages that real players don't have. Such as torps that still do insane damage to moving targets and travel 150km to their targets. I assume you will make them effected by neuting and nossing, since that is also PVP tactics. Same with sensor damps. All those do not matter to current 'rats'. --------------
Viktor Del'Grande	Posted - 2009.02.24 04:52:00 - [134] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Viktor Del'Grande Hi, Are they affected from tracking disruption the same way as players are affected from it? Is their optimal range and falloff behaviour the same as at the players? Or are these attribute like the cap infinite? There are NPCs out there which shoot you with blasters from 50km+ Are they the same way affected by sensor dampening (targeting range) as players? Or do they have infinite targeting range .. or maybe 250km? They should be, I would have to spelunk the code to be 100% sure. It should have the same affect as it does on players, one thing to be aware of is the npc have different ranges and falloffs than most pc ships. Too all who asked about damps and tracking disruption.... Best Regards Viktor Del'Grande Btw: Eventually update the blog about the often arrised questions and answers or update the initial post
wert668	Posted - 2009.02.24 05:14:00 - [135] I read this and half of "GIVE US NPC AI" and what to say? For me is stuck in the half way.
Chainsaw Plankton IDLE GUNS IDLE EMPIRE	Posted - 2009.02.24 05:45:00 - [136] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Siobhan Ni If you really want to make the encounters more like pvp then have the sleepers smack talk in local and ransom you pod Sorry I tried really really hard but design would not let me make sleeper pod players :( without a ship you seem kinda stuck in w space, and might as well self destruct and well pods would be low on the aggro list, thus when in a gang (aka most likely have a way to get back) they won't go for ya unless you sit around.
Pliauga Gallente Aliastra	Posted - 2009.02.24 06:23:00 - [137] Was anyone transported to w-space last night? ------- "Skynet" is my internet provider, should I be worried?
Venkul Mul Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.24 07:05:00 - [138] Originally by: An Anarchyyt Originally by: Venkul Mul Hit and run = spend lot of time and from what I have seen of combat screenshopts they warp disrupt like crazy If you are convinced it will work and be fun Frigates as tacklers? What a shocking development that has surely never happend. Beside your lack of originality, my dear troll, frigates that warp disrupt, jam, lock at 150 km, MDW, spider tank, can't be nossed/cap disrupted and have lots or DPS aren't equivalent to PvP ships.
Dreamwalker	Posted - 2009.02.24 07:56:00 - [139] Originally by: Chainsaw Plankton without a ship you seem kinda stuck in w space, and might as well self destruct and well pods would be low on the aggro list, thus when in a gang (aka most likely have a way to get back) they won't go for ya unless you sit around. Sounds like PvP to me Originally by: CCP Whisper Local chat in known 0.0, low sec and empire space will remain as it is today, in all it's insta-intel giving, afk cloaker panic inducing, jita trade spamming glory.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.24 08:08:00 - [140] Edited by: CCP Incognito on 24/02/2009 08:09:31 Originally by: Hon Kovell Will the new AI consider whether it can hit or hurt the target? e.g. A webbing frigate may be the most important target but if it's orbiting too close for turrets to hit then another target is a better choice. Or if the most important target is a dread that will take hours to kill shoot something else first. (And ECM the main threat if you can.) Will the AI consider 'targets of opportunity'? i.e. if a secondary target drops transversal to zero and can be killed with one shot then do so before switching back to the primary. Related to the last - when the AI works out targets does it consider how hard they are to kill? i.e. 1 Megathron + 1 Thorax. Thorax is half the threat in terms of damage but can be killed quicker. Kill the Thorax first then the bigger but harder to kill threat of the Megathron. Alternatively, if the Mega can be killed just as fast then shoot it first. I can't give it all away... But the W-Space NPC will multi target and target switch. The target switching is initially based on how close the signature radius of the ships match (excluding modifiers). Then it is down to observation, if a npc sees that different ship is doing more threat then it will switch targets. If it observes an assistance affect like remote reping, then it will consider that as a possible target. So you will see things like the npc initially targets the same size ship, then as the player open up with all guns blazing it switches to the player doing the most threat. Then if it observes another player remote rep it's target it will consider switching targets to the remote rep ship, or maybe allocating a secondary target and use jamming and such on it. Some e-war effect will only be used on primary targets, some will only be used on secondary targets, some will only be used if 'to many' are not on that target already. a internal test we have done with Jamming (which w-space npc don't use). Is to have a npc attacking with guns and missiles one target, and jamming the remote rep ship. Without specifics yes npc will devalue a target if it appears to tank to well and switch to another. No they don't look for targets of opportunity.

Hugh Ruka Exploratio et Industria Morispatia	Posted - 2009.02.24 08:10:00 - [141] Originally by: Venkul Mul Originally by: An Anarchyyt Originally by: Venkul Mul Hit and run = spend lot of time and from what I have seen of combat screenshopts they warp disrupt like crazy If you are convinced it will work and be fun Frigates as tacklers? What a shocking development that has surely never happend. Beside your lack of originality, my dear troll, frigates that warp disrupt, jam, lock at 150 km, MDW, spider tank, can't be nossed/cap disrupted and have lots or DPS aren't equivalent to PvP ships. ^^This^^ My biggest problem with the Sleepers is that they have combine all the best in one package: better AI huge DPS tough tanks partial ewar imunity insane ranges and reaction times They combine "regular" ship abilities but in a way not possible for player ships. F.E a cruiser cannot have good DPS, EHP/tank and remote rep others long ranges. Or. if you pack MWD+web+scram on a regular cruiser, there's not much (or any at all) of your mid slots left. Same with lows, you either get damage or tank, not both. One big problem is capacitor management. Just the simple issue of MWD sustainability. If NPC frigs and cruisers can MWD infinitely long, then we have a huge problem. Do they follow module restrictions ? I mean if I web a frig in the middle of his MWD cycle, he's slow and big so I can shoot him. However if I do the same with a Sleeper frig and he shuts down MWD immediately (no cycle time restriction), then basicaly I just allowed him to shoot me (low transversal) without any advantages for me. The major problem for me is NPC reaction time. They lock almost instantly at great ranges and apply effects that far outrange the best player abilities. --- SIG --- CSM: your support is needed !
Korerin Mayul	Posted - 2009.02.24 08:20:00 - [142] We are now feature complete and spending the remaining time to release on polish and tweaks. :/ a games project... finished BEFORE a deadline? O_o maby scrum isnt a bunch of out-of-touch middle managment jargon after all. ps; i keep getting ganked in pvp. can you patch my player intellegence so this happens less often?
Garia666 Amarr T.H.U.G L.I.F.E White Core	Posted - 2009.02.24 09:22:00 - [143] Edited by: Garia666 on 24/02/2009 09:25:27 Edited by: Garia666 on 24/02/2009 09:23:54 Nice and all.. but will our PVP mods be effective on NPC now aswell? When you use a scram there mwd will turn off? When neuted they will die properly? when jammed they cant remotre rep eachother anymore.. ?? When using an tracking disrubter they will fail to do dmg? ECM burst will stop there lock ? I mean its fun nice AI but the effect should be the same then And dont you think well see more blobbing in wormwholes now? just take fleets of 30+ to roam and shoot npc www.garia.net
Venkul Mul Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.24 09:25:00 - [144] 1) Originally by: CCP Ytterbium Also, don't forget that due to the new Sleeper AI, any other evil player pirate warping in to attack you may also be considered a valid and juicy target for the NPCs, meaning you will stand a fair chances if spotted . 2) Originally by: CCP Incognito I can't give it all away... But the W-Space NPC will multi target and target switch. The target switching is initially based on how close the signature radius of the ships match (excluding modifiers). Then it is down to observation, if a npc sees that different ship is doing more threat then it will switch targets. If it observes an assistance affect like remote reping, then it will consider that as a possible target. So you will see things like the npc initially targets the same size ship, then as the player open up with all guns blazing it switches to the player doing the most threat. Then if it observes another player remote rep it's target it will consider switching targets to the remote rep ship, or maybe allocating a secondary target and use jamming and such on it. Some e-war effect will only be used on primary targets, some will only be used on secondary targets, some will only be used if 'to many' are not on that target already. ---- Without specifics yes npc will devalue a target if it appears to tank to well and switch to another. No they don't look for targets of opportunity. I see a big contradiction between 1) and 2), so: the new NPC will (at least potentially) switch targets against new people that enter the combat area and attack the players already locked in combat with the NPC or not? As a threat assessment it is logic that they will not switch targets, but then please don't speak like the new AI could be a "equalizing" factor in PvP when NPC are involved. The NPC still help, and for sleepers greatly help, the group attacking the players already involved in PvP.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.24 09:38:00 - [145] Edited by: CCP Incognito on 24/02/2009 09:40:23 Originally by: Venkul Mul 1) Originally by: CCP Ytterbium Also, don't forget that due to the new Sleeper AI, any other evil player pirate warping in to attack you may also be considered a valid and juicy target for the NPCs, meaning you will stand a fair chances if spotted . 2) Originally by: CCP Incognito I can't give it all away... But the W-Space NPC will multi target and target switch. The target switching is initially based on how close the signature radius of the ships match (excluding modifiers). Then it is down to observation, if a npc sees that different ship is doing more threat then it will switch targets. If it observes an assistance affect like remote reping, then it will consider that as a possible target. So you will see things like the npc initially targets the same size ship, then as the player open up with all guns blazing it switches to the player doing the most threat. Then if it observes another player remote rep it's target it will consider switching targets to the remote rep ship, or maybe allocating a secondary target and use jamming and such on it. Some e-war effect will only be used on primary targets, some will only be used on secondary targets, some will only be used if 'to many' are not on that target already. ---- Without specifics yes npc will devalue a target if it appears to tank to well and switch to another. No they don't look for targets of opportunity. I see a big contradiction between 1) and 2), so: the new NPC will (at least potentially) switch targets against new people that enter the combat area and attack the players already locked in combat with the NPC or not? As a threat assessment it is logic that they will not switch targets, but then please don't speak like the new AI could be a "equalizing" factor in PvP when NPC are involved. The NPC still help, and for sleepers greatly help, the group attacking the players already involved in PvP. We are both right, if you have been fighting a NPC for a while, and surviving then the NPC will have observed you are a good tank, and your threat is reduced by a multiplier. I will not expand on how this works, just to say that someone that has been tanking for a while will be a less valuable target than someone with no history. depending on how long the fight has been going will kinda influence if the npc attacks the new target, or assumes that he is a ally arriving late. In either case the npc doesn't care if he is a ally or a interloper. It shoots at the best target. If it knows you are a good tank, it will see if the new target is a good tank or not. If it doesn't know yet then it will use the signature radius and threat as a basis for picking a good target. So the bottom line is there is no hard fast rule that says the AI will behave this way. It all depends on what you do... We didn't like the mechanic of first ship in holds threat for the whole battle so we changed that. You will have to fight the W-space npc and make your own guesses about when they will and won't switch targets. I will say this. The npc do not use faction standing/ criminal flagging/ security status for any of it's evaluation of targets.

