Plus one.
I’ve been thinking.
Oh boy.
I understand the jump drive range reduction and the jump fatigue timers are designed to limit power projection. I’ve done my own math, checked how it all works. Under current conditions, supercaps stationed in Doril, the regional gateway from Derelik, are able to threaten 398 null sec and low sec systems in 10 different regions.
One jump. One jump away from bored super pilots dropping a half dozen Aeons on a jump freighter, or dropping 4 pack of Aeons and Nyxes on a bubble camp of frigates and cruisers. After Phoebe, that 5 LY range shrinks the number of target systems to 33.
Without the jump fatigue timer, supers and carriers can just be infinitely repositioned to get into range of the target system. For large alliances, it’s trivial to have cynos where you need them and truthfully, for small alliances like Art of War Alliance, it’s not that difficult either. If you have the character slot, it’s trivial to train up an alt with Cloaking and Cyno 4, dual purposing a character for picket duty and lighting the occasional jump beacon.
I can see how CCP limiting all jump capable capitals to the same 5 LY distance makes it clean. But the more I think of it, the more I think that CCP needs to leave the jump range on jump freighters alone.
As a byproduct of managing power projection, CCP is nerfing the jump range on freighters. This makes it harder on the large alliances where 3 guys are in charge of moving alliance assets to support a thousand pilots. I can understand their point. It should be more difficult for large alliances to support all of their people.
In figuring out how this affects OUCH, I think that logistics is going from a solo activity to a group one. My corporation is going to have to work harder to move our stuff in and out of empire. We will have to mitigate the increased risk of more cynos and more jumps with teamwork. This is not debilitating because we are already have a team of pilots living in null who are used to doing our own logisitics to support our PvE and PvP.
But.
There are people out there that do not shoot stuff. They do not want to do this in groups. They mine. They build. They trade. They ship. They explore. They haul. They do these things because they find enjoyment doing this. It’s their game, just like your game is flying around making pew pew sounds.
There are people who try to stop them from doing these relatively peaceful activities. I am one of them. I have never let a blockade runner go when it has landed in my interdiction bubble. It’s not in my nature.
Uh, pirate?
Right. In my Eve profession, I’m a null sec pirate, defined by the NBSI policy of my corporation, and a teacher, defined by my role as a coach and mentor for new pilots. For someone whose profession is moving stuff from point A to Z, successfully avoiding someone like me is their PvP.
Avoiding the gank can be even more exciting than ganking.
But what CCP isn’t taking into account is that for most of those pilots handling corporate and alliance, or in the case of Black Frog, commercial logistics, logistics is their game. Their fun per hour is measured by contracts fulfilled, whether it’s Black Frog, or a SOV jump freighter pilot working for “The Man”. It’s not something they do in order to do PvP. It is their PvP. And when I say, it’s their PvP, I’m saying it so that lizard brained oh-look-it-moved-shoot-it PvPers can relate.
Listen up folks. Combat pilots are pretty lucky right now because we have an industry of players who willingly build things for us to fly, and another group that move those things to places that we need them. The jump range limitations and timers don’t hurt alliances, who can n+1 their way out of these inconveniences. But the professional jump freighter pilot, whose fun per hour is clearly measured in trips, not jumps, per hour. They just got screwed, and it’s not right, because they are not part of the power projection problem.
Collateral damage.
Let be clear: if CCP changed a game mechanic that required combat pilots to make and transport all of our own ships and modules ourselves, we’d be pretty upset.
Oh wait.
That’s coming with Phoebe.
Minus one.
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