Originally by: mazzilliu

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When anyone has any really interesting war stories in EVE, it's not about some NPC battleships they killed, nor is it about their super laggy 500vs500 alliance battle, or that asteroid they mined the crap out of. Usually it's about their solo kill or their gang fight with <=50 people in gang. My own experiences also confirm this. It's an adrenaline rush trying to outsmart the other side, and always rewarding if you win- because every individual pilot can know with some certainty that they affected the outcome of the fight.

So i want to see more small gang combat in EVE. Most of all I want to return large scale alliance combat to small gang sizes, if it's possible. I'm averse to unnatural changes such as setting arbitrary caps or damage nerfs on large gangs- I'd much rather see a change that produces a natural result of having smaller gang fights.

So, arbitrary changes aside, it's pretty hard to find a solution that would encourage such a change. I have a few ideas, but I know they aren't complete and they will need more ideas from other people to make the best possible plan. Here they are:

-Change shootable sov structures to a different mechanism for their destruction- give them low HP, so that a small gang of about 50 high damage battleships can shoot it down in 5 minutes, and then it triggers a timer, and the defenders must have the structure repped up to high health for at least X percent of the time. and when the timer ends, another shorter timer starts, and if the X percent wasn't acheived, then if the attackers can shoot it down to 0 health then the thing is destroyed. Also change station services so a gang of 30 high damage battleships can shoot it down in about 10-15 minutes each. It's enough time to mount a defense, and it won't take all evening to rep up either.

I believe the huge numbers in alliance warfare can be, at first, blamed on the high HP of things like poses, and shootable pos structures. While dreads, moms can be used to cut down the HP quickly, its easier and less risky to get huge numbers of battleships. Partly because the other side will bring huge numbers just to kill dreads. So what we get is a continual escalation, up to the very point of people's tolerance to play EVE(how many alliance wars are decided when people say they're sick of playing EVE and getting up at 2AM to do ops?). this will need more thorough testing if it would ever make it into the game, but I think the general idea of reducing the HP of structures and making victory dependent on a continual wearing down instead of sheer numbers will make alliance warfare more interesting. It makes skill more of a factor.

So what would dreads, carriers, moms, titans be good for? dreads can become anti-subcap ships, making one pilot worth 6 or so pilots in subcaps. carriers can just stay the way they are with the repping and make fighters really good against battleships so 1 carrier can.... moms and titans can also stay the way they are, they're best against caps anyways.

I think that idea would need a lot of work to make it balanced... plus its a huge change. But personally i think the high HP is a big problem with any alliance sov scheme.

-Increase the income of lowsec enough that carebears will think of it as something worth making money in. The details are in this thread. A more populated lowsec means more targets, and since large alliances generally aren't in lowsec, this means more small gangs and solo killing. And i want the resources to be focused on the belts for more fights!


-what else? give me your feedback

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