Zerb Arus WormSpaceWormS	Posted - 2009.02.24 09:40:00 - [146] Originally by: Venkul Mul ... As a threat assessment it is logic that they will not switch targets, but then please don't speak like the new AI could be a "equalizing" factor in PvP when NPC are involved. The NPC still help, and for sleepers greatly help, the group attacking the players already involved in PvP. I warped to a fleet which was fighting sleepers. I was not part of that gang, nor did I use any module. All cruisers locked me and began to shoot me. Was this the information you were looking for?
Winter Star Volition Cult The Volition Cult	Posted - 2009.02.24 10:52:00 - [147] I wonder if trying ot cycle the primary target of the sleeper would prove effective? Agro could maybe be grabbed by a dps increase acheieved through heat or somesuch and cycling your mwd to increase signature?
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2009.02.24 10:59:00 - [148] no said this yet sooo... thank you :)
Eileene	Posted - 2009.02.24 11:35:00 - [149] Originally by: CCP Incognito a internal test we have done with Jamming (which w-space npc don't use). Is to have a npc attacking with guns and missiles one target, and jamming the remote rep ship. Just make sure there is a point to fit ECCM modules. As it is now NPC ignore your ECCM modules and use static tables with jam chances.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.24 11:36:00 - [150] Originally by: Winter Star I wonder if trying ot cycle the primary target of the sleeper would prove effective? Agro could maybe be grabbed by a dps increase acheieved through heat or somesuch and cycling your mwd to increase signature? Sry we use the unmodified signature radius, we are looking to compare class not get your frigate popped by the battle ship cause your mwd makes you look like one. Originally by: MotherMoon no said this yet sooo... thank you :) You are welcome :)


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.24 11:38:00 - [151] Edited by: CCP Incognito on 24/02/2009 11:38:27 Originally by: Eileene Just make sure there is a point to fit ECCM modules. As it is now NPC ignore your ECCM modules and use static tables with jam chances. As stated above, this was pushed back till after release, so you won't see it yet, but it is high on the backlog. But since the w-space npc don't use jamming it wasn't viewed as critical yet.

Princess Boon	Posted - 2009.02.24 12:12:00 - [152] Edited by: Princess Boon on 24/02/2009 12:13:25 The new AI sounds great. I think most of my comments have been said before, but to reiterate. NPCs that behave like real players is fantastic, and will certainly spice up PVE combat. However, I hope that, just like humans, the AI will make mistakes. The Sleepers, with their awesome technology, already have a huge advantage over conventional ships; add to that the reaction times of a computer, and the ability to magically see all the capabilities of all the ships they engage, could make the whole experience feel unrealistic. Will it be possible to actually out smart the Sleepers? I think it's a shame the AI is not being applied to NPCs we are already familiar with; to ease us in to the hash realities of w-space combat.
Winter Star Volition Cult The Volition Cult	Posted - 2009.02.24 12:13:00 - [153] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Winter Star I wonder if trying ot cycle the primary target of the sleeper would prove effective? Agro could maybe be grabbed by a dps increase acheieved through heat or somesuch and cycling your mwd to increase signature? Sry we use the unmodified signature radius, we are looking to compare class not get your frigate popped by the battle ship cause your mwd makes you look like one. Oh yeah /doh! Disregarding the mwd part - is the theory still osund in principle, would a method of cycling and threat management through Heat be feasible iyo? I know i oculd just pop on sis and try this but i'm stuck at work and this is more fun ;)
Pliauga Gallente Aliastra	Posted - 2009.02.24 12:21:00 - [154] Originally by: CCP Incognito Edited by: CCP Incognito on 24/02/2009 11:38:27 Originally by: Eileene Just make sure there is a point to fit ECCM modules. As it is now NPC ignore your ECCM modules and use static tables with jam chances. As stated above, this was pushed back till after release, so you won't see it yet, but it is high on the backlog. But since the w-space npc don't use jamming it wasn't viewed as critical yet. But this is critical!!! If the players entering W-space dont't bring any ECCM (as there is no point) then they will be vulnerable to ECM PvP. Hence this brings us to our current situation. PvE and PvP require different type of fits and different aproaches. ------- "Skynet" is my internet provider, should I be worried?
Venkul Mul Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.24 12:25:00 - [155] Originally by: CCP Incognito We are both right, if you have been fighting a NPC for a while, and surviving then the NPC will have observed you are a good tank, and your threat is reduced by a multiplier. I will not expand on how this works, just to say that someone that has been tanking for a while will be a less valuable target than someone with no history. depending on how long the fight has been going will kinda influence if the npc attacks the new target, or assumes that he is a ally arriving late. In either case the npc doesn't care if he is a ally or a interloper. It shoots at the best target. If it knows you are a good tank, it will see if the new target is a good tank or not. If it doesn't know yet then it will use the signature radius and threat as a basis for picking a good target. So the bottom line is there is no hard fast rule that says the AI will behave this way. It all depends on what you do... We didn't like the mechanic of first ship in holds threat for the whole battle so we changed that. You will have to fight the W-space npc and make your own guesses about when they will and won't switch targets. I will say this. The npc do not use faction standing/ criminal flagging/ security status for any of it's evaluation of targets. Perfect, 10/10. The NPC will not automatically switch targets (exploitable) but will "consider" it based on several factor. I can't ask more.
Cyberman Mastermind	Posted - 2009.02.24 13:10:00 - [156] Originally by: CCP Incognito If it observes an assistance affect like remote reping, then it will consider that as a possible target. This reads to me as: "Don't bring logistic ships, they're insta-dead". Is this correct? We should use buffer-tanked Battleships and Frigates, but anything between likely is dead on arrival.
Dav Varan	Posted - 2009.02.24 13:40:00 - [157] Will we ever see rats that can change there damage type ? Guri rats that fire missiles and yet stick with KIN when firing againt 90% resists have allways seemed the dumbest of the dumb when it comes to the AI IQ stakes.
SmokeyJones	Posted - 2009.02.24 14:06:00 - [158] How we are suposed to kill them and survive? If they use evasive manevauring to have max transversal velocity, guns will be useless. Theu can swith target, then your drones can be easely killed. Their DPS and resists are high. So a gang with 5 ships in spider tank can't beat them. I was trying to thinl out of the box, but without a good tank and with useless weapon, it becomes a even hard task.
Eleana Tomelac Gallente Eclats de verre	Posted - 2009.02.24 14:13:00 - [159] So, we should be able to use several things against them like : -Tracking disruptors -Sensor dampeners -others If I damp a sleeper for range, will he approach to be able to lock again if no target is in range? If I use an optimal tracking disruptor on a med/long range sleeper so he can't get a hit, will he come closer? If I use a tracking script on the same tracking disruptor, will the NPC try to reduce his speed or match mine to shoot me better (lower the transversal/angular velocity)? So, do they react when they are incapacitated by such modules? If The long/med range one approaches and I switch my tracking disruption script, will I be able to screw him on tracking? Well, will be be able to build real tactics around the EW? -- Pocket drone carriers (tm) enthousiast !
Jonathan Calvert Minmatar Empire Mining and Trade eXponential maXimum	Posted - 2009.02.24 14:49:00 - [160] Well, this all demos the problem with making AI, I think. Eventually the players will figure out the script and make their own response to control the battle, then post it on the net and everyone will follow. Meantime you cant spend enough time make the npcs smart enough to beat a real player. But its sure a step better than the current NPCs. Either way, if you want a real fight, go fight real people. If you want a scripted fight, fight NPCs. I just hope the rewards scale to the challenge.
brinelan Caldari Victory Not Vengeance Intrepid Crossing	Posted - 2009.02.24 15:16:00 - [161] Edited by: brinelan on 24/02/2009 15:16:31 Awesome ccp! The mission runners asked for smarter AI and are all upset when they got it. I for one am looking forward to the occasional npc'ing run again. Cap ship required fights \0/ Some days you're the bug, some days you're the windshield.
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.24 15:26:00 - [162] Originally by: Cyberman Mastermind Originally by: CCP Incognito If it observes an assistance affect like remote reping, then it will consider that as a possible target. This reads to me as: "Don't bring logistic ships, they're insta-dead". Is this correct? We should use buffer-tanked Battleships and Frigates, but anything between likely is dead on arrival. How about spider-tanking? Ever thought of that? It will have the Sleepers switch between the partners in the spider tank. In fact, the tanker will be prefered over the one being tanked, if I read the algorithm right. Sounds like a good tactic ... if you're good enough to pull it off ... -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Nikuno	Posted - 2009.02.24 15:33:00 - [163] A quick question regarding the rats and mining the new clouds. With the new AI and the rats choosing the easier targets won't mining the new clouds be almost impossible using industrial ships? Surely they'll be targeted and killed very quickly without a massive fleet of warships guarding them?

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.24 15:39:00 - [164] Originally by: Cyberman Mastermind Originally by: CCP Incognito If it observes an assistance affect like remote reping, then it will consider that as a possible target. This reads to me as: "Don't bring logistic ships, they're insta-dead". Is this correct? We should use buffer-tanked Battleships and Frigates, but anything between likely is dead on arrival. bring everything, and the kitchen sink. secondary targets work on other things than the main threat list. So observing remote rep is most likly going to get you a secondary attack. but it might tip you into the top threat position... Play on sisi and tell me what it plays like but logistics ships have a definite role in the encounters.


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.24 15:41:00 - [165] Originally by: SmokeyJones How we are suposed to kill them and survive? If they use evasive manevauring to have max transversal velocity, guns will be useless. Theu can swith target, then your drones can be easely killed. Their DPS and resists are high. So a gang with 5 ships in spider tank can't beat them. I was trying to think out of the box, but without a good tank and with useless weapon, it becomes a even hard task. You are assuming that they do allt hat all the time, well the dps and resists are all the time. But the evasive maneuvers are only on closing with target. They go back to orbit behavior when in optimal range. The Remote rep has a chance and is not on all npcs

