Umm...Yeah...thanks for the level-headed and unbiased input Krall.

You are, in fact, only two weeks behind me in stating that Nex, if it hangs together, will be the dominant power in Perpetuum.

Moving on...

By your own admission, alone...We could line up and shoot all the ***, children, carebears who you think everyone else playing this game is and replace them with....what? Krall clones? I guess I can understand that point of view...if I preferred playing with myself.

Do you have any useful suggestions for generating more pvp and creating a more dynamic economy?

Yes, anything that I can't pilot/afford, or just don't want to risk, must be OP, and must be banned from island. Buff me, nerf you.

Take some time farming and get some decent gear. Pvp doesn't exist in vacuum, it's pve supported, here as well as in eve.

If you look at the actual benefits you gain from from leveling up skills there really isnt much!

so some have 5% more damage, or 6% more optimal range, maybe they can lock 0.3seconds faster,  battles in PO, as with most pvp games, are won and lost by circumstances and situation.

My first ever pvp experience in eve was vs a 3 year old character who was in a full t2 fitted rifter,  I was in a t1 fitted rifter too and only 2 weeks old.  But the fact I have a plate on and he didnt ensured me the win.

Of course, PO isnt the same as "lock - orbit - fire " (and yes I know eve isnt quite as basic as that too)  but terrain makes a hell of a difference,  and roaming mobs.

So it may seem like a big difference but you can be assured that after a month or so the difference narrows very quickly.

so just keep rolling with those transport missions and making as much money as you can possibly make... the economy will right itself

I'm not Krall, obviously, but it seems like a lot of the problem stems from the fact that you can get everything you need on the alpha islands except epitron. So that's the one and only reason to leave those islands for miners. And since those locations are static and guarded by large corps, smaller corps like mine aren't willing to risk it (at this time). If more ores and harvestables were available only on the beta islands, you'd probably see more people moving out. But that requires a development change; there's nothing the players can do for that.

But remember, the problem in EVE of getting players out into lowsec never really went away either. I lived in a .1 system in Black Rise for the last year I played. It was very often dead except for our corp, even though the PI on the planets was far superior to what was available in highsec and the rats in the belts were good (plus when no Goons were around, we could sneak into their 0.0 system and rat their belts). We became much better players by moving out into the Wild West, but not everyone wants the stress and adrenaline rush of learning how to play by a harsher set of rules.

For what the players can do, if the larger corps declared a pact to leave miners and harvesters alone, and strictly abided by it until such days as it's no longer necessary, you might get a jump in the economy as more modules get made and more commodities end up for sale. It means allowing other corps to mine the islands they're dominating, but that's a sacrifice they'd have to make for the good of the entire game economy.

Fuel is not a NIC sink. If anything it is a material sink. If fuel is not tradable from player to player and only purchasable by NPCs, then purchasing fuel would be a NIC sink (purchasing it, not using it).

A lot of people use to say that losing robots (or ships or whatever) in PvP is a NIC sink. It isn't. It's a material sink. Actually if there's some sort of insurance then it's a NIC faucet.

In terms of global economy, NIC faucets and material sinks act as an inflationary force while NIC sinks and material faucets act as a deflationary force.

An economy is stable if these opposite forces cancel out (are balanced) AND there is high money speed in the markets. If there is not sufficient money speed, the economy is stagnant and prices will fluctuate wildly independently of any balancing forces. Such fluctuations cannot be controlled by balancing/unbalancing. With high money speed however the economy will tend toward stability in the long term as long as inflationary and deflationary forces are balanced.

Remember: NIC sink is a simple action that removes NIC from the economy, not something that removes it from you. If you buy stuff from another player the only NIC sink is any taxes/market fees you pay, not the price of the item you buy. Using fuel is not a NIC sink as there no NIC removed from the game when you use fuel. Buying fuel from an NPC is a NIC sink, not using it. Buying fuel from another player is not a NIC sink (except taxes and market fees).

I don't believe this would be the case. Epitron itself is a suffcient enough reason to go to the beta islands. The trouble isn't with the need, but with the expectation of success. You could move everything to beta, and still not get the alpha players to move, if the risk stayed as it is now, they would just stop playing.

Each group of players has a different expectation of what is an acceptable risk vs. reward. The current perception/reality is that Beta is a PVP arena, simply because you can shoot someone means you should.

It's a vicious circle, PVP players like fights and most of them like challenging heart racing fights, but because these fights are few and far between, they get bored, so when they see anything on thier radar they just attack it. If they happen to be in a group of 10, well all 10 players are bored, so it's not really fair to let just 1 or 2 fight, so it turns into a ganking. If it happens they run into a alpha corp in a beta mining op, with guards, they hop on vent and next thing you know, 30 show up and your dead.

