Do ya have any group actually supporting this change? Because I could see CCP making sweeping changes like that only if everybody currently "important" in null were to stand behind those change and push them as a group effort but the current statu-quo won't be completely changed because :reasons: just because someone else have posted his own personal point of view.

You could have summed this post up by just saying "Hey here's how I want to fix nullsec: Remove jump drives"

Because that's pretty much what you are saying.

I haven't finished analyzing the rest of your ideas, but you do yourself no favors by claiming mineral importation didn't exist before jump freighters. Mineral importation existed - and was even more effective - before jump freighters through carrier jumping of passive targeters in iterons stuffed in a carrier SMA, or oversized guns fitted to destroyers in a carrier SMA. It has never been the case that 0.0 alliances supplied themselves trit locally through mining.

It almost sounds like you are proud of that. *facepalm*

so your entire "golden age of eve" was the eight months between when alliances were introduced (november 2004) and capitals were introduced (july 2005), back when all of the superhighways still existed to Yulai (and you did all this building without even freighters, which didn't exist yet, shuffling trit from the one refinery station per region to one of the two factory stations per region, in an iteron)

that's just wrong, and back then so little existed of the game we know today and people's skills were so low compared to where they are today that it's just not a relevant point to look at. I have a great deal of sympathy for the general idea that 0.0 needs to be made vast again so that anyime you start a minor tiff on the other side of the galaxy we can't barrel in for laughs and vice versa, but pointing to a "golden age" of outpost-free, dictor-free, freighter-free, 0.0 where miners mined without hulks and then lovingly transported their ore to the refinery station, then lovingly transported their trit to the factory station where they built things (instead of just convoying from yulai) either didn't exist, or was only fun because it was still novel

I don't know the last time you had to do any alliance logistical work Manny, but as someone in PL who uses their JF more than any other ship in the game I have to 100% disagree with you. If this became a thing, then 0.0 would essentially die. Regardless of any resource localization done in 0.0 from mining, ratting, or plexing, you still have to import a ton of things for basic industry as they are region bound (go look at a T2 reaction flow/build chart) adding in a resource trading NPC would not be that useful either as that would end up price fixing all the materials, then you also run into issues of how you define racial building materials? Do you mean the basic moon goo? Do you mean reacted moon goo? Do you mean advance construction parts? Do you mean exploration research items? Do you mean isotopes?

If this happened then no one in 0.0 would ever use t2 modules nor ships as sourcing them would be near impossible without an extreme amount of work, especially as most of the exploration sites spawn in high-sec and low-sec space.

Price of t2 ships and modules would skyrocket overnight as fueling a pos would be a nightmare and moving moon goo would be suicide. Additionally there are a limited amount of lowsec systems with a high-sec system next door. This would choke-hold the number of moons available in the game for reactions both T2 and T3.

Moons and systems in deep 0.0 would be abandoned as there would be no way to move products out of those systems in any way that was not a complete chore. Other than the bounty isk itself there would be no reason to kill any rats since selling the drops is not worth the time of moving said drops as you could make more isk/hour just killing more rats rather than wasting time trying to move the loot drops. Currently, most of the Zydrine and Nocxium in the game is produced from ores mined in 0.0 and would result in a massive shortage of both, so t1 ship prices would also skyrocket..
Basically the entire 0.0 outside of border regions to empire space would be abandoned and you would see a mass exodus back to high/low sec.

The entire in game economy relies on the Jump Freighter making logistics not more of an absolute pain in the ass than it already is. If my JF was limited to jumping 1 system at a time I would strait up unsub my accounts.

But, those who already do the current system and reap in the benefits of unlimited power projection will never support it.
Why should they?

Ok, so here's the problem: your recollections don't really match reality. Back before jump drives, there were no outposts. In 0.0, each region had three stations: two factories, one refinery. If you wanted to build locally, you had to mine minerals, move them to the refinery, refine, then move to the factory.

You had to do this all in an iteron because hulks and freighters did not exist.

Most regions have the refinery nowhere near the factory. Querious didn't. You'd be moving small amounts of minerals tons of jumps. And you're claiming people didn't just mine the ABC (which were hugely valuble), they mined the veld and stuff as well and produced locally. But people who did that were idiots, even back then. ABC was worth far, far more than veld, not least because you could produce infinite trit in empire with NPC seeded shuttles. So if you wanted to build something, you'd mine ABC, bring the minerals to empire in an iteron (billions fits in one iteron), bring those minerals to yulai, and sell them.

Then for a battleship or anything big you'd just fly the stupid thing back. But if you really wanted to build locally, you'd bring in an iteron of passive targeters, built from the infinite shuttle trit, and then refine that for gadzooks of trit in your conquerable refinery. You'd then putter your iteron back and forth 7 jumps to the factory station. Now, given that you're stuck with an iteron, and are moving less than one battleship's worth of minerals at a time, you're far better off just flying prebuilt battleships from Yulai (brought in on the superhighways to your jumpoff point). You're only going to be building cruisers or below with this god-awful backwards setup that was only fun at the time because it was novel - you were exploring a new type of gameplay and it was interesting. Novelty wears off.

I would suggest you actually sit down with a list of what got patched in when and figure out which of your recollections simply couldn't have happened. This pre-jumpdrive golden age of 0.0 simply didn't exist, except the novelty that you remember.

Your post begins with your recollection of how great yesteryear was and all of the great things that happened. My point is basically that you remember it completely incorrectly, and that the glories of pre-Cold War EVE are not a thing to use as inspiration.

I've always advocated for greater self-sufficiency for 0.0 and I greatly dislike the bipolar cold war nature of current 0.0, where a conflict anywhere is a conflict with everyone. The former we're actually getting somewhat in this patch and I hope CCP continues iterating on it. The latter is a hard problem that is not advanced by pointing to a glorious past that never happened. If you want to argue we should remove jump drives, then you've got to do it by saying how it will make today better tomorrow, not by saying weren't things great as I recall them when your recollection is faulty.

Freighters and Jump Freighters were added in the Trinity expansion December 5, 2007. EvE was a major pain in the ass back then. Regardless of how rose tinted your shades. As someone who started in 2009, part of alliances that did not have the isk to afford a JF (especially back when T2 prices were so insanely expensive during the height of OTEC), doing alliance OPs to escort freighters and Orcas through low-sec into null sucks. It is not fun, it is not enjoyable, it is not "cool," it sucks.

That does not lower the barrier to entry into 0.0 either, as you need a massive fleet to protect your freighter/JF with your proposed changes. As soon as you are spotted on the out-gate from high-sec to low sec a fleet will be forming to kill or suicide gank that freighter going gate to gate through lowsec.

This concept of yours may have worked back 250k less subs ago, but EvE hit 500k subs back in 2013. The player base is much larger and more diverse. Besides, some of us have jobs to do IRL.

I can understand where you are coming from on all your points Manny, I guess I just don't think that is fun. It really just sounds like boring work to me. I might agree with things like having constellation wide solv with constellation wide cyno jamers, but essentially making everything prohibitively more expensive or more of a pain to move just sounds like bad game design to me.

BTW when I started in 2009 a T2 ship was an extremely expensive investment that I would have never spent the money on, even if I had the proper skills to fly it. All your proposals are fine in the world view where you can freely replace what ever you want, but for those who do not have mountainous isk reserves, t2 cruisers were as far away a pipe dream as owning a capital. Even at current prices, my Rhea is worth more isk than I went through my first three years in the game combined (2009, 2010 and 2011).

Furthermore, if these kind of changes went into effect, what reason is there to bother living in 0.0 at all other than to have your name on the map? You make more isk in WH, and in terms of ISK per Effort you would be better off in Low Sec or High Sec. Your changes basically just sound like you want all of New Eden to be WH space.