Thebro Nobrunder Schrodinger's Renegades	Posted - 2009.02.24 16:10:00 - [166] Originally by: SmokeyJones How we are suposed to kill them and survive? If they use evasive manevauring to have max transversal velocity, guns will be useless. Theu can swith target, then your drones can be easely killed. Their DPS and resists are high. So a gang with 5 ships in spider tank can't beat them. I was trying to thinl out of the box, but without a good tank and with useless weapon, it becomes a even hard task. Good Lord Man! Have you ever pvp'd? They try to keep their traversal high... so what... that's what web is for. They switch targets... so what... that's what repping your drones or ecming the npc is for. They spider tank... so what... jam them... These are all things that pvpers do all the time. pvpers use tracking to their advantage, switch targets (even smartbomb drones), they spider tank, have high resists, have high dps, and do lots of things that the npc's can't do. Are they invulnerable???
Cyberman Mastermind	Posted - 2009.02.24 16:58:00 - [167] Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane How about spider-tanking? Ever thought of that? Yes. That's why I asked. If a spider-tank is necessary, a logistic ship probably won't be useful, because I doubt it can be tanked well and still be of much use.
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.24 17:01:00 - [168] Originally by: Thebro Nobrunder Originally by: SmokeyJones How we are suposed to kill them and survive? If they use evasive manevauring to have max transversal velocity, guns will be useless. Theu can swith target, then your drones can be easely killed. Their DPS and resists are high. So a gang with 5 ships in spider tank can't beat them. I was trying to thinl out of the box, but without a good tank and with useless weapon, it becomes a even hard task. Good Lord Man! Have you ever pvp'd? They try to keep their traversal high... so what... that's what web is for. They switch targets... so what... that's what repping your drones or ecming the npc is for. They spider tank... so what... jam them... These are all things that pvpers do all the time. pvpers use tracking to their advantage, switch targets (even smartbomb drones), they spider tank, have high resists, have high dps, and do lots of things that the npc's can't do. Are they invulnerable??? Can they do all that at the same time? No? I didn't think so. If you fit for PvP you have a specific task in mind. Spider tanked gangs are different then buffer tanked gangs/fleets. If you choose one, you can't do the other. That's what makes EVE fun, the choices you have to make. Unless you're a Sleeper, then you can have high resists, passive armour tanking (!), do spider tanking, sensor boosters that let you lock at large range and at incredible speeds, a massive buffer tank, do some nano and have high speeds, have high DPS and neut at the same time, a scrambler, a webber, enough cap for infinite MWD without resolution penalty, etc. etc. etc. Now, give me the PvP ship and setup that can do all that. No? I didn't think so. Perhaps you should do some PvP before posting about it. I don't mind the challenge. I relish it. But this isn't a challenge, this is bad game design. And it has nothing to do with the AI. -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.24 17:05:00 - [169] Originally by: Cyberman Mastermind Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane How about spider-tanking? Ever thought of that? Yes. That's why I asked. If a spider-tank is necessary, a logistic ship probably won't be useful, because I doubt it can be tanked well and still be of much use. I thought about it some more as well, and a spider-tank is probably not possible. The Sleepter neut. So what are you going to run those remote reppers on? Sigh, let's face it, these ueber-stats are just broken ... I'm gonna try to get in some wormhole tonight, but I don't have much hope I'll enjoy the experience. -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.24 17:24:00 - [170] Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane Unless you're a Sleeper, then you can have high resists, passive armour tanking (!), do spider tanking, sensor boosters that let you lock at large range and at incredible speeds, a massive buffer tank, do some nano and have high speeds, have high DPS and neut at the same time, a scrambler, a webber, enough cap for infinite MWD without resolution penalty, etc. etc. etc. You are ascribing all the current ability of a npc to the sleepers, they lack some of the things you talk about. Others they use in balance with there abilities. So a player can't do all of these things at the same time... We are talking about beings from another galaxy, of course they are going to do things that you can't. That is what makes them from a another galaxy. T3 ships are what tech you salvage from blowing up these beings. But that is all the fiction, plain and simple we could make any npc in eve with the stats and ability that the sleeper has. Simple fact we can make a encounter that is numerically impossible to beat. All it takes is setting the dps to 10 billion and there isn't a ship that could survive.


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.24 17:24:00 - [171] Sleepers have a big punch, strong armor, and nos web and scramble. Do all the sleepers have all that, NO! Do they have other weaknesses, YES. Are players beating the highest level encounters, Yes! Are they losing ships, Yes! Are we tuning them from play tests so that they are fun, Yes! We worry about all the points you worry about and more. Can the sleepers be exploited? Can they be farmed? Can they provide a challenge? Are the majority find them fun? Will it attract new players? Will it be interesting for experienced players? Are they two hard? to easy? Trivial for one type of set up? Impossible for a type of setup? Remember the code on sisi is being updated daily, we have been adjusting the code and the AI and the DPS, nos chances, .... daily, some of those changes will hit sisi before release. Please provide feedback to sleeper encounters in the forms, idle speculation of what they do and don't do without playing against them is pointless. We are working to make them balanced, and we watch players fighting the sleepers, we see what is way to overpowered, and what is not powerful enough. Personally I have great faith in the player base. I fully expect that in a month of thins hitting TQ that there will be tactics and fitting setups that will make farming w-space possible. If the minimum we have is that you can't watch TV while doing a encounter then we as developers and designers have won! We have created a AI that is adaptive enough to hold your attention and make you play the game.

