Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Farmers - They're Baaaaaaaack

Earlier this week the Caldari Militia hit tier 3 warzone control. Suddenly the farmers are out in force. Last night I was Benny Hilling around our core systems to chase the farmers away. I am really starting to hate this mechanic.

Basically it is whack-a-mole where the moles are running at 5x speed. And if you lose the game you will lose your house and all the possessions in it!


Tuesday's 'weapon of choice' for the Caldari miltia was the cloaking Condor. Seriously, a cloaking Condor. I managed to snag four of them but failed many more times. At one point I was triple boxing to try and stop the plexes being captured.

I had a look and I have 55 million cubic metres of ships and 5-years worth of stuffz in Nisuwa station. To be locked out of there because of cloaky Condors would be rage-inducing!

Currently CCP don't care as far as I can tell. Faction war was 'fixed' in the previous expansions and they have been too busy with Odyssey and Rubicon to implement any of the simple fixes suggested ('Button' targets to prevent cloaking, rats respawning, counters rolling back, nerf stabs on combat ships, do anything to stop the bloody farming!!!!).

Tuesday's session actually started off well. First I went for an Incursus. Using a dual web Kestrel I was able to keep him at 7.5km and slowly kill him. I say slowly as it was a dual rep Incursus. Now these dual rep Incursus are popular because they are bloody tough. Ideal for the current breed of risk adverse Eve players we are seeing in the Caldari Miltia. However, they need to have a cap booster to run the two reps without capping out. With point and prop-mod that leaves no space for a web. Therefore you have a blaster boat that does not have much DPS (all tank in lows and rigs) and doesn't have anything to control range. Therefore it is easy for a ship with a web to dictate range. Bad news for a blaster boat. His drone died in short order, I made sure he was primary as soon as launched. Then I just hammered him with rockets watching the dual reps undo my lovely work until he ran out of cap charges. At least this guy died with dignity. Had a squid at weekend with the same fit begging randoms in local for help to save him* (and he attacked me!).


Next up was a Caracal I found running a medium plex. I swapped to a Caracal too and went for him. He was T1 heavy missile with no damage mod and no rigs. Against my T2 HAM Caracal he went down fast.

Then I spotted a Thrasher in a small plex. I docked and then had issues choosing a Thrasher. I've got too many varieties in my hanger! In the end I went for a 10mn. If the target was AC I could dictate range, if he was arty I had to hope I chose the right ammo! In the end he was AC, no tank at all (not even rigs) and well off the warp in. Bang! And the squid is gone.

Then there was another Incursus. I tried the same tactic but this guy had better skills. Plus he also had sense to load Null in his blasters. He was tanking like a.... well like a tank! He was slowly plinking away at my buffer. After 5 minutes of trading blows I had no idea how many more cap booster charges he had left but my armour was about 30%. As I previously said about dual tank Incursus, they have no range control. So I simply burnt off and warped away. I jumped in a different ship but by the time I had undocked he'd left system. Did he only have one booster charge left and if I'd stayed I'd have won? I guess I'll never know.


Then it was time for the great Nisuwa Condor harvest. First one I chased ran out of system, but I saw he went into the deadend system nextdoor. I stuck Drack in a Cockbag Thrasher on the gate and used an alt to Benny Hill the squid until he left. BOOM. Minus one stabbed Condor. BOOM. Minus one 40m ISK pod. That'll teach you not to fit stabs!

The next three Condors were all the same. I'd swapped into my gank-sniper Kestrel and had to decloak two of them. Pro-tip guys. If I SEE you cloak up I'm going to burn for that spot and decloak you with any luck. Three dead Condors, two dropper Proto cloaks. I guess 2.6m ISK is better than nothing.

Finally a Hookbill! Yes a proper ship! A good fight to be had here! Point.... and he warps.

A STABBED HOOKBILL!

He tries to run plex but is scanning constantly and warps off every time someone gets near. Finally he leaves system. Wait... Hookbill is still on scan! He logged. Shit! How much agro does he have? Any sort of combat action against or from you starts a 15 minute time. If you quit during that, your ship will warp 1,000,000km in a random direction and will wait there until the timer runs out.

I get on a probing alt. I find a frigate. I narrow it down. DAMN IT! Wrong one! I find another, narrow it down, HOOKBILL! I get 100%, I warp! There he is! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

And as my prober is dropping out of warp.... the ship vanishes. Time was up. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!