There are literally no redeeming qualities to your post whatsoever, everything from "let's remove jump drives but not ACTUALLY remove them" to "let's give people a way to disable hub upgrades for a day at a time within a fifteen minute window, yeah THAT won't get abused in odd timezones at all with no recourse whatsoever" just screams "Let's make the game so awful and unfun that half of nullsec quits."


**** needs changing, I'm happy to admit that, but goddamn am I glad you have no involvement in it.



Least you admit it.

Looking back through this thread, I think you might be happier creating and leading a WH corp Manny. Just food for thought.

I'm pretty sure you're the only guy in your alliance who thinks that way.

e: My reaction to Manny's set of suggestions the other day was about as vitriolically over the top as I feel his power projection changes are. The real problem I've got with it isn't so much what I feel are the bad ideas (NPC trader, hubs hackable in the way he describes, over the top projection nerf) nor the good ones (I like the notion of tying the other indices into sov more though not quite so much in the way he's describing) but in what it fails to really address or even apparently think about. Some of it got touched on above - ****ing over people living in deep null with no alternatives, no thought to upsides of living there. Some just aren't touched on at all - what's the carrying capacity of a system for player income, how does that as well as value of alliance income sources drive the meta (hint: extensively, at least in my opinion), is production based entirely on locally sourced materials really that feasible (up for debate), etc. So I guess you could summarize that all as "some good, some bad, but mostly just feels half assed."

To credit, though, it's spawned some decent discussion.

Yeah so that's the last time I come anywhere near apologizing to you or people like you.

There are literally no redeeming qualities to your post whatsoever


**** needs changing, I'm happy to admit that, but goddamn am I glad you have no involvement in it.

What's to fix is the current system where there is no point going to null without joining one of the existing coalitions. People want to be able to try to carve out their own chunk of space but it is currently in a choke hold of the existing groups so there is no point. It's fair enough that the greatest power can exert the greatest control but when this impacts the game by putting people off even bothering with null (about 80% of the players I think?) then it is an issue. CCP want more people in null so there needs to be incentives to do so.

removing the OP mechanic that jumpbridges/jumpdrives are would mostly fix power projection and would immediately create far more gameplay in general .. the things people actually want .. pretty simple solution CCP just be brave enough too do it

removing the OP mechanic that jumpbridges/jumpdrives are would mostly fix power projection and would immediately create far more gameplay in general .. the things people actually want .. pretty simple solution CCP just be brave enough too do it

Words.

+1 (except the NPC trader thingy... find a better way to fix that).

To everyone saying that implementing those idea would make logistics impossible to keep things running on the current scale, that's the whole point of the changes proposed.

We're not looking for a solution that would do nothing, they HAVE TO make sustaining such incredibly large empire ~impossible or very tedious. The current status quo is the worst thing to happen in EVE in a long time. 2 coalitions with infinite income, agreeing to not attack each other, 2 smaller coaliton who are permitted to exist to generate "gud fights" for the line members. It's artificial, I love good fights like anybody else, but if it's ONLY fighting for the sake of fighting all the time, we're losing the sense of purpose here.

Maybe we could take a look at how WH corp lives and the mechanics in which they live in? I'm not saying turn all space to WH mechanics, but maybe we can learn something about it, there is no "supreme overlord" of WH space, everything happens on a much smaller scale. These corp do not have access to a JF and yet, they still manage to exist, don't they?

You could argue with me that they have much less jumps to do to reach empire space and resupply compared to the furthest 0.0 regions and that's true, maybe player buildable (and destructable) stargate would be the answer? Imagine, you live in Period Basis with your own little alliance who control the region and then you build a smuggler like stargate that links to querious and another one from there to Khanid. So in a very respectable number of jumps, you could be in low-sec empire space and then make your way to a trade hub.

You would need to patrol the supply pipe(s) and escort transport ship (Deep space transport with more cargo than they currently have could be nice here, mini-freighter designed for... deep space, you know?).
Moving large fleets could still be possible throught this new player made network of long range gate, but would be much more localized, static, predictable and counterable.

The "little guy" that everyone keeps referring to has access to NPC nullsec. The problem is that there's not a lot of npc null, not enough anyway and what there is has become quite crowded. Which is why I advocate expanding NPC nullsec space at the expense of sov-nullsec.

If CCP wants more players in nullsec, then we need more NPC nullsec space.

If we nerf moving ships, by making bridging or jumping harder, then large alliances will preposition ships about their territory. This will require more ships, which means the average ship size will take a down tick. Many may think this is a move in the right direction; having supercarriers instead of Titans, carriers in place of supers, etc. But when null was battlecruiser blobs, people still said it was a problem that people blobbed.

.

I wrote quite an essay on this subject but sadly through the wonders of forum web apps it was all piped to /dev/null

TLDR version:

1. People are used to status quo, it's normal to hear them whineif you take away the simply toys they are used to. Look at the outcry from industrialists that they can't just predict their profits by plugging in numbers into EveIPH every day and mass running jobs!

2. To experience some of the magic of EVE Sov, some of the mechanics like Sov levels from the old days , or things which take it out of the control of a small number of supermassive supercapital fleets are welcome.

3. Thank you to the OP for bringing up (again) this important topic.

4. Your ideas could work , but simply removing jump drives all together (without replacing it with something else that is fun) is probably just going to make the (sov) players angry.

5. I choose to live in NPC partly because I see no future in the game in sov.

6. Perhaps this new Rubicon of unexplored space will be the Sov 2.0 , the sov "done right". Let's hope so.

--
Fang

Unfortunately nullsec is much too flat right now and the regions that supposedly should be richer to make this work, aren't.

The other thing with the point you're making about gates is that it's true if they're player built and then put up everywhere. If they were for whatever reason NPC gates, carefully placed and limited to facilitate an option for travel into deep nullsec, that'd be another matter. Yes you could cut twenty, thirty jumps off your freighter convoy, but man isn't that an obvious route to take with no way around once you're on it, it'd be a shame if someone were waiting for you.

I like the idea of making null more spread out, reducing cap ships' ability to get very far very quickly.

Exactly both things have to be changed jumpdrives and jump bridges (both pos and titan ones )

Still spreading universe a bit could be some way to do it without even touching this mechanic , but i don't know what will be simpler.

Let say that all current regions will be moved away from each other so no direct capital jumps are possible ( SOV Region <> SOV Region )
The only way to move a capital to some region is using some NPC <> SOV connection (closer constellation a system that is much closer or something like this)

This will be also interesting from other perspective , as keeping this system safe will be the point of securing some region.

Still the best solution is to mix them and get as much changes into this game as possible.

I know that this is probably bad idea , what do you think about putting to a supers additional requirement that when activating regional jump they have to spoil their drive on a sun for few minutes ?

Limiting how far a capital ship can jump just doe snto work because makes impossble to traverse high sec using the low sec pockets as is done now.

Simply creating a timer between any jump drive activation of like 5-10 minutes would be more than enough to make capital ship fleet movement slower, but not harder.

Also titan bridges are much much more problematic on the fast response field than t capital ship jump drives. Somethign shoudl be done so they are not so overhelmingly powerful. That is by far the most powerful ability in game ( and rightfully belongign on the largest of the ships), but if its used as commonly as I use my cell phone, then something is amiss.




On the sov things. I left 0.0 after dominion because the sov changes just pushed even MORE towards the worst thing in 0.0. Massive HP grinding of structures.

Remember station services? Why the disabling of services basically failed as a feature? Because the ammount of EHP is ridiculous . No one wants to spend 1 hour with an average fleet to take services out or need to bring a capital ship blob to take services of a station.

