Blog Banter #59: Force Projection and Terrain

Blog Banter #59:

Probably been done before... What about local force projection (as opposed to the longer distance force projection that is often talked about)? I think of 'terrain' in EVE to be how systems are mapped together by gates. Strong tactics which exploit terrain have historically been extremely important in deciding battle outcomes. How does this apply in EVE in the presence of cynos?

I'm going to dive straight sideways and sidestep the dev blog about force projection, and the associated threadnaught.  I'm framing my response at a potential future state, far down the road, and talk about a general direction I'd like EVE to take.

Tiebreaker

As I type, I'm headed back to Amarr to fit out another Daredevil.

So far, the Burner score is 2 successful, 2 punts, and 1 on deck.

At last report, I was messing around with the Gurista mission.  I found some successful tank fits, but in the end caved to conformity and bought a Daredevil for some blaster fighting.  This resulted in 2 attempts - first entry resulted in a successful abort, I screwed up my approach and decided to abort while I still had plenty of cap.  The second entry with the Daredevil resulted in me getting Mr. Gurista to ~40% shields before I mysteriously burned out my mwd and web.  (I swear the overheat rack icon was OFF, but the client decided otherwise).  I still might have gotten out, but I retreated in a bad direction and didn't get off grid before I ran out of Navy Cap Boosters.

It was one of those slow deaths you could smell coming, can't help but just sit at the keyboard and ride it out.

The fit was good, tank was strong, but somehow I still got my teeth kicked in.

After that, I just needed to shoot stuff.  So I punted the Gurista and pulled Dread Pirate Scarlet.  Lots of bounties, some decent loot, and the bonus implant for killing Scarlet a pocket early.  It was nice to see green numbers in my transaction history for a change.

At this point, I realized I'm basically earning enough from lvl4s to offset my ship losses (total of 4 frigates consumed by fiery death, for something like 250M, plus another 250M or so that's sitting in my hangers waiting for future use).

I don't like treading water, but I feel like I ought to pursue the challenges I've been whining about.

The burner offers are coming faster for me. This time, after 3 successful lvl4s, Mr. Gurista (single burner) is giving me a chance at redemption.  This will be the tiebreaker.  I'm using the same fit as before, and will be more vigilant on the overheat.

Worming Around The Gurista Burner

I'm waiting for my EVE client to update (today is Oceanus! Yay for Patch Day!), so I have a little time to type.

After the debacle with the Cruor / Blood Burner, I quickly got back to lvl4s (earning the Nestor, see previous post) and also drawing another Burner in short order (another 5 missions and 1 decline, my average is coming down).

This one was the Guristas Worm.

I was pretty gun shy.  I'd just blown a good amount of isk (at least to me) on the previous Blood Raider Chucklehead, and watching Gurista strats on youtube yielded another click-heavy fight with ample opportunity for me to miss a cap boost cycle.

My play time was limited with real life issues and great weather here over the weekend.  So I decided to fiddle a bit.  To Worm around.

Nestor, Bester, Banana Fanna Fo Fester

This one was a long time in coming.  The SOE Nestor is now mine.  I've been sniffing around SOE missions for (what feels like) forever.  I built up the SOE rep, got access to the lvl4, and got my three ship hulls (frig, cruiser, and now battleship).  Built all three with (mostly) my own mineral stash.  

There's currently no reason at all for me to have this hull.  I probably should sell it, as I assume prices will drop with time.  But it completes the set.  And it's pretty.  I built it.  It's mine.  

I am a Statistic

I haven't done it yet, but I'm about to fail my first burner mission.  I'll become a statistic in Fozzie's chart - missions failed.

I promised to keep better count of how many lvl4's it took me to pull a burner.  This time it was five successful lvl4's and one decline,

I drew the Blood Raider (Cruor) burner.  Did my usual research and found that I lacked some necessary skills.  Most guys are doing the Blood Raider with a Wolf.  I'm Minmatar-deficient, and oddly enough, Abavus is not t2 capable for autocannons.

Burner Blog Math

I promised a few days ago that I'd dig a little deeper into the dev blog by CCP Fozzie.

Let's focus on this graph:

Two main points I'd like to make:
1. Only 15 out of 100 Burner missions are actually accepted.  The rest are declined.  Fewer succeed.

I was initially shocked that the accept rate was so low.  I figured there would be a lot of declines, but I hadn't really thought about what I considered 'a lot' to mean.  I guess 85% to me is a metric buttload, which is approximately double 'a lot.'

