Two Days?!? What is this madness? You guys really are insane.

if you defend your district successfully are you safe from all attackers or just the one particular?

Graphs are hot.

So is feedback on this stuff, let us know what you think because we want to deploy it all Thursday :-)

PS: Here is evidence of SocksFours pro football abilities: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/3lvz1u5dod79loe/foxfour.html

July 9th 2013

I failed to see in all their useless charts about the cost of PC battles did they once address the game's problem with how many players were disconnected, or had some game ruining glitch happen...be it frame rate drop or the problems with using a comm channel with too many active mics? How many players started and finished without a re-login to the battle?

"Remember push to talk is your Friend" line from the Dev's.... funny how that is just being swept under the rug....plans for a Comm channel system that works when officers want to talk? (but then again I like telling my buddy that 3 enemies are coming for him because seeing XXX (core flaylocked) Wakko03 just doesn't cut it to properly warn them and I didn't have time in the middle of the gun battle to hit the P2T button.

Not even going to discuss when I might be able to hit back against the ship in orbit, sure they can bomb me on the ground...where is my answer to that?

How about we discuss something like, I don't know ... say how many matches took place across multiple servers? How about the LAG... maybe players were spending so much money on the win/loss because they thought if they had the good stuff they could overcome a LAG problem. So in the instances where it was say America vs Europe or Europe vs Asia who did the lag favor more? With teams made of mixed groups Americans with Europeans and Asians vs say a team of all Europeans (vs Asians, Americans etc.)?

I love it, although I think that you should be able to attack again even after a loss immediately.

There are going to be a ton more fights from this, but I think the only downtime should be after a district trades hands.

If they have a cargo hub, they can withstand 3 attacks before losing the district. Does this mean that we can have 3 battles in one day as long as we have 100 clones left after the second battle? Or is it limited to only two fights a day?

Just finished chewing thorough the whole thing and I support the changes. +1

I think it will breathe some much needed life into PC and do wonders for immersion and add tempo so you feel like you are fighting kinetic operations not just punch carding every 24 hours, its welcome.

The changes to attack and defense of districts should make things far more rewarding and stacked up with the new rewards and pricing it is certainly tempting for getting scraps going.

The only prob I see right now with this is that sure there are great rewards to get but what do I need the ISK for? I'm not a dragon. We need stuff to spend our ISK on and right now me and every other pro player is so bloated with cash I might as well buy the new FoxFour Le Mans LAV.

Really at this point what do I need ISK for? Incremental number Increase fetish?
You might want to think about adding some things to the game for me to spend my half a billion personal ISK on.


As for the dev blog itself. Huge thumbs up from me. You gave us a decent amount of raw data explained what you felt you where seeing and what you wanted to see and what changes you where planing on implementing and what was being implemented when.

I hope to see more dev blogs in the future hand down more raw data and the thought processes that go into changes.

Hopefully the combat balance teams can take a page from this and we can see more raw data on combat/weapons in the future along with graphs and balancing processes for other parts of Dust 514.

I hear what you are saying about the isk thing, but it's certainly not the case for non pro players. I think a majority of guys have to grind in BPOs or AFK to build large piles of isk.

Grinding in BPOs doesn't interest me.

And Pro players should earn more isk. I think this is a realistic scenario.

I'm sure someday there will be things you can blow money on.

Would take away the importance of winning, imo. Theres minimum clone loss so why fight at 110% when you can just burn the enemy out on defending? I like that defenders can get a moment to breathe before being attacked again if they worked hard to keep their district, especially with the threat of multiple attackers over other districts.

If they don't have 100 clones they wouldn't be able to.

In other words you could attack with 300 clones. Lose the first battle, but have 150 clones remaining. Technically you could win the 2nd and still have 100 clones remaining to fight a 3rd.

This sounds interesting to me.

All we are doing is saying if the attacker loses the battle they lose their exclusivity. Which was the only thing that let them get an attack in the following day. It effectively means anyone can now attack the district, including the attacking corporation that just lost, but the battle will not happen for at least 47 hours.

I'm assuming the minimum clone move has been decreased to 100 as well?

Yeah but wheres the line get drawn exactly? I mean, defenders have to rally up a team, fight and then have to fight again no matter what just because the attackers launched an attack from a cargo hub on a research facility? Theyd lose just because of clone loss as theres no way to fend off the larger amount. Wed just see endless cargo hubs all over the place, especially with the new reduced attrition numbers.

We were just talking about in our corp chat.

I don't think you should lose the minimum 150 clones if the MCC is lost with these new dynamics. To avoid the redline hiding, maybe lower it to 100.

I think the Cargo Hub everywhere thing is a given with these new mechanics. If people want to produce more clones for more isk, then there's your risk. You could lose it within an hour.

The biggest complaint from people is the lack of momentum in PC.

