Fireside Chat Transcript 2024 09 28
Ranger Gama:
Well, hello, everybody. Just waiting for numbers to stabilize and we'll get going. Uh, so I know we, we thought he was lying, but no, literally a tree fell on the near Asher's house. Didn't hit his house this time, um, but he's literally out in his neighborhood today, uh, cleaning up after, you know, some little bit of storm, you know, or something.
That's what happens when you live in Florida. You know, I, I questioned how many trees actually are near Asher's house, and he says that, um, he planted a whole bunch of them, and then Beyond accused him of making up a word, um, which was fun today.
Beyondnoxx_UNP:
He made up a word. That word doesn't exist.
Ranger Gama:
Uh, so is, is Asher safe and sound? Yes, I talked to him this morning. He's, he's okay. He's literally in his neighborhood right now, more or less with a, with a chainsaw cutting down trees and trying to fix all the stuff for him and his neighbors. Hopefully they won't try and pay him with hot sauce, you know, cause, you know, we don't want him to die or anything like that, but he's okay. I talked to him this morning.
Kazanir:
It's like a throwback. This is one of my very first memories when I came back to the Alliance during the war was Asher having a tree fall on his house. Hey, everybody. What'd you all think of that blog?
Snipereagle1:
How about them lowsec tears, though? Aww, we're not a vending machine of content to the rest of the game anymore.
Kazanir:
I mean, I feel like we still are, but just on a very predictable schedule, instead of whenever the heck they want. Which seems like an improvement, you know, uh, so can someone link the blog? I don't have it. Yes, the sky hook change anticipation blog was this week. Uh,
Snipereagle1:
I got it.
Kazanir:
Thank you. So for those, I'll just catch everyone. Uh, if you had not been paying attention all summer, the way sky hooks extracting currently works is that they can be hit at basically any time, uh, and successfully stealing from one deletes, uh, about 60 percent of the reagents they're called that are in them. Uh, and so as a result of this, because a lot, you know, most alliances don't feel like they can defend something 24 7 where the attacker has the initiative. The owners have basically been stealing their own. Um, everyone hated that. So CCP has proposed some changes, uh, and instead what they're intending to do is basically generate a timer for each collection Skyhook every three days. Uh, I have a couple of joke names for this. One is a pre enforcement timer, uh, because it's done for the attacker. Essentially the attacker doesn't have to initiate, the Skyhook just gets this timer on a basically a three day schedule with a lot of wiggle and when it shows up. And so they are, they are still quite vulnerable. There's about 3,450 total lava and ice planets scattered across all Sov. So if you work that out, it means basically CCP is giving Team Raider, the low sec guys, whatever you want to call a thousand free theft timers a day.
They all hated that this week, also, as Sniper is referring to, there's just been amazing amounts of crying Um, and. Uh, a general lack of understanding, right? I have, I and CCP have been trying to explain to people that the content currently is on this race to the bottom. Uh, someone even in arguing with me pointed out, oh, hey, we're having these cool fights over 8 million isk in a skyhook and I just let out the largest sigh of my life in hearing that, because that's not really the point.
So what, what I love about the new mechanics is that there is a guarantee of any given timer being meaningful. Uh, which means you can't, you can't come out and steal the stuff before it's there. The owner can't pick it up early. If you show up to the start of one of those timers, either you have the opportunity to, to make the theft yourself if no one is there, or there's going to be a fight and it's going to be over uh, basically one and a half days of full output. It gets half of the three day output is available for theft. Um, so this is, you know, you will see on Reddit, people are saying this is going to kill the content. I'm suspicious that that's not true because it's a thousand timers a day. Uh, they show up in space, they can be scouted. If they're open, they show up in the agency.
Um, and yes, so Sapphire asked, doesn't this just mean we'll still have to self steal? So the effect of this, they have, it looks like, and maybe they'll change this again, I don't know. But for the time being, it looks like they have removed the penalty on theft. So self stealing is basically a supported and symmetric mechanic.
And so we will presumably show up to every one of those timers we can. If no one gets the timer, and it's open all hour, then it just closes again, and the next timer will have double that amount in the surplus bay, it's called. So of course, that's possible too. Um But yeah, so there is, there's certainly still a lot of work and effort involved in these new mechanics. We'll see how they play out. Um, but the, the current thing was, was just not working from anyone's perspective, including CCP's.
