Raindeth
FACTION Inc.
Irrelevant.
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Posted - 2011.03.29 23:10:00 -
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TLDR: THIS is how you get to your stated goals, sorry too long to summarize though.
I read the first 3 pages of replies. I hope some poor CCP newb has to get through to page.. 51 because I will fix this for you. I will cross-post this so CCP sees it.
First, you have to stop looking for the quick and easy solutions to complex problems. Seek first to understand the motivations of your players and the dynamics of the economy. State your goals, then make changes that speak to the players' motivations.
So, your goals are to:
1) Increase conflict among similarly sized entities
2) Allow new, smaller alliances access to 0.0.
What motivates large alliances to hold sov?
1) Vanity. "We are the king of this hill" mentality "We are leet PVPers" etc
2) Passive Income. Making billions with little work through established moon-mining.
3) Individual income production for members is a factor.
So, how do you achieve goal #1?
There is currently no way to classify how big an alliance or powerblock is. With metagaming and use of NPC alts, alliances could be any size. So, the first thing you need to do is get alliances to voluntarily classify themselves. You would need to give big incentives for alliances to classify themselves appropriately. I would definitely use a "vanity" reward as well as an isk reward. In fact, here it is: Make sov bills scale in cost, so that one system costs 5 mil per day, but say, 5 systems cost 20 mil per day EACH (100 mil total) scaling up more steeply as more systems are added. THEN, you can reduce the sov bills based on the size of the alliance or powerblock you have. So, a "medium-sized" (make cool names) alliance would get, say, 5 systems at the 5 mil per day rate, but any sov after that would start increasing the per-system cost. Also, sort out moons and technetium. Make what you want valuable correctly valuable and require a certain level of alliance size to harvest certain moons. No small alliance has a tech moon now (or not for long) anyway. A small alliance could HOLD a tech moon, but would not be able to get isk from it. Many reward factors like this would help discourage big alliances from splitting up into a billion small alliances working together to grief the little guys.
Ok, now that you have alliances and coalitions classified to represent their size, you can address factors that will allow them to want to fight similarly sized entities. Introduce rewards (vanity and actual strategic incentives as well as an effect on captured moons) that reward similarly sized entities to attack each other. If a huge alliance attacks a tiny one, make it less rewarding and more difficult, AND VICE VERSA. If a small alliance attacks a large one, make it less rewarding. A number of small alliances could band together, but then if they want to attack the large alliance and get the full rewards for doing so, they have to register as a larger entity, even if it is a temporary TREATY.
Goal #2
I think the realization of goal number one will naturally lead to goal number two. Smaller alliances will pop up everywhere and probably fight each other for the _A_ system as long as it is more rewarding (remember vanity and iskwise) to hold 0.0 sov.
As far as programming and work, I'm sure what I've proposed here is difficult, but if you want Eve to continue to be a great game, you need to look first at the goals, not how easy it'll be to implement. Sorry programmers.
Critics, constructive ones, are welcome.
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