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[Esna Pitoojee]

I think a stalemate is really the best way to describe it. CONCORD can't actually get Nation to go away (or even go away quickly, thanks to the whims of capsuleers) but on the other hand Nation's efforts at interdicting capsuleers have been a stupendous failure at the basic issue of making the capsuleers care, and he can't actually make any major new steps (i.e., actored live events) without the capsuleers waking up and coming down on him like a ton of bricks.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

I'd be hard pressed to call it a stalemate unless he were unable to take people from the incursion systems - granted, I don't do incursions, so I'm not sure how often that aspect of them is cut short. If an incursion that lasts until the Sansha mom pulls out takes a few million people, then he's steadily building up his army with each one.

[Morwen Lagann]

I'd be hard pressed to call it a stalemate unless he were unable to take people from the incursion systems - granted, I don't do incursions, so I'm not sure how often that aspect of them is cut short. If an incursion that lasts until the Sansha mom pulls out takes a few million people, then he's steadily building up his army with each one.

It's been established that whatever Nation is doing isn't involving anything planetside at this point, so the only ~things~ they're doing are in space.

There might be minor deadspace pockets they're yoinking folks out of, but as I said earlier, that stage of things is over. The 'upliftings' were entirely within the domain of the live events leading up to the expansion. They never had any representation ingame beyond :words: in local from event actors, and they never will, either.

Besides, when you can just keep pooping out clones of the people you took already, why would you need to take more people? Nation deploys rebirthing/cloning facilities into every incursion - they're one of the HQ-level sites, in fact. They have the people already. They don't need more.

[AOkazon]

Then why do the DED bulletins in Incursion systems say they're fighting off planetary abductions and that's why capsuleers have to do all the front-line work? Honest question.

[Morwen Lagann]

No, they say they are on standby in the event they occur.

Attention all capsuleers: Sansha's Nation forces have staged an incursion of the %(constellationName)s constellation. Local empire navies are standing by to protect against planetary abductions. Reinforcements are required to actively remove the threat.

All pilots who offer assistance will be rewarded.

Authorized by Operation Ishaeka Commander Vieve Creston
DED Special Operations
CONCORD cannot guarantee the operational security of this channel. Attendants are advised to use caution when sharing intelligence.

Also, it's stated that Nation has shifted to other things, in one of the site descriptions itself, for the Override Transfer Array. (Highlighted in yellow.)

Override Transfer Array

Forces Required:
• 5 - 10 pilots

Military Intelligence:
Your objective is to destroy the Sansha’s Nation fleet amassing here. They will be making use of logistics arrays, so disabling them may be advisable.

Rewards:
• 15,000,000 ISK × ratio
• 2,000 CONCORD LP × ratio

Background Intelligence:
One of the most significant evolutions in the Nation’s strategy has been the move away from abducting planetary populations. Their new tactical doctrine, which relies in part upon system-wide capsule interference, is clearly focused on limiting the power and influence of the capsuleer class.

The technology underlying the system-wide capsule overrides is not dissimilar to CONCORD’s own Tracking and Response System (TRS). Where it veers into new territory is in the application of new technologies designed to override local resources in ways previously thought impossible. Intelligence gathered by DED operatives strongly suggests that this facility is chiefly responsible for establishing these overrides.

Synopsis from ISHAEKA-0095. DED Special Operations.
Authorized for Capsuleer dissemination.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

Gotcha. So it really is more of a stalemate. Not because of the effectiveness of the capsuleers, but because of the effectiveness of the various empire's navies in resisting planetary abductions.

[Morwen Lagann]

It's implied by the incursion channel that it's a stalemate until the capsuleers get involved - the local navies are on standby to defend against abductions, not other actions.

We're supposed to be those 'reinforcements' that are being referred to. Capsuleers should be acting as an immune system w/r/t incursions, kicking the things out as fast as possible.

Instead, we're doing something more akin to kicking someone out of our house when they're already in the process of leaving, because we've been too busy playing video games with them until then.

[Saede Riordan]

Gotcha. So it really is more of a stalemate. Not because of the effectiveness of the capsuleers, but because of the effectiveness of the various empire's navies in resisting planetary abductions.

No, reread this, bolding mine:

Attention all capsuleers: Sansha's Nation forces have staged an incursion of the %(constellationName)s constellation. Local empire navies are standing by to protect against planetary abductions. Reinforcements are required to actively remove the threat.

All pilots who offer assistance will be rewarded.

Authorized by Operation Ishaeka Commander Vieve Creston
DED Special Operations
CONCORD cannot guarantee the operational security of this channel. Attendants are advised to use caution when sharing intelligence.

Standing by. They're in place to try and stop abductions, that doesn't mean abductions are still happening, as Morwen stated, they already have people, they don't need more people. Their actions are centred around 'limiting the power of capsuleers' this is done...somehow...by letting the capsuleers farm their forces. It really looks to me like Sansha's forces are almost studying capsuleers, watching their responses and how they react to the incursions. Planning...plotting...waiting.

Again, Nation still have like 4-5 superweapons up their sleeve that they aren't using.

[Morwen Lagann]

... Or, alternatively, they don't have any more superweapons we don't know about, and every toaster left in New Eden right now, player and NPC alike, is actually nothing more than reusable cannon fodder keeping people entertained so they don't get bored and start looking for where the so-called "promised land" is, where Kuvakei is sitting around drinking mojitos and stroking his bald.

