Deep safe spot nerf coming to EVE Online

Any EVE Online player that's spent time in nullsec or lowsec will know the importance of safe spots. By creating a bookmark while in warp, you can warp to areas of space several AU from any celestial objects. Although other players can still see your ship on the directional scanner, they'll need to narrow down your location with combat scanner probes to warp in on top of you. You can be stay relatively safe from hostile players by continually warping between multiple safe spots, an old and intended part of EVE's tactical gameplay. The creation of deep safe spots several hundred AU from the nearest celestial object, however, has never been an intended game mechanic. Over the years, several different bugs and oversights have allowed players to create them. Unfortunately for players that have been using deep safe spots, this particular tactical tool is going to change when Tyrannis hits on May 18th.
Deep safes offer a huge tactical advantage as they not only hide the player outside directional scanner range but also offer some strategic benefits. In nullsec wars, it has become common practice to jump capital ships to a deep safe spot or use it to jump-bridge in a support fleet in complete safety. As the safe spot is several hundred AU away, enemy fleets in the same system can't reasonably arrive in time to stop the incursion. On May 18th with the release of the Tyrannis expansion, deep safe spots will be a thing of the past. In addition to eliminating the few bugs that can be currently used to create them, CCP are updating the warp mechanics to prevent abuse of any similar bugs introduced in the future.

After Tyrannis, warps to any point over 10 AU further from the system's star than the outer-most planet will fail. This means EVE pilots are now restricted to a bubble of space centred on the star and encapsulating everything in the system. Normal safe spots within the bubble will still function but any made outside it will cease to exist. In addition, all objects in space outside the bubble will be deleted on May 18th when the expansion goes live. If you've ever left a ship floating at a deep safe spot, now's the time to go and collect it.

Reader Comments (12)

This is disappointing change. Space is Big, being able to hide in that dark vastness is a defining characteristic of being out in space. They could have implemented a more interesting mechanic, such as potentially getting lost in deep space if you warped out during combat. Self-destruct time...

I should point out that you can still hide in the vastness of space in EVE after this change. To hide from the directional scanner, all you need to do is get over 14 AU from the nearest celestial object. The wording of the announcement is a little strange, so many people are assuming you'll no longer be able to warp to any point over 10AU from a planet but this isn't true.

Say the system's outermost planet is 64 AU from the system's star. Under the new system, you will be able to warp to any point in space as long as it is no further than 74 AU from the system's star. Normal safespots, including those outside of directional scanner range from the nearest celestial, will function absolutely normally. The only bookmarks that will stop working in this example are those outside the 74 AU bubble. But since no actual game mechanic allows you to warp to a point outside that bubble currently, this nerf only affects deep safespots created using a bug. 99% of players won't notice a change at all.

This is true most people dont realize that its Star->Farthest Planet + 10au is the bubble size, they think its 10au from a planet which isnt the case....

Issues i see in this are 2 fold...

1. they need to get the gridloading bug under control to make capitals not need the off-grid deep safes

and

2. They need to add the ability for Titan and SC pilots to be able to specially dock their ships at friendly POS's maybe just a module that the ship locks onto so that no one else can take it or something, as it is Super pilots are stuck in their ship, now without deep safe safety its even more of a bummer. Not to mention the nerf to insurance on the big daddies.

The major problem that i see is that the way CCP designed warping around in EvE many of the solar systems are 3D within a soft short cylinder shape. Many solar systems do have the necessary planets or moons (or that awkward Stargate) to make safe spots above or below the solar plane. Many of the "Deep Safe's" they are trying to remove are further outside of the solar plane (Eg. within this soft height limit but stretching the radius from the sun really far). So yes solar systems will be an actual Sphere according to the game mechanics, but the ability to move up or down relative to the plane is extremely difficult if nigh impossible with the new "fixes" they are trying to implement.

Maybe if they allowed people to warp a certain AU within a direction W/o needing an object there this would not be anywhere near as big of an issue to begin with... Plus they are totally removing the purpose of Deep Space Probes...

This blog is already out of date. After 20+ pages of mostly negative feedback, CCP have said they're reconsidering the nerf and are releasing a new devblog today.

Most of the negative feedback focused on two points.
1. Their "sweep" will delete supercapitals owned by players who may be taking a break from the game. Imagine leaving your titan or mothership in a safespot, but when you come back to the game you're in a pod!

2. Bridging to deep safes is currently the only safe way to enter a heavily populated system. Since the Dominion lag remains unfixed, you can expect to see a lot fewer fleet engagements, since there is no longer a safe way to enter a system.

Isn't the creating Ultra Deep safes an exploit, and thus not CCP problem to protect people and ships that have used it? I was under the impression that it was taking advantage of game mechanics in a way they were not supposed to be used, ie an exploit.

It wasn't an exploit until this devblog. That's the problem.

Instead of nerfing it, they could have upped scanning mechanics or something. :/

Am I understanding this right? I have been playing Eve for eight months now and I had no idea it was possible to warp 100 AU pass the outer planet, literally in the deep void of space between stars.

All this time I've been wondering where people could put a capital ship if they needed to leave it. The are some people, like me, who only have one Eve Account and I have always thought not allowing capitals to at least anchor at a private station was not sensible.

Under normal circumstances it's not possible to warp that far out unless you have a mission or an exploration site that you can warp to. Safe spots this far out were generated using a quirk in the Emergency Warp mechanics (the warp your ship undergoes if you log off while in space).

Until the release of this devblog, using the emergency warp in this manner was not considered an exploit, which is partly why so many people are a bit confused. It's a rather sudden reversal on the part of CCP.

Also, just a clarification: Capital ships (carriers, dreadnoughts, Rorquals) can dock normally at stations. Supercapitals (titans, motherships/supercarriers) cannot dock normally. POSs are notoriously unsafe, so it's common practice for supercapitals to find a deep safe and cloak up.

In the deep darkness of space, there are no true exploits. There are just simply things that the gods prefer men not do.

I can't buy the "didn't know it was an exploit until now". The process involved quitting and relogging into the client multiple times to make the deep safe. This is the definition of exploit. The only reason CCP didn't call it an exploit is because there have been bigger issues to fix and I'd imagine it wasn't a widespread problem until people started linking to the guides in their blogs and spreading the word.

Since CCP looked the other way for so long they need to give people a heads up and set a date in like 30 days or whatever for people to get their assets moved to a legal spot. But they need to clean up these bookmarks and assets.

Of course this deadline shouldn't come out until the grid loading issue is fixed, which hopefully happens with this new patch.

Deep safe spot nerf coming to EVE Online

Reader Comments (12)

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 11:10AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 11:26AM Brendan Drain said

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 11:46AM cchance said

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 11:46AM OmegaTwig said

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 12:08PM DrewIW said

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 3:42PM mitchgant said

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 6:21PM DrewIW said

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 4:27PM Gubru said

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 5:00PM Ace Noble said

Posted: Apr 14th 2010 6:19PM DrewIW said

Posted: Apr 15th 2010 7:36PM Fausts said

Posted: Apr 16th 2010 12:10AM (Unverified) said

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