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Travel Changes and Jump Drive

The movement Dev Blog came out today and with it came the force projection and movement changes. The thread is at one hundred and  pages in under twelve hours.

It is a nerf. A head shot really to movement as we know it. But then, did anyone think it was not going to change?

The nerf could be smelled on the air. It was a major topic during CSM9's campaign run. I worried, if CSM9 had no low sec representative, then if the cap changes came during their term jump changes and how they would affect low sec, both positive and negative, would be glossed over.

I cannot speak for null sec. I did not sign the null sec agreement for that reason. I may not know everything about low sec but I do live here and I can comfortably say that it is my home and my way of life. I cannot say the same for null sec or the usage of any jump mechanics in null sec. Or, living in null sec in any way. That is why I did not sign their letter to CCP. I will not just sign my name to what I do not understand. That is not the game I have learned to play and I have so much of my current game to learn that I do not mind some areas of Eve being an unknown to me.

But, jump changes. This has been hard. Knowing that things needed changing does still not make the knowledge of the negative impacts easier. Logistics will be harder. Assets, spread out during years of jump usage, would have to be contracted or managed in new ways. Nomadic lifestyles will require much longer deployments and undeployment periods.  Or, they may become untenable.

I do understand the concerns with doing this in isolation to other changes to sov null and null sec in general. But I do not understand how it changes them as I understand how it changes low sec. In five weeks the universe will seem to be. From Sujarento, if I take gates, it is five jumps to Jita. When these changes come in it will be two jumps with my jump freighter. For those further out, the outskirts will truly be the outskirts. Far flung assets will not be as common or casual.

Everything will change. Knowing that it is coming and hearing, seeing, and feeling it are different things. And these are just the biggest aspects. Now the other pieces have to be worked out.

And there are worries. The current numbers for jump fatigue gain, loss, and cap. The  jump freighter distances. There is the entire aspect of what will this do to null sec with no sov mechanical changes. Does space need to change with more gates to connect regions? More room in carrier bays? How slow they warp and align? Newbie death cloning? There are still many details to work out.

Movement will be something different. What has happened for so long will no longer work. I was looking at Jita and wondering if regions will matter in the future. I wonder how will we contract our concept of space and travel. For the positives that are on the table the negatives are also there. The person in a remote region who no longer knows how their corporation will move around. A small scale industrialist whose reaction farm will require twice the number of jumps.

And there are those that are happy with the changes and look forward to what may happen.

I’ve had a longer time to know and absorb the gravity of the change. I struggle to fully write out how dramatic I think this is. I know what a shock it is.  I'd like to hear more from you all. So, share with me if you will.

Comments

  1. After I read the dev blog and posted it on FHC...my gods, the schadenfreude feels so damn good. I've had a silly smile on my face all day, which means I'll have to reset my "days without humour" counter quite a bit.

    CCP Grayscale truly is the Dev that Eve deserves. I admit I didn't have a very high view of him a year or so ago, but now? Maybe with his utter clinical view of the game, it can be made better.

    As I've not had anything to do with jump drives, I'm still probably not going to resub for this. May be after a couple more releases and see what CCP does.

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    1. Absolute and totally agree... I was thrilled when I watched the "o7" show... this is really gonna shake things up as long as CCP doesn't cave to the screams of "Unsub! Unsub!" from deep nullsec...

      I did my time in null and hated it... and I love Blops Ops... and yes, I am personally pleasde Blops is not getting the nerfbat this go round and actually, as Jumping mechanics go, Blops dont really affect the nullgame, so I'm happy.

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    2. Blops are getting the nerfbat too. Probably because if it didn't wed all just run tenfu fleet.

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    3. Nope, Blops is only getting the timers, range is still same as always.

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    4. Did that come out in the thread, because the dev blog says all jump capable ships being limited to 5ly.

      Even if its just the timer though, it still means more than a couple of jumps every few hours is restricted. Still pretty nerfy.

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    5. Right now Blops are keeping range but gaining fatigue. This is one of the major discussion points.

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    6. Yeah, I see that now on the "special cases" part of the dev blog. The fatigue is still going to pretty much make blops gangs extinct, particularly into deep null where multiple jumps are required, since a single jump for a kill then a single jump back over will multiply the fatigue so much.

      If I'm understanding it it right, and my late night half drunk math is remotely correct, then a 7ly jump and a 7ly back will mean that the next 7ly jump out would leave you waiting in hostile space for an hour, then the jump back out would ground you for 6 hours. If you then jumped out on your 5th jump ~9 days later (roughly half your remaining fatigue), you'd get a wait time of 22 hours before you could jump back out of hostile space.

