Penny criticizes the effects of the new discovery scanner in wspace. Right on. I put some suggestions there in a comment, but recently read another good suggestion (by Sugar Kyle): have automatic discovery happen only in highsec. The explanation is that it is an service provided by empires. The effect is what we want: to alert newbs to the world of exploration, while keeping more dangerous spaces mysterious.
Here's a few other changes I'd like to see made related to probing and sites.
Remove the Z-axis arrow in scanning. Already covered.
Put back ore signature sites, and add ice ones. This does not mean eliminating the current anomaly-based mining sites. (It might mean making them a bit rarer.) Variety is good. As it is, making all mining sites be anoms makes it too easy. Anyone can see anoms, which makes them little different from fixed asteroid sites. This is true both for the miner and the ganker. Sig sites change the balance somewhat to favor better-prepared miners. Not only do they have less competition from other miners, they also have a level of warning (seeing scan probes) from gankers that is not available in asteroid fields or anoms.
Add in some deadspace-based mining sigs. (That is, they have a warp gate like a mission site.) These should have enough tough rats to require at least a modest combat ship to kill, like a level 3 mission. Thus, to exploit them you'd need both scanning and PVE combat capability, in addition to the ability to mine. Mining in deadspace would be safer than mining in sig-sites, because gankers must reveal themselves at the warp gate for at least a few seconds. Also you can jetcan the entrance to make cloaked entry hard.
The change to move ore sites to be anomalies is plain peculiar when coupled with already making scanning more obvious and almost trivial to do. It's not like it would take long or much more skill training to find them as miners, and their by-default hidden nature would keep them somewhat underutilised and worth finding. As it is, they are just additional asteroid fields.
ReplyDeleteDeadspace mining sites sounds like a nice idea, but as all rats have been removed from relic and data sites I don't think they would be implemented with any kind of necessary combat.
And, yes, keeping the discovery scanner only in high-sec seems reasonable, to show new pilots that there are signatures but without holding their hand when they move to more dangerous space. They need to know they'll have to fend for themselves at some point. It may even encourage other carebears to move out of high-sec, if only to avoid the annoying animation with every session change.
Current ore sites are not exactly extra asteroid fields. You cannot set up bookmarks in them, and you cannot predict where they will be. To find them, you must roam.
ReplyDeleteAnd that roaming is why I guess that CCP made them so easy to find. All of the mining barges and exhumers have no utility high slot to put a probe launcher in, so either you accept half-rate mining (or zero rate in some barges), or you have to use two ships. Having to use two ships is very little extra bother if you stick to just one system or a few. But if you want to roam around looking for sites, it's not really viable.
I don't see any connection between the removal of rats in relic/data sites, and possible new mining sigs.
Do you really find the extra animations annoying? I pay no attention to them, but they don't bother me on those rare occasions when I do see them. If anything I find them charming and scifi-ish and high-techish. Kind of like when I bother to hide the spreadsheets and viddy the gorgeous view around my POS. (My POS is at a moon of a Saturn-like gas giant, with lovely ring.)