The not-so-great deep safe analysis.

Before I start, if anyone reading this sees TeaDaze, tell him I said “I told you so”.

Early on, when we were still drafting plans for mining in the static C5, one of the major problems was that hauling the ore through the connecting WH would slowly whittle down the mass to the point that we might not be able to fit the Hulks, Orca, ectera back through, condeming them to a lifetime of trying to build a scan probe launcher out of spare parts, and when that failed, crashing each ship into a separate planet and re-creating civilization, prospering on individual planets until inter-planet contact is established, at which point a war is sparked. This commits each population to the destruction of the other, draining each planet of resources to construct vessels of war, which are launched into space only to be loaded onto my Orca, and shipped to Jita while holoreels of old spaceship battles are shipped back to the population, with all news networks carefully manipulated to keep the war going indefinitely…..

Wait, sorry, that’s my Tyrannis plan. Anyway, an alternate solution of making a deep, deep safespot and having the rorqual compress ore on site in safety was one of our “really good ideas”, which, unfortunately, will soon be impossible since to the disabling of said exploit, which is at the top of CCP’s “fix now” list, instead of some other things that I remember being upset about but apparently I’m not passionate enough about to remember. The one legitimate reason for nerfing deep safes I’ve heard so far are some people in null are putting their Dominion shoot-me-to-take-system thingys way out there making warping to them difficult. Oh, and it’s an exploit.

The more enjoyable explanation, in my opinion, is that CCP is trying to discourage blob warfare by making it unfeasible from a lag standpoint, encouraging hit-and-run groups attacking several strategic areas instead of 300 man cap fleets eliminating everything so fast they redefine the word “superior firepower”. But hey, that’s just the ramblings of someone who thinks a bit too much into these things.

The 20 AU limit seems fair, as the only non-exploiting way to get that far now is flying an interceptor in the preferred direction for several years, the major point being that there is no longer anywhere convenient to stuff a large cap fleet while their grid loads. See aforementioned conspiracy theory.

Anyway, cataclysmic variable did a much more serious analysis, but I disagree on his conclusion that “We have the power to change this game”.

The end result, deep safes unusable, is still going to happen. We’ve managed to achieve “we’ll move the ships” instead of “we’ll blow up the ships”, but there is still no-where to park a supercapital and there still will be no way to exit out mid-warp when you realize you’re warping into a gatecamp/death. You can say “we changed things”, but really, what’s different? The five people who quit Eve while in a safespot and didn’t leave any contact information with friends lose a ship that they apparently don’t care about.

It will still be impossible to fight on a grandiose scale without lag occurring, and now grid loading issues will be crippling because when a cyno is lit in a system with a defending fleet, the defending fleet will warp to that cyno, the attacking fleet will have grid load issues, ectera.

So, the three options are either have the attacking fleet in system BEFORE the defending fleet, or attack several points at once, or don’t use blobs. See CCP Conspiracy theory. Also, it’s probably worth noting that on all the forum’s I’ve read, the devs only respond to questions not including the phrase “Fix the lag before you fix deep safes”. COINCIDENCE?

Also, CCP has THREE letters, but only TWO Cs. COINCIDENCE? I think NOT!

The Icelandic volcano has shut down European air travel the same day deep safe nerfs were announced. COINCIDENCE?

I’m hungry, so I shall go make a sandwich. COINCIDENCE?