Jita, I can see where you are coming from with this story, I was looking for more of a technical description disregarding any current political landscape and focusing on the average player and below.

Details of how x mechanic or feature is intended to support the player, which there are hints of sprinkled in the above post.

I think we can all agree that the majority of players that are still here, PO forums,  do no fall into the category or realm of who we are targeting to support and empower with these changes.

Station Locking vs No Lock

It takes days to drop a station and then lock others out currently. The issue is not corporations being locked out but their inability to cope with the methods and tactics of harassment PvP that can be brought on by a beef, which always occur.

Now I want to compare two experiences of mine to demon-strait the players I believe we need to target and support properly for game growth.  I feel they are the ones we have failed to help time and time again.

Using FOOM as a reference example, I engaged them solo in a vendetta for something their CEO stated to me. I could not beat them all but I could beat 80% if not more of them on my own, consistently. Only a few remain

When they did take a step to engage me at 110% to take a defeat me I rang the dinner bell calling my boys. I may have gone down but none of them survived those engagements for I was ultimately baiting them to go all in.

Note I never took the station form them nor did I have docking rights. I merely took control of their beta and shut down their ability to use it productivly.

Lets use STC as a example second example, when I returned from in-activity and they controlled Dom with RG. When this occurred I was locked out of Danachrov and had no access to resources.  They were well over 30+ active players living and playing on that island.

They refused me access and declared a preference to fight me over it. We all know the results of this, however players like DeathMonkey and his brother as well as a few others were capable of learning, adapting and growing from this.

We lost however 80-90% of their players in my mini siege against them.

When the server attempted to assist them, again, I then engaged them with my own support and continued to come out on top despite sporadic losses. Once these conflicts reached a certain point I did bring in the full weight of what is now PoE to crush any and everything.

My point with this is that unlocking beta stations wont change much in the above dynamic. It would be far more beneficial for us to write guides, video tutorials, and feature descriptions to empower these players to successfully venture out. 

The rough numbers for  mission rewards are a great step but I think our main focus should be identifying abusive mechanics or harsh mechanics that could use some tuning to prevent what appears to new players as a complete shutdown to access to aspects of the game.

        The 3 days it takes to turn a outpost around and lock someone is not somthing that happens over night and it can be identified and planned for when it begins to occur.

        You cannot know when a player like myself, Mongolia, Supremeghandi, DeathMonkey or others stage against you and there is nothing to help them combat us besides that station lock as it limits a few of our greater techniques.

We have lost far more to niche play things that new players don't understand and fail to overcome with the currently available knowledge and tool-set.

P.S. All the fits I used to achieve these things were provided to the dev's prior to use and were detailed to be pushing the edge of what is considered balanced. I personally thing balance is in a worse state now than it was previously for these new players as well.

Jita or whom ever is for unlocking.

Can you describe the gains or benefits of unlocking these beta stations? I understand your saying this is step one but what do you foresee as the immediate gains or impact of this change.

Further more, where do you see this growing or being expanded on to support the above points.

I believe a true focus should be on picking apart the pit-falls of beta and other areas that don't support player growth properly. Once Identified a work around or fix can be designed and implemented.

I understand Joke may choose to not leverage cookie-cutter builds to shut players down but it inevitable that a player or group of players take a action that paints them as a target as every group has eventually done in the history of PO.

When the above happens these mechanics will be used against them and they will be victim to it.

My point is what is 'your' dev road map that starts with unlocking betas go to next and what are the steps to create a active and proper beta environment?

I would say dropped modules are fine or loot is acceptable but not more.

Once again,

New player or new corps move to beta, they are unlocked and open which 'seems' inviting.

They make that move and take a severe beating and see no feasible or easy means to recover the loss assets. They stop making any progress in the game and move back to alpha.

No one likes moving backwards in a game....

My point is, these assignments need to be freaking crystal clear free money for players and corporations. They need tools to assist in their growth and safety nets need to be in place to prevent them from feeling as it they are starting from scratch with a huge asset grind.

Progression in this game in terms of economy and assets is not easy until you reach a certain threshold. New players cant get there right now and there are no tools to help them

in a magical world there would be enough beta population to prevent abuse by vets such as myself or others from using a handful of accounts to shutdown entire groups of players.  This would require a small swarm of them to stop our movements and setup of these 'harsh' actions.  15+ players could stop me from moving in but if you cant stop that then you are the mercy of the others.

Anni, I dont think you grasped what I was trying to say but I will answer your question.

My statement says there is no reason to be 'At Risk'  on beta. Meaning you will not see me or other EXPERIENCED players  deploy our fleet of accounts or deploy with  players/account to beta for economic gain.

There are a number of things I can do on Alpha or Gamma with almost no risk for a far greater return of nic/assets to me for my time.

When I do go to beta, To hunt , it is with multiple bots and I dont 'risk' them until there is a valid reason. I will scout with a scout and find my prey. I will then herd them into  a kill box and drop my REAL fleet on them.

If my Fleeet is on beta, I will always have a plan to get away with out being wiped, this is not always the case. However Anni, you, I and everyone else knows there is a large portion of veteran players who can and do operate in this method.

New players do not know of all the veteran tricks and in order for them to prosper they must risk far more than I.

Your 1 month old 10 mil player does not know that I have a speed fit bots that out range, out tank, and out damage them.

I ON MY OWN have gone against superior numbers numerous times, only leveraging my knowledge of the game to exploit my wins and bring devastating results to my opponents be it moral or asset loss.

Quite frankly IF and WHEN i do go to beta it will be for targets (multiple targets not one ninja miner) worth my time and effort, one that will require a amount of planning in order to dissect them and their corporation piece by piece.

The issue is not one player but when a group of players try to push out to beta, it is obvious when it occurs and they are, with out proper knowledge, just a victim awaiting their death.