Uh, so Hultaji asks, isn't the owner can just empty the skyhook bow silos one second after the volume timer will open? Right, that, that is possible. By moving to symmetric theft, everyone is motivated to show up right at the beginning. Um, and I, I would have preferred they did not get rid of the asymmetric nature. I think it would be cooler if we were always trying to defend and there were some benefit for that. Uh, but nevertheless. Even with a symmetric timer, the timer has been generated three days prior, uh, and so it can be scouted. Someone can, can come through the system and say, hey, hey, well, there's a Skyhook timer in here. I need to come back at such and such a time. And so I anticipate that that is what you will see quite a lot of, uh, especially as they, they wander.
So the other key mechanic here is that there's a wander on the vulnerability window. We pick the time that we want it centered around, but then it can drift around that time by I think the current implementation is up to 6 hours. Uh, and it's in a sort of bell curve around the central time. Um, so I think that'll be very interesting. It won't just be all at 1 time. There will be sort of all over around whatever time zone we pick. But the time that if you, if you pick correctly, you'll get 8 or 12 hours on the backside that is basically protected that there won't be any inside of. Uh, let me go through, I'll just keep answering questions here. You guys are asking the right stuff.
Malplox asked, does it go to 3x, 4x and so on if not collected? That, that's my understanding. So if, if multiple timers get skipped, it just keeps statically, you know, accumulating stuff in what's called the surplus bay. It doesn't transition at all to the secure bay. They don't affect each other. So hypothetically, if you skip 5 timers, you're going to have 5 days of 50 percent output in there for the timer that someone does show up for.
Uh, I, Alhazrie asks, even emptying by people on ACL? So I believe the secure bay can be picked up at any time. Uh, but there's no reason to go do it more frequently. Because, well, it's a static amount of output. You could collect that every week or every two weeks as I understand it. It's just, it's secure, it's there, you get the half that's yours.
Uh, there is not currently any ESI for Skyhooks, no endpoints that we're familiar with. Uh, they do have some notifications that come through EVE mail. We're parsing those as hard as we can just to know where they are. Uh, so that certainly is an unfinished bit of the expansion. Um, Let's see.
Um, so hey, can we set the timers on the forum so we know when to possibly form? We haven't really worked that out yet. We don't know how much information we're going to get or how easily and certainly there'll be, you know, a bunch of them every day. It's not clear what we want people to be doing, or if they're worth focusing on. It depends who shows up, but I imagine that that that will be a part of the future.
Uh,
Snipereagle1:
Keep in mind that there's going to be like hundreds of these, so. You know, slamming the forum calendar, how many, with all the like skyhook timers would just be like so much information that you wouldn't be able to see like important forum calendar ops.
Kazanir:
Yeah. Um, Karmabad asks, is CCP going to work on ESI? They are working on it. I have been assured. There were some fixes earlier in the summer that fixed some of the missing ESI stuff, but there are still some pieces, especially around the new SOV hubs and the new, uh. And the skyhooks that are not operational yet. It is a frequent topic with us.
Speaking of us, the CSM campaign is coming. If you have been paying any attention, that is ongoing now. People are applying, we don't have a ballot yet, but we probably will by next week. I think the campaign officially begins on the 4th. I have to double check, but so there's just a couple of weeks of campaigning and then voting is later in October. So get ready to vote exactly as the state tells you. I am running for a 3rd term against some of my better judgment, but things are, you know, they've been a fairly big mess this summer, and I am on the quest, so there will be more posts about this coming. I am happy to take other questions, uh, but that is, that is finally here. They delayed this term again by another month or two. So as of this writing, Angry Mustache and I have been in office for two terms and twenty eight months, I think it is. So that's been a little odd. Uh, yeah.
Uh, Rang asks is our mumble fixed now? So the mumble problems were not exclusively our fault. I will not comment on them further because there is not enough information and the difficulties that were not our fault were confusing, uh, in various ways.
Snipereagle1:
I mean, we can just say it was network problems at a provider level.
Kazanir:
Right. But, so we think for the time being that we're okay on Mumble. Uh, 4thtime_lasttime asked, does CCP even listen to the CSM? Uh, that, the answer to that is definitely yes. They, they do listen. It's not like we're getting stonewalled. We're not getting the cold shoulder. We're not getting iced out. At the same time, there's 12 CSM and a lot of game designers that want to design their game. So, the fact that they are listening does not always result in the right stuff. And sometimes the stuff they listen to, you know, I can't, I can't give a ton of detail. But for example, uh, during CSM 17, I wrote some stuff about how to fix the reserve banks. And some of what I wrote sort of resembles the current Skyhook mechanics that everyone hated, and that did not work. Does that mean I invented them? No, of course not. Obviously. If, if that is even connected, a designer had to take that and turn it into something. And there's a huge gap between where those things happen and a lot of other people are involved and sometimes it doesn't work out. Uh, it's a similar story for the new Skyhook mechanic. I did, you know, try and come up with some ideas and write about how I thought something like that could work. But of course, is the blog exactly what I wrote them? No, it's not like that at all. Uh, it's a, it's a feedback process. Um, and that, you CSM probably works better than a lot of public, uh, feedback organizations, just like we feel like our alliance, uh, works better than, uh, many businesses, corporations in the real world. Uh, but nevertheless, that does not make it a clean picture. And there are lots of events where, uh, you know, like I said, everyone will hate that thing.