The minimum clone loss is there to make sure that non cargo hubs are taken in 2 consecutive wins and cargo hubs in 3. Reducing this increases the number of consecutive wins required which we think gives the defender too much advantage and reduces some of the volatility of these changes.

We did consider the implications of dropping the minimum loss to 100 but decided it was not worth the cons.

We were just talking about in our corp chat.

I don't think you should lose the minimum 150 clones if the MCC is lost with these new dynamics. To avoid the redline hiding, maybe lower it to 100.

Might be sleep deprivation but I dont understand this.

Thanks for sharing the incoming changes with us, and for trying to fix some of the problems Planetary Conquest have. That said, I can't say that I liked many of those incoming changes. I think they will make PC more static and risk averse than it is now. But I will wait and see before talking about them.


However, there is one thing that has troubled me enough to write about it now. I think you have made harder for new corps to enter PC by themselves. This is because two of the changes you have made:

1) Genolution pack gives you only 100 clones.

2) A follow up attack is only allowed if you win.


1) Means that a corp that has no districts and wants to enter PC, will have to attack at least with a 3 to 1 clone disadvantage, unless they are lucky enough to find a district that is not full.

2) Means that you need to win 2 or 3 battles in a row to take a district. If the defender wins even only one of those battles, he will have 2 reinforcement cycles (160-200 clones) before the next attack, so their clone reserves would be at full capacity again. Which means the attacker is back to the start point in most cases, and makes conquering a district against a better opponent by attrition almost impossible.


The combination of 1) and 2) makes very difficult for corps that are not already in PC to enter Molden Heath by themselves. In most cases, they have to attack with 100 clones against 300, and at least win 2 battles in a row to conquer a district. It is cheaper, yes, but their chances of being successful are lower. They may pull it off if they are a very good corps, but lets be honest here, the very good corps are already in PC.

Thanks for sharing the incoming changes with us, and for trying to fix some of the problems Planetary Conquest have. That said, I can't say that I liked many of those incoming changes. I think they will make PC more static and risk averse than it is now. But I will wait and see before talking about them.


However, there is one thing that has troubled me enough to write about it now. I think you have made harder for new corps to enter PC by themselves. This is because two of the changes you have made:

1) Genolution pack gives you only 100 clones.

2) A follow up attack is only allowed if you win.


1) Means that a corp that has no districts and wants to enter PC, will have to attack at least with a 3 to 1 clone disadvantage, unless they are lucky enough to find a district that is not full.

2) Means that you need to win 2 or 3 battles in a row to take a district. If the defender wins even only one of those battles, he will have 2 reinforcement cycles (160-200 clones) before the next attack, so their clone reserves would be at full capacity again. Which means the attacker is back to the start point in most cases, and makes conquering a district against a better opponent by attrition almost impossible.


The combination of 1) and 2) makes very difficult for corps that are not already in PC to enter Molden Heath by themselves. In most cases, they have to attack with 100 clones against 300, and at least win 2 battles in a row to conquer a district. It is cheaper, yes, but their chances of being successful are lower. They may pull it off if they are a very good corps, but lets be honest here, the very good corps are already in PC.

I think the Cargo Hub everywhere thing is a given with these new mechanics. If people want to produce more clones for more isk, then there's your risk. You could lose it within an hour.

The biggest complaint from people is the lack of momentum in PC.

If they have a cargo hub, they can withstand 3 attacks before losing the district. Does this mean that we can have 3 battles in one day as long as we have 100 clones left after the second battle? Or is it limited to only two fights a day?

Graphs are hot.

while we're talking about PC.

Any thoughts on removing precision strikes from PC TTG?

Its the only way we'll have a true eve-dust link in PC battles.

We would like to remove them and would also like to make getting an orbital strike like how it was during the tournament at Fanfest. EVE pilots do something to get it.

I think the momentum can be related to this


There are few other underlying issues- 1.) people are still grinding out SP because they feel its required to be better contenders 2.) some people do not under stand the dynamics of PC and politics i.e its just a first person shooter to most 15 year olds 3.) Its really difficult as a merc to see the rewards of PC - now that gaining more isk is an incentive maybe people will petition there corps to open up the wallet for salary based play ( isk )

3 is a really big one and is why we are working on designing a system in which ISK is earned by members of corporations who own districts actively and corporations can TAX that.

All we are doing is saying if the attacker loses the battle they lose their exclusivity. Which was the only thing that let them get an attack in the following day. It effectively means anyone can now attack the district, including the attacking corporation that just lost, but the battle will not happen for at least 47 hours.

Looking forward to discussing this all with you guys! CCP Nullarbor is around as well to answer questions you guys might have. :D

Will Uprising 1.3 also improve technical issues we had in Planetary Conquest battles?