Shall I begin referencing examples such as FOOM, STC on Dom, STC on Norhoop, TOG, the list goes on...

Zoom, you should know very well that a corporation cannot awake one morning the be locked out of their outpost. This fear alone is a miss interpretation of why people are avoiding or hesitant in venturing out in to beta as one normally would while progressing.

A Corporation must first take ownership from a corp and then defend that sap until the station breaks 50% stability to perform a lock.

I can reference a number of examples where I have taken a station, locked the owners out and either gave them their assets or with held them and those players no longer exist/play PO.

This is a feeble attempt to stimulate play but again REWARD, is needed on beta for emergent game-play. This game was designed with rock-paper-scissor balance and has done nothing be step farther away from this with each update and balancing pass.

If Alpha is pure safety, Beta is full risk, and Gamma is self-secured. Beta should be the most beneficial to live as it carries the greatest risk. (takes longer to crack a gamma station than beta and lock the player out )

Focus on enabling INTUITIVE methods for asset/nic generation that is GREATER than Alpha and Gamma for combats and trade offs for industry that out weigh Alpha but can compete with Gamma.

I used to out farm alpha spawns on beta with explosions for loot pre-beacons. Now i can do a weeks worth of farming in a hour or two using beacons. THERE IS NO REASON TO BE AT RISK CURRENTLY on beta and unlocking stations doesn't change that, the only ones who do risk it are the uninformed, thus they are punished.

Re-Balance bots BACK to rock-paper-scissors with fits that are viable, the current balance allows for longer fights than previous balance but its a stepper curve for new players to conquer because current fits come down to best in slot modules and max extensions to 'brawl'

I understand where your going with this but this will have very difficult to understand cascading effects across all bot sizes and types.

Honestly, there needs to be some sort of ideal state of bot interaction that we are working towards. If we only focus on filling down extremes we will end up in a very poor state with no flavor. 

This game is unfortunately to difficult to play from a user perspective to dumb the mechanics down where there is no flavor to bring interest.

Dev Zoom or Alf if you can present to us clearly the problem you want to solve, the resulting balance you are after and the flexibility you have in achieving it from a mechanic modification stand point. I am more than confident the theory craters here will at least give you some frame of reference to work from with confidence.

Also it is very easy to fit the Arbalist mk 2 to demob equally as far as my most extreme cam mk 2 fit with a negligible speed difference.

This is fitting to a extreme but if you sprinkle these in with normal fits your in for a fun time.

270m no nexus 350m w/ Nexus  Demobbing Arabalist mk 2 @ 124+ KPH no Nexus and full tank. The reactor and +1 slot allow this extreme fit.

My cam mk2 will trade 4-5 guns to run this fit @ 150 KPH no weapons or e-war or defense.

Something to note on this fit is that it breaks the assault and below level fights instantly. You now have the speed to control every engagement, with demob immunity. You will outrun any bot that can out-range your demob while out-tanking anything faster than you.

This is one example using the current argument by no means is the arbalist the only issue.

Zoom you are summarizing a specific group of players opinions incorrectly. You are writing off the opinions of your Die-hard min/max style players. This is not to say the word of a min/maxer is gold, because this can lead to situations where knowledge is the only factor in winning but you need to understand their perspective.

When 'winning' is defined as never losing a bot things get interesting.

1) You wanted to enable more give and take play during combat and fitting while removing polarizing fits that could lock out entire segments of game-play across all robot classes.
*Let me know if you need the fits or examples*

- Good  shot, but you missed the balance. The good news is we have dialogue to resolve it now.

2) Who are these people and what are their fits. 

We had a great amount of flexible fits across almost all of the bots at every size(except a handful). However from years of experience we know what play-style and fits achieve the greatest chance of success in every environment and situation. 

Zoom when you are able to control every situation it leads to defined results.

3) the issue arises here from the basic design of the game. You had a rock, paper, scissor system of balance with extremes that drew the lines of rock, paper and scissors. In a effort to diversify 'fits' these extremes have been worn down patch by patch to where now our rock essentially paper and scissors cleans up.

This leads to a dull playing experience and everyone doing the 1-2 things that have a 5-10% better chance at winning.

4) The fits I see that have been destroyed were racial defining and racial extreme fits. They were also the key holders to our rock, paper, scissors balance. They needed tweaking not trashing, with a review of the roles for isolated 'useless' bots in the situations they were 'useless' . 

5) Can you share the techniques you have developed on comprehending the written English language. I have daily struggles, as a 23 year-old native English speaker,  in my work environment using written communication. This may help me portray my point to you better and others.

Lets just look at how Demobs are applied, individually. This means they have to break the TOTAL demob resistance of a robot with a SINGLE applying buff when using two.

If the equation were to factor the TOTAL demob against the TOTAL demob resistance this situation could be resolved.

If it is still a problem then I would suggest reviewing how the resistance and effect are scaling.

actually to get "equipped' it is far more of a grind and far more inaccessible for new players than PO. It has a crippling RNG factor on its crafting/progression for gear that short of mass production (with no tools for this) it is just a gold sink for the wealthy.

You see in order to 'gather' one must own some of the pre-defined player housing. (players can set TP's to these houses and many world portals similar and travel freely with no cool-down)

Some of this housing is located on or next to high level turn in hubs. Where a player must transport a item (drops on death) for crafting rewards and gear progress after turning it in.

I am not going to dive in to the mechanics, but from my point of view Anni. It is far easier to start out in PO than Archeage. Considering you dont even get a radar until your at the end-game (which some groups hit on day 3 of launch)  you will never progress unless they allow it.

EDIT: Their time based progression system is tied to being logged in and thus being offline is a debuff and you are capped on industrial progress based on the availability of these points.

Also, a great source for pleasure reading.