Snipereagle1:
On the topic of IT stuff as well, we know that, uh, we know that goonmetrics still has issues. We fixed the updating issue. Uh. But there's some instability in the ESI endpoints that it uses, so we're still waiting for some other stuff to get fixed. So, unfortunately, I don't have a satisfactory answer for you. It will get fixed when it can be fixed.
Kazanir:
Elysium in chat is trying to lay a curse on me.
Snipereagle1:
Oh god, guy's not like this.
Kazanir:
Right, exactly. I will, I will add. I mean, Fozzie gets a bad rap over Aegis Sov, right? I think a lot of people know that. However, I am old, and I can remember far back enough to a point in 2011 and 2012, on a very old forum called Kugetsuman, where a lot more players thought that something like Fozzy Sov would be awesome.
I'm, I promise you, I'm telling the truth. Those are real conversations. They happen. That forum is dead. It was failed to be migrated by one of the test admins that took it over in late 2016. But that's a real, that's a real story, you know, um, that, that's, uh, those mechanics got Fozzie's name, right? He was obviously responsible. He was, uh, you know, a big part of that expansion, but there were a ton of players who thought we want to get away from the SBUs, get away from the pitched battles, get away from the EHP thing, and they all said that was good, and CCP listened to some extent to that, right? Um, so these are complicated topics. Giving feedback is always dangerous. It's always a little bit of a monkey's paw. Um, that's where we are. Let's see if I missed another question.
Ranger Gama:
So 4thtime you're asking about a, a war update. Asher will be back with us next week for a war update. He has promised in stone that he will be here next Saturday for you all for a big war update. So he will do a war update next Saturday. He has, he has sworn Kaz even put in there, you know, Thanos will return. He will be here on Saturday for you guys next week. Yeah. So you see, guys, here's the thing, right? Firesides need fire. Fire comes from wood. Asher is chopping wood right now. You see everything all works out. Okay. Well, he's using a chainsaw, but still.
Beyondnoxx_UNP:
Modern problem. Modern solutions.
Kazanir:
Someone in chat asked about Grayscale. So maybe we can do a brief story time. Grayscale was very famous in the sort of 2010 to 2015 period. Um, and his introduction to the player base was a bad one. There was a CSM, which I think was CSM 5, that basically did not have very many nullsec people on it.
And in the course of CSM 5, they were looking at nerfing projection, and they changed POS, starbase jump bridges, you previously could have two of them in one system, so you could have a whole highway without taking any stargates at all. Um, they nerfed that to the current form where you can only have one in a system, uh, and Grayscale got a bad rap starting with that. Um, and many other changes. I personally argued with him a number of times on the forums about nerfing jump freighters, uh, et cetera, et cetera.
But then, at the end of his career, or close to it, with CCP, he was the guy who was responsible for the invention of jump fatigue. Uh, which, In hindsight, was one of the best balancing changes they've ever done. Uh, you know, it was very unpopular at launch, it had to be fixed, it was horrible. You could get years of space aids, as Apple Pear mentions. Uh, but, ten years later, I don't think that the game would have survived if they had not added some kind of capital jump fatigue, because I played all those years against people who didn't have any, and it was, it was so much more broken than current projections. Holy cow. Um, so again, these things are a little bit complicated, you know.
Ranger Gama:
And you know as much as I don't like jump fatigue when they first put it in I have to agree with kaz like if we had had the version we have now at the beginning, everybody I think would have been cool with it Those of you who were not playing back at that point to see like an entire PL fleet drop on you from 500 systems away. It it was fucked up. Do we have any other things for everybody or we just do an open Q&A now? Did I miss anything on our agenda for today?
Kazanir:
I've just been rolling questions for 20 minutes, you know.
I would assume Asher is using a Kirkland brand chainsaw. I can't confirm that because I don't know that those exist technically, but if it's not, he might even have some sort of Kirkland decal on it to pretend. I don't know.
Ranger Gama:
That's a good call. Are we saying he's cheap? No, we're saying he goes and buys like 500 of them at once because it's the Kirkland way.
Kazanir:
All right. War updates have got to wait for Asher. Stay tuned.
