My EVE time has always fluctuated, and right now it’s on a downturn; so I’m not spending as much time in Greater Mars as I was. This, of course, means there’s more chance for interesting sites to respawn.
Tonight there were two new ladar sites to check out — and mine gas from, though my gas mining inclinations are slight. What caught my attention, though, is that these ladar sites had more robust sleeper defenses than used to spawn in sites (with the same name) in this system. One site had a spawn of six frigates, which is one frigate more than I’ve seen at a gas site previously; the other site actually had four of the Sirius gun towers. Ladar sites this size have, in the past, had the same defenses as gravimetic sites in this system; typically either five frigates or a cruiser plus three frigates.
I haven’t really seen enough ladar sites to know for sure that there’s been a change, but I’m wondering whether there might not have been a server-side tweak to randomize sleeper defenses just a smidge. That’s a change I’d be 100% behind; it’s bothered me ever since Apocrypha that a site with a given name would always have the same defenses, and that when you killed the defending sleepers, they would always have exactly the same loot and drop predictable salvage from the same small salvage table. I really think there should be more variability.
Anybody else see any unexpected Sleeper spawns in the last couple of days?
Entries (RSS)
April 11th, 2009 at 2:07 am
I’ve been logging the spawns I find in Ladar sites. Yesterday I found a site that I would have expected to be guarded by 5 or 6 frigates, but instead there were 2 cruisers. I’ll continue logging these expeditions.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:16 am
I was pootling about in w-space the other week, mainly to parctice my scanning skills whilst looking over my shoulder for other players (without the benefit of local), and came across a variety of ladar sites in one system. one had the 5 frigs you mention, and a couple of others had the sirius turrets. As such I don’t think they’ve tweaked the difficulty of such spawn and its pretty random what you get thrown at you (dependant on the wh system’s class of course)
April 11th, 2009 at 7:49 am
Thanks, Prophet.
Mandrill, I’m not arguing with you, just clarifying my point — namely, that so far it has “seemed” that all of the variation had to do with the WH system class; within a given w-hole system, you got the same spawn (or one of a very small number of possible spawns) at each site of the same name. Until yesterday, I had never observed any randomness or variability in this. (Which, by the way, I consider a game design flaw; but it’s possible it was an actual bug, now fixed with unannounced server-side hotfix.)
So, what I’m trying to do is differentiate between one possibility (new randomness injected into the system) and the other (long-existing randomness not detected hitherto because of the smallness of my sample size). Obviously we won’t definitively be able to reach a conclusion unless CCP speaks, but I’m keenly interested in hearing anecdotes like Prophet’s.
April 11th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
I too have found the Sleepers a bit more random of late. I don’t know about variation in spawns but I have noticed that all of a sudden the Sleepers are much smarter and savvier about who and how they remote rep. I’ve had to switch targets much more than in the past because it seems like the reppers will be quicker off the mark to help out a friend in need. Maybe I’m crazy, but they do seem smarter lately.