      The thing is, if they make black ops too viable, we'll just throw 4000 tengus across the map to fight instead. It's a real delicate balance, and honestly, I think the way they are doing it is going to make it pretty difficult because of how fatigue slowly decays but multiplies when added to.

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  2. Mostly a lot of meaningless forum ranting. Nothing much will change in null sec.

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    1. I keep seeing this but always without a shred of "...and here is why." And if what you say is true... explain the epic null tears over this? ALL your CAP and Titan buddies really that dense?

      troll lol lol lol lo lolly...

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  3. I'm seriously happy about it. One of the things I haven't seen talked about too much in that threadnaught is it means people actually have to fly through space again in Null instead of Jump. Just the simple act of people going gate to get again instead of taking a portal or a bridge will inject life into the game.

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  4. This change will not be felt by the nullsec bigwigs until destructible stations becomes a reality there.

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    1. and again...
      I keep seeing this but always without a shred of "...and here is why." And if what you say is true... explain the epic null tears over this? ALL your CAP and Titan buddies really that dense?

      troll lol lol lol lo lolly...

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  5. Going from 5 to 16 jumps to nearest HS-bordering lowsec system with a JF == me letting CCP know that they can take my sub fees out of Greyscale's paycheck from now on.

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    1. Why you chose to base so far away from HS if HS is so important to you?

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    2. Because current jump mechanics make it a pain. But that is all. Or at least my opinion is that from some further deployments.

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    3. Anon 2:29... if this is all it take for you (and all the other unsub whiners) to quit... then laters. You obviously don't have what it takes to play EVE. EVE is not about Easy. Oh I know this is gonna mean changing how you play... that's the POINT.

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  6. Huge huge change, completely fantastic move. Teleportation has been too ubiquitous, too easy, too safe, for too long.

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  7. So I support the the apparent aim of the change. Making space far more regional and making remote places well remote.

    At the same time however I'm a little upset. I don't live in a remote place (nearest hisec gate is 8 jumps) and I am extremely regional already. My little industry operation is entirely located within 2 constellation of lowsec right next to each other.

    It's an 8 tower setup with 2 large towers and 6 small ones. The only imports are fuel blocks and Cadmium. Everything else is moon mined locally. The profit after costs is around 2 billion a month, which is very modest, but it's ok. The linchpin to the entire operation is my Jump Freighter, twice weekly I have to move it highsec to get out my produce and pickup my imports.

    The station I use is a 'cyno safe' non-kickout station bordering hisec and it's 7.7LY away. And this is the crux, I have no other station within 5LY that borders hisec and isn't a major risk to use as an exit point.
    What that means is that after the changes I either risk a JF that with cargo adds up to about 8 billion twice weekly (that is 4 months of work/profit). Or I move everything by blockade runner which massively increases my real life time investment (to the point where 2 billion ISK a month is no longer worth it).

    So post changes that means I will shut down my very local lowsec industry operation because it will no longer be worth the risk/reward.
    So that leaves me feeling like changes that are aimed at altering the state of 0.0 and power projection turn me into, well, collateral damage.

    I have none of the fuel advantages that sov 0.0 give, I am not involved in capital warfare or hotdrops or any form of power projection, but these changes leave me feeling like I got accidentally screwed over by the 5LY limit of JF range. And yeah I'm upset by that.

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    1. How about waiting the final numbers? JF get a bonus to the range :-)

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    2. Can you explain the why here for people like me who are ignorant of the mechanics?

      Why can't you jump twice, through a place somewhere between your current two endpoints? A place might be a station, a POS, or just a safespot out in space somewhere.

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    3. The mid station I'd have to use is a notoriously camped kickout, so I'd be jumping into a death trap.

      A safe spot, well, we're talking 8 billion in jump freighter that is super easy to scan and can't fit a cloak, not to mention the cyno would be warp-able and show up on the star map... I mean I could almost just initiate auto-destruct at that point :P
      POS presents much the same risk I have to jump to a cyno away from the pos or to a cyno next to the shields and then crawl in at 90m/sec. Not to mention the POS would need to be fueled which eats my profits and is very easy to scout (once somebody figures out what I use it for my cyno alt gets added to the logon list and next time I log it on... you can fill in the rest...)