Clurk Brodon Yog-Sothoth Heavy Industries	Posted - 2009.02.24 17:44:00 - [172] Originally by: CCP Incognito If the minimum we have is that you can't watch TV while doing a encounter then we as developers and designers have won! We have created a AI that is adaptive enough to hold your attention and make you play the game. And if you create content that can't be reliably soloed, you fail. Most pilots will ignore your high-risk AI and stick to grinding easy-mode L4 (and complain that it's boring).
Gar Ddhen Gallente Can't Decide Balance of Judgment	Posted - 2009.02.24 18:04:00 - [173] Originally by: Cyberman Mastermind Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane How about spider-tanking? Ever thought of that? Yes. That's why I asked. If a spider-tank is necessary, a logistic ship probably won't be useful, because I doubt it can be tanked well and still be of much use. Dual fit Guardians/Basilisks using remote cap transfer on each other plus their remote reps can maintain a hell of a turtle... especially if the logi pilots have logistics 5 so have cap to play with when hit by the neuting effects. Most logistics 5 pilots only need the one large energy transfer on them to maintain all systems... the second allows a good buffer against cap warfare.
Random Womble Minmatar Master Miners Electric Monkey Overlords	Posted - 2009.02.24 18:18:00 - [174] Originally by: CCP Incognito Sleepers have a big punch, strong armor, and nos web and scramble. Do all the sleepers have all that, NO! Do they have other weaknesses, YES. Are players beating the highest level encounters, Yes! Are they losing ships, Yes! Are we tuning them from play tests so that they are fun, Yes! We worry about all the points you worry about and more. Can the sleepers be exploited? Can they be farmed? Can they provide a challenge? Are the majority find them fun? Will it attract new players? Will it be interesting for experienced players? Are they two hard? to easy? Trivial for one type of set up? Impossible for a type of setup? Remember the code on sisi is being updated daily, we have been adjusting the code and the AI and the DPS, nos chances, .... daily, some of those changes will hit sisi before release. Please provide feedback to sleeper encounters in the forms, idle speculation of what they do and don't do without playing against them is pointless. We are working to make them balanced, and we watch players fighting the sleepers, we see what is way to overpowered, and what is not powerful enough. Personally I have great faith in the player base. I fully expect that in a month of thins hitting TQ that there will be tactics and fitting setups that will make farming w-space possible. If the minimum we have is that you can't watch TV while doing a encounter then we as developers and designers have won! We have created a AI that is adaptive enough to hold your attention and make you play the game. And those players that are doing well are testing things with groups far larger than will be viable using WHs on TQ will allow i mean come on one of the first testing groups had 30 people or something including 2 MS and and a carrier that was hardly a realistic group and they were supposed to be taking on a 10 man site iirc yet they still lost a number of ships.
Dinsdale Pirannha Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.24 18:32:00 - [175] Originally by: CCP Incognito Like I said above. Join 'Wormholes' on sisi and a GM/ QA will move you to wormhole space. Also be aware there is a pending bug fix for part of the drone problem. the drones where generating double the threat they should have been so the NPC where seeing them as the most desirable target. Should be patched this week on sisi. Nice to see CCP that there was indeed a bug to explain the drone killing extravaganza. But, the question still remains, is an Ishtar with 5 Ogre II's or 5 Sentries still going to be worthwhile in a group. Clearly, if the Ishtar is the best DPS boat in the squad, the drones are toast using the threat assessment AI you have built. But what about those Ogre II's in a squad of Laser and Missle based boats? If the drones are still very high on the threat assessment list (yes, I read about the tanking portion of the targeting assessment), then Gallente drone boats are still not a viable weapon platform. I am hoping to organize a crew within my corp to do some testing this weekend, so will withhold further comment until then.
Avernus Gallente Imperium Technologies Sangre Azul	Posted - 2009.02.24 18:57:00 - [176] Ingconito, Great replies so far, happy to see how things are shaping up. I've seen it asked by it hasn't been touched on yet; Do Sleepers have insta-reactions? eg. locking, switching targets. And have you figured out the loot tables? Obviously everything will have it's rarity value, but I'm wondering if some things are only obtainable from the hardest spawns?
Katarlia Simov Minmatar Cowboys From Hell	Posted - 2009.02.24 19:46:00 - [177] I really don't see this style of combat giving any more love to logistics pilots. And that sucks. As NPC's will attack ships that aren't even locking them, and can dish out some SERIOUS hurt very quickly, logistics seem to be a bit screwed. You really can't get a decent tank on them, and I suspect people will die REALLY fast. I may be wrong, but this sort of thing seems to be implying that people should be bringing standard PvP spidertank/buffer fits through wormholes. And that sucks. Really sucks. Like the alliance tournaments have shown, having everyone in boring ships and there being no particular ship that looks to be important, you get sucessful but boring fights. I don't want to see just standard PvP gang set-ups, especially becuase it doesn't give a niche for hybridised PvE/PvP set-ups that have sustainable tanks and decent firepower, but still have points and webs and so forth. That would be good. Basically what im saying is that everyone having cap boosters, remote reps and plates, its still as boring. I HOPE to god that thigns are better than i think. I think it'd be great fun to be able to dump a couple of snipers into an encounter, slap the frigates, and then warp assault frigs and EAFs onto the bigger ships, so the snipers can still do damage. That would be awesome. But it really depends if the sleepers have realistic sensor ranges and sensor strength. IF you can cut their targetting range to under 50km with one or two damps, things will be good. If not, things will just be a bit... well ... meh.
Tohms	Posted - 2009.02.24 20:32:00 - [178] So what happens if the sleepers just destroy your gang and you are all in pods. how are we going to get back to empire given that the wormhole that we came through collapsed?
Lincoln Armm	Posted - 2009.02.24 21:01:00 - [179] Moving toward PvE and PvP combat being similar is def the way to go but there is a major hurdle that you so far have not talked about. PvE in EVE is a net profit activity while PvE is a net loss. We can go into why this is but its not important for the discussion at hand. Those roles are not going to change and both are critical for the current EVE game system. This is the root of the issue when people talk about the reward. MOST PLAYERS ARE NOT GOING TO PVP AT A NET LOSS. But in EVE losing even the occasional ship hurts. Yes you can fly cheaper ships to lessen the damage but this will also increase the chance of defeat. This is made even worse by the vastly decreased chance of recovering yourt can if defeated by a sleeper. SO lets assume that you actually come up with sleepers that destroy a player's ship maybe once out of 10 encounters. Those other 9 better pay off damn well (and thats assuming the other 9 are all wins). This sin't even talking about balancing against the isk per hour rate of running l4s. Another issue is that fitting and refitting is a key element in PVE and PVP. EVE is the only game where you can essentially "switch out whole characters". Many fights are one and lost in the fitting area. This is all good except there aren't any stations in W space. No places to refit, no places to replace lost drones, fix armor and hull, etc etc.
Jaabaa Minmatar Dental Drilling Corporation	Posted - 2009.02.24 21:24:00 - [180] http://www.eveonline.com/apocrypha/index.html The flash link "How the AI Pew Pews the Player" goes to: http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=624 -> "This Blog entry does not exist" and not http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=636 as it should. Just a heads up -- EVE Mobile Skill Planner V3 !! http://evemsp.sourceforge.net/
Orontes Ovasi Minmatar COGNET SpaceSystems Ltd Ushra'Khan	Posted - 2009.02.24 21:29:00 - [181] Originally by: MotherMoon no said this yet sooo... thank you :) /signed As someone who is bored silly of wash/rinse/repeat style PVE, I'm looking forward to the adventure. If it's worth the ISK, people who can afford the risk/reward curve will participate. If it's not generating the proper ISK/hour, then more adventure for those of us who like to scout in force
Prokofy Neva	Posted - 2009.02.24 21:41:00 - [182] Some friends and I entered w-space from hisec in Yona on Sisi. There were 3 spots with sleepers in the system we entered. It took lots of ship losses, changes of tactics and some recruiting of others to win. Eventually, a dozen or so skilled pvpers cleared the system and got plenty T3 loot, but everyone lost a ship or two. Our thoughts are that these encounters were very very difficult given that we reached them from hisec. Are the current Sisi W-hole systems going to approximately match the difficulty ratio of K-space to W-space that we encountered? In other words, did we get our asses kicked in the EASIEST w-space?
Venkul Mul Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.24 21:59:00 - [183] Originally by: Prokofy Neva Some friends and I entered w-space from hisec in Yona on Sisi. There were 3 spots with sleepers in the system we entered. It took lots of ship losses, changes of tactics and some recruiting of others to win. Eventually, a dozen or so skilled pvpers cleared the system and got plenty T3 loot, but everyone lost a ship or two. Our thoughts are that these encounters were very very difficult given that we reached them from hisec. Are the current Sisi W-hole systems going to approximately match the difficulty ratio of K-space to W-space that we encountered? In other words, did we get our asses kicked in the EASIEST w-space? It was never stated that the WH space accessible from high sec will be the easier, only that it will be the less rewarding. From what I have gathered from the mass limits so far (nothing conclusive) 0.0 or low sec probably will be easier as you could bring much more mass, so a larger fleet and bigger ships. Encounter strength seem to be much more random that the high sec/low sec/0.0 access division can make you think.
Ron Bacardi SniggWaffe	Posted - 2009.02.24 22:14:00 - [184] Thank you CCP, sounds awesome! About time we actually had a challenge in pve.
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.24 22:27:00 - [185] Well, it was time to put my money where my mouth is, so I logged onto Sisi to check things out. I ended up being moved to W-space with a small gang of 9 or 10 and we engaged spawns of similar numbers of Sleepers. Lots of bugs on Sisi BTW, but that was to be expected. All have already been reported, I checked that. I brought along an Arazu to test if my solo PvP tactic for the Arazu (yeah, I roll like that) also works on the Sleepers. It's safe to say it doesn't. I was getting along for a while, getting targeted sometimes and running away, but was podded when everyone in the Sleeper gang locked me and my paper thin Arazu went from full shields to no structure in half a volley. With an effective HP against uniform damage of 5,750 HP, no wonder, because the damage output spiked well over 3k DPS according to my gang mates. No, I'm not joking, and we're not talking about a large Sleeper gang either. I have also no explanation why the Sleepers locked on me all of a sudden, as I was way out, doing almost no DPS, and only used my dampers on a single frigate. It must have been to check the look on my face (puzzled). As for damping, I didn't really see any effect at all. I wasn't able to damp a frigate down below even 50km with three target range scripted damps. I'm getting 48.875% milage out of my phased muons (not the best damping skills) and at one point I put some 3 muons on the bugger at optimal range (48km) and he didn't drop his lock once even though I was able to get away more that 80km. I could be wrong but I think the math goes like this: 0.511250.577230.755625=0.22299, so I had him damped to about 22.2%, meaning that muppet must have been flying around with a target range of 224km or more. From what I can see, it is safe to say that damping is just about useless on the Sleepers. I found out that some of those frigates were doing over 1,500 km/s. None-stop. So I though, I can do that as well with my nano-ed Arazu (I mean, what else can you put on that nerfed ship?), so switched on my MWD. That's not a good idea I can tell you. MWD doesn't seem like a good idea at all. So I thought, lets switch off that MWD and put my scram on the bugger. No change, happily keeping traversal up at 1,500 km/s velocity and hundreds of traversal. None-stop. Luckily we had a nice Oneiros pilot on board and my gang mates popped the frigate in time. Then again, from what I can see, using scramblers to turn off Sleeper's MWD is just about useless. So, what about DPS. Well Sleepers put out a lot of DPS clearly. Expect DPS of over a thousand from BS, and in the low hundreds from frigates. I can't be more exact because, clearly, my Arazu can't handle that sort of DPS, but that's what I got from my gang mates. I got hit four time by frigate missiles and that was 700 shield HP gone! As for my DPS, well we're talking Arazu here, so that won't be much, but I can tell you that I did some ***ping 23 HP against BS and some 61 HP against frigates. From 250mm Railguns II at optimal range, with all support skills to 4 and med rails spec to 4. That is, if the Sleepers weren't putting traversal up like crazy, at which time, you simply don't hit anything at all. I personally don't see gunnery working that well, although good results were had by missiles and painters. As for drones, my ECM drones lasted, well, one spawn, and after which they were ripped gone, my light drones probably just tickled the Sleepers so they let them be most of the time, until they just disappeared that is. Probably one-salvoed, I have no idea. I was unable to notice any difference from the ECM drones, but that doesn't say much, I was too busy running away to notice it. In the end our spider-tanked 10 man gang went up against a similar number of Sleepers, and most of the very well tanked ships stood their own. Especially with the Oneiros to help out. I had the feeling though that the Oneiros had a hard time surviving though. TL;DR forget about PvP tactics, they don't work. -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.24 22:57:00 - [186] Oh, I forgot to say something about the AI. Not bad at all. Those Sleepers sure know how to move, and usually they do so quite intelligently. The multi-targeting works well as well, although I'm still puzzled by the fact that a whole spawn, out-of-the-blue, decided to ignore all the (somewhat) high DPS output BS and target the the distant out force recon who's doing almost no DPS and using damps that don't seem to have any effect what-so-ever. I'm not sure about the drones rumours, maybe it's fixed, because I expected to see them get popped like crazy, but they weren't. Most of the drones were still out there most of the fight. Maybe the Sleepers just shrugged them off, they didn't seem to have much effect. The Sleepers also seemed to do smart spider-tanking during the battle, although without any ship graphics visible at all, and look at apparently bugged as well, it was hard to see if it was actual spider-tanking or plain repping. At any rate, those Sleepers sure knew how to tank. Overall I was most impressed by the movement behaviour of the Sleepers. They do try to rush you, while keeping their traversal up, but are equally capable of making a run for it if they run into too much resistance. This would have been nice to watch, if only I would have been able to see it. The only problem I still have is with the uber-stats on the Sleepers. A BS heavy 10 player gang up against a mixed Sleeper gang (4 FF, 4 CS, 2 BS) should be able to cope nicely. Especially given the amount of Isk on the field of battle. Instead we just held our own somewhat (lots of jumping in and out to avoid ship losses). Although it wasn't as bad as I feared (scramming was mostly, if not only, from FF for example), remember that these were relatively small spawns (medium size max), and most other anomalies in the WH were bigger. Given the time it took on Sisi (where everything is cheap and available) to get the gang together, and the help from the GM to get us to the spot, I still can't help but think that this content is just too difficult and involved to provide regular entertainment to the semi-casual player (like me?). I understand that you want to make them difficult, but seeing them in action, I still think you went overboard. Frankly, I don't see the need for it as well. Still, one point of reference is not enough, so I'll be on again soon do try some other things. -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Avernus Gallente Imperium Technologies Sangre Azul	Posted - 2009.02.24 23:23:00 - [187] Good feedback above. Looking forward to hearing more detailed reports of how people have fared when bringing realistic setups. Someone in Goons reported they were seeing a fair bit of success with sniper hit and runs, would like to see a more detailed report on that sort of tactic.
SmokeyJones	Posted - 2009.02.25 00:48:00 - [188] Ok, a noobish question. How should i give feedback about sleepers or something else in sisi? Where should I write my experiences to be heard?
digitor 7	Posted - 2009.02.25 01:00:00 - [189] Originally by: Gadrin Demarr Personally I'd like to see the stale and older-than-wow (which is frakking old and uninventive) PvE content to be revised with new ideas: Real ship fitting and real characters with strengths and weaknesses. I'd like to be getting real escort missions in normal non-deadspace space which may be intercepted by real players or AI pirates all the same! Real assassinations where I am required to track and follow a target far away using my locator agents before someone else happens to pop him. Something which blends into and enriches the normal gameplay by creating interesting scenarios for the players (all of us) to interact with instead of the static sandbox PvE playground. Something different from the old "go here, kill that" or "go there, bring that". Anyway, an improved AI is at least a step in the right direction. Great work! I can't wait until this stuff works its way down into the regular content! (well, uber-stats and cheating excluded then of course) reminds me of x3 where you were ambushed by xenon or how ever you spell em (been ages since i played x3). i think this would be an issue as you would then have to have the station guns fire on the pirates, which inturn would mean that YOU would not be playing the mission the NPC will vs NPC. its a good idea but if its to close to populations then you will find it different to what you envision (aka Kill stealling by the stations or other players?)
Katjia Minmatar KNIGHT'S OF THE ROUND ROOM ReZZerecteD AlckemisTs	Posted - 2009.02.25 03:20:00 - [190] I don't know if any one has attempted this at all but sounds like tracking/spider tank may be the key to this lil puzzle. Since the groups of 10 seem to be popular what about a fleet set up as 2 heavy tanks with remote reps (talk'n gatecamp busting style tanks) and 8 intys/afs, ab speed fit to start possible mwd tho the dps sounds abit icky to use mwd. Have super tanks remote rep the lil guys if all else fails 2 of the lil guys can swing down and remote rep a heavy tanker while in orbit, transversals for the win, and maybe cap inject themselves to keep up the cap. My god a remote repping capped out wolf... eeew could be the future tho. Lemme know if this works at all, i know from experience a good fleet of lil ships can own a bs, even uber tanked ones. I bought a computer with vista and all i got was a "smart" paperweight.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.25 07:55:00 - [191] Originally by: Avernus Ingconito, Do Sleepers have insta-reactions? eg. locking, switching targets. And have you figured out the loot tables? Obviously everything will have it's rarity value, but I'm wondering if some things are only obtainable from the hardest spawns? When an engagement is started they have the normal targeting delay, target switches happen instantly, when target switching it is assumed the npc would switch after they have a lock, we have a defect that is out standing that you don't get the flashing locked bracket until they actually switch. So it will appear like they switch instantly. Personally I think it is OK that they switch instantly, it keeps people on there toes... Secondary targets also suffer from this in that there is no indication that they are about to target a secondary. There is also a random delay that prevents them from re-targeting or setting a secondary target.


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.25 08:03:00 - [192] Originally by: Tohms So what happens if the sleepers just destroy your gang and you are all in pods. how are we going to get back to empire given that the wormhole that we came through collapsed? Well you have a few options. A) the wormhole will only collapse if you have exceeded the mass limit. other wise it is still open, so book marks are your friend in this case. B) Have a safe spot with a Orca or something that you can get a new ship from. C) Follow another player out. "<local> Have found wormhole to empire, send 50m isk, and I invite so you can get home" D) self destruct! W-space is dangerous and inheritable risky. There is no guarantee that the wormhole out of this system leads back to empire, it might lead deeper into w-space. You are in uncharted territory, you have to pray to the gods of luck that you can find your way home. That is my view of it, you would need to ask the W-hole team for more details on how you get in and out of w-space. My understanding that generally speaking a wormhole will give a estimation of how stable it is, and how much mass it has left. No hard numbers or anything. As long as the w-hole doesn't collapse it is two way. hope that answers your questions.


