we began by starting at complete removal of assist, and worked our way back up until we had caught all the use-cases for assist that we didn't want to impact negatively. That included [snip] and most importantly, incursioners.

Adapt or die.

That's such a horrendously awful idea I can't even wrap my head around it.

What is the point of a fleet in the far future whose broadcasts don't go to everyone? What even is that? Are we communicating through cups and string? Morse code with the running lights? I just don't even.

dont use that term it ended last year with bs rebalance. as only tech I ships had tiers. so any pending changes cannot be construde as tiericide.

the term to use now is just ship rebalance.

thanks

70 drones is by no means the maximum you can see during a HQ site. I used it as an example. So your 'solution' is useless.

Specifically, he says that he wants to preserve incursion drone managers. Even with this limit, they're preserved. Even with half the limit, they'd have been preserved. You still have one guy controlling an entire cloud of drones.

GǪand that second cloud of drones is controlled by a second guy. The drone managers are still preserved. No amount of narrowmindedness can remove this simple fact.

So yes, yes you do.

GǪwhich he is.
Thus, Rise's comment about wanting to preserve drone managers is entirely correct.

You can twist it as much as you like, but it's still the case.

GǪan entire cloud. An entire cloud controlled by one person.
So his comment is entirely correct.

You're twisting it by suggesting that by not being able to control every done in the field, drone managers are somehow removed from the game. This is hysterical and nonsensical hyperbole. Same goes for the claim that having to have two people look after the drones is somehow this huge negative impact.

One guy can still control an entire cloud. The impact is zero.

GǪand having two controllers is such a minute impact that it's not even measurable. It'll take any competent incursioner all of two seconds to adapt.

Well I'm confident that the highly skilled, well organised, very motivated Incursions community will be able to adapt to this minor obstacle.

No, it's zero impact.

It's addressed by the fact that it will have no impact.

That's impact caused by your poor choice of fleet design GÇö choose better.

Not from this change no.

Well no solution is 100.00% perfect mate, that's the nature of compromises. We did our best to cause the minimum damage to gameplay modes that weren't a problem. In this case the damage is pretty trivial. I doubt anyone on the CSM or at CCP is going to lose much sleep over the hideous torment inflicted by this change on the helpless innocent incursions community.

There is no contradiction, simply the fact that the potential harms to incursions, while undesirable, were of considerably lower importance than the decided balance point for drone assist. In the end any negative effect is still negligible, at worse making a second drone bunny, so it really hold no weight against the primary goal.

No, that's not a contradiction, it's prioritization.

Seriously if you want to work yourself up into a lather of pedantry when Fozzy's meaning is perfectly clear, then go for it. If there's one thing I've learned from the EVE-O forums, it's that when people are determined to be mad about something, nothing will stop them.

One specific subset of one gameplay style will experience very minor inconvenience. It's a shame, but that's just too bad.

I really really doubt they're going to change on this at the very least until it is deployed and its effects seen. I know you're clinging to the statement that they didn't want to negative impact incursion runners, but until you can actually come up with an argument beyond "it is inconvenient" I can't see them doing much.

Here's the thing, your drones are not receiving broadcasts. Your drones are exactly that - mindless machines who receive orders. Pilots receive broadcasts, drones don't.

To bad cloaky afk camping dose not tax the servers. Maybe then you would fix that.

ctrl-x ?

forgive me I mean to say X-click. i.e. designate a target in the overview.

But to widen the subject a little, I appreciate that people like to run incursions and the name of the game is maximisation of riskless return. My view is that while it seems appealing to be able to earn 100m isk per hour in hisec with no real risk of loss, it is not good for eve.

A change that reduces that to 99m isk per hour is a (small) step in the right direction.

My personal (considered) view is that all incursions add to the game is monetary inflation. There is no skill involved since the sites are formulaic. After running a few I was bored to tears.

I have no problem with the idea of a pvp-like form of pve in eve, but incursions in their current form do not provide this experience.

If common sense prevails and drone assist is eventually removed, the small impact on incursion income is not really a factor that should be considered, in my view.

Really? That is a concern? Why not use A-M = sniper targets and N-Z = DDD targets? Or put DDD in own squad and broadcast targets to squad in order? Oh, right, I forgot, that would be :effort:

So I'm gonna make my first post of the thread here.

