Holy One
SniggWaffe
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Posted - 2011.08.15 19:08:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Holy One on 15/08/2011 19:19:42
 Originally by: CCP Greyscale
Originally by: RAW23
I love the idea of small-holdings but I'm not really sure I understand quite what is intended by the term. Would it be possible to elaborate a bit more with some hypothetical examples?
Ok, gonna use this post to reference a whole bunch of other posts in this thread which I agree with 
The basic idea is that it should be viable for small groups of players to set up shop in quiet areas of nullsec without necessarily getting the approval of the big fish in the area (particularly if they're doing smart things like settling in space owned by an alliance in a different TZ). They'd have to keep out of the way of the "owners", but so long as they managed to do that it'd end up being far more hassle than it was worth, and cost much more than it would save, to evict them.
This requires, more than anything else, the ability to make a "safe base", which would ideally be something along the lines of a fully scalable modular starbase anchored somewhere in deepish space, where it couldn't be found unless you followed its owners home, provided it stayed small enough. This gives both a practical base of operations and a "homestead"ish feel - as you build up and customize your own little settlement, it becomes your home as well as your base.
Ideally this would also entail various tools to upgrade bits of the system in a way that again isn't really worth dealing with, maybe even down to the per-planet level (all the belts around this one planet are a bit better, or it spawns some extra anoms, or something).
You could really look in to creating some kind of symbiosis between 'homesteaders' and 'sov' holders. If you conceptualize nullsec as a kind of psuedo-fuedal enterprise then 'trade' should more or less be the lifeblood. This economic drive should in no small part contribute. Make it the exception not the norm to encourage the growth of private enterprise in sov space.
Rather than encouraging isolationism (although not excluding it) you should be trying to find a way for independent enterprise to 'fill in' some of the logistics and resource harvesting/conversion holes in the current sov model. Merchants looters and ghosts, amirite?
Imagine if it wasn't the norm for alliances to gather resources; it wasn't the norm for them to produce t1 and t2 stuff themselves; it wasn't the norm for them to do their own logistics (in the main) etc.
Resource gathering, t1, t2 production, mineral harvesting and refining and critically logistics should all have a thriving independent slant. Give people a reason to take their operations in to null sec sov space and give sov holders a massive incentive to become 'barons' rather than 'grinders'.
As for providing somewhere for people to dock, refit, repair, clone etc. that's a no-brainer. Its frankly astonishing to me that you have only recently twigged the reason most of sov null is empty is because there's no practical advantage to being there if you aren't able to utilize the local 'services' or avoid the local 'blob'.
BBQ makes me hungry for more... |