Ranger Gama:
Yeah, guys, again, Asher will do a big war update with you all next week.
Uh, is Catch showing us a lot on the new mechanics? Yeah, we've learned a lot on on all of these pieces. It's really been interesting to see the workforce, the power, you know, how the new structures, the minor and major, um, ratting upgrades, all those kind of pieces. It's been. We've been learning a lot the last few weeks of, of doing these.
Uh, right, can NPC space be added to SovNull stuff? You know, we'd love that if they put it into the drone regions.
Snipereagle1:
It'll happen one expansion after we take the drone regions.
Ranger Gama:
Can we get more videos where we suddenly show up in the middle of Horde's place and blot the hell out of them with Whalers? Uh, I mean, moving fleets through wormholes to do that is fine. That's more of a specific question as a military guy.
Kazanir:
Those fleets do happen. So, I mean, I can give a brief update on the war. We have like 9,000 timers today. Uh, people are definitely figuring out, oh, hey, we can hit this space and Goons will respond. So there's a little bit of that happening. Uh, so especially even though we have not provided you a full war update, stay frosty, look alive. Uh, if you've been sort of just chilling for a couple weeks, there certainly seems like there will be stuff to do. Uh, pay attention to fleet.
Uh, if you are one of those guys who made your, your control alt delve alt months ago and has never logged it in, maybe this is the week to finally do that. Hint, hint, hint, hint, hint, hint, hint, hint, hint, hint.
Uh, so we definitely have stuff that you could be doing. Uh, another note, we do have a bunch of citadels that because of the GEZ reorganization are already marked, Do Not Use, get your stuff out of there. Uh, we. So those, uh, you know, we have given a bunch of time for that to happen. We're reminding you again, but if it's marked that way, at some point, that is going to come up and you need to have your stuff gone or it's going to, uh, go to asset safety.
Ranger Gama:
Uh, so if the ping says jump clones green, yes, that means you could jump your mains back. If it says jump clones red, that means no, don't do it and get your CAD alts on.
Kazanir:
Uh huh. That's right.
Ranger Gama:
So if you've got something in one of the Do Not Use things and you need help moving, that's an excellent thing to reach out to your corp members about, like poke your, poke your corpies, and see if they've got something they can help you move with, or if you can help somebody with.
Kazanir:
Right, if you happen to have Omegas in Delve, certainly they're welcome on those fleets, assuming you can fly the right thing. Yeah, it's not, it's not illegal.
Snipereagle1:
We always need, we need boosts. We need dictors, you know, those are things that you can't do on, uh, on alphas. Um, but yeah, really it's about like, we need to be able to go fast. And so, have your CAD alt and have a ship pre purchased so that if we ping a CAD fleet, you should be able to log in, grab the ship, doesn't matter what else you're doing, all you have to do is dock, close those clients, get in fleet on your alpha, like, it, it's about response time, right? Um, so yeah, when people, uh, when people join and they're like, Oh, like, how do I get a ship or they're like, oh, I have an FNI? Yeah, that's the stuff that's not helpful when the FC just really needs people in the fleet to go kill whatever's bashing our shit. And, and yeah, like it was, it was absolutely heavily inspired by the Ghost Program and INIT. Uh, I actually came to Goons from INIT, and in INIT, the, um, Ghost Program was very successful, and it's something that we, uh, you know copied and it's it's been going well.
We just uh...
Kazanir:
We wish we were more successful at it hint hint.
Ranger Gama:
So since goons are terrible at subtle and Kaz is trying to be subtle. Um. Get your CAD alts on and actually use them god damn it. There you go Uh, no cormorants on contracts, right? All right. Um sniper, I will get in and deal with that. We've got corms, we just ran out of them on contracts We'll get some listing.
Beyondnoxx_UNP:
If you ask, uh, Gooniveristy, I think they have some.
Snipereagle1:
We have plenty. We just need to refill contracts. Ghoster, you don't, you don't get to talk about structures because you can't figure out how to fuel them.
Ranger Gama:
Damn. It's true. Boy, maybe we end the, uh, Fireside on that note. Shall we do that?
Snipereagle1:
I look forward to killing them again in two years, Ghoster. My heck. Well, I guess any other questions before we call it a day there?
Apple Pear:
Did I miss anything today?
Snipereagle1:
Nope. Sounds good. Thanks everybody.
Ranger Gama:
Cool. Alright guys, everybody enjoy your enjoy your Saturday if you are out on the fleets with those timers. There are timers today. So make sure you're looking for pings to go and shoot the baddies.
Have a good one. Everybody. We'll see you next week.
Kazanir:
Bye everyone.
