I'll go into details later on but just one thing.

Having a district being locked when it's captured strikes me as very very odd and not very rewarding at all...
A corp that manage to take a district from an enemy will hardly get the chance to set the time of battle to the time they wish as the former owner will take advantage of this 24h lock time to strike back at a time he knows suits him better.

So, you get a district, and you dont even have the luxury of defending it when you want ?

This wouldnt be a problem if we all lived in the same part of the world. But when members of a corp will invest more time than usual in Dust 514 to steal a district of interest and fight at a unusual time, they wont have the chance to change the time they will defend it when they manage to conquer it ? Even after spending millions of ISK worth of clones and fee of genolution clone transport ?

To be honest, i dont see the point in adding this. From the DB i understand it's to avoid corps taking a lot of district day one and switching their RT so massive time blocks are created instantly. This is all good and nice, but it will only work if people actually go and attack them. And with everything corps will have to do day one, there's a good chance that the first 24h will be pretty much fight free. And then, everyone will change its districts RT.

But so be it. maybe this is a good idea when taking an unoccupied district. But for districts taken after an actual fight, i would have gone the opposite way and give the new owner a 24h free of fight period during which he could set RT peacefully. That sounds like the LEAST you should get from successfully assaulting a district.


This has only one goal : Create and permanent war and flipping of districts. On the paper it sounds nice. But it may very well kill the persistence. As if you dont have a chance to hold one to what you own, then it's not persistence. it's just glorified corp battles with no meaning. Taking that district, losing it again, taking the other losing. Losing another one coz even when defending successfully, you end getting screwed.

Not liking this even a bit.

Rest of the changes, i already discussed. the change to clone generation is close to the 75 we were all already working on and wont change anything to the wear off effect of attackers on defenders. And wont rescue defenders when winning. So overall, PC becomes a "Go,dont think, attack" and then a "uh ? dont think. strike back" mode.

It will become an ISK sink.

Money sinks will never work in dust or eve why... Because this game is all about getting as much isk as possabile so why would Anyone take part in a isk sink it. defeats the whole core of eve

)

My corp has 35 members.
I cannot force a good player to donate, nor can i control when he did.

Looks to me like clones are of little purpose. I rarely if ever see a MCC match win through clone count. Even more so in Corp battles as people are more aware of picking up their squad members.

I don't see any corps having more than the lowest number of clones since losing to clone count is quite rare and the clones themselves are quite expensive.

It doesn't seem to bear any advantage to having more clones.

Also there doesn't seem to be any advantage to being in PC from the dust side other than having some gudfights. The costs seem more prohibitive than what you get out of them. It will be an isk sink that I don't see having many rewards.

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I made this post in the general forum, but I'll make it here too since its in response to the dev blog.

My concern is, the cost of individual clones makes the difference between gear costs negliable. A starter clone costs over 500k ISK. So this means, a clone with equipment would range between like 510k and like 1M or so.

Point is, the balance between proto gear and lower gear made sense when the price increase was 10k to like 500k, 50X price for an advantage. But when its simply 2X, it wouldnt remotely make ANY sense to not use proto gear.

So whats the point of the lower gear even existing? Are you really gunna suit a 500k clone with cheap gear, ever? This also means that any corp with half a brain will only allow soldiers who have enough SP to run proto gear to use their clones. So now, newer players are pretty much cut off from enjoying the meta aspects of the game.

PC was already going to be an ISK sink due to arms races. Youd be throwing your best gear at PC, regardless of it a dude could only fit an advanced suit or a proto. But now, if I'm a corp, theres no way Im letting me fight in PC cause I dont have the SP to use proto gear. And Im not putting 10-50k gear in a 500k clone.

Are you accounting for the loss of clones needed to send to take the shell corp district?

You're still missing my point though, yeah it does make it a little less attractive for big corps to take multiple districts but it makes it impossible for a small corp to take one at all.

This update presents a huge problem-the unlimited starter packs kills the strategic aspect to PC that came with attrition. Before, this update, attrition presented a very cool strategic element into PC by limiting the range of across which an established corp could move. This would have forced corps to be strategic both in what districts they target and in what districts they take.