This spawns a concern:  Are too few people partaking in the new content to warrant CCP to continue to deploy burner updates?  What is their threshold of pain for investing dev $$ into content that relatively few players are apparently participating in?

Burners 0.5, Pukin Dogs 2

*** WARNING NOT YET VERIFIED FOR LATEST PATCH ***
*** WARNING NOT YET VERIFIED FOR LATEST PATCH ***
-----

Well, I have to give the Burners a 1/2 point on this one.

I misread the mission text (noob mistake of the week) and thought I had the Sansha burner again.  Turns out, it was Mr. Angel.  I did a perfect deployment only to be asking why he was orbiting so close and why I wasn't doing any damage.

After a bit of panic (understatement), I managed to sort out what was going on.  My tank was holding, so I navigated away from the spawn point then began playing with modules and didn't just let him burn me down.

Turns out my Retribution can perma-tank him if I turn off all other modules.  I took the cheesey way out and logoffski'd and waited out the 5 minute aggro timer.  Upon my return, I was warped to the acceleration gate.  (For those of you saying "omg cheater" I could have simply slowboated under web to the aggro range, forced him to reset and gotten out, but would have taken ages to do so...).

Anyway, a little bit later, I figured out that a Vengeance was what I needed.  I had one tucked away for a rainy day only 2 jumps from my mission hub.  A quick refit had me set up this way:

[Vengeance, Angel Burner]
Explosive Plating II
Ballistic Control System II
Small Armor Repairer II
Ballistic Control System II 

Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I
Fleeting Propulsion Inhibitor I 

Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Rocket
[empty high slot]
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Rocket
Rocket Launcher II, Caldari Navy Mjolnir Rocket 

Small Warhead Rigor Catalyst II
Small Warhead Rigor Catalyst II

Fitting credit goes to Archtype 66 in this thread.

The fight:

Upon warp-in, the target was 87km away from gate due to the previous pursuit.  He aggro'd immediately and we rushed at each other and the fight was on (I much preferred this starting style vs getting dropped in his lap).  Set orbit at 5k (he orbits much closer, but I wanted to move at least a little), activate all high and mid, watch my stats to decide if/when to overheat and kick the SARII when shields drop.

With an off grid booster (omg more cheater, I know), this was an ezkill setup.  I ended up overheating my SARII right at the end when I hit 50% armor.

I was mildly afraid that I'd go into a reload cycle and let him recharge his shields, but managed to end the fight with 6 rounds left.

Not my proudest kill, but it goes in the win column.

PS:  The loot sucked.

What's playing:  Matt & Kim, Let's Go

Anomic Agent #2

Second Burner mission was offered earlier today.  I once again pulled the Sansha flavor, which makes setup very simple.

As the server seems at least a little bit unstable (not sure if it was my connection or the game), I'll wait until it's not super-busy-Sunday before I tackle it.

Total mission count between #1 and #2 was somewhere around 25-30, including declined missions.  I'll keep a better count this time.

I did notice that they promised payout this time includes just short of 14.2k LP, which isn't too shabby.  Base payout is 1.67M with a time bonus of 2.18M isk, which still feels too low.

I intend to follow the same basic recipe as attempt #1, which resulted in success.

Fall

A non-EVE post.

Fall is my favorite time of year, by a wide margin.  Temperatures are cool and getting cooler, and it's generally dry.  It's a time of rapid change after the slow evolution of Spring into Summer.

People talk sometimes about how certain smells evoke memories.  I have two.  First, I hate the smell of fresh cut grass.  Some people romanticize it.  Those people obviously didn't spend their childhood and teenage summers humping a push mower around the yard.  Coming inside the house coated with a layer of sweat, grit, bug spray, and fresh-cut grass splatter is not my idea of romantic.  Today, the smell of 2-cycle engine exhaust plus fresh cut grass just makes me groan a little.

The second is much more positive.  I love the smell of 2-cycle engine exhaust, Carhartts and sawdust.  As a kid, this meant Fall.  In my early years, we'd go to Grandpa's woods and hitch up his antique tractors (2 of which are now in my barn) and my uncles, dad, and grandpa would spend the day cutting down dead or dying trees.  It was Grandpa's way of maintaining his woods.  It was our way of heating our home.  As a kid, I'd play with my cousins in the underbrush until the saws were turned off and it was time to carry wood to the wagon.  Sometimes there would be a Thermos of coffee (or hot cocoa for me).  As a late teen, I got my own saw and graduated to "one of the men" cutting wood.  It was a big deal, at the time, to be counted that way.

