I don't think this is a good idea Zoom. In my mind we're way beyond the point where someone can "run out of bots" overnight, it just gives all the vet corps a way to pay to X-uple the size of their stockpiles with NIC (that everyone has squirreled away on mule accounts due to more then half a year of botting on Alpha).

Alpha income is sorted, any noob with a Sequer can prolly fit out a PVP robot in 30 minutes of running something like L5 transport missions.

As a NIC facet, missions are better then static spawn botting because for example I can't take 3k medium missile launchers to Gamma, recycle them and haul the commodities to Beta for production anymore.

Personally I like this change because it means nobody in my corporation will have to mine anything EVER regardless how many times we lose robots - we'll be able to do really dumb sh*t and not give 2 f*cks.

But I think it's bad for the game in general.

Zoom what are your thoughts on an alliance system down the road?

Is it something that's completely off the table?

Zoom, Ville has a good point.

The resources it takes to produce lights, assaults and light ewars are *** high. Simplify those 3 classes and you'll be buffing newbies significantly.

I mine Titan on Beta all the time wtf is wrong with you Jita.

I know everyone including me is fawning over the other blog stuff, but this is still a highly gamebreaking topic that deserves more attention and more dialogue with the Devs.

Talk to us Zoom.

There is a very open niche for actual (logi) remote repair and remote transfer robots. Termis just isn't being used since it received it's bonus change, and lets be honest its a bad mining bot anyway.

The logi department in itself definitely needs fleshing out mechanic-wise (heavy cap usage of RR, have to rely on shield tank 99% of the time, etc etc).

Additionally, if you go the machinegun bonus route perhaps a drawback of the race might be a very small capacitor in comparison with the other races?

Are we designing glorious WINMATAR here?

There better be some rust and duck tape.

I think it would be hilarious if it happened in the middle of some large PVP fight, people accidentally stepping on observer landmines etc.

Are you planning to tweak the reward (thus incentive) for owning a lockable Beta outpost by maybe adding a modifier for outpost owners for mission reward or Obi's field terminal tax idea maybe?

I might be a bit selfish here but for a long time I've wanted a reason to cultivate a Beta-side NRDS market hub, but there was never any reason to do so. With Obi's idea about field terminal tax coming to the corp controlling the outpost of the sector, I could definitely see a big fat reason to a) capture an outpost b) stimulate random people to come live there c) police the sector.

A lot of effort with a lot of potential reward. I'm sure someone wouldn't like it and would come kill random people, which generates content in itself.

It would be beneficial if they didn't have the availability to undock from my home-base with impunity though, there's an excellent SAP mechanic in place that allows anyone to unlock an outpost in a day or two assuming we win every fight.

I feel like having L5's on Alpha 2 and L5-6 on Beta might be a bit too much income for Alpha, but we'll have to see.

Thanks for answering Zoom!

Aside from staging for epriton mining and gamma, how will better missions come into the equation? What is your vision for making stations worth owning, balancing the risk of losing territory with the reward of owning territory?

I wouldn't be convinced either TBH, the arguments in favor largely revolve around an excuse to live on Beta and blueball any fights that might not be 100% sure wins.

If you unlock any outposts, you might consider stopping them being capturable by player-corporations and their SAP's should be discontinued (to prevent easy ninja-SAP-farming with an alt). Just empty NPC terminals with same facility efficiency like TMB/ICSB/ASB.

The "griefing potential" honestly can't even be called griefing, if the station is open there's nothing inherently wrong with Alliance A moving a portion of their accounts or all of their combat accounts into Corporation B's homebase and taking it over. It's a sound strategy when you have a superior force at your disposal, and I'm sure everyone who can will be using it in some degree.

I could argue thats one of the many reasons station locks were implemented in the first place (Zoom, do you remember how quickly F-Navy quit the game en-masse because Styx brought M2S to live in Brightstone? 3 days!), but ultimately it's the Dev's choice what is allowed.

I personally am not looking forward at all to going back to those days of camping someone's home-base until they move elsewhere or go to Alpha.