15/05/11 08:39 AM
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| Mercoxit | 192 |
| Crokite | 187 |
| Hedbergite | 171 |
| Hemorphite | 168 |
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| Dark Ochre | 147 |
| Pyroxeres | 118 |
| Kernite | 106 |
| Veldspar | 99 |
| Scordite | 93 |
| Gneiss | 90 |
| Plagioclase | 88 |
| Spodumain | 82 |
| Omber | 81 |
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On revisiting the scene of the crime
One of the features of the overhauled sovereignty system is system upgrades, allowing claimed systems to be modified to attract more anomalies and probably some other modifications. I don’t know, I live in w-space, where sovereignty cannot even be claimed, let alone the system upgraded. But it got me considering the possibility of an upgrade specific to w-space.
The genesis of my thoughts was the aftermath of assaulting a tower in w-space on Christmas Eve. It was a lovely present, to find an entirely undefended tower in w-space, but the strontium present in the fuel bay stopped Fin and I from doing any real damage. There was enough strontium for the tower to be in reinforced mode for forty hours, and our static wormhole only remains open for sixteen. Without wanting to remain isolated from our home system, and then making our way back via an exit to null-sec, all we could really do was turn around and leave the tower alone.
Such are tower assaults in w-space. I strongly suspect the occupants of this class 3 system rely on strontium to protect their tower from destruction, instead of weapon batteries for an active defence. Either the tower is put in to reinforced mode and the attackers go home, or the attackers remain in the system, severing their own link home, and risk waiting until reinforced mode ends. There is no guaranteed way back in to the same w-space system without leaving at least one scout there. Maybe there could be.
The wormholes in w-space are not entirely random. They are the product of Sleeper technology, opening links between systems, and maybe their randomness is actually a result of the ancient technology gone a bit haywire. Perhaps it is possible to harness this alien technology, much like is already done for strategic cruisers, to stabilise wormhole connections, at least a little.
The w-space upgrade I am thinking of is a celestial beacon. When installed, the beacon links one system to another, creating an anchor for the wormhole technology. When the current static wormhole collapses, the new one created will latch on to the beacon and open to the same system, allowing further journeys between the two systems.
The benefits should be obvious. A tower is no longer completely safe merely for having strontium, as a celestial beacon can be installed allowing a fleet to return after the reinforced mode ends. But there are other benefits. A rarely visited system, with dozens of anomalies or mining sites, can be plundered for profit over a greater period, instead of watching all the resources disappear with the current static wormhole. Or a connection to a system with a convenient exit to high-sec empire space can be utilised over several days, instead of trying to cram all the travel in to a few hours.
Such an upgrade is, of course, supremely powerful. After all, it essentially breaks the randomness of w-space, its defining nature. The way the beacon needs to be installed, and its fragility, hopefully will militate against most concerns of being too powerful. The beacon must be anchored to the K162 in other system, and after the old wormhole collapses any new wormhole will appear in the same position. It is also visible on the overview throughout the system, much like a territorial control unit, or stargate. Any capsuleer can warp to the beacon on a whim, without needing to scan for it. The beacon is also poorly armoured and cannot be repaired, making it an easy target for destruction.
The beacon may give an opportunity for return visits to the same w-space system, but it is far from guaranteed, and far from safe. Being able to see and warp to the beacon allows locals to destroy the beacon easily and keep their system safe. The attackers would need to defend their beacon heavily to ensure a further assault against any tower in the system, which may take too many resources compared to perhaps a simple bombing run or two needed by the defenders. The guarantee of a K162 being at the beacon would also make it a prime target for ambushers from other systems, adding some danger to planting one even in a system marked for profit or its exit.
The only issue that could be a real problem is abusing the beacon to allow greater numbers of ships to travel between systems. Rather than only being able to get a certain number of battleships in and out before the mass allowance is surpassed, a beacon would guarantee further passage between systems, essentially allowing as many ships as possible to enter and exit, a new wormhole being created each time the current one collapses. Perhaps this will be solved by the beacon only renewing wormholes that collapse during their end-of-life stage. Those wormholes that are intentionally collapsed by mass at any other time would also destroy the beacon. That would limit the number of ships that could transit every twelve to twenty hours.