*Nobody came and he died cold and alone with people laughing at him for being such a sissy.

11 comments:

  1. You mention nerfing warp core stabilizers on "combat ships". Can you please define a "combat ship"? is it a ship specifically "designed" for combat, even though it may not be fit for it (ex: a Caracal with only cargo expanders)? would a mining barge be considered a combat ship since it can fit drones, and different types of ewar (ex: a procurer used for tackling cruisers on gates in lowsec), even though its "designed" for mining? Much appreciated.

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    1. My original idea posted on here a while ago was to increase PG to actually cause a nerf to DPS. By increasing the PG requirements of stabs you can reduce the weapons on the stabbed ships making it harder for FW farmers to kill the NPC ship.

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    2. While that's an interesting idea, you still haven't answered my question: what do you define as a "combat ship"?

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    3. http://eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&view=kills&plt_id=342516&m=2&y=2014

      Take a pick

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    4. So Titans, Dreads, Carriers, Supers== not combat ships. That's a singular definition, eh?

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    5. Using the first page only, I chose the following to be combat ships (in order of appearance as on your list, top to bottom): thrasher, caracal, incursus, thrasher, executioner, harpy, hawk, incursus, rifter, griffin, hookbill, merlin, dragoon, navy slicer, coercer, coercer, thrasher, incursus, navy slicer, harpy, bantam, harpy, and firetail.

      Which do YOU define as a combat ship?

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  2. Don't mock the dualrep Incursus, I made many victims with that little dude, including destroyers (a Corax included). Also, it's one of the best ships to fly without links/implants. If you go full HG slaves and armor links, dualrep is massively overkill. obviously :)

    It's v. simple if you get locked out of station you just drop FW until the situation becomes stable :D

    And about the definition of a combat ship, it can be basically any ship which is fitted for combat. Few examples:
    - cyno brick tanked retriever (instead of mining fit);
    - blaster-fit Venture with warriors in the cargohold (instead of a mining fit);
    - dual web rocket Heron (instead of being fit for exploration);
    - normal combat vessels that have bonuses for weapon systems and don't fit warp core stabilizers or cloaks.

    Warp core stabilizers were nerfed a while back, they used to have no drawbacks, nowadays they give you a locking time of about 2 years. Same with normal cloaks (not the covops). Trouble is that their drawbacks are mostly offensive-related (you can't lock fast enough), they don't have enough defensive drawbacks - e.g. making your align time 1.5 months because "space-time curbstombing common sense when fitting stabs".

    Increasing PG would make stabs unfittable to transport ships and those can actually use those :) Not everybody has a jump freighter and there should be some balance to the game.

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    1. OK. Add a bonus to industrial ships and transports that nullifies the increased PG.

      Better still add these "bonus" to stabs:-

      -80% fire rate to all turrets and launchers.
      -80% damage from drones.
      Turns your ship pink

      ;)

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  3. What about keeping the current negative effects of stabs but also make them activated with a Spool up timer, more than 1 Increases the spool up time. 100% reduction on industrial ships. That way afkers can't just warp off when alarms go off. Oh and make them stackable like guns so industrials only need to press 1 to activate them.

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  4. To me warp stabs seem a simple and reasonable game mechanic. No need to complicate them. Also already quite balanced: even excluding the scan res penalties, you need 1 to 3 modules to 'defend' against each offensive module (point, scram, faction scram). That's already a disadvantage in a 1v1 situation, and becomes extremely hard for the defender (thus ultimately ineffective) vs. a small gang or in a fleet situation.

    So let those darn farmers keep their stabs, but ffs CCP give FW these two words: TIMER ROLLBACKS!!!

    The most simple and effective mechanic to improve FW! Example: you warp into a small plex a farmer has been running for 10 minutes, so timer shows 25 minutes for you. Here's the catch: it only takes you a minute or two to 'roll' that timer back to the original 15 mins. From then on, time warp ends (sorry Rocky Horror fans!) and timer continues counting down in real time.

    People willing to defend their space guns a blazing would then have a strong advantage ('timer speed' to undue the farmers' wrongdoing) vs. people who just fit their ships like rabbits. As it should be!

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  5. Just tackled a farming incurses with my harvesting Heron....4 f'n stabs....he still got away...

    The last 3 months have been minimal for me with regard to Eve. This damn plexing mechanic is ruining any enjoyment I used to have with this game.

    ReplyDelete