We need more targets that are EASY to disable (and then also easy to repair) so that smaller incursions are doable and not everythign need huge fleets.

Station services woudl be a start. Cut their EHP to 10% of current. Half Jump bridges EHP. Move moon mining pos modules to outside POS shield so they can be disabled in a reasonably short time by a moderate gagn that is not responded when incursioning at an enemy space... Things like that make smaller gangs more meaningful, promoting more chances of combats (and smaller combats) and usually way more fun engagements that wehn combined with a timer on capital jump drives woudl mean not every single fight is under constang risk of a hotdrop.

Sorry , but no.
The whole point of people suggestions is to change this, and there is no difference if this is lowsec or a nullsec.
What eve needs is to be big again, where moving from one edge of universe to another in a capital or super will not take <1h.

You suggest timer between jumps, it will not change nothing.
Ops will just start a bit ealier , and this will make capital, and especially supercapital usage more safer.

I think , whole point of changes made by CCP should focus on making sov holding alliances much more tied up to space they own.

There will be always place for deployment in other side of eve , as eve is a game of alts.

I'm not saying that this will be easy job , but it is something that ccp have to do.

Just look at this webpage , and "all times" graph.
Players Online

Current numbers put active player base number around 2011 , and it is still dropping.

You can say that every thing CCP gained since Incarna it is now gone or even more from what i see Quantum Rise was also expansion that put the active player base above this number , and this is 2008.

People where not waiting for Industry re haul , yes it is nice , players online will jump a bit for 2-3 months and then again they will start dropping.

People where asking CCP for certain changes , and where again ignored.
How long people are asking for pos system rehaul? or for a sov mechanic changes? or for different cyno / jump mechanics? supercapital changes?

Something that relay matters , and what we will get?
More expensive ships, more expensive logistics , so less people willing to burn their isk in ships.
Nice industry interface , that will benefit a very small group of players , as one skilled character have 50? or more production lines , but when on grid , he can fly only one ship.

Eh, yes you can say that i'm worried about eve.
This is nice game , but it is falling apart, because instead of growing ... devs are cutting roots just to make it more colourful and shiny , like this is the reason why most of the players play in this game.

In my opinion one of the big problems that causes powerprojection are the timers...
People can set the timers to their likings, so they have WAY to much time to get their defending numbers in.
Timers should be MUCH shorter, so the defenders have to be CLOSE to their defending system to be able to always defend it.
If an Alliance wants to take SOV they can prepare for it and Blitz it.
The Defending Alliance should be either there to defend it, or loose it.
timers should not be ANY longer then 24 hours. (or maybe even 3 stages of 8 hours each)

Well, if we wanna go the route of limiting power projection, how about starting with something smaller and more incremental? How about we just remove Titan bridging? I mean it wouldn't solve the whole problem but it would be a start.

I've always felt uneasy about the idea that 99% of Titans' role in Eve is just to sit in a POS and bridge.

You make a good point about replacement caps to avoid the timmers. But at least would keep super capitals as slow response.

What you want to achieve is good, but limitign jump to adjacent system is not because will not curtail mobility. Will create serious choke points and even more stagnations. Unless you add several dozen extra low sec system just to provide alternative routes on those points. And then you need to solve the problem of the low sec pockets....

I haven't been in a 0.0 alliance for quite awhile, but it seems to me the problem with stagnation isn't the ability for alliances to move their forces from point to point but the time, and fire power, required to dislodge an entrenched alliance.

Reinforcement timers allow alliances ample time to re-position fleets and, for the most part, choose when to engage. It's useful for small alliances with a few members, but makes the big coalitions almost impossible to dislodge. A few hours to a small alliance is a few dozen ships, to a coalition it's putting the system into TDI.

Instead of limiting force projection, I rather like the idea of an area of influence mechanic in sov space. Each alliance chooses a system to be their seat of power, where their influence will strongest. Every jump away from this system will have a lower influence score, eventually resulting in systems where the alliance has 0 influence.

As a mechanic, influence would represent how long a system would hold out against aggressors. The Seat of power would have the longest re-reinforcement timers, letting alliances set up defenses, and boarder systems would be reinforced for mere hours, if at all.

It allows the current system to be more fluid. If you wanted to hold lots of territory, you can do it but you need pilots available at a moment's notice. If you want to hold small amounts of territory, you can afford to be a little more strategic and choose your battles.

It also allows small groups to actually be a little more effective. You don't have to send a capital fleet in to battle every time, if the boarder systems have no reinforcement timer you could run and try to grab systems before a defense could be mounted.

I think that having timers and costs affected by usage are something that should be added. But i do have worries over this making the game tedious and unfun, which not every enjoys.

I may of missed it, but how will this affect blackops?

Interesting solutions but I'm afraid the coalitions would not break up as a result. When the best income is directly dependent on the amount of sov owned, it makes sense for alliances to collaborate rather than fight.

The only way to really break up the coalitions would be to make renting less profitable to the extent that it could not support a coalition of 50,000+ characters. But that's impossible if you think about it. The only other option is to outlaw renting, but CCP wouldn't dare interfere with the whole ~sandbox~ narrative.

I like how all of you assume that making gross changes to the way capitals navigate the known game world will somehow have some mystical ability on players way to undermine even the best changes, to simply make more jumps, or to just quit playing this awful game.

"Power Projection" was a neat catch phrase during the CSM, but when most of the nullsec populace is capital ready (in many cases with several racial variants at that) what you're experiencing isn't 'power projection breaking the game' it's the influx of more and more players with higher and higher skill points.

Making Sov cost more might do something to break up huge swathes of space owned by a single entity, but if the space is unused in a 40k man coalition, why is going to be more desirable to a much, much smaller group? Bad space is bad.


There was a lot more to this, but the forum ate it (twice); this is the draft, and I can't be ****** to re-write it all again. TL;DR Tinkering with Sov, sure; ******* with jump drives, meh.

It is not only sov that is the problem. If we tie up costs to sov we jusut split the alliances within a coalition, not the coalition itself.

If we could make life be more expensive the more blues you have that would result in the ideal solution, the problem lies in how to do it in an elegant way that is not easily circunvented.

That is why I proposed (rough and very very initial idea) that the alliance manteinance bill be tied to the number of player owned outposts it is allowed to dock

A few pages in and it is nice to see the conversation evolving.

In my opinion the main problem will nullsec, AND THE ONLY PROBLEM WITH NULLSEC, is the sov mechanics. I'm no expert at creating rules but I feel the solution is simple:

Speed up all timers so a system can change owners in less than a day.

Example: Alliance B could destroy Alliance A's station in under 18 hours(6 hour reinforcement timers).

Potential Situation:
Ally B knows that Ally A has a horrible USTZ and an even worse Aussie TZ. Ally B waits for Ally A to have a bad EUTZ showing so they begin to siege a strategic hub. Unless Ally A pulls a rabbit out of their @ss their station is lost.

How is this a solution? Alliances today rule out strategic hits/death blows because you can see them coming from a mile away.

With todays mechanics Ally A would reinforce Ally B's station on a wednesday. Ally B now has 3 days to plan its defense for the weekend. 3 days to move cynos, dictors, etc. WAY TOO MUCH TIME.

In current times, as we learned from Germanys Blitzkrieg, the faster you can hit the better!

Advanced Situation:
Coalition A needs to remove Coalition B from a region. They alarm clock on a Monday after DT for their coalition to reinforce and now CAPTURE every system in said region by Monday night. Come Monday afternoon Coalition B would be backpedaling due to the abrupt, vast attack on their space. Either they pull together numbers within the next 12 hours to defend every system or they face to lose all of their hardwork.