The risk simply becomes 100% if your spotted, and no reward is worth 100% risk.

Change it up, so that even if your spotted, the roaming party needs to think twice before attacking.

When the beta area's are simply the playground for PVP action, then no incentive is going to be enough to get non-pvp players out there.

Make Beta-2 the wild-west, keep the pvp flag on all beta's, just add in a consequnce for blowing things up for no reason. And then, sure, make things less available on alpha and as long as the risk isn't 100%, we'll go to beta for it.

Aeon, its a start, but getting ore out of the ground is easy, but the built in 6U capacity of a small bot is 27K epitron, but if it takes an hour to get there and back, that's going to take a long time to get the 6 million ore I need to make a batch of Lithus's. What I'm saying is that you have to haul, and the sequar masking is terrible, and the feild container is a shiny beacon of fail.

Transport and the container are the weak links and what make it easy to get spotted, ie dead.

The risk is that everyone wants to kill the miners, and they can. Try to defend, and that's even better, cus now it's a battle, win or lose - we lose because we aren't there to fight.

Lolno, Lemon, you are wrong. Basic c/b analysis makes it start raving mad to hire a corp to protect a mining op. Any corp able to effectively protect the op will demand enough income to make it a better deal to mine in safety in alpha and buy the ish you need off the market.

Remember when I made some suggestions about auto miners? Of course you do, you were against them.

This was the exact reason I suggested them, said they should be beta only and said they should cost more PU than just mining the ish. It reduces the time you spend at risk, and allows you to mobilize an effective support force for the transport run to clear them all. Why? Because pvping defenseless targets is lamer than a fat chick with no legs.

But nooo, that would be intelligent and cut out the dedicated miner who, uh, as I recall, was still required to set them up and on a one to one basis to boot.

Seriously dude, you might want to revisit your opinion on the subject now that you are out and out agreeing with me that c/b is out of whack for ninjaing ore on betas.

I also wanted mining made more interesting and attention required than currently, but I can  understand not wanting your afk-able earnings taken away. That's an incentive for defending the status quo that makes sense. But a viable method for earning epi that also provides _fun_ targets for pvpers? Done and done.

I think hiring Merc's for protection is a great feature and adds a lot of flavor to the game. But again, if it comes down to a battle in the current situation, we've already lost.

There's no scaling between how much covering combat forces you need and the size of the operation.

Assuming we've made arrangements with the prominent force on a particular beta Island, that is we're paying for access from the 'owners', and we are looking just for protection from roaming groups.

1 mech, 1 assault, and 1 ewar would be enough to disuade a small pirate band, of course we are talking about hiring this group for 4-5 hours. These players opportunity costs would mean paying them 1.5M per hour for decently skilled pilots. There's 22 M NIC for that, plus the 10 M nice payed to the outpost owner, we're into it for 32 M NIC for a 4 hour mining sessions. This force isn't big enough to cover mining and transport, so add 300k per remote TP trip and another character on gate watch.

Anyway, where I'm going with that, is the operation is large enough that a small band will call in for a larger group, since there will be lots of targets, and then 3 won't be enough to defend.

It could easily get into 100 M NIC to get enough firepower to ensure a succesful mining OP, if you have to pay a Merc company for it.

It takes a lot of mining to get 100 M NIC's worth of epitron, and then it's break even, you've done all the extra risk with no better reward.

Alternately, if a beta corp was strong enough to lock down an their Island, then we could pay the owner 100M nic for access, but if that was possible, then it would be better just to pay that corp to mine it for me and not have to get 10 players togehter in 400M nic worth of mining bots for a day just to make it worth it.

Or, maybe I'm over-valuing Merc operations?

Depending on the quality of the mercs you hired depends on how effecting/risky the operation is.

For example the only concern you have is to maintain a Hauler to Mined amount ratio. As long as you are close enough to a TP to extract if spotted and your can is sub a lithus load at all time. You could easily effectively ninja mine.

As far as having a decent merc corp this is how i would view it. Assuming you hired top tiered mercs who would insist on a reimbursement policy on their death this is how it would go down.

Assume you have 6-12 rivler mining with 3 pilots defending and 3 lithus running. Can is empty at all times.  now assume a 5 man light roam spots this groups of targets... They can take it so they do 1 of 2 things.

Call for zerg light assistance or fall back and take 30+ min to form a effective squad. Assuming you are within 15 mins of a teleporter you can safely extract easily.

Utilizing 2 TP's you can minimize the number of lithus you need.

Mercs role would be to intercept and protect the rivlers at all cost, includes kamakzing if needed. There are plenty of pilots capable of fending off 10-25 enamy players in 3-5 man groups.