Improving conditions in lowsec seems to be getting a lot of attention lately, there a LOT of threadnaught’s and discussions on the subject, and a lot of good ideas..mainly from pirates on how to make lowsec better, and from a PVP point of view a lot of them have some fantastic ideas. However no one seems to have much of an idea how to lure the more industrius side of eve to lowsec besides putting a few more shiney rocks there.
Now shiney rocks may be a good idea but with the current system no one in there right mind would take a mining barge into lowsec, they are far to slow. A better way would be siney rocks and a new ship class that is about the size and spec of a retriver but much faster align times and a bonus to warp stabs, and if sad ship were available for around 10mill…you might get a few more miners trying for those shiney minerals
Another idea is to improve missions, the very slight increase in pay doesn’t balance the risk of losing your ship, maybe either vastly increase the money or..and I like this better up the amount of LP earned permission AND the rate you gain standings. All of a sudden bringing a BC out and chancing it to up you standings fast or get the LP for the faction items you want seems a fair trade.
Thirdly give the exploration sites in lowsec more faction loot make it woth living there hunting for them, a ratio like 1 in 8 gives faction loot in high sec, 1 in 5 for lowsec and 1 in 3 for null. Its now worth bringing a scan ship out to do more than safe busting.
Im sure some of these ideas have been mentioned before but im starting to think that the best thing lowsec could ask for is a few decent care bears, but it needs to be profitable to go there and take the risks.
When we do the pirates have more targets and SOLO PVP may make a return and you don’t need to blob care bears. It would become viable to roam on your own. That in turn makes even more care bears come out as they have half a chance 1 v 1 instead of 5-1. PVP wins , care bears win (isk until they get shot), pirates win .. more targets.
Implement some of this along with the changes to criminal flaging , PVP and bounty hunting that have been suggested and you have the makings of a pretty shit hot expansion that breathes new life into lowsec.
Rant over.
I like the idea of a mining barge with builtin warp stabs. The problem is that it'd probably end up being T2 and that puts the price so far up there that it nerfs its usefulness.
ReplyDeletePerhaps instead tweak the retriever such that fitting warp stabs in the lows doesn't completely nerf the ship. You'd still get the long align times, but you mine aligned in nullsec and WH space so its not too much of a problem.
If there were rocks that were worth something in low-sec you might get industrial corps setting up ops with escorts to mine those rocks.
There is a mining ship with warp stabs... its a skiff ... warp strength +2...
ReplyDeleteThe problem with escort fleets and all mining vessels in particular is that ccp hasn't given them large enough tanks.... I think the ships should have massive structure tanks ... and ccp should provide some offensive capability that allows a mining ship to drive off attackers... Right now you can't tank a mining ship other than an orca to survive more than about 20 seconds against cruiser or t2 frigates. And with drones as the only weapon possible and no tank there is no possibility of survival even with a good escort.
No one is going to suicide mine. Which is why lowsec is deserted for that purpose. There simply isn't enough profit in it. Now if CCP started putting ABCS or mercoxit in lowsec in limited quantities you might see more ninja miners...
I think increasing payouts in lowsec a bit is a good idea, within reason. But increasing it too much will create an ISK faucet that can't be counter balanced by the rabidness of pirates. I've missioned a lot in low sec, just 'cause, and I've never been scanned down.
ReplyDeleteA combat mining barge would be awesome, even if that only means it's faster and has nice agility.
For a carebear I spend quite a bit of time in lo-sec mainly doing exploration in a cloaky T3. However there are 2 things that make never run a mission in lo-sec
ReplyDelete1) the reward, but you've covered that
2) the standing loss for a failed mission, with exploration if a system hots up I can move on, no problem. If I'm in a mission I either have to stop playing or abandon the mission and take a standings hit. If there was some kind of system like the refusals where I could elect to throw in the towel say once a day or a week, then I'd probably risk it and more people risking it = more people/ targets