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In the coming Retribution Expansion (To be released in December) CCP will be redoing the Bounty Hunting System AND the Kill Rights System.
As most players already know, Bounty Hunting as it currently exists in the game is a joke. Some players collect large bounties for bragging rights then never undock the high bounty character, others wait until their bounty reaches a certain level then they simply Pod themselves with an alt or have a corp mate do it to collect the money. As it stands now putting a bounty on someone is almost the same as giving them ISK! Achieving a completely opposite effect than is intended.
The new system aims to fix this by linking the bounty payouts to the ISK lost in each kill, making it very unprofitable to kill your self. The problem is that it’s not all that profitable for other people to kill you either.
CCP comments in quotes:
The key one is to give people faith that money they put into the bounty system has a fair chance of actually leading to their target crying tears of fear and frustration.
The core of the new bounty system is to pay out only a portion of the bounty at a time, instead of paying the whole pool upon a kill.
The reason it’s no longer the same “winning the lottery” type deal is because CCP is only going to payout 20% of the kill value. So if you hunt down a pirate with a 10 Billion ISK bounty on his head and you blow up his HAC worth 200 Million ISK you will only get paid 40 million ISK from his “pool” of bounty.
In effect this makes Bounty Hunting …Read More…
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Since I’m painfully grinding my security status back from below -5 to a level that allows me to PVP properly, I thought it would be a good time to talk a little about Security Status. (Even if it is broken)
Security Status is what you get for killing NPC’s and what you lose for killing Players. Thus creating a system that punishes PVP with restrictions and disadvantages.
What Disadvantages?
- Players with -2.0 or below can’t enter 1.0 systems
- Players with -2.5 or below can’t enter 0.9 systems
- Players with -3.0 or below can’t enter 0.8 systems
- Players with -3.5 or below can’t enter 0.7 systems
- Players with -4.0 or below can’t enter 0.6 systems
- Players with -4.5 or below can’t enter 0.5 systems
Entering these systems when your sec is too low will result in you being chased and potentially killed by the Navy (not Concord).
It’s still possible to get most ships through these systems but only if you move quickly.
Go below -5.0 and you are a permanent Criminal, which means you can be shot by anyone anywhere. You are Flashy and PVP + Travel just got very very annoying.
The solution? Get a hauling alt and live in low sec while you watch your Sec Status drop to -10.
But that’s all very very annoying and in my opinion a very BIG mistake on CCP’s part.
Low Sec is dead for two reasons… First, there’s nothing there worth getting and second, PVP is punished severely in low sec. Having to Rat for 1 to 2 hours in Null Sec to rebuild enough Sec Status to cancel out one low sec kill is TOO MUCH.
Let’s get back to mechanics…
How do you get Security Status Penalties?
By Attacking a player ship, Killing a Player Ship, Killing a POD (Big Drop in Sec there), or even killing a player owned item or structure (jet can, POS) while in a system besides Null Sec.
Further the severity of the sec hit is based on the security of the system you are in when you commit a criminal offense. Killing a Player Ship in a 0.1 has a MUCH lower penalty than in a 1.0 system (which will get you concorded on top of the sec hit).
Basically if you like to PVP and you don’t keep ALL your PVP in Null Sec, you are punished with hours and hours of ratting to repair it.
But what’s the fastest way to repair your Security Status?
In a …Read More…
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For those who haven’t heard of it, Crimewatch is the name CCP has given to their project dedicated to overhauling the Aggression and Flagging Systems in EVE Online. Currently the systems are sloppy, unreliable, and the cause of many pilots frustration (and death). It will be implemented in the Winter Expansion in early December.
The biggest problem in the past was that it was never very clear if you had a timer, what timer it was, who it was directed at, and what it all meant. Simply learning these complex rules was challenging, but allowed Griefers to exploit other people’s ignorance of them (ex: Can Flipping).
Much of this is going to change, and while it looks like the new system will be more simple, I wonder exactly how it will impact PVP and that’s what we will examine in this article.
One of the major changes is to clearly show the timers and provide “tooltip” descriptions of what they mean. This will massively simplify things by it’s self.
Here’s the description direct from CCP:
The following image shows a character with three flags. From left-to-right: PVP flag, Suspect flag, Weapons flag. Each flag also has an associated timer, shown by the clock around it. The specifics of what each flag means will be explained later.