Ignore what Rise said about "not affecting incursioners" for a moment. Can someone explain to me why incursion runners think they're entitled be exempted having to adapt to change?

So no, there isn't an explanation for the entitlement, then?

CCP's been known to tweak before, y'know. Put a good enough explanation forward and maybe it'll happen here, too, but "we like it this way and don't want to change" probably won't cut it.

Is having to do something yourself in an incursion a bad thing, now?

Please tell us about the difficult life of the hisec incursion runner

no, please, clearly we are unaware of the hard knock life of the hisec incursion runner as we play the easy, laid-back 0.0 game

i mean it was taxing enough to juggle the HP of my fighter bombers, the cycling of my reps on the titans next to me, continuously resetting my fighter bombers to keep them applying damage, and the fps monitor to ensure that my client was actually working

being an incursion runner must be hard

if you haven't noticed i'm calling you out on your BS about your life as an incursion runner being so hard because oh no CCP lapsed in their constant coddling of players that don't even pay their own subscriptions because as it turns out they have to occasionally act with other interests in mind than yours

That's bs. Incursions are **** easy, just like every other kind of PvE. When I did them, they felt an awful lot like mining after a while with the only difference being that incursions hose a lot more ISK all over everyone involved. After a while, I was even using mutliple characters in them.

On topic though, I'm glad for the change in general. Flying Domis was getting boring and I have only been here for a month =p

If someone could link me the post explaining the particular problem with Incursions and the hardcap, I would be thankful as I am not interested into reading through of 40 pages of uselessness.

So you're upset over ~2500 DPS lost from a gang of 30 ships?

my sides

Having read the text carefully, I still fail to see why incursion runners can't direct their own drones.

Please kindly tell me specifically which game breaking problem I am missing?

Read my whole post.

it sure doesn't, which is why you were crying about how much harder those incursions are going to be

"i didn't actually say that thing that i said"

you confused me with the incursion runners crying about how they'll need another TWO drone triggers in their 30-man gangs and crying about how they're being neglected to improve the gameplay in the areas that actually matter

ctrl-click

shoot

yes there is so much to do, so little time

Unfortunately, we can't raise it. We wanted to have as little impact on incursions as possible, but if the cap was any higher we would probably not be able to achieve the main goal of limiting assist use in large fleets. There is a lot of pressure to lower it to 25 but we hope that 50 will get the job done, as I'm sure 25 would feel quite a bit worse for you guys.

[14:48:37] directorbot: Drone assist is being limited to 50 drones per person. You may now spend the rest of the day posting like maniacs while trolling our various defeated foes. Enjoy yourselves, you've earned it. https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=319278

Yes, this means we'll have to toss Dominixes into the dustbin and return to using some real goddamned warships once this hits. :toot:

*** This was a broadcast from the_mittani to all-all at 2014-02-06 14:48:34.730289 EVE, replies are not monitored ***

There was a pretty good reason.

Because nothing else has changed that might have made drone assist a problem in the last 10 years c/d?

i guess if you are so developmentally challenged to believe that making drones easier to command than any other weapon system in eve somehow does not engender mass use of said weapons system then there's little else to say besides "gas thread ban op" because goddamn you are operating in some sort of reality alteration field

d r o n e a s s i s t

it is the topic of this thread (ostensibly)

It doesn't matter what size you use. Drones put twice the load on the server than players do. If you have Baltec Fleet and their 3 sentries...That is 4000 Objects. 3000 of which are acting like 2 Megas each in terms of load.

I don't think you fully grasp the concept of the load AI scripts in large volume put on servers.

The problem is 100% drones. Period. Just like it was like 7 years ago.

It doesn't matter if your fleet is called BaltecFleet, Wreckingball, Welp Fleet, or Dunk Fleet.

Oh look he's going to play the "ITS NOT TECHNICALLY DRONE ASSIST IT'S THE CAP ON HOW MUCH ONE PERSON CAN GET THAT'S CHANGED DUMBY" game.

you've got pretty poor reading comprehension, let it go

my post did in no way imply any sort of change

CCP doesn't agree with you. Maybe try convincing them? Or don't w/e this thread is **** anyway.

it's not so much that it took 10 years for anyone to figure it out so much as it took 10 years for it to become the server bottleneck

remember, this change is as much about keeping servers from being on fire as it is about game balance

No you dont get it this is to fix a bottleneck created by the CFC on purpose to combat a mechanic that has been in the game for 10 years, it obviously fixes something, nobody can tell you what that is but it obviously fixes something.

