I enjoyed this topic.

2/10 for effort, next time use Optikhan's sniper as a reference.

It's worth it to keep jabber up and running for drive-by logins.

Even better if you sit in TS playing fun games while ore mines itself.

That's an interesting narrative implying we didn't already kick your assorted bunch of whatever up, down and over the curb whenever we felt like it.

Here's a small sample refresher;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYLpt9fFgoY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBFR4lozJHg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU4Gfxl9ad0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SDM2uU9_yk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWpzpmgdtNY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeYf1DCEHek

Now by all means, carry on your best impression of Gevlon.

Beta lockouts are necessary for the security of any newbie beta operations.

Otherwise we'd be dropping out of whatever Beta station they were near. It's not like everyone doesnt have enough accounts by now.

I hope all these arguments that sound very convincing result in many Ictus' being fielded since they're balanced right?

1. Remove all static NPC spawns from Alpha.
2. Remove all liquid ores from Alpha.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Remove the opportunities for botting, they're bad game design. Everyone's quick to point fingers at corp-stockpiles being the reason for a dead economy, few have the capacity to understand what a NIC faucet botting is on Alpha.

Alternatively if you can't be arsed to develop the game and fix the faults, just make botting legal in the EULA then everyone can stop pretending it's a very riveting experience to shoot static spawns for 20 hours.

Quoted for truth.

Alpha is a botting paradise being abused daily.

Nerf the hell out of it, Alpha should never ever have anything close to Beta income levels, and right now Beta is worthless in comparison (no risk for PVP, no explosion damage costing you loot, perfectly AFK-able with a simple software and a sequer full of ammo).

And the part when they get butthurt and snappy after it all goes tits-up fails miserably and "I TOLD YOU SO"

Stockpiles by themselves aren't the problem.

The problem is there is nothing to use them on.

Beta has been steadily nerfed into the ground so the only real difference is +50 NIC on plasma and local epriton. Missions are more or less worthless money-wise for the effort required.

The most efficient way to generate liquid NIC is to do what a lot of dudes are doing all-day-erry-day build or pick one of the available botting programs, run it on Alpha for a week or so, cash in the plasma. No risk no effort except micromanaging ammunition and schedule for reloading.

Existing stuff has a value. The Devs simply removed any and all reasons (besides epeen) for using up existing stockpiles, so the only natural thing to happen is that stockpiles are drastically growing. Perpetuum was fun when we went to war for territory that was actually useful back in '10, now a days it's just bored botters fighting bored infinite-stockpiles and random noobs dreaming about overcoming 4-5 years of hardcore stockpiling.

Wipe won't solve it. It would just reset the stockpiling timer, until there's a reason to really spend resources the stockpiles will just keep on growing. To solve it the Devs would have to understand their own game and redesign the Alpha & Beta reward systems, which is a lost battle. Every time they removed a source of income (kernel sales, transport missions, beacon pits 1-2-3-4-5-6-7) the only thing they really did was insure nobody will ever be able to catch up to the existing stockpiles.

Waspfleet, Ictusfleet, Grophofleet - doctrines we designed and loved, but ultimately retired for very good reasons.

Nothing stops you from fielding them against us if you think Ictus is just fine.