i hate to do it but i have to agree. not that i like it for myself. but its good. good a essential ore for high lvl production is in a risky area.

now we just need the other part to be worth it. we need more meaning to colixum so that gamma has to play a important part as well. honestly i think this change schould not be made before the colixum based bots/equip.

So, as for the whining about ore fields under npc spawns. If the reward is worth it, players will do it. We walled off immentium fields from spawns so we could run missions before on Norhoop. And back in the static ore spawn days we walled of spawns from the huge epi field at Uria. It took a couple guys working together to get it done and maybe an hour to do it. The good thing about liquids is you only need to get to one square to mine the field. It isn't any different than having to decon strucutres and terraform to get to that titan field on the turret wall on my gamma island.

I remember ninja mining in a t1 termis so I could sell epi at 14 nic per. I only had to mine for like like 30 minutes to pay for my bot. Everything else was gravy. You get ballsy with the ability for that kind of profit.

This change also makes owning a beta station more worth while. A safe place to dock up and base out of for mining alone is worth it. Plus having the chance of a field spawning near your outpost for some easy epi. And as a consequence, passive and specimen processing saps have good value again and are worth hitting or scooping loot on. Not just Corps and vets, but newbs and small scale producers will probly give it a shot if they cant mine it easily.

The other consequence as Arga so eloquently stated, is that the ability to produce structures on the scale required to wall off an entire gamma island to yourself has now been seriously hindered. Epriton will now be a limiting factor in the amount of structures you can put on a gamma island, especially when that same epriton will be needed for bot and mod production. (Cant imigaine this is an unintended consequence the DEVs overlooked )

So Arga is correct, It probably won't be worth walling off an entire gamma island and spending the time, Nic, and material investment. But it would still be viable to build a small tightly defended outpost on a gamma island somewhere to take advanteg of the Gamma bonuses. Sure you will have to do some hauling in and out and it will require cooperation between corp mates to keep things secure and mine in peace. But this gives indy guys something to do, and gives the PVP guys something to do.

Its not that all the risk is now forced on the indy guys, because if the indy guys cant get epriton to make mods and bots and structures, that will quickly become a problem for the PVP guys.

I remember RG back in the day would secure Novastrov and mine out every field on the island. Doing something like that these days may be a little more difficult in the age of spark teleport. Which should be a good thing. It will take numerous operations on beta to get the amount of epriton big corps will need, This should lead to much greater conflict on the beta islands, on a small and large scale. The argument age of unlimited safe mining is coming to an end. Don't pretend that most of us weren't asking for it.

The only concern I would have, is if you must go to beta to do missions and  improve relations past level 3 still. That the amount of player activity on the betas might hinder epriton mining too much with a much higher population. But then again, players usually find a way to make things happen. That's half the fun of a game like this.

All in all, I think this will be a good change for the health of the game.

+1

(And I am sure this post isn't current, as there have probably been 3 more pages written since I started it. )

So basically Gamma is only beneficial in a all-or-nothing sense of investment, while requiring T3 to really only achieve the needed reward?

You want players to build this up and expand all the while supplying their day to day costs?

This is titan Ore all over again...

hmm ...

You lead the gamma front for your corp which was very short lived .. but trust many of the tweaks and improvements made to gamma were in no way because of anything that had to do with you .. STC/Nebs and its Allies had done more for gamma at this point than any other entity in the game ... STC was one of the first corps to Deploy Gamma terminals... and were still here . .

From the sounds of it if it isnt instant gratification you dont want anything to do with it . . oh wait does arga speak for your corp or just you ?

Also change Epi back into a Ore Please.

And really Heliaso Stop B1tching about NPC's.

Next Up, adding Deltas, They just won't have HDT.  This will drive PVP on Gamma's!

Yay!

would suck to mine on a blue island with all the ecm jamming you...

All they've done is shuffled the 'worthless' issue from beta to gamma.

As far as effort, we worked for MONTHS to prep for gamma release, I'm not going to do that again (hours of mining and transport) just to have the steam release fail to generate interest.

For me, a 100 person game isn't what I want to play. I want the epic battles.

In that sense I'm speaking for myself, I don't see this change as creating anything new that will capture, hold, and/or entice epic battles with 100's of players. Until I see that type of change, I'm waiting.

I think one reason NPC's on gamma were scarce was to make them less suffcient in the NIC area. Maybe there is now room to make those PVE elements better.

It still won't make it worth building a base, maybe an outpost to rat out of.

If you mean cheaper... then maybe. But it's still a logistical nightmare to haul between islands, especially between two PVP islands,

By this I mean, youre better off doing mining, production on the same island. Which would be beta, but the overhead of saps is just a major drain to morale.