Sunday 31 August 2014

Mother of Bob, Hyperion changes.

Hyperion has been released, Alot of it I am fine with, in fact I really like the majority of it.

Sigs keeping ID over down time is great. +1
Wormhole effect balance I'm happy with Black holes are no longer the leper of w-space. +1
Bookmark copying increase. +1
K162 spawning when you jump in. +1

The next few things will be from the POV of my small alt corp that lives in a C4.

Some thing I think is good for wormholes in general is the second static for C4 wormholes. However it does come at a price, One I'm willing to pay though even if it really sucks for me.

Second static.

My small alt corp I have that makes T3 also has a C4 wormhole it had a C3 wormhole and was a really sweet place to relax, It had perfect PI me and 4 of my mates could easily run sites in there and pvp in the c3 if we wanted. The down side is with the patch we got our second static that was a C5. Now this sucks combined with the mass/distance change and the frig wh. we are basically screwed. As a small corp we really struggle to close the C5 with assuming we could all use orcas which we can't it would still take 2 rounds to close it, with battleships 3 rounds, If there is any big group in that C5 we basically have no way at all of closing it safely.

Frigate wormholes.

These seem cool on paper but for my alt group we cant collapse them at all. If we want to do anything we have to bubble and leave a scout on them to run sites. Even this isn't ideal a group of interceptors could easy just fly through a bubble get tackle while other frigs burn through to come help kill us.

Mass/distance jump mechanic.

This just plain sucks, it makes it so hard for us to actually collapse our new C5 safely, using Orca's takes one guy at least two trips which gives who ever is in there plenty of time to find us. Using battleships isn't much better. That would be three rounds needed to close and while we would be closer to the wormhole. But would need three rounds so 10 minutes at least.

These three changes combined have basically made it impossible for us to live in the C4. Which really sucks as it was a great wormhole to relax in. Now alot of this is down to the fact we have a C5 as our second static if it had been a C1 to C4 we'd maybe have been ok.

We've not the only ones having this issue. So are others and I see others leaving. However while some move out others will hopefully move in as its potentially a decent PvP wormhole for small groups. This is why for the dual statics I'm happy to pay the price for this change.

Now for the NoHo POV.

Frigate Wormholes.

These are pretty sweet for us, We already have a frig fleet comp. So we can pretty much take on most small groups running sites in lower class wormholes. Caps in a escalation site is probably a bit out of our league for the current fleet set up but we're working on that. If we connect to anyone running sites in C1 to C4 i'm totally confident we can kill them no problem with our frig fleets. The slight down side is even after being toned down, these things still seem to be bloody everywhere, While we appear to have a huge chain, in reality 85% of the chain is off limit for anything but frigs/destroyers. So this is mixed blessing, if you love frig fights your in luck. If you don't, sucks to be you.

So for us great. smaller groups it potentially sucks.

Mass/distance jump mechanic.

We are currently up to 100 pages on the main feedback thread, with a extra 36 pages on a earlier feedback thread. Again this really isn't going to affect NoHo, rage rolling will take a bit longer. Our (NSFW) Bhaals deep fleet, needs a few tweaks but is otherwise not really affected. But then we're one of the largest groups out, Smaller groups will certainly be feeling this. Especially if they connect to us or we connect to them. Its going to be really hard to close any wormholes that were active in, Yep I said it ANY wormhole, not just our home system. Yesterday we caught our first cap trying to close there static that had connected to our static. They made a bounce and warped there dread there and in that time we managed to get Dictor to the wormhole and bubble up. I'm not sure if people will keep doing this, I feel that just slow boating back is much safer than making a bounce, especially if you have a nano cap.

This is also worse in lower class wormholes as you can't use caps so actually need more people to roll a wormhole (or more trips) as shown below.

C5 to C5 you need 1 dread, 1 orca and 1 battleship.

C4 to C5 you need 5 (potentially 6 if its a plus mass wh) orcas. or 10 or 11 battleships

C4 to C2 you need 4 orca trips or 7 battleships.

Again putting more pressure on smaller groups in lower class wormholes

I just don't see anything good coming from this change at all. People are happy with a certain amount of risk, But this will most likely end up being a unacceptable amount of risk, leading to people not rolling.

there are already several threads about people not getting any new sites in there system. Which could well be a indication that there is less people running sites now. Which isn't good at all. I'm hoping to get numbers in the next few days from CCP and hope these will provide more information.

My own view this this mass/distance change is probably one of the worst things to happen to wormhole space so far. I'd realy like this rolled back and the number of frig wormholes lowered considerably again.

Annoying stuff, If you have read any of the threads on wormhole forum you'll see alot of people (normally out of corp alts or nullsec people) post about changes that really don't know what they are talking about and while I don't go quite as far as The Mittani I do some what agree.

I've used one of his paragraphs a couple times now in the thread.

Here's the hard truth: If you don't live in Wormholes, and you've never lived there, your opinion about how wormholes should or shouldn't be is worse than irrelevant: you are the virgin offering advice on how to get laid. Like a virgin, you probably genuinely believe that your opinion matters and that the mere fact that you have no personal experience on the topic shouldn't invalidate your opinion, while everyone else listening to you is quietly shaking their head.
What is worse than people talking about stuff they don't know, Is people talking about stuff based on stuff they think they know that's actually wrong. This frustrates the hell out of me if people don't understand the basics of how to roll a very simple wormhole how the hell are they ment to comment on how this will effect wormhole space. Now one of two people can easily be ignored on the wormhole forum. But what about when this is happening on actual podcasts with, so called wormhole experts. This to me is way worse you have people listening to these assuming they are correct when in fact there "expert" is talking total shit, basic stuff like, "closing with two dreads and orca" highlight the point they don't know how to roll wormholes. Then getting basic facts about the changes wrong (caps will now spawn up to 50km from the wormhole) when its stated clearly in the dev blog exactly what it is.