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    4. In general, I like the direction the changes are making. I think that space felt a lot bigger before the advent of warp to zero gates and cynos ruled the sky. I like the idea of regionalization and shaking up the old political order of nullsov.

      My concern with the implementation is something that Kaeda touches on. The changes as outlined will cause changes in tactics and habits amongst the big boys, but not necessarily increase their risk much. Blobs will still blob.

      The bigger impact will be to the smaller groups out there. The semi-solo industrialists and the small alliance groups are going to feel more exposed, forced to take more risks (if nothing else by additional jump counts, or by using predictable jump routes).

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    5. You are not thinking about the dev blog correctly, the point is that they expect behavior to change and you are simply taking the easiest route to keeping things exactly as they are now without a behavior modification.

      The solution is that you have to weigh the risks of more jumps/stations that are camped/timers running against the risk of taking several 0.0/lowsec gates to get within the 5 LY jump you have always been doing to get to your supply point.

      The other issue is that you are running bi-weekly trips. Clearly the changes force you to re-calculate your logistics. This will have a negative impact but in the end in greater efficiency if you look for it.

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    6. I don't think I'm reading the dev blog wrong. Have you asked yourself why casual industrialists are casual? And then ask yourself if looking for the least time consuming way is cause or effect.

      I'm simply not willing to sink multiple hours a day every day into EVE anymore like I once did when I had more time, that's not because I don't enjoy EVE, but because I also enjoy other things and they also take my time a commodity I have finite amounts off.
      Sure I could work around many of the issues most likely as long as I'm willing to invest a larger amount of time. Something all the 'HTFU crowd' seems to think is a reasonable demand to make, they're welcome to their opinion, but I don't share their sense of priorities.

      But for my EVE gameplay to be emotionally rewarding their has to be a certain amount of satisfaction/gratification for the time I invest into the game. I'm not a masochist you see.

      I currently enjoy what time I spend in EVE and I'd like to keep doing so, but if the behavior change you say CCP is trying to encourage here ends up meaning I have to spend a far larger amount of time on EVE for the same gratification, then well that is no longer worth the real world trade off for me. There are to many other things I'd have to give up, things I also enjoy. EVE doesn't exist in a vacuum and it competes for my time with other hobbies.

      The reason I speak up now is because I would like to continue playing EVE. But I fear that the changes as they look now will force me into a decision about if I'm willing to spend extra time on EVE at the cost of spending it on other things and as it stands currently it looks like it will lean towards a 'no'. I simply enjoy the other things I do with that time right now to much vOv

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    7. Thanks Kaeda. Can you explain a bit more?

      On the station: for a jump of 7.7ly there should be an area of about 9.6ly^2 (assuming a planar arrangement of systems) that is within 5ly of both points. In this area any station might be used, assuming it's not a nasty kickout station. Presumably this is all lowsec. I would have thought that there would be many stations in such an area. But you're telling me there's just a single one that's no good. Is that the case?

      Do you think that is normal for lowsec, or is it more that you have an unusual geometry in the sense of sparseness of systems in between?

      How many systems are in this area? How many moons that you might have a POS at?

      Regarding POS, my naive take on how to defend a freighter would be to put up a dickstar. I.e. zillions of ECMs. I guess you feel that this would be insufficient against the sort of fleets you expect to come after your freighter? Are you really going to be jumped by fleets that can handle 50+ ECMs? (100+ at a large dickstar.) Or is it that you think they'd take down your POS?

      Regarding safespot use: my understanding is that you can suicide a cyno frig and thereby have the cyno up for just a few seconds. Is that not the case? So my naive idea on how to move safely would be to find an empty system and fire/suicide the cyno. Recharge the capacitor so long as it is safe (i.e., nobody in local). Use a cheap Osprey to recharge cap in as short a time as possible. At 400 cap/sec, a Rhea would charge to 95% in no more than 100s, and that's not counting its self-recharge. Perhaps log off for the remaining few minutes of jump fatigue. If people enter the system, log off. Or perhaps warp around between safespots. Or use a mobile scan inhibitor. (Or a set of mobile scan inhibitors acting as decoys. At 16m each, you can afford a few.) Assuming you are getting recharged while aligned, if anyone is in local you watch for probes and if you see combat probes within 4(?) AU, you warp. Your low warp speed is probably a help here.

      I dunno. I guess none of that seems really bulletproof and/or cheap. The POS seems pretty safe, but a full POS is too expensive if it's likely to get killed more than a few times a year. A cyno alt can be tracked unless you leave it AFK cloaked most of the time (thus costing a PLEX per month).