Que Mannies solution: Stations can be destroyed(assets beamed to lowsec/jita)
If a coalition did a deathblow to another alliances main station, the defender would then logistically have to get all of their assets back out of lowsec/jita to the frontline again
That would be a pain and people would gladly defend their turf to prevent the extra work.

All together this solution would do the following:
require all alliances to be on high alert at all times
SOV wars to be more FPS like, high death/action
logistic networks ready to retrieve lost assets from destroyed stations
potential more cap use(='s greater chance of cap loss)(more fuel usage)
more wars as alliances run the risk of losing their entire space in a week or two(nowadays 1 system a week)

With the timer discussion, I think another thing that's been forgotten is the distinction between tower timing (takes some effort to get the timer right) and the new system of preset timers. I am not convinced that the "set time, timer is within the variance based on that time" is a better idea than the old system of tower timing where there were things like ******* up stront timing, or the ability to kite towers.

So then you just fill the space with renters and we're back to square one

Until living in and using space for YOURSELF and your members is more profitable, fun, beneficial and entertaining than renting it out and unsubbing is addressed, all this power projection talk is just bandaids on a bigger problem.

But what made you have a timer in Cobalt Edge and The Spire? Wouldnt it make sense to live in one constellation, one region, one pocket? No, it doesnt make sense because theres not enough value in that space.

OK, let me get more space! More space = more renters = more isk

Why do alliances need isk? To guard their sandcastle or kick over someone elses

I could not agree more that power projection needs to be nerfed severely. It's the only way you'll get truly epic fights that actually mean something. Meaning comes from effort invested, not from numbers.

How about allowing a single character to move more at once, but make the move itself considerably slower and more dangerous?

Imagine carriers/freighters could carry 10 times what they carry now, but moving from the north to the south would take days and requires traveling through every damn system. With some bad luck, by the time you arrive, it turns out your best friends are stabbing you in the back... It would make conflicts slower and somewhat more predictable.

Other than that, I believe sov warfare should be very "minimalist". As few sov structures as possible.. no need for cyno jammers and what not. The main advantage defenders should get is that they're already there and nicely stocked on ships and ammo. If the attackers handle the logistics well, then props to them.

Logistics should be a team effort that requires a proper fleet to guard the convoy. It should involve fighting your way there.

But...there is a fundamental flaw in EVE's industry design: industry is more complex than it should be (too many different components) and anything T2 requires components from all regions.

This encourages trade, sure, but at the same time obliterates any possible local identity. What if the great wildlands provided all raw materials needed for the production of minmatar T2 ships? I am dreaming now, but that is the kind of flavour EVE industry sadly lacks.

lol what a gigantic crock of ****

Just a few thoughts.

Premises
1. Sprawling empires are bad. This is bad because it makes it more difficult for smaller entities to get into the null game.
2. Dependence on a large number of players/allies to survive is bad. There is only one logical endpoint to this after a period of coalescence: two enormous coalitions which balance each other (see point 1).
3. Alliances would not form coalitions if they did not have to. I am assuming that lack of fights and a desire for independence would be enough to stop coalition formation if point 2 (i.e. survival) was solved.

Actions
1. Nerf power projection.
2. Institute GÇÿdynamic true secGÇÖ to increase rewards for active space and decrease rewards for inactive space against an unmodified sec.
3. Institute GÇÿdynamic defence indexGÇÖ to increase the defensibility of active space and decrease defensibility of inactive space. Somehow.

Results
Rental empires will be maintained as long as it is possible to defend multiple parts of your empire simultaneously over great distances. Nerfing power projection will increase the probability of successful rebellion and territorial wars. This will continue until the optimal empire size is achieved, i.e. small enough to adequately defend all borders.

Alliances need the ability to grow GÇÿupwardGÇÖ instead of sprawl GÇÿoutwardGÇÖ and this must include both rewards and defence. A GÇÿtallGÇÖ, active alliance should be very difficult (impossible?) to dislodge from a small area of the map. If an alliance chooses to grow upward (focus their activity in a smaller area of space) then they should attain greater income (GÇÿdynamic true secGÇÖ), preferably player-generated rather than moon-generated. They should also attain greater security as a natural consequence of concentrated force but also from sov mechanics (the GÇÿSomehowGÇÖ above), allowing them to defend against a stronger force (GÇÿdynamic defence indexGÇÖ).

Conversely, if an alliance chooses to grow outward then their reward is rental income. Power projection nerfs mean that such an alliance would be inherently unstable, vulnerable to coordinated attacks.

A potential problem with this approach is that an active rental alliance would also grow in defensive strength. Maybe that is alright if the renter would need to be involved in sov defence. If they are strong enough and good enough to repel a strong invader then the chance of rebellion would also be increased.

Making the game tedious and unenjoyable, obviously.

My convenience (and everyone else's) is essential for the game's health. Making the game inconvenient is not that far from making the game un-fun.

You also appear to be conflating easy and fun. That does not necessarily have to be the case.

FYI: Just to be clear, I don't do logistics for my alliance or corp. So I'm not here complaining about how my own in game activities would suddenly suck alot more with these changes.

I'm not exactly jumping for joy over the suggestions here simply because I don't seriously believe PL would just dump the current rental empire model for the sake of the health of Eve.

Where were these radical ideas after the moon goo nerf? Where were these ideas after the Halloween War? I understand you are all so terribly bored you drop Supers on cruisers but honestly? I doubt you could convince people to give up easy income.

Rental income is the easiest thing in existence. Basically CFC/Nc./PL have become landlords nothing more. And due to botlord agreements for both sides to abstain from hurting each others rental space these ideas make even less sense.

Can you seriously convince these people to unclutch their pearls long enough to see there's more to Eve than a blinking walllet? I doubt it.

And what of PL's super cap force? There's just too many unanswered questions and even though the ideas are radical and refreshing, I doubt they will ever come to fruition.

CCP depends upon these once a year proxy wars to advertise 2000 man space battles to draw more people in. What these people don't understand is the 10% tidi, the billions of isk needed to field huge behemoths let alone the years to train such ships too.

So it's a catch 22. You either revert Eve back to an even more niche game and lose half the subscribers or you let the coalitions become so bloated and fat that the line members eventually bleed off and you lose those people anyway.

These are fresh ideas but hardly practical and certainly laughable when leaders of entities like yours scoff at anything that would hurt their easy income.

My analogy of Supers being Eve's ICBM was correct then. They seem to be more of a deterrent than anything else. If you could get seriously backing in PL for Manfreds ideas there would be some weight to it. Not that Manfred himself isn't weight enough behind them.

You got my support on this. Gate camping shipping lanes? Holy **** it's almost like Piracy would be profitable again!

I'm going to try again....

What I was trying to suggest, and my fault that I failed, is that one solution might be to make null logistics less important. If "stuff" is sourced locally more than bought in bulk in empire and then jumped out to null then logistics becomes less of a thing.

Right now, and even with the various changes to industry, making things in null is not going to be much of a thing except for various high end commodities. For example, making JFs in null might become a big thing. Making cruiser hulls, probably not.

I agree with much of Manny's goals (more people mining in null, more people manufacturing in null, systems being more intensely used, I'm not even against seeing the current null empires contract in size and opening up huge swaths of space for potential new comers). I'm just not sure making things inconvenient is the way to go. Trying to force people into an outcome is not as easy or healthy as providing incentives where people willingly move towards that outcome.

Most people focus on "force". Change the rules so people can't do something anymore instead of changing the rules so they don't want to do what they are currently doing and do something else, that also could have positive long term "health" benefits for the game.

