Ganthrithor
Caldari
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
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Posted - 2011.06.22 18:52:00 -
[1]
 Originally by: Nobani
Originally by: Kepakh
The number might seem large but does it really matter?
Claiming a space isn't the difficult task for new, in matter of fact any, entity entering 0.0, it is the keeping the space and for that you will need those 1300 people in your alliance anyway.
Sure it does. One of the stated goals of Dominion was to put pressure on large power blocks and allow smaller groups to get into 0.0. This has obviously been an abysmal failure.
A popular scapegoat is "the ease of force projection" by large existing entites. While this is certainly part of the picture, it is not the whole, or even major, problem. Pre-dominion, the "basic unit" of contesting sov was very low -- setting up and destroying towers, which can be carried in an industrial and have a "modest" 40-50 mil hitpoints each. As a result, when Goonswarm was in Delve it was not infrequent to see someone claiming sov in the backwaters of Querious. Of course, we would eventually get the :effort: to go over and knock it down, but people tried, and probably got some happiness from owning "their" little piece of space for a while.
Now, to make an effective sov claim, you're no longer dealing with towers, it's ~200 mil HP IHubs which require a freighter to haul around. Bare TCUs don't count because you can knock them over without a reinforcement cycle. In my opinion this is a serious step backward from the point of view of introducing new blood to 0.0.
The problem with the old POS warfare was that in some systems you could have 60+ moons, of which you had to control half to make a successful attack; and the logistics of fueling hundreds of towers. Honestly I think CCP threw out the baby with the bathwater here. In my opinion, reforming the POS warfare system and making system upgrades POS modules would have come closer to achieving their goals for Dominion. E.g. Only allow one POS per planet to claim SOV, and introduce a system for auto-fueling POSes in uncontested systems.
Seriously, this.
You don't see sov-squatters anymore. Sov is totally (and I mean seriously totally) unaffordable for any kind of small entity as it stands-- first there's the initial investment in sov hardware, then there's the horrendous costs associated with maintaining sov once you've claimed it. On top of this there's the requirement that you run freighter escort ops to transport your hubs and upgrades and stuff as well, which doesn't lend itself to small groups quietly claiming sov in a backwater constellation at all.
Personally, I really, really enjoyed the old sov system. I used to claim sov in several "unwanted" 0.0 systems using my alt-corp where my Amarr Control Tower Small was the larges sov-claiming tower in system. I had multiple systems sov'ed up, piles of little towers that served as ratting outposts or lowend moon miners, and my own little network of cyno beacons that allowed me to do logistics stuff without having a zillion cyno alts. It was really fun and satisfying running my own little space empire.
Now, under the Dominion sov system, running a mini-space empire is out of the question. I can't even afford sov in a system or two, let alone the massive infrastructure costs of claiming sov or the extortionate payments required for things like cyno beacon-enabling upgrades. I would never even consider doing such a thing under the current system, and that's just me talking about the possibility of claiming sov in unwanted systems in a region my alliance already controls-- for some kind of "outside" entity the idea of claiming unwanted 0.0 systems is even more absurd, as they expose themselves to the risk (more like certainty) of their infrastructure being killed by massive supercap blobs as soon as they drop it. Before, small groups from lowsec or whatever could show up, drop a POS, and set up shop. If the region-owners showed up after a bit and blew up their tower, who cares? They're out a few hundred mil.
+1 vote for planet POSes for sov
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