Tell us what you think in the comments below, he's here ready to chat with you about it!

The new defense system seems even more carebear than before.

Why should a single failed attack from one corp make a district impervious of attack from other corps for 2 days?

No, that is still 150.

Only thing that's missing is contracting out district battles, like being able to tell, "hey Corp X, please fight on my district".
I hope that's somewhere on True Grit's/CCP's roadmap also, because corp roles aren't enough for that.

Basically it means you guys are bad at math, calculating ROI, estimating risk, those kind of things... OR what it means is you just want to have fun... in a video game... Who knew? When balancing the original numbers we had a number for what we thought people would spend on gear during a battle. You guys blew those numbers out of the water, and kept fighting even though you were losing money. Not surprising really, in the moment to moment gameplay you are not thinking "these suits cost me X, I am going to make Y, is this worth it?" The thought process is more of a "WIN WIN WIN! WE WANNA WIN!" This is great! We just under estimated how much you guys would be willing to spend.

The new defense system seems even more carebear than before.

Why should a single failed attack from one corp make a district impervious of attack from other cops for 2 days?

Yeah, I think we really need to see a way to contract out district battles down the line and also open up Eve-side support to be pilots outside your corp or alliance. If we are going to get mercing going lets make it happen on both ends of the equation.

Only thing that's missing is contracting out district battles, like being able to tell, "hey Corp X, please fight on my district".
I hope that's somewhere on True Grit's/CCP's roadmap also, because corp roles aren't enough for that.

Sounds cool .
It solves some of the problems of PC

1) Reduce player burnout
2) It helps more corporations get into the fight. ( Probably get kicked out but still)
3) GRAPHSSSS


One thing I do see a problem is that with the lower Starter packs cost, won't Bigger alliances be able to buy Molden Heath?

Why are clone packs being sold with 100 clones, then? It seems rather pointless if two packs are required every time, IMHO.

Yeah, I think we really need to see a way to contract out district battles down the line and also open up Eve-side support to be pilots outside your corp or alliance. If we are going to get mercing going lets make it happen on both ends of the equation.

Here's some feedback. This line from the early part of the post confused the hell out of me. Maybe because it was a typo, maybe because Iceland is Bizzaro world, or maybe because I am not involved in PC and its all going over my head.


"Right now 90% of battles are started because of a clone move rather than a clone starter package."

"People WANT to fight, even if it means using clone starter packs with which they end up losing money."

Is the first sentence messed up, or is 10% starter pack usage way higher than normal and therefore this fact supports the second sentence?

You can only buy one per attack. So it means that clone starter pack fights will start with the attacker at 100 clones.

3 is a really big one and is why we are working on designing a system in which ISK is earned by members of corporations who own districts actively and corporations can TAX that.

3 is a really big one and is why we are working on designing a system in which ISK is earned by members of corporations who own districts actively and corporations can TAX that.

I think this still begs a question that was started here about when more districts can get started...

My tldr from that thread started by an Ahrendee Mercs Leader/CEO and continued by some other people was that...

1) There are many corps that either don't care or are ignorant of the math involved with PC and just want territory. They can fund their fun for as long as the size of their corp allows, and their proficiency in battle helps.
2) Because access to territory is limited they want more of it with gradations of difficulty and profit levels.
3) There is some illusion still about how lowsec and highsec work that even alliance leaders seem to not understand.

I think the logistics change will help to make different 'gradations' of space. Some areas will now see more 'battle churn' than other areas.

One thing though...with the longer curve that logistics/clone loss has now, I can't help but think that this is paving the way for more districts being opened. Are there lowsec districts in Molden Heath that are 20 jumps away? And I didn't catch to see you/CCP is adding back the cost of travel through highsec.

I'll be working on a little more math based analysis from this devblog in the future.

I think you should make clone packs for corps already in PC cost 80mil still and Corps not in PC 10-20 mil. You may worry about people abusing that system by making corps outside of PC just to hit a planet, but perhaps create a timer of a week for corps to enter PC.

Like you said, the barrier for large alliances to pay the 80 mil is not isk. So make them pay to have the "attack anywhere" advantage. I don't see many people utilizing their own districts for initial attacks.

Also attrition distance needs to be lessened a little bit. Like to echo the other guy that said there is no point to the chokes on the map if you can hit within 4 jumps at 100%. Example, those in egbinger can hit audesder at no penalty. So the fortification of your front lines is pointless.

I feel you need to have high attrition to start but then lower percentages as you move out. So 80% once you hit outside current system then go 70%, 2nd jump, 65%, 3rd jump and 65%, 65% 65% 60% 60% etc. Allow people to still hit really far out, but at a high clone cost, but still allow the ability to fortify your front lines.