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.25 08:06:00 - [193] Originally by: Jaabaa http://www.eveonline.com/apocrypha/index.html The flash link "How the AI Pew Pews the Player" goes to: http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=624 -> "This Blog entry does not exist" and not http://www.eveonline.com/devblog.asp?a=blog&bid=636 as it should. Just a heads up forwarded to the right marketing people. Thanks.


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.25 08:22:00 - [194] Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane ... TL;DR forget about PvP tactics, they don't work. Oh, I forgot to say something about the AI. Not bad at all. Thanks, means allot coming from someone with your background. I have forwarded the comments to the team, I am not sure about the dampening and Scram. But I will look at it today in my spare time, and see if we broke something there, entirely possible. As they say the only program without bugs is print "hello workd" oops I failed! :)


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.25 08:26:00 - [195] Originally by: SmokeyJones Ok, a noobish question. How should i give feedback about sleepers or something else in sisi? Where should I write my experiences to be heard? here

Shi Yanshu	Posted - 2009.02.25 09:12:00 - [196] Sleepers will target drones, too, right? Sooo: either remove that they target them or please please finally remove the drone bay. It is utterly useless with new bandwidth and a nuisance anywhere in the game... Hunting in W-space will be impossible for drone boats unless you go to the effort to set up a POS or something...(hurting younger players). (Lost half of your heavies? go back to station. Oh wait! there is no station...or is there?) So pretty much please step on the toes of the drone devs and make them finish what they started. ty Phyra

CCP Ytterbium	Posted - 2009.02.25 10:09:00 - [197] Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane TL;DR forget about PvP tactics, they don't work. Forget about forgetting that. I will have a look into your point to make sure that dampeners have a sensible effect on them, even if not shutting them off completely. Bringing dampeners into a Sleeper fight should help you win it, but should not be the sole winning factor. However, expect to be called primary as an E-War ship for the Sleepers if you indeed do lock them in such a way in the future. Regarding the warp scramblers having no effect on their MWD, I believe this is due because the modifications were not moved over to the NPCs when the speed changes happened during Quantum Rise. I am not saying we will change this behavior, but we will definately investigate the matter. Excellent feedback, keep it coming.

Alucard Tai	Posted - 2009.02.25 10:45:00 - [198] Originally by: CCP Ytterbium Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane TL;DR forget about PvP tactics, they don't work. Forget about forgetting that. I will have a look into your point to make sure that dampeners have a sensible effect on them, even if not shutting them off completely. Bringing dampeners into a Sleeper fight should help you win it, but should not be the sole winning factor. However, expect to be called primary as an E-War ship for the Sleepers if you indeed do lock them in such a way in the future. Regarding the warp scramblers having no effect on their MWD, I believe this is due because the modifications were not moved over to the NPCs when the speed changes happened during Quantum Rise. I am not saying we will change this behavior, but we will definately investigate the matter. Excellent feedback, keep it coming. Do check if tracking disruptors work on NPC's, when I tested them against a random non-sleeper NPC they had zero effect, 4 tracking disruptors with optimal script didn't have any influence on his ability to hit at all.
MotherMoon Huang Yinglong	Posted - 2009.02.25 12:19:00 - [199] Originally by: Random Womble Originally by: CCP Incognito Sleepers have a big punch, strong armor, and nos web and scramble. Do all the sleepers have all that, NO! Do they have other weaknesses, YES. Are players beating the highest level encounters, Yes! Are they losing ships, Yes! Are we tuning them from play tests so that they are fun, Yes! We worry about all the points you worry about and more. Can the sleepers be exploited? Can they be farmed? Can they provide a challenge? Are the majority find them fun? Will it attract new players? Will it be interesting for experienced players? Are they two hard? to easy? Trivial for one type of set up? Impossible for a type of setup? Remember the code on sisi is being updated daily, we have been adjusting the code and the AI and the DPS, nos chances, .... daily, some of those changes will hit sisi before release. Please provide feedback to sleeper encounters in the forms, idle speculation of what they do and don't do without playing against them is pointless. We are working to make them balanced, and we watch players fighting the sleepers, we see what is way to overpowered, and what is not powerful enough. Personally I have great faith in the player base. I fully expect that in a month of thins hitting TQ that there will be tactics and fitting setups that will make farming w-space possible. If the minimum we have is that you can't watch TV while doing a encounter then we as developers and designers have won! We have created a AI that is adaptive enough to hold your attention and make you play the game. And those players that are doing well are testing things with groups far larger than will be viable using WHs on TQ will allow i mean come on one of the first testing groups had 30 people or something including 2 MS and and a carrier that was hardly a realistic group and they were supposed to be taking on a 10 man site iirc yet they still lost a number of ships. ' more like 5 battleships. get your damn facts straight.
Venkul Mul Gallente	Posted - 2009.02.25 12:35:00 - [200] Originally by: MotherMoon Originally by: Random Womble And those players that are doing well are testing things with groups far larger than will be viable using WHs on TQ will allow i mean come on one of the first testing groups had 30 people or something including 2 MS and and a carrier that was hardly a realistic group and they were supposed to be taking on a 10 man site iirc yet they still lost a number of ships. ' more like 5 battleships. get your damn facts straight. Originally by: Xelios So, my thoughts. First off our gang was way overkill, we had 29 people in fleet including several capital ships (a Nyx among them). Link Oh yes, 29 ships. We need to keep fact straight.
Viktor Del'Grande	Posted - 2009.02.25 13:22:00 - [201] @CCP Incognito: I was the oneiros pilot which Batho. Crane referred to: Our gang setup was not optimal, because we were formed in a hurry and the market did not work properly. We were partly shield tankers, partly armor tankers. The gang consited of: 2x Dominix Armor Tanked 1x Maelstorm Shield Tanked 1x Golem Shield Tanked 1x Nighthawk Shield Tanked (not a optimal logistic configuration. I wanted to switch to an basilisk, but due to market i only got the oneiros) 1x Scimitar 1x Oneiros 1x Arazu Maybe i forgot someone ... The scimitar supported the shield tanks and i supported the Domis. As the fire concentrated on one domi, i used 4 permarunning Large 'Solace' Remote Reppers. The armor was slowly going down. As i used my additional 5 Medium armor bots, the armor hold. After maybe 30 secs - 1 min they primaried me and i got deep in armor out of the engagement. As i reentered the scene i supported the armortankers and the shield tankers again, which went into armor. As the scimitar got destoyed the first shieldtanker vanished very soon, it was the Maelstorm they ripped fast through it and then through our gang. My oneiros got scrambled and was blown up. As the sleepers focused on Batho, i tried to keep him alive. The others destroyed the frig. Everything was ok (it seems). Best Regards Viktor Del'Grande
Doxs Roxs Free Collective Sons of Tangra	Posted - 2009.02.25 13:34:00 - [202] Originally by: CCP Incognito Edited by: CCP Incognito on 23/02/2009 15:11:19 Originally by: Coltach Will these new rats be as susceptible to EWAR as players, will they cap out like players aso. This is of paramount importance, and you'll have to address this one way or another. PvE fits are about sustainability. PvP fits are about burning out the other guy just 2 seconds before he does it to you. How has this disparity been addressed? We have some changes on the drawing board for e-war, but they didn't make the deadline for feature complete for the releases. you will have to wait until a future release to see them, but we are aware there is a unbalance between the e-war for npc vs players. At some time they will be addressed, but not this release. Also I would like make something clear, all the E-war ability that work against the NPC still work against sleepers. You are still able to do everything that you can do against current NPC in the E-War front. Webs are needed for frigates, target painters and dampeners are still useful, and ECM will still shut down a npc from attacking. The changes we want to make int he future to E-War is to make the NPC less capable when it comes to jamming, and sleepers don't use Jamming. Ok, ECM is still ******ed against NPCs, did you atleast make them require scramlers or disruptors to kill? Thats one of the key points of a PVP operation, you need to keep the primary from warping out, if points are required on the NPCs to keep them from warping out and in again it will all come MUCH closer to a PVP experience. Regards /Doxs After 9 months of being a "!" face, I now discover that Im butt ugly instead...
Jonathan Calvert Minmatar Empire Mining and Trade eXponential maXimum	Posted - 2009.02.25 14:24:00 - [203] Well, we had a fun battle in wspace last night. 15 of us, comprising 2 carriers, several marauders and BS, and a bunch of t2, t3 etc others took on a cosmic anomoly. It started with a few frigs, which were rediculously fast, but we managed to kill them. Then spawned 6 BS, 10 cruisers and a bunch of frigates. We held on for about an hour or 2, with the carrier repping everyone, and us trying to pick off the enemy, which was really hard. 15 ships took 15mins to kill a single cruiser. Everyone in a while, they shift targets to one of our cruisers and destroy it in 2 volleys. I lost a t3 ship and a rapier. It sure was fun, but Im not sure yet how likely it is to actually win an engagement. We eventually had to withdrawl after losing about 5 ships, and being unable to efficeintly kill anything.
Kashimir Otoko no Baito	Posted - 2009.02.25 14:27:00 - [204] Have been testing PvP tactics on sleepers quite a bit at the moment. All I can say that even tho' a ship that only has gank is pretty much going to get owned, a ship with mdw, scram + web, ecm drones, decent tank and a lot of dps, is working like a charm. Ofcourse those ecm-drones are going to get primaryed by the new NPC AI but that will give you some time to lower the upcoming dps anyhow. One piece of advise for those who haven't yet tested to fight this new AI: "Never compare this to lvl4 missions. ...and don't forget your scram + web. " Great Stuff.
Slab Drinklots	Posted - 2009.02.25 15:52:00 - [205] I know this might not be the right place for this, but having heard the old saying that NPCs take to much computing power to operate gave me an idea. Why not have a couple of dedicated computers operating the NPCs and communicating with the nodes instead, just like the players communicate with the node via a client. NPC load on a node would thus be about the same as any other player and you would be free to make the NPCs incredibly more complex. Personally I think a system is possible where NPCs are persistent with names, ships, fittings and pods (if the backstory has them in pods) moving about EvE just like players and being bound by the same rules. Just have them spawn in their space and get different missions and ships, guard a mining op in their NPC space, mine in their NPC space, roam about in their NPC space looking for easy kills etc. General missions should not be all to hard to do and it would be immensely cool to see Blood Raider raids on a player mining op, just roaming NPC wolfpacks or NPCs even coming to help their allies if under attack and they are nearby. As for fighting and maneuvering, you would have to ensure that they have their races ships and the same limitations that apply to human players. It should not be impossible to ensure that they have a capacitor and manage it, that they actually have a MWD or AB and manage it. That they have an active or passive tank, proper guns, ammo etc.. The way I see it, managing a ships mods should be quite easy with an AI, just divide all mods into different categories and have the AIs use them the way they are to be used. Low on cap, fire the cap injector if you have one, turn off MWD if needed or maybe just warp out and come back in a minute. Getting shot at, check how much DPS is incoming, if to much just warp out, if it can tank it, stay and tank it etc. If it cannot get away, overload mods and try to do as much damage as possible, simple rules should dictate how likely an NPC is to do one or the other. Actually maneuvering the ship in space is not hard, just like players they should behave according to what type of weapons and optimal range, e-war mods etc that they have, if they are a tackler they should behave like a tackler. As in, zigzag in to the target keeping the transversal up, put point/web/scram on target and try to stay alive while the DPS guys in the NPC gang try to kill it. If taking to much dmg, warp out and warp back in again. Different AI fittings for ships are not that hard to make, you just need to make some basic fittings that suit that NPCs playstyle and faction then add some options to it and make sure they improve their fittings over time, provided it does not make them go out of character. For example, the NPC faction can store what killed its tackler class frigates the last 50 or 100 times and then change the fit to something that helps counter that. If they constantly get neuted, improve cap recharge or maybe even fit a cap injector etc. Also add other points that might help improve their fittings, for example, if a NPC tackler tries to reach a target to tackle it and the target warps out or is to fast for him to catch, increase the chance for the NPC to want more speed in his next setup. If NPC tackler puts a point on a hostile ship and it still warps away, add chance for NPC to fit a scrambler or maybe even bring dual long range points etc. I realize this might sound incredibly complex, but I am quite sure that its doable and it would give the EVE universe a huge boost to the immersion factor as well as make PVE fights much more PVP like. Mayeb just start with the officers and faction spawns and then work your way from there...
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.25 19:27:00 - [206] Just quick email before I'll try to go out into WH space again (maybe trying a small garrison of Sleepers, see how I can stand up against them). I want to thank Viktor Del'Grande for providing more information about the gang setup. Apparently the Golem in the gang had a triple booster setup, which I wasn't even aware was possible. Apparently Even he had trouble tanking without support. Which says something about the DPS received from those Sleepers. Clearly the gang wasn't very organised before we jumped in, although I think Joe did a decent job of trying to get us to work together. Unfortunately I missed most of it because EVE voice and sound in general stopped working half-way through, although I suspect that problem is on my side. Clearly with a more organised gang we would have done better. Like Viktor said, having only shield or armour tanking would have worked better. Still I don't think we did work that badly together, so kudos to the guys in the gang. It was a shame about the damp and scram not appearing to work because I had hopes I was on to something there. I understand that you don't want to have I-win buttons with e-war against the Sleepers, but let's also not forget that damp is currently useless in a PvP setting in a practical sense, as two sensor boosters (commonly used in PvP, especially on sniper setups) practically negate three damps right now (even with maximum skills), making the Arazu a rather poor tackler right now (it's damp boni should really be upped to 7.5% or even 10% or else a range bonus). I'm not sure how you can change damping so that locks won't be lost when target range damping if you keep sufficient distance, although there is a way to do so with scan resolution damping. Although those Sleeper did get a lock on pretty quickly (5 seconds for frigates?) You could up the target range on Sleepers in such a way that three damps on a battleship mean that you're still a target farther than max tackler range of an Arazu (some 48km). Lets also not forget that if you need three damps on a ship, you're only taking out one ship in a spawn of Sleepers, while at the same time putting your expensive paper-thin force-recon at risk. Players will only do so if that is actually worth it, otherwise they'll bring some other ship. This is actually the same as what happens in PvP right now (I mean, who in his right mind still flies Arazu?). Scrams basically should just work. The only reason I can think of is that they fly that fast without MWD, which would be, well, insanely overpowered. If that's not the case, players should have the option to turn off the MWD with scrams, otherwise you'll never get away. As for the AI, yes, I do think it's quite good. I was expecting a little more predictability but that didn't seem to happen, which will keep players on their toes. The rush and dodge behaviour of the frigates was also a lot of fun to see. Ofcourse, like I explained here, players will eventually recognise patterns and tactics and will act accordingly, as you're probably aware of as well. There's nothing to be done about this with static AI scripting. Adaptive AI however ... well enough about that. Though for now, with the chaos of the fight, it will probably take some time before the multi-targetting, manoeuvring, and spider-tanking algorithms will be figured out sufficiently to take advantage of. Plenty of time to get Adaptive AI from the backlog. Ahum. Finally, I do want to point out that, all the expected bugs on Sisi notwithstanding, I did have a good time trying out the new content (as far as possible). Although part of that can be explained because the cost of losing those ships doesn't have a lot of drawbacks on Sisi. On TQ I probably wouldn't have been such a happy camper (I had that Arazu a long long time I have you know). As for target disruption, I dunno dude, this Intaki bows for no Empress ... -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Hugh Ruka Exploratio et Industria Morispatia	Posted - 2009.02.25 21:19:00 - [207] Originally by: Kashimir Have been testing PvP tactics on sleepers quite a bit at the moment. All I can say that even tho' a ship that only has gank is pretty much going to get owned, a ship with mdw, scram + web, ecm drones, decent tank and a lot of dps, is working like a charm. Ofcourse those ecm-drones are going to get primaryed by the new NPC AI but that will give you some time to lower the upcoming dps anyhow. One piece of advise for those who haven't yet tested to fight this new AI: "Never compare this to lvl4 missions. ...and don't forget your scram + web. " Great Stuff. according to some reports, scrams don't wrk on sleeper MWDs. also basicaly spider tanking mission runners should do the trick I gather from all the reports ... anyway still seems the sleepers have OP stats. this is not comparable to player engagements, so the intended goal is not achieved. --- SIG --- CSM: your support is needed !
Kuolematon Space Perverts and Forum Warriors United	Posted - 2009.02.26 12:19:00 - [208] Oh! A threat meter! I know! Let's do addon and name it as .. hmm OMEN! Thats new and creative! Hurray for EVE to be creative! "The Amarr are the tanking and ganking floating rods of ~~gold~~crap"

