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[Morwen Lagann]

It only explains small detachments for specific purposes in Caldari and Gallente space, under certain circumstances. Also, re-read it very carefully. I think you are completely ignoring that the vast majority of missions where you shoot Caldari or Gallente NPCs involve groups of ships so large they could never, ever be allowed under the implied terms of that treaty.

It also says NOTHING about the Amarr or Minmatar. It's specifically about Iyen-Oursta. Not to mention, the idea that either of those two groups would let the other put military ships inside their border for any reason at all is ridiculous at best.

The only part of that that I see everyone having in common is the search and rescue restrictions.

[Gwen Ikiryo]

How on earth would you really enforce borders in the modern day sense as a huge space empire, anyway? I mean, it's not an option for us because of the mechanics, but what's to stop a "civilian" construction force coming in, going out into deadspace past scan radius, and setting up a stargate to get the actual forces in?

[Louella Dougans]

How on earth would you really enforce borders in the modern day sense as a huge space empire, anyway? I mean, it's not an option for us because of the mechanics, but what's to stop a "civilian" construction force coming in, going out into deadspace past scan radius, and setting up a stargate to get the actual forces in?

That's actually the plot of a mission series with Gallente elements.

"Roden Shipyards" ships, building a stargate, in a wibbly nebula, to allow Gallente Navy ships in.

There are other similar missions, where the Gallente have constructed a settlement, declared it to be part of the Federation, and are sending forces to "protect Federation civilians", which is the same scheme as is being played out in a couple of places in RL.

[Havohej]

It only explains small detachments for specific purposes in Caldari and Gallente space, under certain circumstances. Also, re-read it very carefully. I think you are completely ignoring that the vast majority of missions where you shoot Caldari or Gallente NPCs involve groups of ships so large they could never, ever be allowed under the implied terms of that treaty.

It also says NOTHING about the Amarr or Minmatar. It's specifically about Iyen-Oursta. Not to mention, the idea that either of those two groups would let the other put military ships inside their border for any reason at all is ridiculous at best.

The only part of that that I see everyone having in common is the search and rescue restrictions.

Five ships here, ten ships there, suddenly you have enough ships for an L4 mission \o/

As to Min-Amarr...  good point.  =/

[Alain Colcer]

It would be quite the achievement if CCP redesigned every PvE mission with 2 goals in mind:

1) better simulation of pvp engagements using less ships but better AI
2) rewrite and organize better the NPC missions texts and goals against "other" factions to fit better with the lore.

I mean, we can always run the famous damsel in distress mission because it was all mercenaries involved...but against the empires? or the pirates? rewriting those would bring a major change in the quality of game inmersion if you ask me.

Mordu's NPCs have bounties in missions, but in reality they are not really outlaws....they are hired guns...to me all these little details detract from the inmersion part of the lore.....i do understand they fulfill a role in the game....just think it could be done better.

The funny part is PvE is probably the game mechanic with the largest audience today.....and its such a shame the stagnation on the theme so far.

just to point to another part of PvE that i think could need a facelift, my recent suggestion on the LP store on FHP:
http://failheap-challenge.com/showthread.php?18379-LPstore-%96-Revisiting-the-idea

[Morwen Lagann]

I don't post on FHC because it's FHC, but some feedback that hasn't shown in that thread yet: I don't think you're correctly taking drop rate into account for tags in that post if you're suggesting pirate tags be used for anything.

Navy tags are a guaranteed drop on their carrying NPCs - they are intended to be a replacement for bounties. Pirate tags on the other hand? Those have an incredibly low drop rate, even when you're grinding through NPCs hour after hour after hour. I just recently ran the Minmatar and Gallente epic arcs (lots of Angels and a mixture of Merc/Angel/Serp/Independent ships respectively), and I salvaged everything for the extra ISK. I got a grand total of TWO Angel tags over the course of both arcs - TWO!

That's not bad luck, that's a really low drop rate.

[Alain Colcer]

I know they have a low drop rate....its one of the things ot adjust.

But also LP items that require navy tags request 20+ of certain types....and 10+ of admiral/vice-admiral (or equivalent)...which just makes it absurd....5-6 im okay with.

