Why should a solo interceptor be the deciding factor for control of an entire system? Or any factor at all?

Yep. Interceptors, and whatever counter they can devise against interceptors. Probably more interceptors.

... That their only counter is themselves?

would like to see some eft fits/graphs of any of those tracking an interceptor at long range (150km or so)

come on a corm sniping fleet :) and it will cure your doubts

nothing as it effortlessly burns outside of that range due to dscan, warp deceleration, and crappy lock time on the smallest signature ship in the game

uh you start moving the interceptor out of range if a caracal waddles onto grid, you don't just sit there and take it on the chin

caracal RLML misl takes 12 seconds to hit the target, at which point the interceptor has burned an additional 60km on the caracal

missiles don't hit if the target moves out of their effective range while the missiles are in flight

the point of the trollceptor isn't to effortlessly cap any objective, it's to cause an immense, logarithmically increasing amount of work for defenders while shouldering zero risk

it's mostly the risk part that is the issue, generating logarithmically increasing amounts of work is much less defensible considering the stated aims of the sov revamp to break up existing holdings

the only rebuttal I have seen from the pro-trollceptor crowd is little (wrong) vignettes about how easy it is to stop one ship from capturing one objective, when the problem is that it can hit any objective it wants without risk

ah yes the interceptor that is polite enough to sit inside the eagle's optimal long enough to arrive from 14AU away, decelerate from warp, lock, and fire on it

DO YOU GUYS EVEN PVP?

orbiting a target would be extremely stupid in a trollceptor, you want to sit at a point far away from any celestials and burn at an angle off grid

60 dps isnt going to kill anything. These cepters are not going to sit there and pepper them with bb guns, they will eith be out of range when you land our out of range when you lock them.

your assumption is that i would want to stay on grid to try to capture the objective when an obvious anti-interceptor ship waddles into dscan range

at that point the objective is already lost and the primary objective is to escape

i hear that successfully defending one objective counts as defending the whole of your space when you have more than one system

um constellations have at minimum five systems, and with three objectives each that is fifteen dudes to counter one dude

and the interceptor is not hardlocked into defending that system

if you had to actually risk something to necessitate this response I'd have no issues with it

you're talking about capture node pimples, not the initial rf timer, which is all that i have ever been talking about throughout this entire thread

what does the tcu have to do with it, you can make timers for ihubs and stations too

if anything the tcu is the least vulnerable to trollceptors

the problem is that a single attacker generates a disproportionate amount of work for the defenders at any scale without enduring even an iota of risk

that is the whole thing

uh yes, the defender absolutely has to respond to the pimples in every single instance

you're talking about capture node pimples, not the initial rf timer, which is all that i have ever been talking about throughout this entire thread

like i am basically repeating the same thing over and over because y'all keep circling around these same few talking points without actually refuting what i am saying

i could set up a perl script to win the thread at this point

WTB griffin or maulus with 250km lock range

the sov pimples in this discussion strictly serve as the punishment for not dedicating a disproportionate amount of manpower to countering a single trollceptor every single day

you're talking about capture node pimples, not the initial rf timer, which is all that i have ever been talking about throughout this entire thread

do they not have sensor boosters and ionic rigs where you live

arguing semantics doesn't really help you here

obviously i can't do 250km, nor did i ever state that you could

you don't need to lock to 250km to be effective

a malediction's 110km is plenty of buffer

4x countered (still got rigs, highslots and a lowslot to spare)

http://i.imgur.com/eyMzXd8.jpg

both of these suffer from the problem where the ship attacking the interceptor is somehow able to keep the interceptor inside of its optimal at any point

interceptors get to, y'know, move, especially when they see long range turret ships on dscan

eft warrioring is nice and all but attacking ships that politely sit inside a turret wielding ship's optimal just doesn't happen when the targeted ship can move freely

re: the maulus, great, you stopped one RF event, interceptor disengages and uses its superior warp speed to get to another one

those fat lazy empires must pay, and i will be the one to make them suffer

unless of course i have to risk a t1 cruiser, if i have to do that i'm going back to masturbatory fantasies about the next patch soz

Stop thinking about this as a 1v1. Think of this as fleet versus fleet. How does an alliance defend even a single constellation against an equal or larger force?

we're not afraid to use the cruiser because shooting your ship would entail placing ours at risk

what we do not want is a bore-off

our discussion is not about if this or dominion is better, it's if this system is better with or without bore-offs. we are discussing how to improve this system and given that you agree that bore-offs are bad it seems we should both agree that "well you can counter this by doing something equally or more boring so nobody has fun" is not really a great design philosophy

yes but your stubborn refusal to admit reality is not an argument, it's just you sticking your fingers in your ears and posting loudly

every solution to interceptors proposed by the "how dare you make me risk a ship" crew leads inexorably to a bore-off because there is no other means of stopping interceptor raids because the ships are not at risk unless the pilot passes out

unfortunately for you they are objectively correct

my claim is backed up by unrefuted argument: yours is backed up by "well i don't believe it". nobody cares what color you believe the sky is, and your insistent belief it is red does not do much besides make bad posts

your argument is now "well sure its a bore-off but the defender has a little bit of an advantage in the bore-off"

that is conceding the point, thank you for playing

you are doing an unfun activity where neither can affect the other except by refusing to be bored into logging out

that is the definition of a bore-off

"well i performed my unfun maintenance that does nothing except reset the timer on his, what fun"

this is the pinnacle of your argument, that "well its a bore-off but...uh...it could be worse?"