Yes, the latter is probably quite a bit harder, but at the same time it is more consistent with the notion of the sandbox game. The former, however, is less consistent with a sandbox game. It really comes down to: you aren't sandboxing like I think you should, so I'm going to stop you from sandboxing that way.

No cyno's at top belt? Fine : P And no you aren't fat. I'm the fat American riding a power scooter lol.

I'm also worried they might be a bit too much to introduce in one update. Do you have any kind of phased in plan?

Quick technical question:

What exactly do you mean by adjacent?

Connected by gate--i.e. a JB would be a "safish" way to get from one system to the next and avoid gate camps.

Or some other definition? The reason I as is that on a 2-d map systems that are "adjacent" can be rather far away and involve a number of gates.

Sorry if this were answered somewhere else in the thread....15 pages is a bit of slog to read.

Long and very good post.

So lets cater to the rich and organised who can just burn 30j with interceptors to their 500 BS cache in the warzone instead.

This thread has AIDS and most of the suggestions in it are hilariously disconnected from the one thing that matters in terms of having power to project in the first place: warm bodies. If I can simply stockpile ships in strategic locations then you can nerf jumpdrives or logistics or exotic dancers however much you like, the little guy will still get stomped by those with more people.

If your end goal is a more diverse null sec, then you need to address reasons to diversify, not arbitrary limitations on distance that only hurt the small and poor anyway.

I set my timers accordingly.


And pay my sov bills. ;)


edit: If you are questioning the ability to have those stockpiles in the first place, let me tell you about this alliance that used to do just that. You might have heard of them.

It still favours the big player who can just put enough players over at point B to mine and build the crap on site if needed under this new regime.

Which is why he proposed sov that has to be used to be kept? One of the changes doesn't work without the others .. which is why they were proposed together? And I would like to see more under the name of 'use' than just ratting or mining in a system. Why can't I run a market hub for my two neighbors and get usage points for that?





There is a whole number of ways you could nerf moving big fleets round quickly without breaking NPC nullsec pockets. But they would probably also make them more accessible to less skilled players and who wants that? You better start trading ore/ships/modules for ice/pirate faction stuff/moon goo with random Wormhole People cause those supply convoys don't come through anymore.



Why would they though? What drives 1000 people to jump back and forth 5 times a day to defend something they don't use? That's the question that needs an answer. The only way the blob can end is by making it even more unfun than it is already.



Adding to the hacking thing:
I think the hack should go away with the fleet (over time) that does it. Since not every alliance has a round the clock guard online ready to defend every structure. And having to 'unhack' your sov upgrades every day because some Aussie is pissed and wants you to be pissed as well doesn't sound so great.

Fair play for advocating something which isn't directly in the best interest of your alliance, but about improving the gaming experience for everybody.

I don't have any amazing solutions to this very complex problem but I do think that roaming gangs of all size and types (not just blobs and capitals) should be able to disturb defenders enough that they would want to form a defence fleet. It's pretty crappy that the best defence to a small roaming gang is to sit in station whenever they get within a couple of jumps until the roamer/s get bored. As Manny said there is a lack of content drivers... Although I worry that if production was restricted to require being done locally would that make players even more averse to risking them in fights?

Totally agree that smaller entities should be able to exist in sov space too, there is many many players that would be interested in playing in that region of space if the current mechanics weren't restricting players to such a boring and unrewarding existence. The choice of joining the blob or getting steamrolled isn't attractive to a lot of people. Until we see major changes I think many of the what I consider 'real pvpers' that is people who when they log in look for fights, will stay in lowsec or npc 0.0, or worse yet go inactive because sov 0.0 isn't fun.

I don't think the problem is power projection. It is just a scapegoat / catch-phrase for a bigger problem.

Touched upon:
* Conflict drivers: need more. R64, CSAA, sec, and sov are not enough.
* SOV linked to indexes: use it or lose it.

CCP has it that some space should be more valuable than others to promote conflict, which seems reasonable until the defender becomes un-removable.

But there still needs to be incentive towards movement and conflict. The list of conflict drivers needs to be a LOT longer, and some randomness needs to be thrown into the mix.

As a potential future Titan Pilot, as well as being a part of the null bloc game for quite awhile, I can honestly say that even though these changes look decent on paper, I can see a long term burnout for most of them. Looking at the 'engaging border disputes' comment a few pages back from you, Manfred, I can see the exact thing that is happening with BOTLORD now repeating in terms of logistical movements. We don't touch yours, you don't touch ours, all is ok in the neighborhood. What could potentially be fun for a few months will eventually be paved over by Politics, and null will go back to it's current state of 'Not doing much'.

I can't pretend to have been playing for as long as the lot of you posting in this thread, but I'd like to think I have enough of my whits about me to see a rather large bandaid that you are potentially giving CCP here. Light changes could be made to make things more interesting, but the primary problem, as most people see, which is Industry and logistics in Null, will be hurt more by this than helped. All you are doing is slowing things down a little, and inconveniencing people a little. Most of these changes will light the forums on fire for months on end, until CCP reverts / loosens things a little to keep people happy. While I am thrilled to see some really potentially good changes coming from this thread otherwise, your initial 'Radical' ones are really painful. No one will be happy to see most of these go through, especially those dealing with Alliance Starbase and Logistics causes on the day to day.

That being said, at least this thread so far has been relatively civil. Some of the ideas like Mass on Cynos is really interesting, and maybe bringing in the potential of Tech II Cynos with more mass stability and less cycle time would be something in the future, but that's not really something to be brought up in this thread in the 'going out on a limb' clause.

Im not against the 'honorable third party' thing, trust me I'm not. However, if something needs to be moved that's of any sort of Logistical and Industrial priority, what major power ISN'T going to form to defend it? A smaller third party can only do so much to cause havoc, and will likely not risk the potential losses to MAYBE get a Freighter or two. A few might, such as Snuffbox, etc, but most won't even bother. It's a huge 'Maybe' in a long list of them, and I really can't see it working out to anything other than the occasional annoyance and maybe a good ALOD Post or two.

"In a perfect world". You, of all people should know this.

Your changes, though potentially interesting, are a huge stretch that stand to either help things along greatly, or completely make the game a hassle to be a part of, or just outright tedious to the point it completely trashes Null Logistics and Industry. I can't help but see outcome two being the more likely one, no matter how you spin it.

Ops will be posted. Ships will be formed. The larger entity will prove the victor. Fleets will redock after sitting around for 20 minutes and stood down. Blue balls will be had. The cycle of null shall continue.

After reading alot of good ideas and the usual goon-tears i'd like to trow in my 2 cents:

It's been said already, but i find it very important that you can only maintain SOV by acutally living in that system.

By living i mean not just being in system, docked 24/7 with alts, but actually mining/ratting/plexing/PI/building and so on...
The more ppl live there the better the system gets, also dynamic true-sec...

SOV should be disrubtable by a small scale fleet to a certain extend and structures/stations should be hackable.
Imagin if you manage to hack the docking permissions on a station for a short amount of time... hrhrhrhr :D
So the residents either need to fight back or lose something valuable to said fleet.

I'd also like to add, my ideas on moon mining:



Someone smarter than me should tackle this. Its been suggested before I know.


I kinda think this is cool. I like the idea of outside the tower. Because with all the other changes you will be living closer to your moons due to power projection. So there is no reason why people wouldn't be able to look after there moon. Perhaps the harvester becomes hackable.

3. Rorqual
With the moon minerals shifting moons, you can find a r64 vein on an empty moon.
Lets give the Rorqual Capital Moon Miners. In order to use them it fould need to siege up, but should also be able to "ninja" a valuable vein in a reasonable amount of time, while still beeing in danger if doing so.
Imagin fancy graphics mining a moon or stealing the veins from an unarmed mining POS :].

