Dersen Lowery
Laurentson INC
StructureDamage
974
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Posted - 2014.01.24 03:25:00 -
[1] - Quote
Vald Tegor wrote:[Speed of completion will always determine the amount of reward per time spent. Which will always mean the thinnest tank possible, to maximize applied damage. This means 4 damage mods, which you will not generally see on a pvp ship - especially one meant to engage multiple hostiles at a time. This also means shield tank / application mods, not tackle and ewar in mids. Logistics mean a large group activity with 2+ players dealing no damage at all.
Basically, the payout would need to be completion based and completion time somehow become dps independent, without being doable by a cloaky warp stabbed frigate like FW plexes.
This seems to me to be the easier part: A few high-DPS ships accompanied by sensible support and tackle, with non-ridiculous lock ranges and real ship attributes. That would make EWAR both effective and useful, and it would advantage non-trivial buffer and burst tanks. Make especially valuable or prominent rats warp out when things turn against them, unless tackled. Bring back the change that made rats regard all intruders as hostile. Then they're a wild card instead of a guaranteed disadvantage for the person running the anom (or vice versa). Adjust rewards so that the vastly lower quantity of rat ships doesn't result in a vastly reduced payout. You could have small anoms with just a few rats that can be run solo or in tandem and larger sites that more or less require fleets of varying sizes, and which have a roughly Incursion-style payout system to encourage fleets--but if someone wants to try storming them solo in a shiny battleship, sure.
The tricky part is getting anyone in an anom to fight, because you can generally assume that anyone coming after you is looking for a gank, not Honorable Space Combat, and if they've warped to your anom it's because they're reasonably sure they can take you handily. This is where I think the rat-as-wildcard mechanic would make things more interesting, but it's also where large numbers of anoms of various sizes per system would be useful: if there were enough ratters in system to respond to one ratter's distress call in the ships they're currently flying, without generating a long stream of comedy killmails for the marauders, then they could credibly protect each other. Ratters could agree on shield or armor doctrines, and the fleets in the larger anoms would likely have logis. In that case, however, I'm not sure how many roaming gangs would bother, unless they had clearly superior numbers. That's not a problem that any mechanic is going to be able to solve.
For extra credit, teach the rats how to use the new deployables. 
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