So you have to deal with this already because losing a fight sets you back 80-100 clones on your war of attrition, costing another clone pack to finish the job. The real big change is the geno packs are now only 30mil instead of 80 so the net result is cheaper even counting a loss along the way.

Good point - its hard to notice that even dust has lowsec and highsec regions-

So that means that there won't be another attack (If the attacker wins) until the next reinforcement timer.

With 100 clones going in, (Unless the attacker doesn't lose a clone) The next battle will be at least 23 hours away?

The raid mechanic you know 50% of clones for successful attacks.

Lets say i attack and win, I have more than 100 clones and decide to follow up. What happens to those 40-50 clones i just raided for a successful attack?

Do they go back to my home district immediately or are they added to my clone count for the followup attack.

Next question, do i get a 50% for each followup attack so if i attack say 2 times and its a cargo hub will i get 40 from the district for each attack?

Well I'm pretty sure that they changed the map a bit so that it is a little better to tell now. I don't remember that change seeing much feedback...I'm on vacation away from my PS3, but I'll try to find that in the patch notes and link where feedback would be appropriate unless somebody catches it before me.

It relates more to the decline in number of battles. This is why I showed the graph with the number of clone moves. The number of times clones are moved to start a battle has remained relatively consistent while the number of battles taking place has gone down and so the number of battles being started with clone starter packs has gone down with it.

That make sense?

How exactly is clone stealing going to work with the new "100+ clones means you get to attack again" deal. What if as the attacker I win, thereby stealing a number of clones (let's say 40), but only have 61 clones left after the battle? Does the 40 I stole get added to 61, thus giving me 101 clones and a chance to attack again right away?

Here's an idea:
Remove changes in attrition for clone jumping and allow clones on districts owned by other corporations to be sold to other corporations with a slight penalty.

ex. Hellstorm wants to attack some awesome corp 10 jumps away. Normally, with research facilities the cost for jumping is awful and not worth it. Hellstorm has an ally 13 jumps away. Hellstorm is able to purchase 100 clones from this corp, suffers a 5% penalty, and make the 3 jumps to the target at normal attrition rates.

Clones stolen because of a win go straight back to the district the attack was launched from. They are not counted towards the 100 minimum. They cannot be used in the immediate follow up attacks.

We would like to remove them and would also like to make getting an orbital strike like how it was during the tournament at Fanfest. EVE pilots do something to get it.

All that happens is that if the attacker loses they lose their exclusivity for re-attack and the promise of a fight the next day. After they lose if they chose to re-attack the same district they will have to wait the same period as if they attacked any other district for the first time. So we are not really giving the district an extra defence, we are removing the attackers buff if they fail.

Promising changes yet I see a potential problem having another battle take place 5 minutes after the first one finishes (assuming the attacker has their 100+ clones remaining from the last match). That gives very little time to basically take a breath and go over what went right/wrong in the previous match.

I say have the next match start ATLEAST 15-20 minutes After so that way both sides can breathe, restock any fittings, devise any alterations to strategies, etc.

Promising changes yet I see a potential problem having another battle take place 5 minutes after the first one finishes (assuming the attacker has their 100+ clones remaining from the last match). That gives very little time to basically take a breath and go over what went right/wrong in the previous match.

I say have the next match start ATLEAST 15-20 minutes After so that way both sides can breathe, restock any fittings, devise any alterations to strategies, etc.

Just to clarify this say attacking corp looses, their ally corp initiates follow up attack does corp number 2 also have to wait the 48 hours or would they be able to attack within 24 hours? Essentially being able to tag team a defending district?

What about the followup attack can do you get a second round of clones to steal?

As great as these changes are, I still don't see myself wanting to join a corporation to participate in PC.

The fights don't seem like they'd be much different from a regular pub skirmish aside from everyone wearing proto and vehicles everywhere. How far along are you guys on Skirmish 3.0?

Basically it means you guys are bad at math, calculating ROI, estimating risk, those kind of things... OR what it means is you just want to have fun... in a video game... Who knew?

I'm afraid that the new reattacking system is another buff to small teams of core players, which is already the predominant mode of operation in Planetary Conquest for the moment. Basically it allows for a dynamic timer manipulation at the cost of clones. Here's the scenario:


MLG Pro Skeelz [MPS] is a small corp with around 100 characters in it. Counting alts and activity, their nightly PC contingent is a core of 16 players who are on the bleeding edge of SP gain (18 mil +). As such their win ratio in PC would probably be over 50% without the gear advantage. With it, they're consistently pulling up to 70-80%.

Immense Elitists [IEL] is a much larger organization. They have 500+ characters, and so they can run two teams simultaneously if they want to on a given night. They have two very competitive teams with but with average 9mil SP per players (so they're out-geared by MPS)


IEL have a numbers advantage and so they attack 2 of MPS's districts. District 1 (D1) is attacked with 150, and D2 with 166. D1 and D2 have the exact same reinforcement time. Let's say for the sake of argument that the two battles queue up at the exact same time, and that both are Cargo Hubs.