Except this won't make force projection impossible.....at all.

Force projection requires precisely two things:
1) Having force (i.e. numbers)
2) Having the will to project that force (i.e. telling grunts to deploy to region x)

You want to nerf Jumping/Bridging? Here's how coalitions will adapt:

Jump/death clone to lowsec staging system nearest to deployment area. Lowsec logistics with the proposed changes are still largely trivial, so fleet ships will be staged in the low sec systems most convenient for deployment. Once strat op is done, jump/death clone back to home region.

Example: CFC deployment to catch: Deathclone from VFK to Khanid/Nourbal, pickup fleetship, do strat op in catch, deathclone back to VFK.

A jump range nerf doesn't matter when you can move 2000 warm bodies across the map in an instant.

Any Alliance / Coalition who would just give up their space to a bunch of randoms just for the sake of 'convenience', doesn't belong in Nullsec.

Didn't want that space anyway, etc.

If you can't afford the space you're in, then your Alliance is getting closer to the point of death. Even then, renting has more than proven that income is easily obtained from those willing to part with their own. It's worked for various entities, and honestly, I think Renting will become even more popular with changes like these.

Why not? Deathclone to staging system across the universe and stay there. I'll grant you that staging systems will be chosen differently for logistical concerns then they are currently, but nothing stops you from sending your coalition or a portion of it across the map.

Taking gates? Bubbles? Who cares. Get 2000 nullified T3s instead of 2000 ishtars. Big deal. T3s are cheap.

People tunnel vision on jump drives a lot when they talk about power projection. There's more than one way to project power in Eve.

[


Perhaps they're carebears, industrialists, pure PvErs who would rather a stable, mutually rewarding relationship than rely on the fickle whims of mercenaries. Frankly, some rent so the pvp group they buddy up with has an operations budget is probably cheaper than mercs and they'd likely get it back by selling their pals ships and equipment.


Something related: treaties. If you're going to have utilization matter, there ought be a mechanism to formally assign that usage to someone else's claim.

It probably goes without saying that you can expand on the usage thing both to further promote further upgrades of space (five levels is boring, lots more potential there) as well as develop the idea of "hostile usage" or something. If someone is not only stopping you from using your space, but using it in your stead...that should matter.

The groups living in those regions would get crushed by the coalitions that'd continue to exist elsewhere, as new rules or not they'd still have an overwhelming advantage in basically every way.

Variations by region or constellation or even system in the "terrain" would be intersting but at some basic level everyone has to be playing by the same set of rules.

TL:DR-
JB moved away from POS and are now anchored on a planet
JB networks are limited to intra-constellation only
Maximum of 2 JB per constellation regardless of who owns them
Only alliance (corp if no alliance) members can access the JB


.

Wormholes should be only addition to logistics.
Why all gates allow all types of ships to pass?

So we have grate idea about capitals passing regional gates , as the only way to change regions.
I suggested more connections for each region so each region have NPC space connection.
This gate don't have to be capital mass capable.

Why not add gates that will only allow moving smaller ships.
So we can have gates that will allow to move :
- XXL ( so every possible ship )
- XL ( every thing smaller from mothership and titan)
- L ( so current sips allowed , including JF)
- M ( every thing not capital -> so this will exclude freighters and jump freighters)
- S ( Smaller than battle cruisers , but industrial ships will be also allowed)

Now each SOV region have at least :
- one XXL Stargate in the direction of the NPC Space
- XL gates in the direction of other SOV space
- one M gate linking to the nearest NPC space , unless there is already direct XXL Stargate to NPC space

For the NPC space itself.
All NPC nullsec space will have few S size gates to 0.1 sec Lowsec , number will be dependent on the system count.

This way there will be always logistic window.

I live in Stain, and it is a bit on the edge of the map, so while keeping current connection styles.
We have XXL Gates to :
- Esoteria
- Catch
- Period Basis

In order to move capitals to Lowsec we have to go :
Catch -> Providence -> Lowsec

As Stain don't have direct access to lowsec we will have 2-3 S gates to lowsec created.
At the same time Stain will get M gates to regions :
- Paragon Soul
- Impass
- Feythabolis
- Omist? unless Curse is not closer

I am liking the idea of lived-in-sov. So how about something like this:

Anyone who does (pretty much) anything in a system pushes his/her corp/alliance sov uppwards in the form of sov-points. The corp/alliance with the highest sov-points will be the sov owner after DT. Set a maximum points at say 1000 to ensure it will not take 50 months to get rid of someone who has been entrenched a while.

Examples of things to affect sov:
Kill a rat: 1 point
Sell an item on the market: 5 points per transaction (ammo, charges and shuttles excepted to minimise abuse)
"Pop" a roid: 1 point
Sov structure of some sort (few hitpoints, short reinforce timer and hackable): 200 points, lost if reinforced or hacked, lost permanently if destroyed.
Destroy a piloted ship that belongs to different alliance/corp: 5 points (shuttles and noob ships excepted)
Destroy a capsule belongs to different alliance/corp: 10 points
Successfully complete a hacking site: 10 points
PI: 1 point per 1000 units moved off planet. Owning the customs office 25 points/office, lost if CO is reinf

A few examples and the numbers may be stupid but you get my point. This means A/ Renters will be the sov owners within a week or two. B/ Taking systems require some effort apart from blowing the sov-strucure. C/ The more a system is "lived in" the more work is required to dislodge the owners even for a hugely superior force. D/ Less or not at all "lived in" systems can be taken quite easily. E/ Everyone, from the JF "import" guy to the grizzled combat pilot contributes daily.

Thoughts?

And the reason you remain a part of this despised majority is - what?
Why dont you quit PL, create your own alliance, call it Against ALL... ehm... Carebears, and wreck the havoc?

That's because it involves efforts and risks, and you're either too lazy or too scared (or both). Instead, you go for ranting on forums, starting a topic #723467529346 about "how to fix sov". The sov is fine.

Sov is fine, yes.

Sov mechanics is broken, indeed - but the sovereignity map itself represents the state of mind of nullsec population and is therefore fine. Most people are risk-averse, deal with it. Those who chose to fight - they have all kinds of tools for that. They have NPC nullsec to live in, they have blackops to hunt the renters and siphons to drain the moons (since recently). Those tools may be sub-optimal and require some balancing/revamping, but they are there.

You may say - oh no, it's not for me, it's just pathetic guerilla warfare, and I want all out, I want to welp yet another 59 titans. Well, those titans, I remember them... and what triggered that fight. It was a Halloween War, which started... let me remember... after Solar Fleet and Darkness of Despair formed a coalition. And who are those DD dudes? I guess those were some try-hards from Stain, who (in the beginning) were not even able to take a single R64 moon. That's how you create content, Manny.

And also obligatory - your tears are delicious.

How many capital fights do we have a year now? Does it really matter if they get reduced? It seems like the only reason they exists is to sit around 9-10 months out of the year, and simply deter smaller engagements from happening.

For as much pain as it is going to cause, capitals (or at least supers), and insta-jumping half-way across the universe need to be head-shot and taken out of the equation. There is simply no way to allow them to be used as it currently stands and have any type of productive environment. Those that amassed the most of these wonderful massively unbalanced ships first have won the game.

Words

Without going into too much detail into the problem of power projection itself, I'd like to introduce you to my simple concept to control it. This is simply a concept that I would be interested in hearing feedback on. I don't know whether it would be good or bad for the game but it wouldn't be as drastic as a change as some of the other ideas mentioned here.