Mrs. Durden and I now live out in the country, and Fall for me means a frantic time of finishing all the crap I didn't get to over the summer and trying to clear my plate so that I can cut wood, split and stack the results.  Yes, I rush through chores I'd rather not do so that I can enjoy the chores I look forward to.  Ultimately it means plenty of winter nights in front of the fireplace with the smells of wood smoke filling the house with wholesome warmth.  And sometimes hot cocoa.

All in all, I find it satisfying work; chainsaw therapy.  Very primal.

A month or so ago, one of the summer storms knocked over a big locust behind the house.  It's well out of the way and didn't need immediate attention.  I've been eyeballing it as my first victim this year when the temperatures permit it.  This weekend we finished a lot of little things around the house... almost time for the saw.

My anticipation of this kind of manual labor is probably weird to some of you, but yes, I very much look forward to it.

So if my posting turns sporadic, I'm likely outside running the chainsaw.


What's playing:  Alice in Chains, Bleed The Freak

Burners mk2

CCP Fozzie posted a dev blog today showing some of the initial stats for Burners mk1.  The data is interesting, to say the least.  I'll ponder it over the next day or three and will be back with more thoughts.  (As I am posting from my phone, I'll save the heavy typing for later.)

One stat that bothers me is the stated 85% decline rate by missioneers.  Only 15 out of 100 burner mission offers get accepted.  I expected the decline rate to be high, but not that high.

The second edition for Burners (which I have dubbed "mk2") includes an NPC assault frig supported by two logistics friends.  Sounds fun to me, personally.  But, will the decline rate be higher for the more challenging edition?  Probably. Makes me wonder what an acceptable accept rate is....

And no, I still haven't seen my 2nd burner mission offer yet. I'm beginning to hate the rng gods.

Should EVE Have Achievements?

I can already hear you muttering, "NO!"

Hear me out.

Rule #4 of this blog's Manifesto talks about having multiple ways to measure a player's progress.  Here, I'll go copypasta it and save you a click:

#4 - Sometimes, we need a different measure of progress than isk/hr.  And I don't mean adding things that convert to isk (like LP/hr or m3 ore/minute).  That's just isk in a different format.   

In PVP, we have killmail and killboards and that's a good way to measure things and keep a score.  Character skillpoints has always been a measure (if over-emphasized) of character progression.  The recently overhauled Ship Mastery is a fun way to generate some bragging rights, maybe.  But here's the point: nothing motivates nerds more than "leveling up."  As I continue to post, one theme you'll see is an attempt to allow progress to be captured.

 So, as CCP overhauls the lvl4 / burner experience, what tools do we want to capture the progress?

Do you want an in-game achievement for killing the Anomic agent?  For solo'ing the Angel burner?  For killing the Serpentis Burner in under 10 seconds?  ... for getting killed by a burner agent?  :)

For PVP, there are information feeds (API) that allow the player-community to establish killboards.  There are in-game killmails to link, and collect.  All of this drives all kinds of behavior, some of it good, some of it ... less savory.  But it's a type of motivation not (usually) rooted in isk/hr.

For PVE, we don't have that, have never had that, and don't even have a log showing what missions we've completed or declined recently.  This past week I went through the game trying to count, and ended up in my Wallet counting mission payouts.  This only worked because I had a screenshot with a datestamp telling me when I should stop counting.  It only told me I'd done a mission, not which mission or even which agent.

Now then, I'm NOT (not!) advocating a WoW-style achievement system with hundreds/thousands of meaningless tasks.  Let me digress a minute and say that the Achievement mentality is something that helped drive me from WoW.  I don't need that kind of instant gratification and constant reinforcement of how cool I am.  I don't want a checklist of to-do items that I must complete or not be considered uncool.  EVE doesn't need that kind of structure or handholding.

But I do think I want something in between the big nothing we have now and the absurd something that other games have.

So for me, I'd start with a killmail-style mission log, included on my character sheet.  Collect some metrics like: which ship I was in, how much damage taken/received, and which agent.  Make it part of the API, and see where the community takes it.  Then adjust accordingly.

Does that count as an Achievement system?  It could.  It could be the foundation of one.  The important part would be starting small and staying small.