Verran Skarne
Shadowfire Enterprises
2
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Posted - 2012.08.14 15:16:00 -
[1] - Quote
I haven't been able to read all of the responses yet but here are my general thoughts as someone who spends a lot of time in wormholes.
First, my personal wish list for a POS revamp:
- Personal storage for corporation/alliance members
- Change administration so that a corp can operate multiple corporate offices and multiple POS's and manage permissions independently.
- Allow alliance members to actually use anything other than a ship maintenance array if given permission to do so.
- Make it one structure instead of a bunch of floating things that people can bump into/get stuck on.
- Allow ships to "dock" with the POS instead of having to store/board to change ships.
- Allow pilots to access hangar/storage/fitting like they do when docked in a station.
- Boost refining array efficiency. They're practically worthless.
- Make storage cheap/plentiful. It's silly that we use assembly arrays to store ore because the corporate hangar arrays are too small, for example.
How I would recommend doing it (briefly)
- POS is a single structure that has a fitting screen like a ship does.
- POS "modules" are fitted into the POS and use CPU/Powergrid
- Each "module" expands or adds capability.
- Modules can still be onlined/offlined depending on needs.
- POS fitting space should depend on size, but should have enough slots in the fitting screen to allow owners to fit about twice as much stuff as they could have online simultaneously.
- POS owners should be able to emphasize defenses but at a cost.
- Pilots who are moored should still be able to take manual control of defenses.
Specific issues being discussed:
Docking/Mooring/The Bubble
- I am not a fan of station games. Don't bring those into wormholes.
- I'm ok with losing the bubble as long as ships that have are close to the POS and not moored get some kind of defensive boost. Otherwise it's too easy for a sniper fleet to camp off a POS and primary anyone who unmoors.
- If we lose the bubble we should add a new POS module that works like either an enhanced directional scanner or a deep space scan probe (the latter can use some CPU/powergrid to balance it out). This lets pilots see what's around them before leaving protection.
- If we lose the bubble add new defensive modules or make existing defensive modules cheaper. One of the purposes of the bubble right now is fleet staging, so that pilots can get into the right ships and form up before getting into combat.
POS Sieges and "Evictions"
Do not remove the ability to anchor a large POS in a Class 1/2 wormhole. This is for two reasons:
1. Small and medium POS's simply can't store enough stuff in their current format to make it worthwhile to use them for a corp that is living in a wormhole and actively doing any mining whatsoever.
2. Small and medium POS's can be torn down far too quickly/easily with a small fleet of subcapital ships to be effective for anyone trying to live in a wormhole. It takes longer to reinforce a large POS with a subcap fleet, but it can be done very easily in matter of a few hours by a determined attacker, which still gives the defenders time to try and get people online to respond.
To help explain my perspective, I see Class 1 and 2 wormholes as the entry point for hi-sec mining/missioning corps that want to get some of the risk/reward of nullsec but don't really want to try to deal with the absolutely ridiculous politics of nullsec. These players are taking their first steps into more challenging areas of the game, and they're accepting a much higher level of risk of losing ships both in PvE and PvP. If you make it easier for some group of people to come around, blow up their house, and loot all their stuff, those corps will simply stay in hisec because they won't consider it worth the risk, and that will just lead to more stagnation in all areas of the game. As evidence I'll point to the number of dead towrs that we routinely fine in Class 1s and Class 2s, where the people who owned them simply gave up after losing a bunch of ships.
Of course, if you don't believe that EVE would benefit from having more players out in nullsec and in wormholes and blowing each other up and having fun doing it, that's your prerogative. But from my standpoint we want to encourage people to try out the cool stuff in EVE and help them make the transition out of carebearhood without scaring them off entirely.
Even with the current system it is trivially easy for a determined attacker, once they find a way in, to stage a siege or harassment campaign against a group of defenders in a Class 1 and either take their tower down or simply starve them out until they give up and leave. Yes, it takes planning and organization and it can go on for weeks depending on how well prepared and organized both sides are - but if you're fighting for control of territory you should be willing to make that kind of commitment to it in my opinion. If you want to own a system or kick someone out of one, you should be willing to commit time and resources to it, and it should not be the sort of thing that you do over the course of a single weekend. That's not what EVE is about, in my opinion.
Corps that move into Class 1s and 2s eventually outgrow them or at least start branching out into higher-class wormholes. They learn the basics and then they want to go after the bigger and better signatures and anomalies that bring in more ISK. When they do this they accept an even greater level of risk and they have to be even more organized to be successful. This brings the people already out there more opponents to fight (or potentially allies to befriend or recruit). If we change that paradigm, a year from now how many people will be in wormholes at all?
That's my two cents (for now). |