there's a 40 hour timer on the hull ability ... so looks like i will have to keep the mission around for a couple of days while i stock up on the arti ...

Yeah, so I'm not really one of those people who thinks that halcs should be removed from the game or some such nonsense, but I'm not really understanding how fewer people wearing halcs could possibly not create a greater number of viable targets. And a not insignificantly greater number, too, given that there are literally hundreds of players using them in my badging range alone.

if you nerf halcs, those people now using them will just repair less .. that is where you will have fewer targets since your refreshed battle tab will not include disabled ships.

Exactly, Sen..... THIS is what I've been saying all along. I fail to see how it is so hard for people to understand. Diminish the effectiveness of halcs, or make them more onerous to use and people will just stay down longer. People staying down longer equals fewer targets. It's not difficult math.

Halcs are not the problem.

99% of the time it comes down to the player and their attitude.

pretty much

"Fewer Targets?" I suppose if you consider unattackable deadbeats taking up space on your bt "targets"......

Personally, I'd waste less time cycling through too tough to kill pvpers than I waste now cycling through a bt full of halcs.

And what's more important than fewer targets is, if these people stay down, they aren't doing a lot more than PVP: they're also not NPCing, which hurts their own development and means fewer tasty alerts for their legionmates, too. Just lower activity altogether. If being able to halc up keeps you in the game in other ways, it's worth the annoyance to PVPers.

There is nothing must have about this reward. It's nice, but it won't set you way behind other players if you don't get it right now. So if the current demolition derby out there is too annoying for you (too many halcs, you don't like getting attacked the second you step away from your computer, etc.), just do the mission later at your own pace. No biggie.

Personally, I'm enjoying the mission.

Good excuse to actively PvP, sure lots of halced and zeroed players are annoying, but still plenty of folks to disable.

Plus, I expect not a ton of people will have it at my level, so a slight edge.

"Thank you Apollo in Bay 2 ... your hull has been tested ... B- ... thank you for volunteering ... you are cleared for take-off."

"Chetta of IJ ... your eta in less than a minute is confirmed once your halcyon fumigation is complete ... please direct your ship into Bay 3 for hull testing."

"Kha Jalopsy ... you are on deck ... eta in 2 minutes once your pacification mode expires ... please direct your ship into Bay 8 for hull testing."

"Chetta of IJ ... BREAK OFF ! BREAK OFF ! ... you have gone into pacification mode which disqualifies you from hull testing for 4 HOURS. please initiate go around."

"Tower, Bay 3 is clear for assignment."

"Kha Jalopsy ... your ship has failed to pass the initial testing ... your halcyon infestation is confirmed ... please return to repair bay 17 for further fumigation."

one of these days ... i swear i'll run one of these bozos into another one just for wasting my time ...

"Ambassador Spock ... your pacification mode is scheduled to expire in 44 minutes ... you are assigned Bay 1 ... please wait there for further instructions."

"Forkin Toaster ... please IMMEDIATELY clear Bay 2 ... we know you like to keep taking this test ... but you have already been checked at least 5 times today ... come back tomorrow."

"RobM7 in Bay 4 ... your shields are interfering with the hull test ... we have initiated a Krionite Dispersal Field ... please standby while the hull testing proceeds."

all these ships and we still haven't gotten half the number of successful tests that we need ...

"Roger Tower ... scanning mode upgrade initiated."

just to find more bozos to feed to the brainiacs ...

I had a bad feeling this chain would end up requiring PvPing...

Well I've decided to just do the daily later when it is archived. I'll keep halcing up to annoy people

while i can understand this from some perspectives, i must say that i have to lol at it too, because i kinda forsee the same complaints coming up when it is archived as well.

Yeah, its a wth are you thinking thing right?

I mean you've got 2 weeks to knock out some rounds right now, so why not at least try.

I'm 56 Hull Tests in atm, and i hope to have at least 100 Hull Tests by the time its gone. If i can get more then yay me, if not then no biggie, at least my task is half as hard when archived.

I'm 51 hull test data samples in now, plus quite a few kills that it wouldn't let me get test data from for one reason or another...if nothing else, this is helping my combat reputation quite a bit. Only about +18 on my differential until I get to insane, finally, so should get that probably tomorrow.

Past 5 days my differential has been +10, +11, +7 and +18, and off to +4 so far today (and that's despite being disabled 20 times myself in that time frame...) It's like having a non-stop foundry of war legion mission going in terms of improving combat reputation and motivation.

Personally, I'm loving the irony of the whole situation with this mission...

People b!tching and moaning about halcs while they're trying to get kills to earn a module that boosts vs player attack which they won't get the benefits of because everyone wears halcs.

Except the reality is, people are doing this mission to complete the chain in order to get first crack at the new reward at the end of it.

Enough of this insanity. No more missions in this chain that try to "force" people to PVP. I guess the previous mission wasn't enough for Dan, so he came up with this idea that's just totally backfired in my opinion. I totally agree with the posters that say there is nothing wrong with halcs, calming amps, etc., today and have always said so. Normally, there are always enough viable targets to fully use up your TM limit -- but this mission has just had the opposite effect. By causing a lot of people to halc up or apply calming amps (I don't blame them at all), by causing a lot more zeroed disables, by getting many more people I know of to just stay dead and collect their artis (maybe popping on once a day or so), AND by seemingly having the hull test ability count against your TM uses so you can't raid or hack nearly as many kills. Even if you didn't rush though collecting the artis like I did, your day-by-day limits would be reduced by this ability.

Looking at one legion with 58 members, 45 (77.6%) are disabled and staying that way far more than usual, 5 are pacified, 1 is at 0 disables, and only 2 (3.5%) are actually online PVPing. Three out of the remaining five are low enough ranks not to be valid targets for most mid-players anyway. I wouldn't be surprised out that the numbers were similar in most other legions since the release of this bi-weekly. [Update: 6 hours later, 44 were disabled, 7 offline and pacified, 4 just offline, and only 3 online. Comm seems much quieter than it used to be before this mission as well since so many people are just choosing to remain disabled and do something else.]

While I'm on a silly rant....no more 2 minute cool downs on these bi-weekly mission abilities. This new quirk has me feeling more like I'm working an unpaid job than playing a game. I never thought I'd say that I'll be glad when a chain is over, but this one has introduced so many bad new ideas that I hope at least the end result is AWESOME to make up for the pain...

Good post. Thank you for putting the numbers to exactly what I have been saying all along. As the hardcore PvPers, and perhaps Dan, are finding out; you usually have a hard time forcing people to do something that holds little interest to them. I'd say that if that were the intent of this mission that it has failed pretty dramatically.

When I play a game, I want to be able to do the things I enjoy doing on my own schedule. The main reason I have quit every other timer based game I've tried, but stuck with this one for years, is the timers are often clumsy and force you to to play on the game's schedule instead of your own (20 hour timers instead of 24 hour ones are a great feature!). When the game starts controlling my life, by giving me a strict schedule to follow or risk missing out on significant content, I stop playing. A game running my life is something I won't tolerate and unfortunately this chain is doing that. Fortunately it's just one chain, but it seems to be part of a trend. I've really enjoyed the concepts introduced on this chain, but I have to agree that the two minute timers have killed the entertainment value. The hours spent waiting on them has had almost no entertainment value for me, and when I got done there's less of a sense of accomplishment, and more a sense of "Holy crap am I glad I never have to do that again!" I guess they're good if you have an OCD to satisfy.

I love PvP and got really into it the first day, then I thought about how ridiculous it was, in a game about conquering your oppents, that I was negotiating a trade of disables with folks! That falls squarely in the realm of things that don't entertain me.

+1