I think a celestial beacon could be an interesting w-space upgrade. Allowing continued passage between systems that could otherwise not connect for months is useful occasionally, and the drawbacks of it being so visible and obvious should limit its appeal to be used relatively scarcely. There may be other drawbacks I haven’t considered that are the reason why there is no such Sleeper technology yet found, or perhaps it simply hasn’t been uncovered yet. Either way, it would be interesting to see if a celestial beacon would enhance w-space life, or ruin it.
On telling pilots to ‘get lost’ without so many words
Listening to corporation colleagues get themselves organised about who is in w-space and who is in empire space, and how to transition back again, gets me thinking. It should be surprisingly easy to trick a pilot in to getting isolated in w-space. Or, at least, to let a colleague know he is annoying you.
The only way to travel between w-space systems, and to get in and out of w-space in the first place, is to use wormholes. These need to be scanned initially but, once resolved, can be bookmarked and the bookmarks used for navigation. The bookmarks can also be shared and used independently, although I’m sure we’d all like a more robust system.
It should be difficult to get another pilot lost in w-space, because bookmarks for the current system show in green in the nav-comp, and there should be at least a pair of bookmarks per system for the way in and way out. But pilots can be trusting, and often take data at face value. Abusing this trust is the key to isolating pilots.
Let’s say a pilot wants to return to the home w-space system from empire space. You scan an exit, bookmark the wormholes, and contract the bookmarks to the pilot so that he can follow them in. Normally, he won’t be returning in a scanning boat, which is why the following method will work to isolate him in empty space.
Scan the exit normally, and make regular bookmarks; you’ll need them for yourself. Make a copy of the bookmarks and store them in a separate folder, as you won’t want to get the two sets confused. Now delete a couple of crucial bookmarks, such as a pair of wormholes in the same system. A pair of wormholes across different systems would be funnier, as long as they break the link in the right place.
The normal route should be complete:
home ↔ w-space ↔ w-space ↔ empire space
Keep this route for yourself.
A simple broken route deletes a pair of wormholes in the same system:
home ↔ w-space ×→ w-space ←× empire space
Or you can break the route across systems:
home ×→ w-space ↔ w-space ←× empire space
But don’t break the link in the wrong place:
home ←× w-space ↔ w-space ×→ empire space
The pilot won’t be able to get in to the system in the first place, but even if he does he will still be able to navigate out.
Missing bookmarks are quite obvious, though. Certainly, enough pilots have ventured in to systems without ensuring they have the wormhole back bookmarked, including myself, but any pilot paying attention will notice only one bookmark present in the system and realise that he needs two to navigate properly. So you need to make some fake bookmarks. It may be obvious, but it is important enough to have to state: the fake bookmark must be made in the same system as the authentic bookmark it is replacing. This will not only colour the bookmark green in the right system but make the pilot warp to it instead of the wormhole, as required.
Creating safe spots will work for the fake wormhole bookmarks, or you can simply warp to a celestial object and bookmark the warp-in point. Sending your colleague to a celestial object makes him easier for any local activity to hunt, until he makes his own safe spot, which adds to the amusement. When you make the fake bookmarks you must label them to look authentic. Give the fake bookmark the wormhole designation, it’s signature reference, the class of system it leads to, and any other notation you normally use. You can simply copy the details from your correct bookmark. If it looks good, it is unlikely to be questioned.
Contract the bad bookmarks to your colleague, sit back, and watch corporation chat explode with confusion and pleas for help as the pilot warps to empty space in both directions, isolated in w-space with no recourse to scanning his way out. Ha ha ha, what a jape! The same method can also be used to poison a shared bookmark container. Replace a pair of wormholes with empty space fakely labelled, and watch the fleet warp out with no way home. Oh my, the larks that can be had! For added fun, and some level of plausible deniability, claim the the wormholes have unexpectedly collapsed.
