So are you still looking at boosting Assault and HQ sites a little more? Or is this is for balancing Incursions?

Also, approve of the drone alloy -> bounty changes. More power to the miners!

So the summary is:

#1 More expensive ships
#2 Less ability to make isk in incursions
#3 If you live in the drone region your true sec now sucks.

Hard to get excited about 3 nerfs in one blog.

Great change to the way Incursion sites spawn, that's enough to make me want to go back knowing I'm doing more than shooting Deltoles all day.

My only concern is that for the pug fleets that were spending time to form up with their T1 guns etc and pulling in 50-60 mil p/h, the change to both how the sites spawn and the 10% nerf to VG payouts may well force them back into L4 missioning. Intended or unfortunate sideeffect?

Though we can probably make rough guesses, can you please provide us with a chart showing the bounties to be paid for each drone type?

Not sure if the Incursion changes will have much effect on how they're run, but we'll just have to see.

Any change that gives more player targets to shoot is a welcome one.

Does this mean that killing rogue drones will also increase security status now?

CCP Affinity wears the cutest shoes, and thus can do no wrong in my eyes

I used to love collecting those rogue drones alloys but sizeable bounties sound good too.

Oh and thanks for not answering peoples question in the forums, I think its swell that you can start a thread and then ignore the conversation that arises, really.



Do you think in the future, before you make these changes, you could post your intentions and thoughts and get our feedback BEFORE you wreck an economy?

Interesting changes which are already shaping EVE mineral markets today.

So a couple of questions:
1) Will Rogue Drones start dropping normal loot?
2) Will Rogue Drones salvage be increased? It seems today their salvage is quite below par.
3) Will you look into Rogue Drone exploration sites and escalations? Currently, their value is very low (who really wants 'augmented' or 'Integrated' drones?) and could use some new modules / blue prints / etc to be as interesting as the pirate faction drops.
4) How long will it take for the insurance values to adjust to the change in mineral prices? Already, the mineral prices have shot up significantly, and I assume the market will take months after this (if not longer) to adjust to the new realities. It seems a bit unfair if the insurance value for T1 ships lags so far behind players don't get compensated for these drastic changes.
5) Your blog doesn't mention this, but there's also talk about eliminating all T1 module drops from all NPCs. Can you confirm? And does that mean less loot, or will the entire loot drop table be revised to replace T1 drops with meta modules, and thereby reducing the chance for meta 4 modules?

Giving drones with bounties, but then no sec status increase doesn't make sense. ATM, Rogue Drones replicate themselves, thus CONCORD has no idea that they exist unless killing them sends a signal that the NPC has died, and that it had to exist in order to die. CONCORD acknowledges that the NPC died, awards bounty but no sec status increase? In order for BOUNTIES to work you must be WANTED by CONCORD. I'm really disappointed in the Devs that tackled the Drone Region problem.

Will the alloys be gone for good (i. e., no chance of drop whatsoever)? Will you remove all the alloys from the game when the Escalation patch rolls out?

I'm glad we have links to dev shoes and no answers to any question brought up. Seems to be "We're putting bounties on drones and didn't think beyond that..."

but seriously i really want more info about this metal scraps business as that's completely new

Those shows look like something out of the Hunger Games

Ty for answering our questions, it is deeply appreciated. Those shoes tho.....

Now on to the answers themselves;
1. So whats the benefit of killing drones as compared to other rats then? They used to provide something unique and alternative to mining?

Also this statistic of 40% of highends coming from drone space... where does it come from?

2. You have no plans to do this.... okay do you agree that they are worth less or can you provide data to the contrary, alleviating our concerns?

3. Thank you, its much needed.

4. Insurance levels have been out of scope since `nam. If you want to score kudo's from teh community look into this, too many instances of things being worth more in insurance than investment to build, and any kind of non vanilla stock ship has insurance levels waaaaaay below what the ship is worth.

5. I feel that the impact from this hasn't been thought out, is there any data or handy charts? Because removing loot from the game..... bounty's are really really boring, its neat to have isk faucets everywhere but the flow needs some chunks to it to make it interesting.

What will happen to the Rogue Drone alloys sat in peoples hangers? will they turn into Minerals on patch day? Just dissapear? or turn into rare items like some of those things out there you don't see often anymore?

Affinity can you confirm or deny if the trigger changes affect incursions only or every anomaly?

CCP Affinity Thanks for keeping an eye on this thread. The changes are generally good but can you please comment on few issues?

1. Drone region was unique not just for its NPCs but also for way of living in there. The removal of minerals from drones was neede. But it also made drone regions very similar to other null-sec. You mentioned that CCP might plan to add something unique to drones again. Is there any time frame on this yet?
2. Balancing incursion is a step in right direction. But as some people above me said: Having predictable spawn trigger removes a lot of challenge. With proposed system the situation will evolve to "warp to site -> kill every red cross in the order of known priority -GǦ get new bunch of red crosses -> repeat until no red crosses spawn". With random spawn trigger the challenge will be much higher because you can get overrunned very fast if not paying attention. Is the spawn mechanism already set in stone or is there still a room for change?

EDIT: Seems like CCP Greyscale already answered #1

Kayzum Mother Drone (Rogue Drone Harassment) has no bounty. She (at least I'm guessing it's a She!) still has the Elite Drone AI, which was her entire loot drop prepatch, but no isk value.

Considering other RD's that did and still drop the EDAI have a value, is this intended?




Couple of other things I've noticed, this may/may not be purely me being very very lucky for the past 30 hours. Would like to know if it's just me or these really are actual unlisted changes.

• With the change to Meta 0 drops, I'm not seeing a large increase in Metal Scrap drops but instead Meta 1-4's (Especially Meta 4's.) I've constantly come out of missions with a good 20% of each Meta type as the overall loot in my cargo (the remainder being T1 drones, ammo and odd misc drops)


• Serpentis salvage no longer seems to suck and drops far more Armour Plates than it previously did. Getting 20+ in a single mission now whereas before I'd muster 7-8 from across the battleships and the odd BC.

Will post any other things as I find them, but that's all for now.

Kayzum Mother Drone (Rogue Drone Harassment) has no bounty. She (at least I'm guessing it's a She!) still has the Elite Drone AI, which was her entire loot drop prepatch, but no isk value.

Considering other RD's that did and still drop the EDAI have a value, is this intended?




Couple of other things I've noticed, this may/may not be purely me being very very lucky for the past 30 hours. Would like to know if it's just me or these really are actual unlisted changes.

• With the change to Meta 0 drops, I'm not seeing a large increase in Metal Scrap drops but instead Meta 1-4's (Especially Meta 4's.) I've constantly come out of missions with a good 20% of each Meta type as the overall loot in my cargo (the remainder being T1 drones, ammo and odd misc drops)


• Serpentis salvage no longer seems to suck and drops far more Armour Plates than it previously did. Getting 20+ in a single mission now whereas before I'd muster 7-8 from across the battleships and the odd BC.

Will post any other things as I find them, but that's all for now.