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.26 14:14:00 - [209] Originally by: Kuolematon Oh! A threat meter! I know! Let's do addon and name it as .. hmm OMEN! Thats new and creative! Hurray for EVE to be creative! Yea we did, but it is omen for the npc's, not you.. You can't have it :)

Greenbolt Minmatar The Suicide Kings True Reign	Posted - 2009.02.26 16:58:00 - [210] So everything I have been reading suggests the best tactic may be the one least enjoyable. Requirements : High Buffer - Uniform resistances (Sleepers can switch Damage types it seems - high buffer buys you time for remote reppers to show up and activate) ECM - If you can remove some of the killer DPS it allows you to live longer Remote Reppers - Sleeper DPS will destroy solo active tankers. A fleet of Balanced resistance buffer tanked BS,BC,CS equiv with spider webbing repair and a few plated scorpians to ECM jam out the heaviest DPS/annoyance factor sleepers (Assume sleeper BS but eh?)) Sounds like obvious uniform blob spider tank pvp to me. Hopefully some of the out of the box techniques smarter players than me come out with are better than this otherwise Sleeper fighting is gonna be snore fest grinding limited to those few groups that have worked out this kinda pvp. --------------------------------------------------- Scordite -Who was it that said that flying minmatar is kinda like going down a flight of stairs on an office chair while firing an uzi?
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.26 18:21:00 - [211] My last trip into WH didn't last very long, so only a short report. I went in with my Arazu again, this time along. The idea was to check on scanning and maybe try a small spawn on my lonesome. The problem was that my cloak apparently switched itself off. The Arazu is a force-recon and can therefore warp cloaked. But when I jumped to one of the on-board scanner anomalies, at arrival my cloak turned off. I tried to do this twice, at which point I was pwned by about four frigate missiles, mostly because I didn't expect this to happen. So the question is this: is cloaking not supposed to work in WH space, or is this a feature of the tactical environment I was in? (Yes, I had the correct cloak on) -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Eisbrecker Minmatar DevilDog Brigade	Posted - 2009.02.26 19:13:00 - [212] As long as the Ai does not use inflated stats. Too many times "harder" AI equates to the same AI with padded stats across the board. Sounds like you guys have added new techniques to the rats, just please don't make it unfair (i.e. make the ship fittings and abilities something the players can do as well).

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.27 08:22:00 - [213] Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane The problem was that my cloak apparently switched itself off. The Arazu is a force-recon and can therefore warp cloaked. But when I jumped to one of the on-board scanner anomalies, at arrival my cloak turned off. I tried to do this twice, at which point I was pwned by about four frigate missiles, mostly because I didn't expect this to happen. If you remember the name of the site I can take a look, my guess there is a gas cloud or something that you can fly through that got to close to your cloaked ship and deactivated the cloak, but without something to identify the site, it would be a needle in the haystack problem.

Kuolematon Space Perverts and Forum Warriors United	Posted - 2009.02.27 10:34:00 - [214] Originally by: CCP Incognito Yea we did, but it is omen for the npc's, not you.. You can't have it :) Thanks to your horrible UI and SDK that makes BASIC programmers cry. Ohwait, you don't even have support for plug-ins like those OTHER games. "The Amarr are the tanking and ganking floating rods of ~~gold~~crap"

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.02.27 11:27:00 - [215] Originally by: Eisbrecker Sounds like you guys have added new techniques to the rats, just please don't make it unfair (i.e. make the ship fittings and abilities something the players can do as well). Why should sleepers be limited to what players can do? Players are building the most advanced ships ever from the salvaged scrap of the sleepers. So of course the sleepers are not limited to the max DPS that players can do. There is some effects that should work on the sleepers that don't, I could say because the sleepers are immune to them. In reality none of the npc are affected by them yet. We want to change this, so we will see what happens in the coming months. If you want a analogy think of fire ants killing a wasp. No ant will survive the bite or sting of the wasp, but the many ants will kill the wasp. The ants will lose many of there number but in the end the wasp dies. From the carcass of the wasp you get the materials to build the new technology. my analogy is flawed a bit, but you get the idea. We have been finding that numbers don't guarantee victory over the sleepers. But teamwork, well thought out plan, and leadership seems to be what carry's the day.