MPS see that they can't defend both at the same time. Here's what they do. We're going to assume that the FIRST battle on D2 lasts just as long as the battle on D1.

MPS fight D1 on the first battle. Their gear and skill allows them to win handily. D1 locks by the new defense rules.

Meanwhile they don't show up to D2 for the first battle. It takes just as long. IEL have 150 clones by the end.

The second fight for D2 initiates. IEL and MPS fight, MPS again win handily. The district locks due to the new defense rules.


If IEL reattack IMMEDIATELY on both districts, this will be the state of both districts when those attacks happen:


D1 = full on clones | generates 160 between two days

D2 = 450 - 150 (first defense no show) - 100 (second defense win) + 80 (second day's reinforcement) = 280


So now MPS defend D2 in the first attack and noshow on D1. Same outcomes, IEL reattacks:

D1 = 280 by the same math as D2 the last time

D2 = 280 - 100 (win first defense) + 160 (two days of reinforcement) = 340 !!!!!


So basically a core team with a gear advantage can now defend DOUBLE the districts in the same hour of reinforcement. Now there are some things to be said about adjacent hours, but in general keep in mind that this is costing IEL a lot of clones as well and morale isn't improving by facing the same team of 18mil+ SP players who you can't beat with tactics because of the gear difference.

Also keep in mind that IEL has to have tons of resources to do this: at least 6 districts because of some timer mechanics I discussed previously.

=====================


I already dropped Fox a line about this other thing, but so that we can all chew on it together:

You can't beat competitive teams with 100 clones in a PC match, simply from experience. I'm afraid that the 80 clone number was skewed by corps who fought in the first week or so of PC for 1 or two matches and then stopped attacking as their clone pack assaults failed.

If that's the case, the 100 clones per clone pack number is too low in general. Leaving it at this number will make corps wishing to clone pack go very selectively for those organizations that can't sport strong A-teams that have a high chance of killing your 100 clones before MCC victory is anything like possible. That is to say, they'll strangle new corps in the crib.


=====================

Ani had something to say about the cost-benefit analysis of holding a district earlier, and I'd like to emphasize some commentary on a line from the dev blog:



I know that ROFL has poured over the cost-benefit analysis of districts extensively. Running a corp in PC is kinda more like running a government than a corporation. Your goal is not to make money, it's to provide a service and also (as quoted) to have fun. Most people will fight until the coffers run dry because what else is there to DO with the ISK?

There's also a very sticky point to the mathematics, and that's the opportunity cost of fighting for a district. Fighting over a district will, in general, cost you 1 mil ISK per person per battle in gear. We'll ignore the opportunity cost of the clones you use in the battle, as that will even make it WORSE.


Fighting a PC battle takes about an hour: at LEAST 30 minutes of prep time (almost definitely more), and about 25 minutes of fighting.

In pub matches you can make about 750k/man-hr. This ISK is virtually guaranteed. For one PC battle then it's 12 million you could have been making in pubs with that 16 man team. (750*16*1)

Fighting a PC battle for clones at 50% win ratio (assuming binomial distribution, which we haven't been able to test against) is like this. Gear loss is 16mil no matter what. 50% of the time you get clone ISK back. I'll use the new clone number and approximate 250 destroyed clones.

.5(150*250) - 16000 = 2750k = 2.75mil


Keep in mind that 16million is lowballing horribly on gear loss. It's much higher with tanks and the current price of gear.

So you could either get a guaranteed 12 million ISK playing for an hour with those 16 people in pubs, or you could get an EXPECTED 2.75mil ISK in a PC match. That expectation is a horrible number to use, too, because it ignores so many other factors involved with PC matches. Risky factors.

Going into PC is an opportunity loss of ISK unless you don't get attacked, AKA don't fight, AKA don't have fun.

Regarding the attrition, we want to create localized warfare which was the reason behind the attrition in the first place. However we feel it was too much of a penalty with the current values, we instead have some other ideas for later on which will make location more of a factor especially when we roll out additional regions.

We would like to remove them and would also like to make getting an orbital strike like how it was during the tournament at Fanfest. EVE pilots do something to get it.

3 is a really big one and is why we are working on designing a system in which ISK is earned by members of corporations who own districts actively and corporations can TAX that.

Your numbers are off, if at any point a defender takes a loss their facility goes offline and remains offline.

There is, however, a lingering question. Does the district still generate clones on the next reinforcement cycle if the defenders lose a battle and then win the second battle? The answer is no. If a battle is lost the district will not generate clones on the next reinforcement cycle.