Seeing your Aggression Timer Weapon Timer will be very helpful in PVP when you need to jump or dock. Trying to time this in your head was always a pain. My old solution to this was to keep a stop watch by my computer. That’s something I will happily give up.
Another big change is to the way Logistics and Assistance Modules effect timers and aggro. This has been badly …Read More…
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Ever wonder what the difference was between Shield Boosters and Armor Repairers?
Seems like a simple question and something pretty basic, but there’s more to it than you think…
We all know that certain ships do better with one or the other. Caldari typically favors Shield, while Amarr tends to do better with Armor. Gallante and Minmatar are a little more flexible, however Gallente leans toward Armor and Minmatar being the most confused leans toward Shields.
So what are the differences?
First of all the Cycle Times and Amount Repaired stats are very different. The Small Shield Booster II has a Cycle Time of 2 and an Amount of 30 while the Small Armor Repairer II has a Cycle Time of 4.5 and Amount of 80. That works out to 15 HP per second for Shield and 17.78 HP per second for Armor.
As for Capacitor, the Small Shield Booster II gets 1.67 HP Repair per unit of Capacitor (with level V Shield Compensation), and the Small Armor Repairer gets 2 HP Repair per unit of Capacitor.
Seems like a big edge for Armor Reps at this point huh?
Not really, because these stats change quite a bit in real world fittings. Take for example Battleships…
X-Large Shield Booster II’s repair 120 HP per second and Large Armor Repairer II’s repair 71.11 HP per second. As for Capacitor the Shield Booster repairs 1.67 HP per unit of Capacitor while the Armor Repair repairs 2 HP per unit of Capacitor. Making the Armor more cap stable, but less powerful in this case.
The reason for this discrepancy is because shield boosting Battleships typically use Extra Large Shield Boosters while Armor Repping Battleships use Large Armor Repairers. In fact, in most ship classes the Shield Booster used is 1 level larger than the Armor Repairer. Frigates use Medium Shield Boosters and Cruisers often use Large, while Battlecruisers sometimes use X-Large.
Shield Boosters also give their Hit Point boost at the beginning of their Cycle, while Armor Repairs don’t give any HP until the end of their cycle.
Beyond that Shield Boosting ships are typically faster than Armor Repairing ships, giving them a big edge in controlling the way a fight plays out.
In the end, it’s really hard to say which is best, but personally I lean toward the Shield Boosters for two main reasons: Speed and Instant Boost
Waiting for an Armor Repair to finish it’s cycle before you get any repair is scary and sometimes deadly. In many of my ships with Dual Armor Repairers, like the Sacrilege, I start one rep before I lose my shields because I have died many times before the repairer had any effect at all.
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Last Friday I setup Twitch and streamed a few hours of PVP and pretty quickly racked up 8 solo kills in my Thrasher, with most the kills coming in outnumbered fights. Unfortunately I had my settings wrong and the resulting video was pretty terrible quality (was my first time streaming).
You can go watch it on Twitch now if you want but the quality is pretty bad. To check out the new Twitch Channel Click Here.
I’m 90% sure I have fixed my setting and now the streaming quality is pretty good, however I’m still not 100%. But if it’s not I will keep at it until I get it to work.
So what exactly is Twitch and what do I plan to stream there?
Twitch is a site that hosts streaming feeds of live video game play. This growing trend seems to be most popular with Starcraft at the moment, but it’s a great medium to teach from and just have fun with. Certainly much more entertaining than doing a Podcast (I’ve made a few, but never released them because I wasn’t sure I wanted to do them regularly).
So instead of a weekly Podcast, EVE Pro Guides will be doing a weekly EVE Online Twitch Stream. In the stream I will PVP, maybe have a few beers, joke with my self, maybe lead fleets, and generally try to have fun while teaching as much as I can.
Due to the laid back nature, it won’t be nearly as organized and effective as my other guides but there should still be lots of good stuff.
There are a couple catches for the first few weeks. Tomorrow’s Stream may be a little late, and the quality may need some tweaking. Also next weeks stream will most likely occur a day later than normal because I have plans I made long ago for next Friday night.
MOST the time I will be streaming every Friday from 9pm to 11pm US Eastern Standard Time. I will also pop on occasionally to stream when I get some free time, so favorite my stream on twitch so you get notified every time I stream.
Once again… Every Friday 9-11Pm US EST – EVE Pro Guides PVP Stream!
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In the coming Retribution Expansion (To be released in December) CCP will be redoing the Bounty Hunting System AND the Kill Rights System.