Eisbrecker Minmatar DevilDog Brigade	Posted - 2009.02.27 15:38:00 - [216] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Eisbrecker Sounds like you guys have added new techniques to the rats, just please don't make it unfair (i.e. make the ship fittings and abilities something the players can do as well). Why should sleepers be limited to what players can do? Players are building the most advanced ships ever from the salvaged scrap of the sleepers. So of course the sleepers are not limited to the max DPS that players can do. There is some effects that should work on the sleepers that don't, I could say because the sleepers are immune to them. In reality none of the npc are affected by them yet. We want to change this, so we will see what happens in the coming months. If you want a analogy think of fire ants killing a wasp. No ant will survive the bite or sting of the wasp, but the many ants will kill the wasp. The ants will lose many of there number but in the end the wasp dies. From the carcass of the wasp you get the materials to build the new technology. my analogy is flawed a bit, but you get the idea. We have been finding that numbers don't guarantee victory over the sleepers. But teamwork, well thought out plan, and leadership seems to be what carry's the day. That sounds cool. I look forward to taking a bite out of this wasp before I get squashed.
Znaci	Posted - 2009.02.27 15:55:00 - [217] Umm... Looks like they making WoW combat out of EvE ( to some extent). Just when i got happy that i can leave domi with drones and read about the next 15 page assignment - single spaced. CCP... well, lets see what happens
Bartholomeus Crane Gallente The Crane Family	Posted - 2009.02.27 16:26:00 - [218] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane The problem was that my cloak apparently switched itself off. The Arazu is a force-recon and can therefore warp cloaked. But when I jumped to one of the on-board scanner anomalies, at arrival my cloak turned off. I tried to do this twice, at which point I was pwned by about four frigate missiles, mostly because I didn't expect this to happen. If you remember the name of the site I can take a look, my guess there is a gas cloud or something that you can fly through that got to close to your cloaked ship and deactivated the cloak, but without something to identify the site, it would be a needle in the haystack problem. Nope, can't remember the name of the site, but I don't remember there being a gas cloud either. Guess the best thing to do is to try to recreate the effect to verify that it exists. I'll try to find some time to do so. -- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Golden Lance	Posted - 2009.02.28 09:08:00 - [219] Will my Dominix be useless? Does it primary Drones as a "ship" so kill's them before it will attack my ship?
Mrs Snowman	Posted - 2009.02.28 16:36:00 - [220] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Eisbrecker Sounds like you guys have added new techniques to the rats, just please don't make it unfair (i.e. make the ship fittings and abilities something the players can do as well). Why should sleepers be limited to what players can do? Maybe you should read your own dev blog? Originally by: CCP Incognito One of goals we have worked towards is making PvE combat more like PvP combat If your aim was to make it like pvp then its a fail.
Grendle Firefly Brotherhood of Suicidal Priests KIA Alliance	Posted - 2009.02.28 20:10:00 - [221] I know you've said the Sleepers range from frigs to BS but might it be possible sometime in the future to have the AI spawn a Dred fleet in response to a tower being onlined? And then come back when the reinforced timer expired? Maybe in the higher end systems? Which leads to another question. To do this the NPC's would have to warp to moons which they don't currently do. Can we expect to see NPC's spawning/warping to any celestial object or even (gasp) probing out players? Or does this fall under the, "Wait till the expansion launches and find out for yourself." category?
Graw Rayes	Posted - 2009.02.28 20:41:00 - [222] Ppl worry too much. Just get a gang of 3 NH + vulture with shield harmonizing etc. 1 shield transfer in all ships + if needed a Caldari support cruiser. and you are ok. You can probably do most vormhole space with that combo. Then for armor get one damnation + bunch or quality armor tanking ships , abaddon, absolution what have you.. and ge the job done. It wasnt that hard now was it.
An Anarchyyt Gallente Battlestars GoonSwarm	Posted - 2009.03.01 01:38:00 - [223] Edited by: An Anarchyyt on 01/03/2009 01:40:58 A few things, First, to that decloaking bit, I was unable to recloak due to "being with 2000m of Cosmic Anomaly" which I don't think is supposed to happen. Same thing happend with Sig. Secondly, we were able to do an intermediate anomaly with one BS, an Ares, a Basilisk offgrid, and a Zealot for a few minutes. Thirdly, Two days ago, we did our first Hacking site. Four spawns, etc etc. I forget its name, but it was an advanced rat site with 15 Broken Sleeper Databanks and 1 Abandoned Talocan Battleship. (Edit: It was an "Unsecured Frontier Server Bank") We did this to start with a Raven, Megathron, Carrier (which fit on its own through the wormhole), and we brought a Basilisk/Zealot offgrid that only came around for a little bit. So it was mostly the two BS and the Zealot at first, the Zealot was mostly ineffective as the frigs didn't even want to come in range. The cruisers were attacking us and the Frigates stayed back with them, not even coming into scram range. Eventually, we started picking them off, but the time we got to a wave with BS, the Frigs were able to pretty much remote rep them faster than the Damage we could do. So as we got the carrier in I went off and got a Scorp, to which I could about perjaman six frigates, which then put the BS and Cruisers in a position that we could take them out pretty easily. So all things considered, it took like two hours, but we were able to do it with a fairly small gang. With a basic fleet fit (Just a 1600mm Tungsten Plate), the carrier was able to keep me alive, but a few times it got pretty close. It was noticed that they like to run away, and the only weird thing was in the last spawn, a single BS burned about 100km away from its buddies and just sat there going 0 m/s. We got a fair amount of stuff, so I think it was worth it. However, while we got multiples of BPCs, Datacores, parts, we only got a single Caldari Hybrid decryptor. --------------------------------------- Edit again: Spawn info First Wave 10x emergent sentinals 5x awakened keepers Second wave appeared upon death of all cruisers. Second wave consisted of 15x more frigs and 5x cruisers Third wave appeared upon death of all cruisers. Wave 3 6x emergent wardens 1x sleepless keeper 1x sleepless sentinel wave 4 appeared upon 1 bs remaining 5x cruisers 2x sleepless keepers 1x sleepless warden Originally by: CCP Wrangler Second, a gentile is a non jewish person

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.03.01 14:07:00 - [224] Originally by: Golden Lance Will my Dominix be useless? Does it primary Drones as a "ship" so kill's them before it will attack my ship? no there was a bug with that,m it has been fixed, but don't know if it has been rolled out to sisi yet. Drone boat is a viable setup for doing sleepers.

Vorlakrin	Posted - 2009.03.02 10:12:00 - [225] told from main perspective, alt doing the posting... don't know if anyone else has noticed similar situations, but in a W-space area i ran my scanners and found another signature, warped to it and found an area(one of about 6 i found that excursion) that popped up like a DED report when i tried to warp there, telling me it was basically a mining area and that i'd woken up the sleepersor some-such-similar. rats in the area included 3 frigates (emergent sleeper) and a cruiser, (awakened sleeper). frigates seemed to tank like beasts, and i finally realized they have no shields, and i was dealing some 8-10 damage per shot per gun. you'd think they'd be weaker, but they arn't. was using heavy modal laser 1s with multifrequency crystals, and had 3 of them. I also had my drones(tech 1 hammerheads and vespas(5 at a time)). drones did fine when i was soloing, and by focusing on the frigates i was able to reduce their dps to a much more manageable amount and survive. my ship(poorly fit T3 of the gallente flavor) had a self recharge on the shield of proably 8, and i had two large shield booster tech 2's on the ship and either 2 or 3 tech 2 large shield extenders, my em shield hardener, and an invulnerability field to reduce their damage... everything else was either my scan probe, my 3 lasers, or there to provide the cap/cpu/powergrid to the boosters.. solo, vs 3 frigates and 1 cruiser, i did fine. (resists of 50% em, 60% therm, 85% kinetic, and 50% explosive) -- i never took armor damage, never lost a drone -- my shield rep was 240/4 seconds x2 (max regen of 120/second, cap dependent for duration) finish area, move to a new one... same npc setup, slightly less valuable ores enter random person, (fleeted, brought him in cus he wanted to try WH and no apparent devs) my drones began to die,early and fast. went through 10 of 15 meds on my boat in no time, proceded to hoard my drones; eventually managed to defeat hostiles, after random person who'd joined me got DC'd due to hadware issues on his end. this system was connected to highsec, system kept private to protect the following individuals... this system had a POS, unknown if it was online, didn't have the right probes to scan it down. the wormhole should remain active for at least a day(through monday evening central time us(GMT -6)) WH in urlen. on another side note. found a WH in perimeter that led into K-6SNI(say hi [[name removed for privacy]], looking forward to the T3 cruiser guide( " [ 2009.03.02 08:37:15 ] [[name removed for privacy]] > spent all night screening variations of each cruiser, and wrote a guide on them, sad eh " ). (0.0 kspace, so it does happen and you don't nessisarily have to go from kspace to wspace to get back to k space) i for one think the sleepers are cool, they look kinda cool, sorta like old drones with the mech arms and such, but on steroids.they seem to have really high resists, so make sure you're dealing a lot of damage. to everyone confused by my rambling, i'm writing this after rougly 40 hours of wakefullness in the last 48 hours.. and not because i was only playing eve, just can't sleep WH space, in the smaller complexes, appear to me, easyer solo than with someone else confusing the sleepers, or waking them up more, or just becoming one more drone i have to watch out for, who knows... wish i could sleep, have work in 3 hrs... i'll probably edit this with a list of my setup later guess what time it is... DT on the sisi server, moving to TQ soon, i think yup, now i'm just rambling, im' going to go eat, maybe... hmmm /me wanders into the other room...
Polaris Lumine Sebiestor tribe	Posted - 2009.03.02 10:16:00 - [226] Gratz to the team for their hard work and getting creative. Definitely on the right lines here. I have to say it does sound like the Sleepers get all the advantages and none of the disadvantages surrounding the compromises a player has to make when fitting a ship. Not entirely sure I want to venture into WH space kitted with modules whose effects I can't really predict as I am up against a foe that's playing by some different rules. However, as I fly mainly solo I suspect WH aren't targetted at players like myself in any case. Nice to see the PvE getting some luv tho!
Dinsdale Pirannha Gallente	Posted - 2009.03.02 11:21:00 - [227] Originally by: CCP Incognito Originally by: Golden Lance Will my Dominix be useless? Does it primary Drones as a "ship" so kill's them before it will attack my ship? no there was a bug with that,m it has been fixed, but don't know if it has been rolled out to sisi yet. Drone boat is a viable setup for doing sleepers. I can attest to that. I was one of the most vehement people about Gallente boats being ruined for Sleepers. Well, a number of us just ended a session in a wormhole that went extremely well, and I am thrilled to say it was a triumph for the Domi. Basic facts: 1. One of our crew scanned down a site in 0.4 space. 2. WH was not large enough for a carrier, and we estimate it handled appprox 12 BS and 4 BC traverses inside and out before we closed it up. 3. Combat squad consisted of: 4 RR'ing and remote power transfer Domi's with combat drones. No sentries used this time around. 1 gank Abaddon setup for solo work. 1 Hurricane 1 Drake 1 Harbinger participating in the RR with the Domi's. We engaged Sleepers at 3 different sites within the one WH pocket. At peak, we faced 4 BS with approx additional 12-15 support ships. Total Ship losses: The Hurricane when we sent it out for a test to see if he could web a Sleeper BS. Total Drones lost: 4 Ogre I's. Caveat: The Sleepers seemed to ignore the drones completely over the hours of combat. However, the one time they did aggro the Ogre's, 4 of the 5 from one ship were massacred within 1 minute. Now, we have no idea if this is a hard or easy pocket tonight. As a point of reference, the day before one of the GM's warped 50 of us into a pocket against approx 40 Sleepers which included 15 BS. That was complete mayhem, and my Ogre's took damage, but I lost none that day either. So out of two tests, one a major fleet engagement, one small gang, I can say the Domi has come through as an excellent boat. We are going to test ECM either today or tomorrrow, as soon as we get a corp mate to step into a plated Scorpion. One thing is certain. There is no way an ECM cruiser stands a chance in there if the AI decides to aggro it. In fact, I can't imagine a damping cruiser working either. Just trying to get close enough to use the damps spells doom for a cruiser. The Hurricane tried to get close, got within maybe 35 km, then tried to make it back to the main fleet for repping, but did not make it.
Draco Argen	Posted - 2009.03.02 18:19:00 - [228] As my tuppence, having read a scattering of player and CCP posts. And now having gone to a sleeper pocket. Dam good fun. I took a Tengu to see how it fares against it's kin, not so bad, not so great, but that's like saying i took a car to a race...given the varied nature of the Tengu. I died, (blew up) when i eventually was scrammed and my piers had happened to already warp away, but this was the second wave of Sleepers. This was a rag tag bunch of BS, BCs and me (5 in total i think). Ignoring the technical issues for a moment (Cloud caused horrendous flicker for all involved, especially me on Linux/wine); Dam good fun. 100% less stress than PVP, though also less adrenalin. But proportionally better than PVE on gank Lvl 4's (which is dam boring imo). And I like my Pvp in general, stress included. It genuinely hit the excitement of exploration, although I suspect that will wear off eventually. The changes in AI mean you can learn tactics to balance the damage across each other, and you can benefit from working together. Including turning off certain weapons/mods to reduce your threat, etc. However it's unlike PVP where if you don't work together (Specifically more "together" than your opponent) you die, badly. In this you can get away partially with being a bit novice and rushing in there with 4 others guys you just met, in a disco-ordinated bunch and have fun. Or you can progressively work up tactics and team work to die less and kill more. They are not super hard, but as a swarm they can easily get the better of you. They certainly keep coming, eventually over whelming you/your fleet. (Visual effect of a load of sleepers swarming in from 90k and launching missiles, that ultimatle wouldnt all make contact, was awe inspiringly scairy, but the smash pop die part didnt happen, instead it broke into a dog fight) I think this is a new form of Eveplay, PVAI if you will. Some PVE players will never touch it, some will try it an never try PVP, some will play PVAI and lead onto PVP. Each player has a choice, for now. Personally keeping some dumb AI as a bottle feeding mechanism for new players, and those of a timid and yet destructive nature will please the most. I personally was scared witless when that first tutorial bot started shooting as a nublet, that i would die quickly from inaction or mistake. If i had i wouldn't have kept playing for 4 years, instead my concern lessened and i became bolder. More willing to risk and loose things, piece by piece. The occasional and gradual introduction of pansy/weak but clever and evasive high sec rats may also provide a more entertaining newb career to start you off. Good effort guys, but keep your eyes on the financial and interest effects this can have. Ratting and missioning are a sustenance isk earning gameplay, and have many varied affects as such. Some people want brain numbing head banging duck shoots, sometimes i do. Hell Eve's markets and industry may rely on it :P As it stands, good way to introduce it.
atrizu Caldari Fallen Imperium	Posted - 2009.03.03 02:53:00 - [229] This should make PvE much more fulfilling!
Al Kickaurazz Amarr Interstellar Association of Alcohol Consumption Terrebellum	Posted - 2009.03.03 22:51:00 - [230] .. Why does this one word keep popping up in my head when thinking of these super-damage, super-tank, super everything NPCs that need a gang to take down... the word is "elite"... as in elite mobs in WOW (yeah that other unheard of game). One of the things i hate the most with WOW PvE content... Really hope this isnt the start of "elites" in EVE as well. Then im NEVER gonna do PvE..