This method isn’t flawless. A keen capsuleer can check the authenticity of each bookmark on every stage of his journey, by selecting the wormhole and seeing if ‘approach location’ appears for the wormhole he’s supposed to be sitting on, and not ‘warp to location’, or by creating his own set as he travels. But the idea is that many pilots trust the bookmark set implicitly, and do so whilst in ships that have no method to scan for wormholes. And the only guaranteed way out of a w-space system is to self-destruct and bio-mass your current clone.
It certainly seems that the Echelon looks to be a basic, niche ship that won’t see general use, even more so as it can’t be replaced.
But to everyone who is saying they are ‘not excited’ by it, or that it is a ‘massive disappointment’, if this is how you react remind me never to get you a Christmas present.
On Not Learning Anything Any Longer
[caption id="attachment_1007" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Learning is for sleepers."]  [/caption]
[Due to a publishing issue, this was originally posted by the wrong author. That has been corrected. Sorry Penny. Ed.] There is some griping and much discussion about the disappearance of the learning skills. Most of the distress is not in making the game easier for newbie—indeed, this is seen as a positive move by the same people—but that the investment in the learning skills is now going to waste. That is almost understandable, as the raw skill points injected in to the learning skills, and that will be refunded, do not translate directly to the gains those skills will give a character. But this is also the very point that renders the complaint ineffective.
‘I chose to invest time’, writes the typical veteran, ‘and now I am getting nothing from that investment’. Sort of. Your advantage of training in the learning skills will be negated, but the effect is not gone. Far from it, as the training you invested in the learning skills helped you get in to the shinier ships with bigger guns faster than if you hadn’t learnt those skills. There is simply no way that effect can be removed from your character. The time you spent waiting patiently for the learning skills to complete has helped you gain skills faster than any short-sighted or impatient capsuleer who didn’t plan similarly, and has done so for however many years it has been since you trained them.
[caption id="attachment_1008" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Get it working"]  [/caption]
If I were to offer any pilot the opportunity to go back in time and train from scratch, knowing that this deletion of these skills was coming one, two, or six years down the line, I daresay no one would choose to eschew training the learning skills. It would not be seen as optimal to put those couple of million skill points elsewhere, knowing that that’s where they would be put eventually once the refund was given, as the overall rate of skill point accumulation would still not be as great. After all, the whole point of planning ahead and investing the time in the learning skills was to eventually gain more skill points than would otherwise be possible. The accelerated training rate would mean you would recoup the skill points invested in the learning skills after a period of a year or so, and only continue to reap the benefits after that.
Indeed, the clever capsuleer is taking last-minute advantage of the imminent learning skill refund, dumping more points in to a learning skill using her favoured attribute, with a view to refunding the points in a skill of her unfavoured attribute. Such cunning, using learning skills to gain skill points faster than normal right until they are taken away. But that’s what the learning skills were there for, and any pilot that took time to invest in their training has either gained the obvious benefits for a long time, or will see the skill points refunded for no loss. And as the learning skills are themselves affected and accelerated by the attributes they increase, any training in them will still have created more skill points to be refunded than a new pilot would have gained normally.
[caption id="attachment_1009" align="alignright" width="150" caption="We all start somewhere"]  [/caption]
I don’t see any reason for veteran pilots to be frustrated by the removal of the learning skills. To claim they now have no advantage over new players is absurd. A new player will not gain ninety million skill points overnight, because of this change or otherwise. And the very existence of the learning skills means that every pilot must invest in them in order not to fall behind, which just puts everyone in the same boat. Rather than having new players have to find the ISK to buy the expensive, second-tier learning skill books, then themselves get frustrated as they spend a couple of weeks learning with no immediate gain to their character skill, we now all train at the same rate.
That is, we all train at the same rate except when using the expensive implants that only veteran players can really afford, after training the cybernetic skill. As for the time investment, neural remaps have made available even longer-term skill training plans, for pilots who like to think in years instead of months. Removing a pointless part of the already fierce learning curve can only be a good change, which is what deleting the learning skills achieves.
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