Idea: all jump drive capable ships have a calibration amount that recharges kind of like capacitor does. The points of calibration are based upon how many light years the ship can jump. The exact numbers for capacity and recharge rate could be debated but an example would be that a ship could jump 50 light years and their calibration recharges at 10 light years per hour. (I don't know if those are even close to reasonable numbers, I just picked random ones.) Maybe even have skills that can increase the capacity and recharge rate as well. It would basically put a hard limit on to how far ships could jump within a certain time frame but also leave choices available. For instance, you may decide to jump into a fight but not have the calibration to jump out to even the nearest star system for at least 15 minutes. Moving across the galaxy would have to actually be a thing that takes a little bit of time and planning.

I guess I don't get the whole "jump bridges must be neutered" thing floating around. Ever since jump bridges were limited to one per system, these travel corridors are very easy to interdict -- simply focus your efforts on the gates between two links. It's certainly more interdictable than a titan bridge, which can not only reach farther, but can utilize beacons to more covertly move pilots between systems (in that a cyno is not required, which is broadcast to everyone in the game.) Compare this to jump bridges, which, by and large, do not change their links, and are typically published publicly, or at least widely enough to make their existence common knowledge. Hell; you can even divine the destination of a jump bridge by getting within 2500 meters of it and right clicking, even if you are hostile to the jump bridge haver in question!

Certainly, jump bridges are an advantage, but their use today is a symptom of the sprawl required to maintain a nullsec empire today, not the cause. Case in point: we prefer to use wormholes for moving our troops over large distances, despite the fact that we have an expansive jump bridge network. The jump bridge network is too easy to disrupt to be a reliable troop transport mechanism, so we use an alternative.

One of the key selling points of Eve is the player driven economy. NPCs selling fuel as a convenience (even if npc prices are pegged to player markets) go completely against one of eve's chief distinguishing features. If NPCs sell fuel, why not ammunition and ships too?

Anyone that has off-racial towers or caps in a given region would be faced with a horrific logistical nightmare in your bold new vision of Eve. You quite evidently saw the logistical nightmare that ensued and came up with the brilliant idea of having NPCs fix it for you. Great. But if NPCs can fix one logistical nightmare, why don't we use them to fix other logistical nightmares (e.g. modules, ships, ammo, drones, etc.). NPC sell orders for everything!

Except that would leave you without chokepoints to camp for easy freighter kills. If everything is to be produced locally or imported by gate, fuel should also be produced locally or imported by gate. Don't half ass your changes, embrace them and all that they imply.

Unfortunatally its been along time since i lived in Null, so i cant really comment in detail.

However, looking at some of the posts on here there are some interesting points being put across.

A few suggestions i would throw on the table are;

1. Remove the Titan bridge, afterall is this ship not powerful enough without putting a fleet of 200 ships straight on a POS. This means that peeps have to fly to the destination, which could lead to that fleet being attacked on route. May reduce a little lag as well. That way if you want BS on field straight away they use Black Ops with Capital support.

Or reduce the the number of ships to 20, and but a timer on the timer for bridge usage.

Will peeps really want to fly so far just to held some renters out? Will this change how the larger alliances conduct there wars? I dont know

2. Remove Supers and Titans from low sec. This means that smaller corps can have there fun as well, without being counter dropped by bigger more powerful alliances just because there are caps on the field. Also see 1, in regards to the Black Ops and caps in low sec. Therefore less Bat Phoneing and peeps may have to fight there own battles. If the cant fight them, there loose the space.

3. Think i have to agree with the passive income, that someone mentioned in an earlier reply. Remove the expensive moons and put them into mining sites. After all its the bigger alliances that control these and dont give the smaller alliances/corps a chance. Why should the bigger alliances have a free run to all the high end isk by doing a little work?

Just my 2 pennies worth

And what impacts would this have on Low Sec which is arguably at much greater risk in terms of logistics than Nullsec is currently.

Should lowsec once again take a shot so Nullsec can untangle its rats nest of shittiness?

You're still having NPCs run logistics for you, effectively having NPCs supply your market. That's just great. But if NPCs can run large volumes of fuel everywhere, why can't they run guns, ammo, modules, drones, or ships?

What your asking for is a nerf to logistics while simultaneously having NPCs fix one of the biggest logistical nightmares in Eve: fueling all of those off racial towers and caps in any given region.

NPCs delivering goods to your station is not a player driven economy. If your jump changes to Eve don't work without NPCs propping up every single station in null, your changes are crap.

So we're fine with NPCs magically echanging fuel between Amarr and some god forsaken null sec system, why can't those same NPCs exchange modules, ammo, and ships?

Bringing goods to market is as much a part of the market as selling them. You can't have a grocery store without the trucks to bring the groceries to the store.

Is it more reasonable for an NPC to magically teleport Helium from Amarr to VFK and Nitrogen from VFK back to Amarr? That's what your "exchange" system amounts to, and it's a lot worse than the current jump freighter actually jumping their ship back and forth.

So basically you are talk about cutting off null regions economically from the rest of the game but keeping the existing racial/geographic variances that exist in items.

So let's take something like Mercury, which basically doesn't exist in the west. If I'm now in the west my main/only way of obtaining this is "bartering" with NPC's. The price is based on a global average price. Well the only spot that Mercury is being sold/traded is in the East. What's to stop a group in the East from now driving up the price they are selling Mercury to each other, to the point it becomes 2 x Technetium/Caesium so they can now go and barter for double the tech/cae?

I guess they wouldn't bother because there would be no point in producing more than they need locally, because selling to the wider world would be prohibitively expensive/difficult

Cutting off realistic access to other isotopes is not reasonable, but neither is having to import through dozens of gates.

So we want a player driven solution that allows local sourcing of isotopes without invoking magic NPCs or preventing some form of interdiction.

Why not alchemy? If I can turn moo goo into different moo goo then surely turning some Nitrogen 'topes into Helium 'topes should be easy. Either have the process incur a small loss, or if you want to allow for greater interaction then require a reactant that can be sourced either locally in mass or imported from the racial area you want to react into. Maybe both these are options maybe only one.

In one scenario we have an additional mining operation that can be specifically targeted. Enemy just got back from a long deployment and jumped around a lot? Send in the covops to drive them nuts and put a chokehold on them while you beat their ally who can't get help senseless.

In the other we have you guarding your borders to prevent ninja extraction of a resource that if you maintain control of gives you power over your enemies, or a bargaining chip with allies.

Onerous? maybe. Content creating? maybe, if the balance is right. 100% based in fake internet science? Definitely.

This is just off the cuff so if someone has a different take along the same lines I'd be interested to hear it.

I still think you need to address the potential impacts on Low Sec.

Unlike NS you can't evict people from space to secure an avenue, you can't bubble gates to secure a system, you can't flick on a cyno jammer to protect an asset. or op

While I understand that LS is the red headed step child of EVE, its accessibility to industry is much less and more risky than that of NS, or HS, and reducing that further will turn it into even more of a barren waste land.

If this change goes live I propose we adopt Nidhoggurs as our predominant small-gang fleet concept (move aside Vultures).

http://i.imgur.com/KDXE4dD.png

Highlights:

• With about 500m in implants our Nidhoggur warps 4.3 AU/sec with an align of 9.9 seconds (compare to the 14s align of the ever popular "foxcat" batleship)

• Incredible rep potential, when refit full armor each Nidhoggur (2x reps) repairs the target for almost 6500 EHP/second, for our 15 Niddy gang that's 97,500 dps of rep power!

• With 2 scripted Tracking Links and a Navigational computer, your Einherji will chew apart subcaps with a combined fleet DPS up to 25,000! If frigates get you down watch as your Warrior IIs rip those interceptors to shreds.

The ideal composition for this fleet in my estimation would be 10-15 Nidhoggurs with 3-5 heavy tackle (webbing lokis/tackle proteus), off grid Armor/Skirmish/info boosts and scout interceptors for a rough fleet size of 25.