Dave that's dishonest of you, and I am disappointed because I know for a fact that you know better than to try that bullshit on me of all people.

Drone boat bonuses significantly buffed, Drone Damage amps added, server performance increases, fleet meta changes, the gigantic increase in capital ship ownership.

All of those are significant changes in the meta that directly relate to sentry doctrines. I know perfectly well that you're capable of looking past your own immediate self interest to appreciate the wider picture.

Hi Dinsdale

tell us some more about now nerfing tracking titans will end PvP in null forever

Nobody ever said it was the sole reason. Sentry drone setups just weren't viable for large scale PVP before these changes, strengths afforded by drone assist or not. Once the changes were made drone assist is what pushed them past viability into brokenness. The choice comes down to either taking away that which made them viable and leaving a terrible game mechanic, or taking away the terrible game mechanic and leaving that which made the sentries viable.
If they had taken away the Ishtar and Dominix sentry tracking and range bonuses you can bet there would be much greater outcry against CCP. The fact is these setups were too powerful in combination with drone assist and removing it was the logical course of action. Regardless of whether the usage metrics were artificially inflated or not.

FIX YOUR ******* BOARDS CCP

Yeah, I was replying to you, hit "post", and the posting window came up again and I hit post again thinking it had my reply when it actually only consisted of your quote. I don't care enough to write out my reply again so I guess you win.

Didn't work.

along with sigs.

thumbs up I agree with drone assist nerf

nope no chance of that, your idea is dumb

sorry to hear about your slight inconvenience in an incursion fleet

it is if it gets you whatever weird incursion gimmick back at the same time

we all have to make sacrifices to make sure that living in highsec is as terrible as possible

Because if suddenly for example a ship with 125 Bandwidth can for example "assist" up to 125 of drones. 5 Sentries.. 25 hammers.. 50 lights?

And what are you going to do about it if CCP does not meet your criteria for honesty?

I waited 60 pages, to see if the noise would settle out, wrote a blog post while I was waiting.

Look, the difference between Incursions assist and slowcat is the incursion pilots are still really active in the fleet, not going off to make a sandwich. THAT is why I argue that some drone assist needs to stay.

Other options were considered and the hard cap was what was settled on so I ask this of you forum pundits.

What will happen next?

Will drone usage change in null?

Will Incursion fleets end because they cannot maker the ball o doom?

Will the intended outcomes be achieved or do you even agree what the intended outcomes are?

I can assure you this was NOT a kneejerk reaction to any recent battle in the past month so drop that garbage now.

m

Nah, we said our piece and were satisfied with what we had said (or at least I had, don't know about the others)

Repetition does not make anything truer not does shouting 'liar liar' make something false

m

it is an explicit goal for the nerf to affect carriers more than subcaps (this is why it is a reason for a flat cap)

please stop embarrassing yourself

Or we could go with a 50 drone limit and deal with it.

50 drone limit is awesome, good job Rise. Rise gets a raise.
That's my feedback.

I feel for those poor highsec incursion runners. I really do. They must have it so hard.

you're still literally saying that the change shouldn't be made because ccp has an obligation to preserve afk gameplay behaviors because fighting in tidi sucks

naw, that's not even roughly analogous

an analogous situation would have been ccp doing something like requiring you to continually reaim your mining laser at the rock while you are mining it and having the game constantly veer you off the rock and people saying "but I was able to afk mine before the change you are obligated to maintain MY GAMEPLAY IT IS A SANDBOX"

This is a good change, in the right direction.

I would have preferred that the hard cap was based on ship class though. As an example:

All Frigate hulls: Max 5
All Cruiser hulls: max 10
All T1 BC hulls: Max 15
All Command Ships: Max 25
All BS: Max 25
All Caps + : Max 50

If the problem is passive play....remove passive play.

Why would that be necessary? What makes incursions so special?

Does it solve the issue completely? No. The dps/ehp/range/speed advantages of the cruiser sized sentry boats will still dominate fighting in my area of operations (low sec).