Production Facility: 100 clones per day (100*150k = 15mil per day)
Clone pack: 100 clones (costs 30mil, 15mil when biomassed)

Am I right in thinking that a corporation could lock a production facility district with a clone pack at no cost if they use a alt corporation to launch the attack?

Is there any limit on number of "5 minute" re-attacks in a row? Max 4 battles if there are 400 clones in the district and attacker manages to keep it's clone count above 100?

Is there any limit on number of "1 hour" re-attacks in a row?

Do the "5 minut" re-attack implies automatic deployment? Or it simply automatically generates corporation contract for PC battle available for 5 minutes? Is there any penalty for not showing up beside wasting an opportunity to seize the district?

Does the district owner has the ability to change RT immediately after the battle?

With those new numbers you can actually make money by self-locking your districts. But it will be boring to do.

Here's how it goes.

Status : District A mother corp. 300/300clones.
Attack by alt corp : 30 Million.
Status : District A locked
Day 1 : RT, no fights. 80 clones produced || Auto-sell : 12M
Day 2 : RT, 80 clones produced || Auto-sell : 12M
Day 2, Fight happens during the RT : Alt corps fields at least one player with BPO crap stuff and suicides all the genopack clones. Mother corp fields one player as well. Fight reward : 15M

End of cycle : ISK result = 12+12+15-30 = 9 Million. Add another 6 million if the district is a production facility.

Start again.

So yeah you can lock your districts and make them earn you 15 millions every 2 day without risk if you have a production facility. I dont know how i missed the part about how suiciding the clones in the pack could turn the balance.

The simplest solution would be to raise price of clone packs to 40 millions. Then, it would only be 5 Millions for a prod facility and a loss for any other district type. But even then, if you can lock your district for even a very little ISK loss, then people will do it.

After all, a suicide party with friends every 2 days sounds quite fun

With those new numbers you can actually make money by self-locking your districts. But it will be boring to do.

That you can make a small profit from this isn't the problem here the way I see it.

The problem is rather that you can lock as many of your own districts as you will without any significant ISK loss (in this case, it's even a profit doing this). This means that if you for example hold 50 districts, but you only have the manpower to defend 10 of them you can then lock the other 40 with an alt corp.

That's the problem with this in my opinion.

No only the first attack steals the clones, you basically take the next days worth of production cycle and prevent it from generating anymore. Attacking it again straight away does not produce anymore clones.

@self-locking district idea, according to CCP Nullabor's post, there is no clone production in 2 cycles following the last battle...

Copy pasting here :


Dont know if this has been brought up here.

With those new numbers you can actually make money by self-locking your districts. But it will be boring to do.

Here's how it goes.

Status : District A mother corp. 300/300clones.
Attack by alt corp : 30 Million.
Status : District A locked
Day 1 : RT, no fights. 80 clones produced || Auto-sell : 12M
Day 2 : RT, 80 clones produced || Auto-sell : 12M
Day 2, Fight happens during the RT : Alt corps fields at least one player with BPO crap stuff and suicides all the genopack clones. Mother corp fields one player as well. Fight reward : 15M

End of cycle : ISK result = 12+12+15-30 = 9 Million. Add another 6 million if the district is a production facility.

Start again.

(easy solution/stopgap is to reduce the isk reward for killed clones down to 50% - so 75,000 isk)

No.

If anything it's the passive income that should be lowered. Do not ever lower the rewards for winning.

I think you should make clone packs for corps already in PC cost 80mil still and Corps not in PC 10-20 mil. You may worry about people abusing that system by making corps outside of PC just to hit a planet, but perhaps create a timer of a week for corps to enter PC.

Like you said, the barrier for large alliances to pay the 80 mil is not isk. So make them pay to have the "attack anywhere" advantage. I don't see many people utilizing their own districts for initial attacks.

Also attrition distance needs to be lessened a little bit. Like to echo the other guy that said there is no point to the chokes on the map if you can hit within 4 jumps at 100%. Example, those in egbinger can hit audesder at no penalty. So the fortification of your front lines is pointless.

I feel you need to have high attrition to start and higher percentages as you move out. So 80% once you hit outside current system then go 70%, 2nd jump, 65%, 3rd jump and 65%, 65% 65% 60% 60% etc. Allow people to still hit really far out, but at a reasonable clone cost, but still allow the ability to fortify your front lines.

Here's my proposed solution:

Clones produced by a district whilst it is under attack cannot be sold to Genolution, and so once the clone count is up the district max of 300 or 450 then they are just 'lost'.

Outcome:
You can still shield districts from attack for strategic reasons (in order to keep them or to allow them to become reinforced) but you can never do it for economic reasons since it will always cost you isk.

Example 1
Status : District 1a Corp A . 300/300 clones.
Attack by Corp B : District 1a locked
Day 1 : RT, no fights. 80 clones produced || Cannot be sold as under attack. 0 mil income. 80 clones lost.
Day 2 : RT, 80 clones produced || Cannot be sold as under attack. 0 mil income. 80 clones lost.