Remember, player capsuleers are fickle by nature  and are not actually bound to any loyalty or employment choice they make. Even Kuvakei recognizes this (effectively) meta-aspect of the 'unbound' capsuleers. Basically, he 'knows' we're all playing a game and going to do things that support our enjoyment of that game.

Besides the fact of not wanting to give away the secrets of the storyline, this would be why not even the Sansha loyalists have any actual idea about what's going on.

[Silas Vitalia]

This is why static, unchanging content is always a terrible idea.


I prefer to give the game feature a bit of 'wiggle room' and assume incursions are still dangerous, doing ebil things to all sorts of people, and plenty of New Eden is fighting the good fight to keep them at bay.

This is again why Eve needs dynamic security status for every single system.  Events, features, and things happening should have real effects on the status quo.

Give people 24 hours notice, give them plenty of traffic warnings, but the only way to encourage people to create dynamic content is to provide more building blocks.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

It's implied by the incursion channel that it's a stalemate until the capsuleers get involved - the local navies are on standby to defend against abductions, not other actions.

We're supposed to be those 'reinforcements' that are being referred to. Capsuleers should be acting as an immune system w/r/t incursions, kicking the things out as fast as possible.

Instead, we're doing something more akin to kicking someone out of our house when they're already in the process of leaving, because we've been too busy playing video games with them until then.

As a caveat: I'm talking a bit out of my ass, since I haven't participated in repelling an incursion since the month they were new. That said...

It would be interesting if, instead of the current "staged" incursion reward system, there was a single payout for repelling the incursion. Perhaps a time-sensitive payout - the sooner the incursion is repelled, the more of a reward there is. It could be allocated in a similar manner to current incursion rewards. This might provide more of an impetus for players to actually act as the cavalry, zipping in and trying to shut the thing down as soon as possible.

[Shintoko Akahoshi]

This is again why Eve needs dynamic security status for every single system.  Events, features, and things happening should have real effects on the status quo.

This is a very sexy idea, in my opinion.

Balancing it would be difficult, but I can imagine something where each system has a baseline security status that it always "wants" to return to - i.e.: in the absence of other effects, it will gradually return to this status. Events and the like could change this baseline, but players should be able to do the same thing (within reason). Pirates might decide to hit a 0.5 system pretty hard, and attack CONCORD and the navy there. They'd get standings hits, but if they keep up the pressure they should be able to drop the security status of that system to 0.4 or lower. To keep it there they'd have to keep up the pressure - if they let up, reinforcements would arrive and local industry would work to replace the lost forces, all bringing the security status of the system back up. On the flip side, the white hat crowd should be able to actively do something to raise the security status of a system. Of course, once they stop doing whatever it is they're doing, the security status would start to drop back down...

[Saede Riordan]

This is why static, unchanging content is always a terrible idea.


I prefer to give the game feature a bit of 'wiggle room' and assume incursions are still dangerous, doing ebil things to all sorts of people, and plenty of New Eden is fighting the good fight to keep them at bay.

This is again why Eve needs dynamic security status for every single system.  Events, features, and things happening should have real effects on the status quo.

Give people 24 hours notice, give them plenty of traffic warnings, but the only way to encourage people to create dynamic content is to provide more building blocks.

I agree completely, but as Louella said very well:

Game mechanics.

If NPCs are able to do anything to inconvenience players to anything other than a trivial degree, then a large fuss is made, and people unsubscribe.

The cyno-jamming aspects of Incursions were one such thing. People were annoyed and influence was used.

You can't make people pay to not enjoy a game. Any kind of serious NPC threat to people's activities, and they lose interest in logging in and in continuing to subscribe.

CCP will never do anything that has the potential to hurt their bottom line. Especially not after Incarna.

[Lyn Farel]

Incursions still abduct a few groups of people here and there in space colonies though (cf the rescue incursion sites).

[BloodBird]

I can see it swinging both ways. There's equal weight behind Sansha winning and CONCORD winning, that for the most part I think it's just a stalemate. Nothing is happening to the Empires, nothing is happening to Sansha. He loses as much material in ships as CONCORD loses in cashflow, likely more. It's a pretty ridiculous waste of resources, on par with regular rats dying by the tens of thousands of battleships every day. Sansha is losing entire stations and installations, along with supercapitals. Meanwhile CONCORD is spitting out enough ISK to cause serious game balance concerns in the metagame. Both sides are bleeding themselves in an unchanging game mechanic that provides no real substance to the story.

The argument can be made that Nation doesn't care about the material cost, which is comparable to "didn't want that titan anyways" as an excuse. But on the same note, the argument can be made that CONCORD's payouts are just a drop in the ocean that is their banking system. "Didn't want that ISK anyways". Both of them are assumptions made without much backing in order to excuse an aborted storyline.

Nobody is winning, nobody is losing, because nobody in CCP has touched Incursion story since the patch hit.

In short, as with all farmable mechanics in all games, just like missions, incursions are a huge no-no regarding IC. While it's perfectly possible to touch on the subject and/or make some mention of it, going into any detail will break immersion hard, and fast.

We have been over this regarding missioning in the past, incursions are basically the same thing.

Guess this is my +1 to Kat's post then.