[Esna Pitoojee]

Havo, I feel like a lot of your points are built on the idea that borders in EVE are porous and that allowing massive naval battlegroups in and out is an easy, everyday occurrence... even though they have to come through specific, easily-monitorable stargates, and that the operators will be to stupid to recognize easily noticeable trends

We live in a world, right now, you and me, here on Earth, where exactly what you just described is a regular occurrence.  I mean, you can't prove a negative, so without entering into the realm of logical fallacies let me ask you: do you believe for one moment that the only US operators in the Ukraine are the ones openly publicized on the news, or that Russia doesn't know about the US operators that are there?

"Operators" and "a huge naval battlegroup" are two quite different things. We aren't talking about a few stealth bombers and covert recon ships penetrating borders, which is something I am absolutely certain happens all the time, but significantly-sized military forces that couldn't be missed entering. Keep in mind, the Gallente Tripwire system was designed specifically to detect and handle intrusions.

The Iyen-Oursta loophole described in the PF Morwen quoted provides the explanation for how/why [Faction] ships come to be inside enemy territory.  Quafe hired Fed Navy to escort the supply convoy to that Quafe outpost in Lonetrek.  Great!  Now that they're inside State borders, they set up whatever they set up, or they start undermining whatever they start undermining.  Or whatever they decide to do.  Are they tightly monitored?  Of course they are - how else could Agent X at Lonetrek L4 Mission Hub Y send Capsuleer Z to go fuck them up?

It brings a perfectly good example of what it could have happened once, but still puts the response and the fact that it is allowed to repeat firmly in the realm of lore-gameplay segregation.

Why do they continue to allow Fed Navy ships into their space under the Iyen-Oursta loopholes?  I can think of a variety of reasons:

1.  It's more trouble than it's worth to violate the treaty by refusing to let them cross the border.  This would require either pulling the leaders of the 4 Empire Powers to the table to renegotiate, crippling economic sanctions or outright war for breaking the treaty.

So, uh, it's less crippling to have multiple hostile battlegroups repeatedly go rogue within your territory? Not to mention that even a few ships intruding across borders have been treated as a major violation of various treaties; why would even larger forces not be treated as a violation of other treaties?

2.  It's much easier to just send one of the thousands of capsuleers available to go fuck them up.

Another instance of lore-gamplay segregation: Capsuleers are not, by lore, all-ending gods who can singlehandedly wipe out naval flotillas. That is a product of the player ship power-creep over the years. Moreover, by lore, the navies have their own capsuleers in even greater numbers: Why not just send a couple of navy capsuleers to handle it if we are so good at it?

3.  Not only is it easier to send a capsuleer to fuck them up, it's also cheaper than sending their own Navy taskforce to fight the "rogue" elements of the enemy Navy and cheaper than renegotiating, suffering economic sanctions or outright war - which, by the way, would likely be sparked by sending their own Navy to eliminate the hostile force to begin with.  Sending a capsuleer costs them a couple million ISK and a few loyalty points.  Sending a Navy taskforce and replacing the losses incurred thereby would cost hundreds of millions, possibly billions if it goes poorly.

See above about navy capsuleers, but I also have to question the idea of not responding to cross-border incursions because they might be bad PR: Not wanting to immediately jump to open warfare I can understand, but not mentioning it whatsoever? That doesn't seem very logical, and stands as another point of lore-gameplay segregation.

4.  What's not to love about watching a capsuleer fuck up an entire enemy Navy taskforce?  Especially when you know that:

See above about navy capsuleers again.

5.  The enemy Navy would absolutely not dare doing anything that would break the CONCORD treaty itself and escalate to full-scale war.

Like, uh, engaging in hostile cross-border violations with significant fleet assets in a direct violation of the treaties? Remember, two battleships crossing the Caldari-Gallente border was a huge deal - and they didn't even shoot anyone. If two battleships is an international incident that was widely recognized and treated with appropriate weight, why not these other incidents?

[Gwen Ikiryo]

The idea of "Navy Capsuleers" seems to be a pretty recent invention, in PF terms. I haven't been able to find any references to the concept other than a few dev comments and passing mentions in lore, all from within the last 3 years.

Anyway, I think it's probably a much bigger deal when a Capsuleer crosses over the border then when a regular run-of-the-mill battleship does. While the one-sidedness of capsuleer/npc ship conflicts lean a bit on the absurd side, they're obviously bucketloads more dangerous.