Example 2
Status : District 1a Corp A . 150/300 clones.
Attack by Corp B : District 1a locked
Day 1 : RT, no fights. 80 clones produced || 230/300 clones
Day 2 : RT, 80 clones produced || 300/300 clones. Excess of 10 clones cannot be sold as under attack. 0 mil income. 10 clones lost.

Yes we are aware of the potential for corporations to lock a district and still make money. We will have an update for you guys as soon as possible for now please keep discussion of the Planetary Conquest update to this thread.

Putting in a 4-12 re-attack hour time after losing at attack on the first battle could help this a bit.. just an idea.

It allows a window for other corporations to attack before they can lock their districts back down.

Also, just need to make it less profitable than actually holding the district. Won't offer solutions on that but if its more profitable to leave it unlocked and there's a timer anyways... not many people will bother with it.

Just wanna throw this idea in the ring: zero clone attrition for sending clones to a district that you own.

Just wanna throw this idea in the ring: zero clone attrition for sending clones to a district that you own.

Hmmm, i'm very much not liking lost clones. In general, nature doesnt like things disappearing.
It feels like a massive double penalty for the defender.

I'm developing an idea whereby each district has 2 pools of clones: some for defence (max determined by the SI) and a 2nd pool that can be used for attacking only. Only the defence clone pool is used for defending. Combine this with being unable to sell intact clones to Genolution (they will only buy damaged clones recovered from battles) and then you end up situation where merely owning districts does not generate income: you must fight you enemies in order to earn isk. This is my my proto-concept. I'll post something in the ideas section once I've worked out how to communicate it better.

Now in the proper thread...

Hey guys! A quick update on the dev blog:

We are aware that there may possibly be a way to lock a district indefinitely. We have discussed this with the CPM and internally. For now we are going forward with tomorrows release of all the information included in this dev blog. We have monitoring in place to see how things go over. We are also working on plans that we can implement early or mid next week depending how this weekend goes.

Thank you everyone who has been providing feedback here, on IRC, twitter, and just anywhere else.

That is all for now. Carry on. :)

We would like to remove them and would also like to make getting an orbital strike like how it was during the tournament at Fanfest. EVE pilots do something to get it.

Now in the proper thread...

Hey guys! A quick update on the dev blog:

We are aware that there may possibly be a way to lock a district indefinitely. We have discussed this with the CPM and internally. For now we are going forward with tomorrows release of all the information included in this dev blog. We have monitoring in place to see how things go over. We are also working on plans that we can implement early or mid next week depending how this weekend goes.

Thank you everyone who has been providing feedback here, on IRC, twitter, and just anywhere else.

That is all for now. Carry on. :)

Yes! no more warpoints for orbitals! What a stupid system, This is eve! The losing side should have the option to use a strike from space to turn the battle. Not just be a kill streak weapon that gives the winners an extra advantage.

Thank you <3

We are also working on plans that we can implement early or mid next week depending how this weekend goes.

We would like to remove them and would also like to make getting an orbital strike like how it was during the tournament at Fanfest. EVE pilots do something to get it.

All we are doing is saying if the attacker loses the battle they lose their exclusivity. Which was the only thing that let them get an attack in the following day. It effectively means anyone can now attack the district, including the attacking corporation that just lost, but the battle will not happen for at least 47 hours.

Ok. This are just my thoughts.

I'm a reasonably smart guy. I work in a bookies and I work with numbers daily basis. So the numbers being flung about so far is something I understand. And as I'm reading them in the new blog I had something of an epiphany.

This is incredibly dull.

The level of understanding required to get the most of your districts, risk/reward determinations, profit and loss, attrition rates blah blah bla.........snooze.

I know that their are players and corp that eat this all up with a ladle. But maybe I'm going out on a limb here to say this, I'm guessing these are in the minority.

The vast majority of players just want to shoot things. Nothing more complicated than that. And what they have right now are three options that are in fact just one.

An increasingly stale parade of Pub matches. Too infrequent Faction Warfare that offers nothing as a reward for participation. And Planetary Conquest, so convoluted in its complexity and of such value to an ISK starved economy that corporations are unwilling to allow anyone but their very best players in it, denying a majority access to develop their skill to level where they could participate in PC.

I know a lot of work has gone into PC. But I'm concerned that in is desire to provide consequence in the world of the Dust Mercenary, they've given us a consequence that a majority care little about, because the personal rewards are not tangible enough and the rewards for a corp are too ethereal.

I believe that in terms of engaging and keeping in the game new players and fresh blood, PC is ill conceived as a game mechanic and is more likely to turn them off.

