EVE Search - Moon mineing (O-Tec) needs a "balance"

Ditra Vorthran wrote:

This is less of a Technium problem and more of a moon goo problem.

This is less of a moon-goo problem and more of a power-projection problem, which in turn is caused by the extreme low cost of jump and bridge mechanics. Without this, OTEC simply can't protect all it's moons effectively.

Yes, I know this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, but anyone who's played EVE since the beginning has seen how null changed and what caused this. And it annoys me to no end if I see players encouraging CCP to go and mess with symptoms, ignoring the real causes.

I have no problem with players coming together and creating something like OTECH. Eve is, after all, a sandbox and OTECH is a sand castle build out of Technium. Actually, I'm surprised someone hasn't done this sooner.

Actually this has been done before, or at least attempted. But never very as successful as now, likely the result of CFC dominance (again, without easy and low cost power-projection, a NAP-train this size would fall to boredom-rot and bickering in a matter of months.

That being said, I object to the conditions that allow OTECH to exist:

1) Moon goo is only obtainable via one faucet. This allows a few people to own all the buckets.

Don't forget: the grass at the neighbor should always be greener in null. And perhaps it takes only a few people to own those buckets, but it takes a lot more to defend them as well. These faucets are paying for ship-replacement programs, backbone logistics and system development. I sincerely doubt many Tech moons are used solely as a personal ATM

2) The pervasiveness of Technium. This is CCPs fault as they built the game to require so much of it.

I'm no MF-geek, but as I understand correctly from Akita's threadnought on this matter, the Tech bottleneck is indeed unbalanced. A good look at this matter, perhaps some additional reactions, also making other moongoo a bit more valuable in the process, would be welcome. That said, I think expensive T2 is a good thing. In EVE MMO-powercreep comes in the form of prices dropping and T1 and meta should remain viable by its affordability over T2.

3) Moon goo income is a top-down income source. Unfortunately, this is really the only income source Alliances currently have. That won't change until CCP changes how Alliances make money.

Only source of income? Aren't you forgetting renters and station taxes? I bet a lot of alliances collect contributions from their member corporations as well.

Anyone could do this to any of the moon goo sources. It's not specifically restricted to Technium. It's just that Technium is the most valuable. So in order to do away with OTECH, or the possibility of OTECH-like entities to exist, a few things need to happen:

The only thing wrong with OTEC is their capability to project the power of their massive NAP-train. How long do you think that will last if it becomes too expensive for CFC to find their weekly fun beyond all their blue neighbors? How long will CFC be able to keep NC. in check if their southern allies start to balk at the price-tag of running all the way north every time a remote Tech-moon is threatened?

Boredom-rot & bickering kill more coalitions then wars do.

1) Change how Alliances make money. Bottom up automated member taxes, 'rent' in the form of automated fees (kind of like Station rental bills).
2) Once that is done, make moon goo obtainable from a variety of sources
3) change T2 blueprints so that the require a wider variety of resources to manufacture t2 goods.

[i]An automated alliance tax on top of the automated corp tax isn't such a bad idea. And it wouldn't be bad for moongoo to have a secondary labor-capped source (like future ring-mining) or even tertiary source (like reactions or 5% yield W-moons) to set a limit to the power of cartels (though null-moons should remain the primary source of moongoo, because alliances NEED a good source of passive income as a foundation and something to squabble over).