The watchlist has been an integral part of my hunting in wormholes since the beginning. I would choose the wormhole to stalk in and add all or most important targets to my watchlist. Once they would log in, I would know immediately and start paying attention, getting ready for a gank. Sometimes I even use it to evaluate hostile fleet capabilities, to know who is online and what to expect.
So what's my stance on this? Well, I approve of this change. Despite relying so much on it, it feels like a cheat. Combined with killboard data, the intelligence you get from it is ridiculous. It will suck to be in the blind spot without knowing if people I'm stalking are active or not, but it won't change much as I will still be mostly afk, checking d-scan once in awhile. On the side note, people I gank, won't be able to see if I am online, watching them. I predict raised paranoia levels of my victims.
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Me and my partner settled in a c4. The system was clean, absent of any signatures and anomalies. Killboard also had a history of locals losing shiny stuff. Since Gris X is from US we have bigger timezone coverage. After the first day he reported two Rattlesnakes doing sites at around 5.30 EVE time. Which is a shame since I'm happy asleep during that time and I will never set an alarm clock to wake up for a gank. The corp is Russian though, so I had a good feeling we might get a shot on getting them within the upcoming weekend.
Time was passing by and we had only Cheetah sitting at the tower, doing absolutely nothing. Gris X went afk and I continued with my job hunt.
All would be fine except for one detail. With only 3 minutes passing, I spot an activity on my left screen and I see Cheetah swap for a Rattlesnake.
Talk about bad timing. Soon another pilot logs in and I watch two Rattlesnakes warp to the nearest anomaly.
I watch them farm while patiently waiting for my partner to come back. There are only two anomalies present. Thankfully it's a c4, so it does take some time to clear them up. Half an hour passes and they finish the first site and warp to the next one. My partner is still afk. Damn, I will have to make a move soon. I can't skip this opportunity as I don't know when the next one will be. After few spawns I decide to go in. Unfortunately, I miscount waves and initiate warp when the site spawns new sleepers. Oh boy, this will be a tough one. I land on grid and the battle starts.
One of the more stressful fights. Sleepers shoot me, Rattlesnakes shoot me and I can barely keep up with the reps. Gris X comes back and joins me, ending up almost losing a Loki. I locked him when he entered structure. Multiboxing 3 ships with remote reps is very stressful. Finally first Rattlesnake breaks and then the second. No wonder they were tanking so much. Both of them fitted with four remote cap transfers, x-large shield booster and bunch of amplifiers with active resists. I am very happy that I made the fitting change to more dps. I also believe that extra dps from the Gris X's Stratios gave that very needed push to break the Rattlesnakes.
How is the intel ridiculous, exactly? You don't know where they are, what they're flying or if they're even undocked, just that they're in front of a screen.
ReplyDeleteIf you need a gaming analogy... imagine you're choosing a server to play Battlefield 4. Do you choose the one with players in it or the one without players in it? You've got the same intel, are you cheating if you choose the full one?
Ridiculous because you add core players from killboard and can tell fleet composition what to expect without actually scouting. In my previous corp I took number of fights with stronger corps by adding jammers and logi pilots to watchlist to make educated guess what kind of fleet they will bring.
DeleteThink of the tools like set.them.red, auto adding, sharing watchlists, giving you intel of core pilots like supers. Only counter to avoid this is log off and be out of game which doesn't sound right. In my low-sec days we avoided so many fights and drops because "oh look, their titan pilot logged in". Makes no sense to me.
I get the K-Space argument, I don't get it for W-Space. You of all people know how patient you often have to be, at least with a watch list there is a dim light at the end of the tunnel. Now there's no light, no tunnel, just dumb luck and abject boredom.
Delete