Hopefully the new monthly point build cycle will bring us rapid progress on developing game modes other than the four we have in Pub matches, better rewards for Faction Warfare (gear as salvage that can only be gained in Faction Warfare and unavailable I the market place would be the first way to start) and as for PC....

Every fix so far has been broken by the players and the latest one before it even launched. It's off putting to new players and the latest iteration is going to do nothing to help prevent burnout of players. It's a game, not a second job.

The NPE, corp mechanics, balancing issues, murder taxis, Dropships becoming viable again... these are matters that should've been fixed already before PC was looked at.

I still love playing the game and I'll be here till the servers pack up but I'm just concerned that a priorities need to be realigned before further iteration on PC.

All I can hear is "wahh wahh wahh, our job is so hard". Good for you.
Other people also have complicated jobs and you don't see them explaining themself.

Get things in order, better and faster.
No one wants to listen to excuses.

Not making excuses or complaining, just trying to explain why we made these changes to Kevall who has the impression we are doing this instead of the other things he mentioned.

Not making excuses or complaining, just trying to explain why we made these changes to Kevall who has the impression we are doing this instead of the other things he mentioned.

All I can hear is "wahh wahh wahh, our job is so hard". Good for you.
Other people also have complicated jobs and you don't see them explaining themself.

Get things in order, better and faster.
No one wants to listen to excuses.

Work on PC is not done at the exclusion of the other things you mentioned. In fact these changes took less than a days work, we are otherwise very busy working on the upcoming releases.

Prioritization of work is more complicated than just what is most important to the players right now. We need to consider alignment with teams doing work on systems that may intersect with the design, resolving dependencies between teams and finding places we can have a big impact for a small amount of effort. PC changes now are just good timing in the interest of shaking things up a bit.

Explain how a losing streak is better than a kill streak.

meh considering the new attrition level, i think we can live attrition for friendly movements.

All I can hear is "wahh wahh wahh, our job is so hard". Good for you.
Other people also have complicated jobs and you don't see them explaining themself.

Get things in order, better and faster.
No one wants to listen to excuses.

All I can hear is "wahh wahh wahh, our job is so hard". Good for you.
Other people also have complicated jobs and you don't see them explaining themself.

Get things in order, better and faster.
No one wants to listen to excuses.

If I gave the impression that I believe that other things are being sacrificed for PC I apologise. I know that different teams are working on them and they are forthcoming.

But every iteration on PC so far has made it more and more complicated with nothing other than an increased payout of ISK and some extra salvage. I explain to new players in chat how it works, I can hear their brain thinking about the uninstall option.

There is no benefit to a corp to be had from PC that can be felt or seen by the rank and file members. The vast majority of eve players couldn't possibly care less about its bonus's to them and their corp. The vast majority of Eve players couldn't care less about dust to be honest. When I won the CCP office tour at Fanfast, some of them went tonto on the forums and social media demanding to know how the hell a Dust player won a tour of CCP! The logic of it being a game also made by CCP and I chucked a Plex into the pot like they did, seemed to elude them at that point....

PC is too complicated, without the kind of consequential impact on Eve or benefit that would make the doubters change their mind about it and consider Dust as being worthwhile to take seriously.

Corps want to fight each other. Lets give them a way to do it that's free from the need for resource management or the kind of thinking and preparation more appropriate to a new business start up. A basic war dec system, a league tournament or standings systems. Anything other than PC, which is going to be exclusively the domain of the mega corps and alliances in no time once again or cause burnout and its too much of a grind.

If we want to make eve players care about Dust, we need to start being able to go after their stuff and make a lot more more ISK doing it.

If we want to make eve players care about Dust, we need to start being able to go after their stuff and make a lot more more ISK doing it.

The CPM and CSM have also been speaking together about this very topic and we have some, lets say interesting, plans to make PC a little more open and "sandbox like" as well as unique from instant battles.

yessssssssssssssssssssssssssss

one day for sure we will go down to our planets when there is no combat, I think the plan is have PvE there? But we don't have a system that generates endless maps YET so we have to wait.

FoxFour and myself have been getting into deep design discussion about the future of Planetary Conquest which we hinted at in the last developer blog. Splitting the ISK earning from clones and creating a demand in EVE for a new commodity is going to be key to getting EVE players to care about what happens in PC. The CPM and CSM have also been speaking together about this very topic and we have some, lets say interesting, plans to make PC a little more open and "sandbox like" as well as unique from instant battles.

For now though, we will be watching to see if these changes are enjoyed by those corps who want to put in the effort required to play in the deep end of the pool.

If you loose the 5 minute reup attack are the attackers supposed to be able to keep the 1 hour attack dibs?

If so when does this 1 hour attack dibs begin? when we enter the MCC on the reupped attack?

Currently we are having issues on issuing the 3rd attack after loosing the bonus round.