Initial thoughts on the Legion Update Patch:
Last Tuesday’s patch contained some big little things. Starting from the top of the 6-24 Patch Notes, here are my thoughts on some the changes!
War Decs:
Having been an ally that was erased with some of the high sec war dec mechanics, this fix is particularly interesting to me. I am not entirely sure this change removes the specific tactic employed by a few groups, but I am hopeful it will be squashed with this update, or an update soon.
FacWar and Insurgencies:
The Faction War map is one of the better UI additions in recent memory. This is an improvement as I can turn off ship casters and forget about them completely. The ihub change, additional roaming plex, and enlistment changes all seem like decent improvements for the frontlines. Bashing an ihub after a successful insurgency just became even more valuable.
The difficulty increase for spreading corruption is welcome change for me. As a casual Direct Enlist-er, I am not always up-to-date on the state of the insurgencies if not in my region/constellation. It appears that Angel and Gurista Factions are both at max Ambition modifier, but I am unsure if this slowed spread will give the militias a higher chance at success. In order to level the obviously lopsided playing field, I’d like to see Corruption 3/4/5 give militias the ability to dock at NPC stations in enemy territory again.
While today’s standings bug/kick fix is welcomed, I do not believe this change (7-01 Patch Notes) addresses the core mechanics used in avoiding the standings loss from killing fellow militia members, whether empire or pirate. Upon joining Galmil, my corp needed “boosters,” pilots with very high faction standings, to raise the overall average standings of everyone in the corp to 0.00. The same mechanics can be used to indefinitely harbor an Awoxer. Additionally, if you’re with a group that primarily DEs into the militias you can side step this issue entirely with a non-enlisted pilot/alt. It has been a year since I was enlisted full-time, so I may be way off base with the current awox-meta. The Awox solution will be a tough nut to crack without a rebuild of the standings systems in game in my opinion.
Filaments and Fleets:
These fleet changes are great! Next up, please separate “Leave Fleet” from the “Resign as CEO,” option to remove my temptation to click. With this sig radius change, the pochven escape hatch has been bolted shut even further.
Markets and Contracts:
Overall great changes for doctrine suppliers and market seeders. No complaints here! I eagerly await someone much better than myself at excel/sheets to create a copy+pastable list for me to efficiently seed markets at competitive prices (this occurred at least once between the draft and final edit of this post!)
Mining:
Pyerite has been in a tough spot since Metenox use increased and created a glut of blue goo. The price of pyerite has seen a slight decrease since the patch. This is a good start, but I am not convinced it will be enough to remove this bottleneck. I frequently build dreadnoughts and other capitals; pyerite is the second most expensive chunk of the cost in 8/9 dreads (T1/Faction). While a ‘base’ mineral being the bottleneck is annoying, it is the only thing keeping R4 ore worth mining, approximately ~79% of the value currently. There is some deeper analysis I want to dive into, but this post has been delayed long enough, it will have to wait for my next set of ramblings.
Pochven:
It has been a few years since my stint in Pochven, but a few of these changes have been long requested. The initial 90min Obs respawn patch was hilariously too long, but this 5min timer is much more manageable and should create enough tension in the region for multiple groups to fight over sites. While I still believe Pochven is responsible for a moderate chunk of inflation after the unchecked farming for multiple years, I am always happy to see iteration in the region.
Misc:
This post is getting too long, and I can’t delay posting it much longer, here’s a quick rundown of the other interesting bits from the notes:
– Tons of great QoL changes and fixes. What’s not to like?
– Skyhook changes should encourage more raiding, I know for my group at least
– SHUB upgrades were supposed to be visible, but the last I heard it was only working for people with the correct corp roles. New change is great.
– 45min unanchor time was maybe a little overpowered for metenox. It saved my assets more than once.
– Massive yellow-brick road buff!
– Compare tool might need additional work.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading my ramblings. I will do my best to get the next post out in a timely manner, instead of a week late. The intention for my next post is to do a deeper dive on metenox and pyerite, unless something more interesting pops up.
-Fouston