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    8. The geography of the lowsec area I am in, is somewhat uncommon. Combination of few highsec border stations in the area and of a few very heavily camped midpoints and the presence of several larger groups in the surrounding nearby 0.0

      Problem with a POS setup is that first of all a large pos eats about 400-500mil in fuel a month. And that jams aren't instant. Once they get a single shot on the JF it's aggressed and at that point all the have to do is bump it of the POS and just warp in and out as needed to re-aggress it if need be. It's a dead freighter at that point, it may take some time but it won't ever make it to the shield unless the aggressors are highly incompetent.

      The trick with the cyno is a thing wormhole groups use basically you light the cyno, set it to self destruct and then only jump in the ship seconds before it destructs. It's still going to be visible on the starmap for all the time it's lit. And if anybody comes in and warps and destroys it, you have to spend another 10 minutes in a new safe spot to light it (and the more often this happens the longer you light up the starmap and the more likely you become to draw attention).

      It's not impossible to work around any of the issues post patch but it will be incredibly more involved and time consuming and will still result in exponentially increased risk even after all that time and effort. I'm sure many PvP'ers will cheer that on as a 'good' thing (I myself once would have), but they need to understand I don't play EVE just to be a target for them.
      I play EVE to build things these days and while I don't mind being exposed to risk or even losing the occasional non-combat ship, the risk needs to be proportional to the costs (both in ISK and RL time) to the rewards.

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    9. My assumption was you'd just leave the POS offline until needed. Then you go out there, fuel it for an hour or two, and operate. Of course this does require sitting there to online all the modules at 2 minutes each. And it does telegraph the attempt, assuming people are watching you. But you can reduce the telegraphage by spending more money on fuel. I.e. fuel it the day before with 26 hours, and leave it running for a day. Log off your cyno alt all ready to go just outside the force field. Then log on the next day, light cyno immediately if local is empty, and proceed. (On weekends, a few hours later might work well.)

      Can you bump your freighter in to the force field? How far can a JF be moved per bump? Obviously you don't have numbers and would not win a bump-off against a gang. But on the other hand, presumably you would be there first and therefore could get off a bump or two before an enemy could notice you operating, get his fleet together, enter the system, and warp to you.

      One other sneaky trick I just thought of would be to use an offline POS, perhaps one just anchored. Any size POS would be fine. Online it without turning on its forcefield. Then light your cyno right next to the tower, jump the freighter, and turn on the forcefield. (Make sure both ships have the correct password set.) Not sure if this would work (are cynos allowed near towers?) but it would seem to solve the problem neatly if it did. And you'd not lose any cyno ships either.

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    10. Like I said it's not impossible to work around. But that is a whole lot of time and effort just to move some cargo, which is the 'unfun' bit of industry.
      To me at that point like I said above it may no longer be worth the effort I could spend all that time reading a good book or glueing and painting together a tiny sailing ship.
      If I can spend two hours in EVE and I only enjoy 1 hour of that time and the other feels like a chore or I can spend those 2 hours doing something that I enjoy the full 2 hours doing...

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    11. I'd find it very unlikely that the camping behavior stays the same for very long. The main pray for the campers is null sec logistics and their patterns are inevitably changing so the campers patterns are changing too.

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  8. Does space need to change with more gates to connect regions? More room in carrier bays? How slow they warp and align? Newbie death cloning? these and the "Null Demands"... uh I mean the 'Null Deal' demands for additional NPC null systems, and their associated Indestructible (IE SAFE) Stations, are all simply attempts to nerf the nerf as twere... For CCP to make drastic sweeping changes to Force Projection and then seriously consider making these 'little' change in response... little changes that basically act to mitigate those very badly needed drastic sweeping changes is... well, it's just crap.

    CCP is making these changes because everyone knows the OPness of Titan Bridges and Force Projection as it now stands in null is one of if not the primary contributing factor to the overall stagnation that nullsec has been increasingly throttled by for years...

    Of course the nullfun players are gonna scream for small changes that will push things back in their favor... but CCP needs to hold the course, publish the changes and let the ships fall where they may as twere... THEN see about small iterated changes that DO NOT push us back to what the CFC & CO. want... but continue to push the game in a new direction... one that does not favor immense huge groups dominating everyone around them to the point of ending up with just one more iteration of the Big Blue Doughnut...

