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Topic: alts, boxed alts, and why people "need" them

My friends and I recently discussed what factors invoke a feeling of "need" when it comes to having an alt. Most were tied to the market and economy, a consequence of both game design (e.g., mat requirements for manufacturing) and player behavior (e.g., the desire to not be reliant on others). I'm posting under Balancing because my main point is, I think the game needs to move in a direction that attempts to alleviate feelings that players are missing something critical if they don't have various alts. Since most are tied to the economy, it's a complex issue. But here's a suggestion for one that's a bit more straight-forward... eyes on beta teleporters.

While eyes are undeniably important, being one is not fun. It's not a job for a real player and the burden generally falls on a boxed alt. I'd like to see this role filled by an in-game mechanism that itself can create opportunities for some fun.

By default, the mechanism should report transitions (jumps) with 100% accuracy (meaning it doesn't miss anything) but with a low (30%?) probability of giving precise intel (meaning it'll tell you a mech jumped, but not what type). One type of upgrade will increase the probability of getting precise intel. With another upgrade, it'll gain a detection range (also upgradable) around both sides of the teleporter and will report anything it detects that stays within detection range for a user-specified period of time. Another upgrade adds friend-or-foe capabilities with the option of not reporting friendly contacts.

There could be an electronics substation ~1.5km from each external teleporter. Like intrusions, they would have scheduled windows of vulnerability (45 minutes?), but would not require anyone to sign up. There would be objectives that result in the damaging of each of the intel precision (requiring moderate effort) and detection range (requiring more effort) upgrades. There should also be a way to hack into the system (possibly accomplished by a single bot) and plant a virus that will temporarily drop the system accuracy to about 80% for a short period (2 hours?) at some point in the next 24 hours. The friend-or-foe upgrade can't be damaged as that'd just put people back into the position of having to have alts on the teleporter again.

Unlike intrusions, there could be "partial" success. If, just for the sake of example, you use a mechanism like an active sap and attackers completed half the total cycles, the upgrade would suffer half the maximum damage. Maximum damage should not equate to no upgrade. E.g., maximum damage to detection range may drop detection range to 50%. There should be fairly passive mechanisms for repair (some effort must be put in to begin the repairs, but you don't have to babysit them), with the repair time related to how much damage the upgrade suffered.

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Re: alts, boxed alts, and why people "need" them

in the end this issue here is, NIC. If people generated more NIC they would more willing to pay 'resonable' prices. But since the kernel prices [main source of raw NIC] is terribble now, and people there for don't want to pay the relative prices when they see buy orders for generally 90% less, people feel end up feeling " why should i bother, i will just go get the items myself instead".  This then lead to the ease with which some were able to exploit the insurance system on such a mass scale. 

So in the end the only way around alot of the issues is to join a corp, and it has to be a corp that has players that are able to support each other fully or someone in the corp is going to need an alt or 2. This is the main difference between the way the CBT and live has gone.

The NIC generating capcity of a single char regardless of build has been cut right back. Combats' get less for kernels, can only sell a few things [incomparison] to npc [for lower prices] and get less from recycled items for commidities to sell. Indy's get less because its more expensive to research on the whole due to the kernel search tier change requiring all levels of kernels instead of masses of T1's [which provided a mass market of sale for newbs on t1-3 kernels] from intra-player trade, higher relation % is needed to equate to the similar recycle output along with additional extensions for top tier commidities.

Perfect example i guess is how i would get materials in CBT and how i do it now or more clearly the amount i get now. Without going into specific numbers to much because im to lazy to dig them up fully:

[intensive farming sessions] similar extension points farming T2-5 mobs,selling to a combination of npc, players and Corps to order, with manufacturing on left overs to sell on market

CBT: July-Sept 1 day farming kernel + modules = 20M-70M [depending on sale/recycle]
Live: Feb 1 day farming kernels [depending] 1-3M,
              All modules are recycled or kept for manufacturing process, because prices suck and arent worth selling, commidities are all kept because again prices suck. All commodities are then used to manufacture anything i see a need for on the market that will make minimal profit that large corps arent mass [50x] producing.

Now personally I pretty much refuse to buy anything off the market because its NIC i could use making more things to make more NIC. Because the cost of the items to the cost and time to produce the items means its stupid to buy anything.  The main issue small corps, freelance agents have and therefore then need alts is that all these NIC reducing changes along with the immense kernel research change [meaning that the balance is firmly in any corps hands that can have as many people kernel farming for research as posible and not bother trading kernels] mean that people feel the only way to get ahead/level is to have more then one char so they can supply themselves/reduce paying the NIC for another persons EP in a different area.

I would of never had 2 accounts come LIVE if i didnt feel how bad the kernel change was during the OBT as i would of just stuck with combat and bought in items i needed, instead of now trying to manufacture them.

Freelance Agent/Merc Suppling All With The NIC For The Job

980X XSPC Cooling, ASUS RoG Rampage Extreme III, 12 GB Corsair Dominator DHX 2000Mhz w/Cooling Unit, 2x GTX 580 SLi, Creative Titanium Fatailty Championship w/ IO panel, 2x 128Gb SSD, 4x 1.5Tb hdd, BeQuiet Dark Power Pro P8 1200W PSU - Multi-BootOS
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Re: alts, boxed alts, and why people "need" them

Alts and scouting alts are differently. As a rule of thumb you have one character for each area of the same and possibly one character for each subsection but that's less needed. Most people will want at least one alt this means.

Scouting alts are characters created on your alts account as a pure set of eyes. It's a boring job and all it does is stop PvP happening. The Arkhe could have it's sensor range nerfed for a start but that wouldn't change anything.

Best solution is a way to get onto island NOT at an exit. Being able to jump as a squad to a defined location. If it requires deploying "Beacons" or something like that on the other island as long as it can be done from an ewar that's perfect. Infiltration could be a new role in the game and would make PVP roaming a lot more fun. Rather then neeing scouting alts you'd want to have mechs and light robots using detection modules. This would give a reason to use Masking modules.

Masking modules suck. They always have and they got nerfed with the detector modules. They're near impossible to keep stable and I'd like to see multiple sizes of them. Smaller modules that use less AP but only mask a smaller surface size. Making each tier of the module surface size related would mean that mechs would be able to run their modules and ewars could run theirs. It would be easy to run and would increase your speed (Mech ones could even be 750kg if the balance guy things maskers need to be heavy) but light ewar (The best thing to run a masker on) can't even run them without being totally useless in PVP.

If maskers can't get an increase make them LIKE a nexus but not a nexus. Make them area of effect based. So that one Masker can mask many units. This would increase interference of a roaming gang but would mean that a detector would also help a lot.

This would all be optional but would mean that PVP would have more options and right now that's all we want. Even if it's just more X counters Y counters Z.. it's better than nothing right now.

TL;DR - Remove scouting alts from gates by allowing direct location teleporting. Make masking units sized or area of effect.

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