Hold on, what if..

As I sit here manually piloting Orca’s to every corner of the Empire (literally), a possible problem with the new bounty system came to me.

Wealthy Pilots / Corps / Alliances could make the game unplayable for people they want to grief. Put a large enough bounty on a target (and keep it high), and they might not be able to undock again.

I wonder if there is a cost from Concord – such as 10% of the bounty is removed as a fee each week, so that over time it will reduce regardless if it is exercised or not?

Of course that is pure speculation. I have no idea how the system is going to work, and if there is a risk of this particular type of griefing or not.

More Undocking

My PI changes have at least temporarily worked – I’ve managed to be enthused enough to do 4 out of a possible 5 cycles over the last 10 days. It is certainly less bothersome. By tweaking the order of the planets I process I even managed to save a little extra time.

For as inane as the process looks on the outside, there is certainly something special in the PI system for the micro managers and perfectionists.

I have finished the Ship Refitting process and all of my roaming bases are ready to, well, roam. I am basically just stuck waiting for jump clone timers to run down to allow me to move each of the Orca’s out to their starting points.

I currently have 470,000m3 of stuff to sell off, EVE suggesting worth around 6.6B ISK – plus one Orca. I am down to 41,000m3 of stuff to sort through, worth apparently around 1.4B ISK. Most of that should go to be sold as well. The whole process should end up allowing me to do what I was before, but with an extra 6B ISK in the wallet. Packrat is probably an apt description of some who can collect so much unnecessary junk.

On the plus side my Trading Alt is able to manage 269 orders. On the negative side, there are some 600 individual items to organise the sale of.

I’ve had to adjust my training of my main for a few days. One of the mobile bases I am preparing is new – for Low Sec exploration and mining. I realised my main did not have the skills to use all the mining crystals required to cover off what you can find in low sec gravimetric sites, so I’ve added various Ore Processing Skills to the queue. Training for a specific purpose at least makes things more interesting.

I noticed my main passed 105M SP, with recent highlights being Astrometrics V, Achaeology V, and the Minmatar and Amarr Electronic T3 Subsystems V skills (all to help with exploration).

(I am not doing much in space at the moment – RL has continued with its cow moments.  This process has however kept me amused and distracted for a while.)

The next EVE expansion now has a name – retribution.

 

There are a few gaming websites which provide additional information, such as:

http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/29/ccp-unveils-eve-online-retribution-coming-this-winter/

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/14/feature/6763/Winter-Expansion-Retribution-Unveiled.html/page/1

http://www.theverge.com/gaming/2012/9/29/3425080/eve-online-retribution-preview

I am pleased that they are looking at the Bounty area. The current system is so easily gamed that it is useless. Differences include being able to put bounties on any Player, Corporation or Alliance, without them having to of wronged you first. The bounty payout rates will now depend on how much loss the target suffers, including taking into account insurance payouts and the like. That could still be manipulated due to the errors in how CCP calculates the average value of things. (I still have that laser crystal that the game suggests is worth 200M, but sells in Jita for less than 1M.) It is an improvement though.

If it works like I assume, there seem to be some really interesting gaming elements in this change. If you want to grief a Hi Sec Corporation, you can put a Bounty of 1B ISK on them. Suicide Gankers could then target their haulers and miners, and in effect get paid for the kills – basically like a Mini Hulkageddon. I can imagine people will be crying about the pendulum swinging too far back into the Griefer’s ball court. However it adds new elements and complexity to how the game can be played. If you get it right CCP, this will be an excellent change.

You have a reiteration of the old ships, addition of new destroyers and a mining frigate, and the NPC AI changes which have been previously mentioned. They also mention a Salvaging Drone. Be interesting to see how effective those are.

You also have an update to Crimewatch – to make it easier to identify the effect of performing actions, and what flags you have and how long they have to run down. You can toggle the level of warnings you get, which is ideal for newer players. Assuming it is implemented well, I think this is a good thing for the game.