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Jomanda
Madhatters Inc.
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2009.10.30 14:05:00 -
[1] - Quote
Having played around with the new sovereignty mechanics as they are on SISI right now, I have some questions and concerns I would like to address.
1. I have anchored many FLAGS in several systems/constellations and even regions for my corp, and every FLAG appears to cost 280 mil in sovereignty. This does not appear to be in line with earlier reports that sovereignty costs would be non-linear. I may not have anchored sufficient FLAGS to reach the next level of sov costs, so I would like to know if sovereignty costs are 280 mil for each system, or increase non-linear witht he number of online FLAGS?
2. The costs for sovereignty are very steep. I was under the impression that the sovereignty changes were (partly) to encourage other (smaller) alliances to make a move into nullsec. However at a cost of 280 mil per system per month, I fear that the costs may be too high for smaller alliances to claim a few neighboring systems or even a constellation.
Moreover, I expect the upgrades may follow the same expensive trend and cost billions per level, with the (possible) supercarrier docking facility upgrade costing many tens of billions of isk. I predict the established, rich alliances will be able to afford these costs and smaller alliances (pets) will not.
I think that the cost for smaller alliances to move into nullsec are too high. Remember that the 280 mil needs to be paid when the FLAG goes online, so regardless of the outcome of the move into nullsec large investments need to be made. Unlike presently, where a towers is more expensive, it is still a tangible asset.
3. The size of the Infrastructure hub is 750.000 m3. This should not be a problem for any of the established, larger alliances which have access to a number of titans, and will not have any problem portalling these, but again the smaller alliances, are at a disadvantage. They have to move freigthers, the old fashioned way, up to their space, at greatly increased risks when compared to the established alliances. And the use of jumpbridges will very likely be too expensive for these alliances, they require to have 35 days of sovereignty, and the purchase of an upgrade (from what I can tell so far).
4. [/tinfoil hat:on] Anybody that can fly a hauler, can afford several FLAGs and has the Starbase Configuration role can anchor and online one. It does not require any anchoring skills at this moment. With the new automatic bill payment (great improvement btw), when the sov payments are set to be paid automatically, the corp will be charged 280 mil for each onlined FLAG.
With the current roles system and horrific security / access restrictions and permissions, when it comes to posses, every spy which has the Startbase Configuration role will be able to bankrupt the corp in just a few hours work.
Again, the smaller alliances (with less isk than established alliances) are more vulnerable, because every un-authorized FLAG that is onlined is relatively more damaging than they would be for larger alliances.[/tinfoil hat]
5. With the announced treaties, and sovereignty being so expensive, I would not be surprised if the only difference, post-dominion, will be, that the "owner" alliance of a region will reduce the number of sov-systems to only their stations and JB systems and will charge their renters per month.
There is no incentive, as far as I can tell, for larger alliances to claim sov in systems they rent out. Even if a certain percentage of the renters' income goes to the "owner" it still requires a monthly investment which may or may not be covered by that income.
The larger alliances are in a position where they can simply tell any newcomers to pay tribute/rent to them regardless of the large alliances actually having sov in the system where the "pet" resides.
In fact, the less sovereignty a large powerful alliance has (and needs post-dominion), the more it can bully smaller alliances which are in jumprange of its capital fleet.
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Jomanda
Madhatters Inc.
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2009.10.30 15:04:00 -
[2] - Quote
6. When the FLAG is online a second bill for 280 mil is generated, presumably for the following month. However, when a FLAG is offlined, and then re-onlined a new bill is issued which has to be paid before the FLAG comes online.
Both onlining and offlining FLAGS generate a pop-up message (which will be clicked away as there are too many of those already). So accidentally offlining a FLAG will nullify the previous payment(s) for sovereignty and require new payments to be made before sovereignty can be re-gained.
Is this intentional?
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Jomanda
Madhatters Inc.
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2009.11.01 11:02:00 -
[3] - Quote
After some more playing around I noticed that when STOP's are anchored and onlined, no message is being sent to either the sov holding corp or alliance. The same goes when the FLAG or a STOP is under attack, no messages are being sent. And yes I checked the new mail systems as well ;).
This may be something that is just not released yet in the current build, but I wanted to mention it, because with the current alliance organisation, holding corps are the most likely to be claiming sovereignty, especially now that you can transfer FLAG ownership. Since holding corps are generally filled with alts, that may not be online for some time, sending corp mails, may not be sufficient. The same problem exists today with station services being attacked, without the relevant people noticing because nobody has an online holding corp alt.
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Jomanda
Madhatters Inc.
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2009.11.02 16:55:00 -
[4] - Quote
 Originally by: Draco Argen
FYI latest Sisi patch has a seperate "Notifications" tab in the new Evemail system.
This will likely be where you get prods about sov etc.
Something some else mentioned that hadnt occurred to me. If we are increasing the population of any given system by allowing them to increase, for example, the value of rat in the belts then the amount of high level loot being shipped and sold into empire will increase. ie increasing supply without increasing demand. Prices may drop and the value of the loot will as well.
Its a complex problem, and may not occur as simply as this at all. However, personally Rat loot and salvage are more valuable than bounties atm, if this changes so will my profit/interest in ratting.
You are right I did miss that particular tab in the new mail interface, but after re-checking the messages for a notification that a system had become "contested", or "vulnerable", I could not find any. I am sure that CCP will make such messages appear, however, I am more concerned about who will be receiving them.
As mentioned earlier, I fear that the notifications will be sent to the sov-holding corporations, rather than the alliance. If so, then this may not be ideal, when the strategically important systems to an alliance are held by their holding corps, and none of the holding corp alts are online to read the notification, sovereignty in a system may be lost without the sov-holding alliance noticing. Similar issues already exist when it comes to station services being incapacitated and the holding corp being notified, without any of the characters in that corp being online to read the messages.
On the other hand, everybody in an alliance currently receives a message when a control tower is being anchored in sovereign space. This information has been abused by spies that infiltrated the alliance and have the tower killed before it onlined.
It would be preferable, as a corp Director or CEO,to configure the recipients of such strategically important and sensitive information in a mailing list of some sort. But then again, the corporation, station and alliance interfaces are all well overdue for improvements (I hope they will be improved when treaties come). But that should be discussed in another thread.
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Jomanda
Madhatters Inc.
The Initiative.
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Posted - 2009.11.04 19:38:00 -
[5] - Quote
When logging in onto SISI this evening, I noticed that the HUB I anchored in not where I thought it would be, anymore. I read something about changed warpin points to planets, so I did not think too much about it.
So I hop in my probing ship, and start probing for the thing, and what do I see to my surprise, the sovereignty structures are not on the filter list to probe them down.
Now I know that FLAGs show up on the overview, and Hubs can be anchored only near planets, and the STOPs only should go near the gates, but these structures should be probable, nonetheless, shouldn't they?
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