    Like you I am not a null payer... but I have done time in null and I have first hand experience of how things work down there... and it badly NEEDS these changes and it needs these changes to STAY. The "same 'ol same 'ol" is what got us to where we are today... and we need to be somewhere else for this great game to grow...

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    1. If I may add... I know a lot of Industry players are very unhappy with the jump changes... but ya gotta take the bad with the good sometimes, and this is one o them times. This shit NEEDED to happen and yes, there are MANY ways it ‘could’ have been implemented… But CCPs goals are NOT to have the worlds best ‘crafting’ game… no matter that we call it ‘Industry’…

      EVE is first and foremost a PVP game and that’s where the guys who created it and own it want to go… all other considerations are secondary to that.

      And PvP in null has been throttled to death in the crib by the mechanics of Force Projection… and ‘logistics’ is also a part of Force Projection as we all well know, so that aspect of Jump tech needed to take a hit too… that it negatively impacts ‘peaceful’ jump use is just collateral damage… but for the greater good, it must be accepted.

      So? Adapt and overcome man! like Rixx Javix said…

      “Eve players we should know better than anyone how to adapt, learn and exploit any new system of rules that CCP throws at us. I for one look forward to figuring out what this all means, how to take advantage of it, and then how to explode all the other people trying to figure it all out.”

      And all that assploding is gonna bring all you Industry types droves of customers… =]

      We all gotta HTFU once again… Those who don't wan to adapt and cope and learn from the changes will fall by the wayside or even unsub, you roll with the changes in changing times or you die... as it is IRL... so it is in EVE. This is nothing but a bucket full of WIN for our great game.

      As the man said, "If they are shooting at you, you know you're doing something right... =]

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  9. Sugar, I also noticed they said Doomsdays were going to be allowed in Low. It brings me to a question I have asked a lot of my corpmates to no real answer. If Supers are allowed in Low, why can't we build them in Low? Especially now that it looks like they will have full capabilities.

    Is this imbalance being looked at? It would make more sense to me if either they were allowed in Low (for travel/use & build) or they aren't.

    Thank you for your time.

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    1. I'm not sure how you are connecting using DD and building Supers as an imbalance of an argumentneith any strength. The DD changes shocked Mr. I missed them the first few read throughs because I didn't expect to see it. I'm not st a full opinion of them as of yet.

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    2. My understand is; (and please be aware I have only been playing 3 months so I could be way off) a Supercap can beat any 2 caps. Often I have seen the phrase "the only thing thats beats a Super is more Supers". To me this indicates not having or not having access puts one at a disadvantage.

      WH don't have to deal with them, and can't build them. Null has to deal with them, and can build them. Low Sec has to deal with them and can't build them

      The DD isn't the imbalance to me. The imbalance is that the can fly in Low, but Low Corps do not seem to have an ability to directly respond. They can potentially purchase them in/from Null, but again this isn't direct.

      From a logic standpoint, it appears to be "the major npc powers don't want them in their space" hence you can't build them in any of that space. But if they don't want them in their space, why are they allowed in Low? If said NPC powers can't prevent these ships from being in Low, then a game mechanic barring their construction there seems anti-sandbox.

      The only justification that makes any sense if " To make SoV Null special". Which to me again makes no sense for a sandbox. Simply, I think if Supers can be in Low, and the components to make them are allowed in Low, then they should be able to be built in Low.

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  10. I'm excited about these changes. Space seems to be getting bigger. The current conditions make null space -- most of EVE -- virtually unusable to me without joining a huge group. I play in all other security spaces, mostly wormholes and low, but a little in high. I'm watching with great interest to see if null might become fun for me now.

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  11. My heavy missile drake raises his hand and waves @ all the capitol pilots...

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  12. While it is nice to see all the distress this is causing among certain nullsec groups, I am concerned that the problems with Oceanus will be swept under the rug in the wake of this announcement.

    If I were a bit more cynical, I might believe that CCP planned it this way, using this announcement as a diversion. Then again, maybe I am that cynical.

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    1. Perhaps. The activity in the relevant Oceanus threads has stagnated the last few days while the travel thread continues to grow. I've seen little to no dev response on any of the Oceanus complaints (aside from a few bug fixes). Normally, when the pressure from the players on an issue lets up, CCP has a track record of ignoring those issues and never addressing them.

      It may not have been intentional, but this announcement has distracted the bulk of the players away from the current issues by dangling a potentially bigger future issue to complain about. if CCP had a better record of iteration and following up on changes, I probably wouldn't worry about it, but they don't so I will.

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