Anyway rant over. Alot of good changes, some quality of life stuff and huge pants on head change, that drowns out most of the other stuff.

Ooh Huge thanks to Robb from Ixtab and Angelues from NoHo for helping me with C3 testing I managed to get 80% of the testing done in one day thanks to them.



Thursday 7 August 2014

Little project not so little.

When I ran for CSM there was a few things I really wanted to do and try and sort. One of these was trying to sort the income of lower class wormholes. The slight issue here being there is alot talk about what you can earn but no hard data. I've heard so much different stuff, for instance I've heard in a C1 wormhole you could make anything from 25 million a hour to 150 million a hour. That's a huge variance.

Some people I know did manage to give me alot of good information, Fits they use to run stuff rough idea of what they make a hour, what sites they run, how they run them. I got alot of great hints and tips. The down side is there is alot of people who talk out their arse. Just looking above you can see some of that 25 million to 150 million some one has to be terribly wrong. It probably doesn't help that this sort of thing is a pet hate of mine.

So with that I started to test what you could make, isk wise in wormholes. My first idea was to do a hour of farming in a couple different ways.

1 dps ship on its own then swapping to salvage after.
1 dps ship with a separate person salvaging.
2 dps ships and a 3rd person salvaging.

This gave me some rough ideas of what sort of isk I could make. I also got to work out correct percentages of salvage. 99% of all isk from salvage was from melted nanoribbons. I knew they made up most the income but didn't expect it to be that high. It also gave me a rough idea of what sort of percentage of the isk froma  site was from blue books and what was from salvage. Both C1 and C2 had a huge percentage from salvage, about 70% meaning they are incredibly reliant on the price of melted nano's.

The slight down side was due to melted nanos being random and my sample size being fairly small I wasn't sure how accurate they would be. I asked if I could get hold of the loot table so I could work out some exact numbers, which I was told was very unlikely. Its worth noting, to date this is the only thing I have been turned down on since being on the CSM. All other info I've asked for I've been told.

Part 2 of PvE testing.

I'll say now I don't do much PvE, nearly all my income comes from my T3 indy corp. I occasionally help out in NOHO with sites if there short, but that's not all that often. What I will say is when you live in a C6 magnatar stuff dies really fast to dreads, by comparison stuff seems to take ages when your just on your own in a Tengu.

I decided to do a much more accurate test. I'd run all combat sites (think small first then, relic and data sites after) 10 times, yep that's right 240 sites from C1 to C6 space. With another potential 240 from the relic and data, This isn't including Ladar and Grav sites, which would take it over 500. Holy shit what had I got myself in to.

I do all my testing on SiSi so I don't have to worry about being ganked. The down side is on SiSi its often harder to get faction mods which I wanted as they are often used in wormhole space. Combined with the fact finding wormholes is alot harder on SiSi. Luckily CCP devs are super helpful, a quick skype message and normally some one can come spawn me faction mods, more ammo (not joking even loading my Noctis and Tengu full on ammo I'd had to ask for a ammo pit stop) Find and move me to wormholes I need and in the case of testing C4's give me a couple million skill points to get marauders 5. Without there help I simply wouldn't be able  to test this stuff. So Shout out to CCP Leeloo, Affinity, Fozzie and Nullarbor, who have all helped.

When I do the sites I record how long they take, how long salvaging takes, and travel time. I record the isk from blue books and how many melted nano's I get. This allows me to work out a isk per hour for each separate site. I do this twice once including all 10 sites of melted nano's and once where I ignore the lowest and highest 2 sites of melted nano's, this allows me to get rid of any spikes I might of had where I got really lucky or unlucky. Thanks should go to our maths guru in NOHO, Faye for helping me out here with advice.

I can then use these numbers to give a average of all combat sites in that class of wormhole or use just the best site, as most of us like to min, max and only do the best sites.

The down side is this takes alot of time. I average about 3 to 4 hours on sisi 4 or 5 days a week I finished C1 last week and that probably took 20 hours. To make it worse, is as I get in to the higher class wormholes its going to take longer. Ideally I need to get this done before the summit which is in roughly 6 weeks time.

With this in mind I'm probably going to ask for some help off people to do C3 and C4 wormhles.I'll do each site a couple times, so I can record the time it takes and then I'm hoping to get a whole load of people in to help me blitz all the rest of the sites super fast. Hopefully I can get them done in a day and not a week. C5 are a bit of a issue. but I think I can sort them and C6 I can get most the stuff from NOHO accounting site.

That should then be the end of wormhole PvE, I should have a fairly accurate set of information on what can and can't be earn't.

Other stuff that's been happening, some stuff got added to Sisi (jumping through wormholes lands you at a distance depending on mass of your ship), and people spotted it. Needless to say it was quickly put on reddit here. Then it spread to the eve forums here. I managed to let some of the Devs know and CCP fozzie posted here. Keep in mind it was a Sunday and he replied within a couple of hours, on his day off.

There will be a Dev blog out soon (tm). Then I will try and organise a wormhole town hall for this weekend. I've been keeping a close eye on the thread and speaking to people about it in mails as well as on comms. I'm also happy to come chat to anyone else about it if they want to mail me there contact details.

CCP Falcon has also been helping me sort out getting some devs sorted for a couple podcasts as well as some other minor community stuff. It's surprising just what you get asked by players. So a big thanks to him and the devs coming on the podcasts.