It seems like the goons story is going from "It's overpowered and we'll burn down null with interceptors" to "it's a boring stalemate where the attacker wastes a ton of time compared to the defender." Is that about right?

please do not post fits that only kill the interceptor inside of a very short, narrow range where the interceptor would not be in any even remotely plausible pvp scenario

basically only post RLML fits, and even then i hope you have 200km+ range

"look at the graph it has a point this is where I can guarantee a ship to be at all times"

interceptor disengages, finds another target

it is like you are fundamentally unable to conceive of a situation where there is more than one objective at play

even an alliance owning a single system can have up to three

wait, i thought moa was going to end our 0.0 nightmare and it was terrifying us...

is that not the case anymore?

no, the attacking interceptor gets to disengage within 2m of getting caught

for the basic math challenged, 2 minutes is a lot shorter time than 20-30 minutes

post type 3: lets turn this entire game into a bore-off

You keep throwing this 40 minute number around. How many systems do you really think are going to have industry 5? Do you think this is enough motivation to get people out and mine the ludicrous amount that's required to reach and maintain industry 5?

nice hyperbole

so yes, we remain in a bore-off but without the thin advantage of a massive inbalance in favor of the defender, merely a moderate one

what fun

The only real disadvantage is being inflicted on sov holders with more systems than they can cover... everybody else is just fine., thanks.

But frigates are indestructible! What can you do against them? /sarcasm off

Sarcasm aside, please explain why you think people should be able to kite their way into sov instead of actually fighting for it.

Can we please stop obsessing over interceptors for a few minutes and get back to focusing on the root causes of why defending even well used space will be problematic? You're getting stuck on one point and lost sight of the proverbial forest. I understand the goal of making unused space easy to take from absentee landlords, but if the defender wishes to truly hold their space, every system would need the kind of around the clock population as say, BUZ or GE- to consistently prevent reinforcement timers from being initiated.

Not only is that simply impossible for anything resembling even a regional power, current nullsec income can't support it. I know an income rebalance is in the works, but asking people to defend their space under the new system without giving them reason to do so is flawed. As it stands, it is far too easy to reinforce a large area of moderately occupied space repeatedly and blue ball the defenders until they tire of the game.

People feel like it's unacceptable that a single "can't touch me!" interceptor ship can force them to have to remain on grid with every structure in their alliance four hours per day.

you seem to forget - they aren't intended for sov warfare. they're intended to make the game as unfun and boring as possible so you don't even want to log in to participate in "sov warfare".

you know, the whole thing fozzie wants to get away from, as per the dev blog.

having to spend 4hrs a day fruitlessly chasing interceptors is going to be boring as ****, especially when that 4hr window is probably the majority of people's active play time.

honestly, if i were looking to go from any other area of space to sov null under this new system i'd look for a corp who's prime time wasn't the same as mine. i have better things to do with my game time than pointlessly chase interceptors who have no real intention of fighting and just want to be as irritating as possible.

They don't run down cepters now and wont in the future. Every single one of your plans revolvs around the assumption the cepter is joust going to let you warp to 0 on it, not more or not run when something shows up.

It has a 110km head start, it starts burning the second it sees you on its D-scan, it will be 200km away at the very least when you meet it. No, you won't catch it.

Actually, a Stiletto can just barely outrun a Garmur, but that's by less than 100 m/s assuming both ships are focusing on maximizing speed over everything else using T2 modules.

Evasion tactics will be optimal so long as they are possible.

Ever heard of these new things they have now, called people? People will always take the low road, they will always do as little as possible to get to their goals. It's really rather interesting.

Sarcasm aside, it's a binary equation. Either it's possible to capture sov by dicking around in a kiting ship, or it's not. If it is, then it's a damn sight easier than actually fighting for sov, so it will become the optimal assignment of resources.

alternatively just hard lock all ships to minimum 3s align except pod and shuttle

look at how easy it is to fix eve

Wait wait wait... you mean every single day goons will voluntarily fly predictably fit inty's into my space during my prime time play hours? I don't have to go on a 60j roam looking for them? I don't have to camp a gate for 4 days waiting for someone to wander by? I can just sit in my home system in my favorite anti-trollceptor setup of the day and they will continuously bring me PvP and KMs on a regular basis?

Holy crap, please sign me up for this morale-draining experience.