Now this strategic element is gone-players can just rain clone starter packs on any and all districts, anywhere that they are open. You might as well just scrap attrition altogether. This system makes surface research labs next to pointless. What was originally so cool about PC was that if you wanted said district 5 jumps away, but didn't want to give up those you had, you had to make a "bridge" between the two districts in order to reach the other district without paying the attrition cost.

Sadly now, this great strategic game mode, which could have been so cool will never be.

It looks to me, with this current system of clones costing much more and the attacker gaining so much when they win, that defending is almost pointless. Corps can just jump district to district and gain huge amounts of clones, ISK, and loot and not bother to risk losing it by defending a district. Since attacking can be so incredibly profitable, what does someone gain by holding a district, or even many districts in a system beyond gaining clones from unsuccessful attackers?

100K reduces the problem quite a bit. Especially since biomass can be resold and you can steal clones. But im not entirely sure where the 100k number comes from. Why is that the estimated value?

Attribute Name Original Numbers New Numbers
Clone sell value 100,000 ISK --> No change!
Biomass sell value 50,000 ISK --> 80,000 ISK

Dont forget that if you win as an attacker then you are locked, therefore you cant reinforce but you can be attacked. Now as I understand it you should get a chance to produce clones at the next reinforcement window because of the 24 hour minimum notice so you cant be attcked for nearly 2 days but you will remain locked until after attack with only the clones you brought with you and 1 production cycle.

which brings me to my point, that is your reason to bring more than the minimum loss number of clones so that you have a good number to defend with if you win but had high clone attrition.

This just occurred to me, and i'm just putting it out there to further the discussion. (devil's advocate, if you will)

if the problem with the 80 Mil entry point is that it is prohibitive to the smaller corps (and i agree with this point BTW, as i'm from one of those smaller Corps), how exactly will the tax help in the grand scheme or things?

i ask this because, should a tax be implemented, i assume it would not be dependent on the corp size. (ie. every corp will now have a tax levy) so the larger corps will be receiving the tax also. if you follow this to it's logical conclusion this would mean that a large corp will be increasing their revenues also, plus at a higher rate than the smaller corps, 'cus.... well they have more members to tax.

so how does this actually help the smaller corps? yeah they get to make ISK faster, but so do the Big Boys, and i'd assume they would be in an even better position to dominate after the influx of the new ISK tax.

I'm still concerned about larger corps with lots of resources being able to beat down a district by simple attrition. In other words, fighting a series of losing battles strictly for the purpose of reducing the number of clones on a district. If you can consistently kill 150 clones (which isn't hard if null cannon damage is adjusted so battles last 30 minutes or longer), you're going to wear down even a defender that manages to win every time. Sure it will be costly for you, but if you already have 5 or more districts you're producing enough clones that you'll never be putting one of your existing districts at risk of a gank. Meanwhile the defender is unable to reinforce because you're constantly locking the district with attacks (which I admit is a necessary mechanic, at least for a losing district).

For established corps with several districts, this will just be another part of gameplay, but for a new corp with only one or two districts, this means it will be nigh-impossible to get established if the other corp(s) on the planet are at all alert. Once you acquire a district, you'll simply get shut out of taking any more.

Genolution Assault pack: 20m ISK
150 clones
Can only be purchased if your corp has no districts.
Can assault anywhere in region
ONLY allowed to attack occupied districts.

Something we havn't mentioned yet is that our cost calculation skips high security systems provided they are along the shortest path between the districts. Having said that, I am neither confirming nor denying there will be high security systems in any paths, just explaining how it works

Will corps eventually be able to sell their districts to other corps?
I think it should happen.

When exactly was the RT timer? Because everyone who got a district on Day 1 (which is everyone who has one now) should have gotten 2 RT worth of clones. I think you were lucky that somehow they only got 1 day's worth, but unlucky because they only lost 70 clones for some reason after the match was over. Fortunately, these cancel each other out and they'd be at 160 anyway (or 150 depending on what SI they had).
Depending on how long after the battle started before you launched your second attack, it's possible you missed your 1-hour exclusivity window, meaning you'd have to wait 2 days. If you know for a fact that you launched your second starter pack within an hour of the starting time of the first battle, then it's a bug.

Also, because the defender lost, their next RT timer won't generate clones, meaning even if you attack 2 days from now, they'll only get 1 RT worth of clones.