The Ice Man Sayeth... (Ice Storm Rumblings)

or~ When Holes Freeze Over...

My last post was about the possible impacts of the changes to Ice  Resources coming in Odyssey. I was very pleased to find this link in this post, "Ice Storm" over on "The Lazy Pilot" by "Unforgiven Storm" who was one of our CSM8 candidates this year. He didn't make the cut this time but I wish him Good Luck next year! You should give his post a read... (it also has a really snappy title!)  =]

While I can follow his logic, I disagree with some of his conclusions. I agree wholeheartedly that people always do the unexpected, that's why Crowd Control of People [<- LOL, I crack me up...] is not a science, hell it's not even magic it's just damned impossible... and EvE Players take great pride in not only doing the unexpected but spending hours and hours looking for New & Improved Unexpected Shit to do... truly, we're a weird bunch.

But, his expectation that CCP will follow in the economic footsteps of his country's leaders is one possibility, not the only one and I believe, not the one CCP will choose. As they said, they will be keeping a careful watch on all things Ore, Ice and market related after Odyssey hits and tweak here and there as needed. If players stop mining Ice and towers go down/are taken down in over reaction, if we huddle up and wait for the Ice Storm to pass... I believe they will recognize it for what it is and possibly, just out-wait the huddled masses... (like EvE players could even huddle in a mass without mass assploding each other [huddle... assplode...  bad bad images])... But I personally doubt CCP will decide that to adjust Ice Resources downwards due to a temporary reaction like that.

Plus, on a personal level, we in Anoikis CANNOT take down our POSes... there are no Station or Outposts in W-space...  These are our only homes.

Anyhoo... I found this nugget linked in his post... in this forum thread, "Dev Blog: Resource Shakeup in Odyssey: Just don’t call it a Cataclysm + Companion blog" post #491 excerpts answering question regarding the Resource Changes as regards Anoikis specifically, and I quote... (underlines mine)

#491 Posted: 2013.04.30 13:10  |  Edited by: CCP Fozzie

Hey guys, I'm back from Fanfest and my day in bed starting the recovery from the Fanfest flu. I've read through the whole thread now. Thanks for all your feedback. I'm gonna start by answering a few common or important questions from the thread:

To answer the question about wormholes, we are not currently planning to add moon minerals or ice to wormholes.

Ice because we do not want wormholes to be too self sufficient, the logistics of maintaining a starbase there is part of the gameplay.
Moon minerals because moons in wormholes are far too defensible, we do not want to place moon minerals in locations that make them that difficult to attack.

 I want to make it clear that we are not intending these changes to force people into 0.0 or lowsec from highsec. Many people simply prefer the gameplay of highsec and that's fine. However we want to make sure that for those miners and industrialists that do want to move to nullsec, they have available opportunities that support their playstyle.

We are also taking care to design the changes so that they do not break highsec profitability. We have projections on how these changes impact the total supply of low-end minerals and we beleive that highsec mining will continue to be a worthwhile activity for those so inclined. The ice changes also mean that although people won't be able to afk mine all day, the time that they do spend ice mining (afk or otherwise) will be dramatically more profitable, allowing them to gain the same profit from fewer hours mining and spend the excess time with whatever other activities they find interesting.

We are not currently planning to improve ore or ice compression, including the rates of compression or Rorquals. We encourage those ice miners that outpace their Rorqual capacity to try selling the excess on local markets, I think they may find people willing to buy their products.

might hope.

So it seems as re Holes and Other tidbits:

1. Anoikis is NOT getting Moon Goo or Ice, in order to keep us dependent on Empire...

2. These changes are NOT designed to force/temp/bribe/IE 'carrot' people into Lo and Null from Hisec, how did they put it... Oh yes, "We at CCP want ice harvesting to be a lucrative activity that encourages players to relocate..." Huh, I don't think he means what he think he means...

3. As for breaking Hisec profitability, no, I don't think these changes will "break" it... but I seriously doubt that Ice Miners today assure that "...each belt is mined out completely..." much less the "...five times a day..." that will be needed to provide the 80% of ALL New Eden's POS Ice Production needs... so break it, no... but bend it? twist it? Oh hell yes... just, which way will it change?

4. And the 4 hr Respawning Dscannable Orenoms will put a serious crimp on AFK mining which will affect botting at the very least early on, and will be... disruptive(?)... to those who have an extremely casual playstyle and prefer AFK mining (IE sitting ATK but watching TV or Hulu or surfing etc., etc)... but as I have said afore, "What one man can code, another man can hack."

But... he dint answer if Anoikis is getting Orenoms... and if yes, if they will be Dscannable too... The assumtion is yes, but I wonder... Seems I have a query to post to Fozziebear...


Fly safe, and see you in the Sky =/|)=