Ex Mudder
Oberon Incorporated
Morsus Mihi
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Posted - 2009.10.30 17:47:00 -
[1] - Quote
I agree with most of what Jomanda said.
Sov costs at present seem to be linear. Unknown if this will change. They are also corp based, not alliance based, so all you really need is a rich corp to support an initial expansion into nullsec. But I share your worries about online / offline games with flags and the associated costs. Not to mention the drama of kicking or losing a corp from the alliance and losing Sov in 1/xth of your space as a result.
I do not know if prices are too high or too low, or if they will be easy for the corporations to recover. Ark and Bistot will become common, appearing after a few days of mining if the test server is any indication, and mining them almost mandatory to keep them in system, so I expect high end minerals to plummet in price. High end moon minerals will drop as well, and I have no idea if low ends will rise enough to become profitable. Rat loot will also become less valuable, as constant ratting will be needed to keep good rats and regular plexing to spawn good plexes. Salvage prices have already dropped since the new rigs were introduced. Main source of income in null sec will therefore be PvE bounties on Rats. Which at least the Corps can tax, probably heavily.
We will have to see if Flags cost as much as a POS and Hubs cost as much as an Outpost before we have some idea of nullsec startup costs, dreads not included.
Sov Infrastructure upgrades are 200k m3, on top of the 750k m3 for the hub itself. I would not be surprised if the price was on par with an outpost upgrade.
As for point 5, I call it Swiss Cheese Sov.
But your final conclusion is the most worrying - NPC alliances, for example, will have a substantial financial advantage at hitting Sov holding alliances, as it will cost the equivalent of a fitted dread a month to claim a constellation, and to pay for it all the Sov holders will have to carebear 23/7, making them easy prey when it comes time to fleet up.
The only good news is that POS bashing seems to be a matter of clean up, rather than necessity. Not having to shoot 6+ POSs per system twice, and them emplace 6+ POSs of your own, will be a nice change. You will still need to kill POSs, but it will be more of hitting the cyno jammmer / generator / JB / FLAG and leaving them to die on the vine when they run out of fuel, or taking a nice moon for yourself, or economic warfare to deny the fruits of a reactor POS to your enemy.
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