[Mizhara]

Esna, I'd say the lack of news reports is far more likely to be a failure on CCPs part than the over abundance of fleets. You don't see a ton of news reports on anything these days so it's just as fair to assume these things are reported but we don't see it.

[Esna Pitoojee]

The idea of "Navy Capsuleers" seems to be a pretty recent invention, in PF terms. I haven't been able to find any references to the concept other than a few dev comments and passing mentions in lore, all from within the last 3 years.

The first reference I can think of are the Tech 2 ships being explicitly capsuleer-only usage, and the Navies very definitely using those ships. I don't know exactly when elite NPCs were added to the game, but Tech 2 ships go back to 2003. Possibly that the introduction of those hull was what drove the navies to begin recruiting capsuleers in large numbers, compared to a handful here and there?

Esna, I'd say the lack of news reports is far more likely to be a failure on CCPs part than the over abundance of fleets. You don't see a ton of news reports on anything these days so it's just as fair to assume these things are reported but we don't see it.

Then that shifts the logic problem to another point: These things are happening and being reported on, we just aren't seeing them... but, nobody cares? Given again that even a couple of ships peacefully transiting the border was a huge deal, why would there not be any political reaction to far larger and far more common incursions you suggest are occurring?

[Mizhara]

Who says there aren't? Trade and negotiations going tits over arse, heavy issues with diplomatic works etc. We didn't even see anything on the gallente election until a huge stink was made about it by players, and it's largely been abandoned since the announcement. We don't see those reactions any more than why we're not seeing the reports. In this case, I'd rather go with what I see in space than what I don't see in the news.

There's no denying there are significant inconsistencies between what we see and what is reasonable, but given the size of the cluster and the comparatively tiny amount of RPers seeing and reporting things, it's quite reasonable to take these sightings at face value.

Embrace it. The Empire conducts slave raids and incursions in the Republic, while smiling pleasantly in public saying no no no, that's "illegal". We don't do that. The Republic says "No no no, we have signed treaties and shit. We don't do incursions except that one time to save two of our tribes from extinction, yanno?" while happily sending in attacks in Empire space. Expecting anything less from two such enemies would be ridiculous. They've been in a state of war since the Day of Darkness. The only thing differing throughout the years is how official it's been.

[Gaven Lok ri]

I was always under the impression that the Navies would have had capsuleers even before the public licences were made.

I think the reason PF only talks about Navy Capsuleers later is that the idea that you need to specify that yes the navies have capsuleers only comes about after someone has tried to argue that players are the only capsuleers.

That is: In 2003 things were nebulous, but by 2005-6 groups like Star Fraction (among many others) really got the pod pilot immortality rhetoric off the ground. Part of this rhetoric is about the superiority of player pod pilots over Empire forces. CCP marketing also ran this route in videos and such for a while.

So once you have that idea around, then you need to start specifying in news reports that the NPCs do in fact also have pod pilots working for them. The argument about relative power of the empire vs new capsuleer types in effect forces people making new PF to be more specific than they had to be before said argument.

Regarding missions: The numbers in missions vs numbers in reported news events just don't work in the same world. I chose to take reported news as PF over the game mechanic sides of the missions, because there isn't a way to reconcile them. You could probably come up with a theory of incorporating missions into RP that would work, something like each mission represents an event that happened maybe once or twice, ever. I have similar feelings about the belt rats, they just don't make much sense as implemented.

[Esna Pitoojee]

You could probably come up with a theory of incorporating missions into RP that would work, something like each mission represents an event that happened maybe once or twice, ever. I have similar feelings about the belt rats, they just don't make much sense as implemented.

This I could see, yeah. The idea that regular massive incursions just happen regularly just doesn't jive with a reasonable universe to me.

[Mizhara]

The idea that the Republic and Empire who has been at each other's throats since the Republic was first founded (and in reality since the Day of Darkness) aren't hitting each other with everything they can spare while keeping up appearances for the sake of CONCORD shielding doesn't really seem reasonable either.

In a reasonable universe, they're at war and have been since it first started. Like I said earlier, what is the official line touted to maintain CONCORD up and avoid a full-scale war with the opponents' allies as well, and what is actually being done and wholly approved of behind the public view is likely to be two different things.