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.03.04 08:59:00 - [231] Originally by: Al Kickaurazz the word is "elite"... as in elite mobs in WOW (yeah that other unheard of game). One of the things i hate the most with WOW PvE content... Really hope this isnt the start of "elites" in EVE as well. Then im NEVER gonna do PvE.. No offense Al Kickaurazz, you were just the last guy to bring this point up. Why do people keep thinking we are turning EvE into WoW. I play both WoW and EvE and there are aspects of both that I enjoy. I like level based progression over time based progression. I Like raiding. It is challenging to a point. I like the sand box nature of eve better than playing in a picture of wow. I love WoW altered reality feature, which mitigates the previous point. I like you can jump into wow for 30min and accomplish something I like The complexity of EvE I like charting my own character progression rather than following a script I like Raid content I Dislike PvP in both games. Yes I am a care bear I like the markets and Trade of eve. I like the crafting in eve better than wow. I can see why people think that W-space is elite npc, They are just harder version. Think of them as T2 NPC. You can argue that rare officer spawns are bosses, does that mean we are wow now? If so where are our 10m users??? Personally i don't have a problem with a single Hard npc iI the last room of a complex, A NPC that requires special tactics to kill. Fictitious example so don't expect to see this in game: A Carrier NPC that has 5 logistic ships. The Carrier has a high multi target remote rep capability and the logistics also have a high single target remote rep each. If you try to kill the logistics first the carrier reps them up. If you try to kill the carrier first the logistics keep it up. To kill them you need to EW all the logistics ships then kill the carrier then take out the logistics ships each. This is game play that make the encounter interesting. In wow a boss that you just kill is called a Tank & spank boss. your tank takes and holds the agro, while the rest of the group/ raid smacks it down. I find it the most boring encounter in WoW. In EvE n-space npc is a Tank & Spank encounter, with the W-space NPC we have introduced the requirement (for med - high encounters) the player work together to kill the sleepers. The next step in NPC combat is to make the players think. If you just roll in with your fleet and the NPC wiles you all, but if you think about it and warp the fleet in in a certain order, or even maybe send in one ship that will get popped because it takes the "mega death beam" or something. Then the rest of the fleet warps in and kicks the NPC asses. That is game play and fun. I would rather have that than warp in, launch drones and go for a nap. There is always going to be the basic tank & spank npc in eve, If nothing else it lets new player become familiar with the game mechanics. I definitely think that named npc should all be unique in how they fight. Each should have a special trick that they pull, should have separate strengths and weaknesses, other wise why are they named? The PvE encounters have been lacking allot of love for a long time, and we want to give them some of that love. Originally by: Al Kickaurazz .. Why does this one word keep popping up in my head when thinking of these super-damage, super-tank, super everything NPCs that need a gang to take down... To this all I can say, get on sis and go play, they are not as super as people keep claiming. They have weaknesses that can be exploited. I have seen some very clever tactics that have proved successful.


CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.03.04 09:04:00 - [232] Continued from previous post... Like I said I am a care bear, I didn't even know that you could fit a BS to be effective at 250km and target anything in that range. I had thought snipers where like 100km :) This exposed a exploit int he sleeper code, we fixed it so it won't ever hit TQ. But the sniper setup can be a very successful setup and with some planning and creative use of BM a way to take out fairly difficult encounters solo. Once the frigs have been popped. With the damage number my sniper that QA set me up with. The frigates are going to pop long before they get in attack range. Then it would just be a mater of warping between BM at 200km range and pounding away at the npc's, warping every time they get in range. Will take a long time for a hard encounter, but the rewards would be good for the pilot. This is a tactic I didn't even for see when we where building the sleepers. So it proves that our players are very creative. Thanks for reading my TL;DR ramblings :)

OMGJITA	Posted - 2009.03.04 17:30:00 - [233] Originally by: CCP Ytterbium Regarding the warp scramblers having no effect on their MWD, I believe this is due because the modifications were not moved over to the NPCs when the speed changes happened during Quantum Rise. I am not saying we will change this behavior, but we will definately investigate the matter. Excellent feedback, keep it coming. I think this is something thats rather annoying a lot of people, torps in the hands of a npc are STILL a long range weapon. NPC's cant be nosed, or neuted... etc... i brought this up in a earlyer thread it was pretty much ignored i think.
Venkul Mul Gallente	Posted - 2009.03.04 23:36:00 - [234] Edited by: Venkul Mul on 04/03/2009 23:38:34 Originally by: OMGJITA Originally by: CCP Ytterbium Regarding the warp scramblers having no effect on their MWD, I believe this is due because the modifications were not moved over to the NPCs when the speed changes happened during Quantum Rise. I am not saying we will change this behavior, but we will definately investigate the matter. Excellent feedback, keep it coming. I think this is something thats rather annoying a lot of people, torps in the hands of a npc are STILL a long range weapon. NPC's cant be nosed, or neuted... etc... i brought this up in a earlyer thread it was pretty much ignored i think. Personally the little fact that NPC ECM has a fixed percentage of success, independent by the target sensor strength (and so unaffected by ECCM) is even more annoying than the reduced effect of neut/nos on them. Then there is the range of NPC sensor dampening. 1 frigate at 100+ km dampening me from 90 km sensor range to 30- ? That is in full falloff, so in the hands of a player it would have a 50% success chance and then reduce my range by 17% with stack nerfing malus. Even assuming 100% success and no stack nerfing it would have required 6 dampers, all on the same frigate. (Thanks to the Ewar icons we have the chance to see how much NPC cheat ) Note: all the above is about current NPC, so not totally appropriate for a Sleeper thread, but still a good chance to remember that to the Devs.
Johnny Lou	Posted - 2009.03.08 09:01:00 - [235] Originally by: Bartholomeus Crane Those players that are totally risk averse may not want to do wormhole PvE. So what. Personally, I'm beyond caring about +3's, +5's or how many skill points I acquire per hour. I've got plenty of both already. I just want to have fun playing the game. This is what I am most afraid of: an expansion dedicated to the old and experienced chars.. a 2 month old char doesn't have "plenty of both already". if you want balanced, here is a very simple solution: have the npc's call back-up using a rule that takes into account the sp and making of the party/fleet that engaged them. you bring in more ships, so do they. and have them drop x% of the stuff that is on their ships. it shouldn't take a genius to tweak this rule so that it pleases everyone.. no overkill on either side and everyone can enjoy the whs. add switching target to the pirate that just warped in and attacked the player(s) they were fighting, in the mix and it should be a lot of fun. but hey.. it's just a thought, wth do I know..
Clurk Brodon Yog-Sothoth Heavy Industries	Posted - 2009.03.08 12:36:00 - [236] Originally by: CCP Incognito I didn't even know that you could fit a BS to be effective at 250km and target anything in that range. I had thought snipers where like 100km :) Sorry, but coming from the guy who's balancing Eve's high end content, that was downright frightening. Quote: That is game play and fun. I would rather have that than warp in, launch drones and go for a nap. Except that wasn't going to happen in W-Space anyway, because you can't fight AFK in nullsec with delayed Local. Remember that Sleepers are meant to be farmed, otherwise T3 will fail. Complicated PvE encounters are possible in WoW because death penalty is low and Raids are done in instanced dungeons. WoW raiders don't have to fight under the threat of ninja salvagers and Force Recon stealth gankers. When a Raven Battleship is 70 times more massive than a Sabre Interdictor, who do you think takes the most risk of getting stuck when going into W-Space, the Carebear or the Pirate? Remember that those high-risk PvE encounters are not going to get you WoW-Style Epic Rewards: they're going to drop salvages of unknown market value. We don't know yet if fighting Sleepers will get us more ISK per player than mining Veldspar in hisec. You already tried PvE missions in a PvP environment, stating that the fight itself is the reward, that only "fun" matters and ISK don't. Are you balancing W-space like you did Faction Warfare?
Spc One Gallente	Posted - 2009.03.09 04:14:00 - [237] My thoughts: make them hard but not too hard.

CCP Incognito	Posted - 2009.03.09 15:37:00 - [238] Originally by: Clurk Brodon Originally by: CCP Incognito I didn't even know that you could fit a BS to be effective at 250km and target anything in that range. I had thought snipers where like 100km :) Sorry, but coming from the guy who's balancing Eve's high end content, that was downright frightening. I don't balance, I just program the systems. The DPS numbers are all done by design. I just give them tools they can use.

Galadarus Starseeker	Posted - 2009.03.13 18:48:00 - [239] Ok.. It sure sounds like there is not much in WH-Space for a casual explorer who does most of his work solo.. Galadarus
Ratklif	Posted - 2009.03.13 19:35:00 - [240] I think they should of made them even smarter. Made it so they can also detect the wormholes and travel at random into normal space, ending up in high secs or low sec. See people panic as a couple of their battleships come through in 1.0 and start pickng people off.

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