And for the true Ballers out there, your Hel can come too!
http://i.imgur.com/XzkokUO.png


All joke-crafting aside, people would just put i-stabs/hyperspatial accelerators in their Carrier lowslots and convoy ships 1,000,000m3 at a time. In terms of fending off roaming gangs, no gatecamp ever is going to try and attack a 20 man carrier fleet, and with some basic scouting your convoy could dock long before a comparable hostile fleet can even get close. Personal logistics would take a hit, but for an alliance or even a large corp moving would be as safe as ever.

As far as how long it would actually take to travel in normal rigged caps: http://i.imgur.com/6XAloka.png
2.6 AU/s warp speed (with a 20m implant)
13.3s align, which if you can be assed to do the MWD trick really drops to 10s. That's faster than moving battleships gate to gate.

No need to curtain friendship.. just to curtail automatic system that make cooperation easy. Make your allaince manteinace increase by the number of blues you have (simple and very rude example) and you can keep friend of someone. But you will not have them blue and therefore emergency operations with them are almost impossible.

it is, because it grows directly in relation to the income capability. Cost is a limiting factors. Th problem is that fixed costs are never going to be a limiting factor. And what you described is exactly what i was thinking. Blue donuts would not be effective at a scalation fight but would be still powerful in planned battles? The result? Now we have a reason to make " hit and run "(for lack of a better term) strikes.

Couple that with a delay of a few hours to change standings...



You may propose whatever change you might dream, as long you ALLOW a blue list to have 10 K people, it will have 10 K people. That is human nature. If it is impossible to limit blue list then we are doomed and this thread is meaningless because if there is something impossible is to curtail human nature and to think that any approach that relies on psycological pressure will work (because that is the same fail as all the other attempts to use such factors, because it ignores the fact that people will usually not think the same way as the one that created the mechanism).

You may make travel as hard as you want, that will NOT solve the blue donut. It will make the stronger part of the blue group to kick the weaker part and pray on them. But the stronger parts that could fight each other in an interesting way will NOT depart. Why? because cowardice is deeply and strongly at the center of human mind.

oh look another, oh no you can't do that, this game is for just us, and anyone ideas that would change how we play the game is wrong

>Each alliance has a Capitol seat, each corp in the alliance has a Home system
>Make sov require contiguous systems and scale the cost to how many systems are owned.
>system bonuses are tied to distance from capitol, and home
>Sov costs are based on useage (reverse scale, more used systems are cheaper)
>Map statistic intel is no longer published (docked active pilots/active pilots in space)
>Grav/ice sites become signatures again and better balanced for lowend minerals (just make them easy to find)
>Everything gets an alchemy (Goo, Ice, minerals, gas)
>system sov index tied to useage, Naturaly degrading sov means that sov can be lot due to inactivity by owners.
>allow more then one outpost per system and remove outpost ownership from sov influence. add monthly upkeep costs per station.

-Jump bridges are now for only moving around in your own space because the sov necessary has to be attached to other sov.
-Individual nullsec empires are smaller to control costs, while encouraging small alliances to take space, While this doesnt change renting, it encourages more alliances owning space. and reduced the sprawl of single entities.
-multiple outposts not affected by system sov means that A. Real market hubs can be built, with refining, manufacturing and research can be centered in a home or capital system, B. Services can be rendered and upkept by third parties (neutral black frog stations anyone?)
-more alchemy allows for greater freedoms in ship types in non-native regions, with reduced logistical need for fuel importation.
-Ice and ore signatures means greater security for miners in null, low and wh, while better balance of mineral composition means less reliance on importation

Comments?

Sure, "proper" caps/supers may counter these fast warping Nidhoggurs, but those caps/supers are slow and have to cyno and cap up in each and every system. Meanwhile the Nidhoggurs will simply be gone by the time the counter-caps arrive.

I can see it now. The same people that bring 1000 ishtars to a fight will now bring 1000 nidhoggurs instead.

You know what's hilarious? That caps will break the proposed mechanics just as badly as they broke the current game. Too bad some people just can't stand the prospect of their "shiny" getting nerfed. And I don't mean just a jump drive nerf.

this is a sandbox, the community has the power to "fix" a lot of the problems itself. It simply requires enough of us to get on board with an ideology and stick with it.

Saying that everyone wants to win and so they will just cast aside any agreements in favor of "winning at any cost", you have a different definition of winning that I do. If you have to break agreements, blob a system to the point of locking it down to achieve strategic victory that is not winning in my book, that if anything is a loss.

And my idea was not about sovereignty. It was about content generation. Wars currently are used to generate content, a direct side effect is having to force an enemy to defend an asset or risk losing it. What I'm proposing is an enviroment that generates content without the sov grinding.

N3 and CFC keep their existing space, generate content in a warzone region (I vote for catch/Provi) and nobody has to remain in this scenario of kicking each other in the nuts until one guy falls over xD

TLDR:

If you don't want the space
If you hate the sov grind
If you want good fights

Why not come to an agreement to generate wargames/fun fighting in a warzone? At least until CCP fixes eve

So.....just to be clear......people that are willing to bring 1000 domis to a fight won't be willing to bring 1000 nidhoggurs that warp/align as fast or faster (and come with a jump drive for what that's worth).

Yeah, no, you're right. No one would ever go for that.

Maybe. But where I live, I see 100-200 man Roaming fleets every day. Those fleets often bring ishtars, apocs, etc. In the past some of them used domis.

Do you see why I might have a problem with those same roaming fleets using Nidhoggurs that warp/align faster than those same battleships, can use the same gates everyone uses, have far more ehp, dps, and rep available than those same battleships, and on top of everything else can refit to any other loadout on a whim? Do you seriously not see the problem with that?

Maybe the mighty pandemic legion doesn't see that as a problem. But I'm a little dude in a relatively small and insignificant outfit that fights outnumbered every day. And you know what? I can't kite those nidhoggurs. I can't kill them off one by one. I can't do anything to them except batphone some bigger friends. But your changes make even that bat phone bit harder (which is a good thing - the only good thing about these proposed changes).

So tell me, how should I connect those dots?

Really? I'll just moon mine/siphon the vast swathes of dyspro or hafnium/other moon goo required to produce my T2 guns, ammo, and ships from my local region since every type of moon goo is available in every region. Sure.

Using Alchemy to fill all of your needs for t2 production. Right, good luck with that.

Using wormholes for all of your null-empire logistical needs. Right.........Been there, done that, not doing it again.

I take it you don't actually have any counter points to the post above yours? Unless you REALLY think a full T2 production line is viable with alchemy alone. In that case: lol.

Then again, this coming from the guy that's fine with faster-than-battleship roaming and refitting nidhoggurs, I'm not surprised. It's good that you dropped the whole "helping the little guy" facade though. Much more honest now.

Manny have you ever moved 10+ JF loads in one sitting of ships gear minerals and just general **** around? Doing this would kill your logistics core and i dont mean logi pilots i mean the real backbones of pvpers and thats the ones that bring and build the ships and move the **** for them. I dont think a single pilot who has ever flown a jf want to go back to pre capital ship days of nullsec, taking a JF gate to gate all the way to highsec? I would sooner stab my eyeballs out. It would be insanely easy for people to just permacamp the inbound and outbound systems to and from nullsec as there arnt that many.

Ask any of your JF pilots if they would be willing to fly a jump freighter after these changes. I dont think you will here back from a single one saying yes. This would result in a good 90% of null going unpopulated due to supplies not getting through. It would go to people only living in the bare close regions to empire space, provi geminate ect. Turning jump drives into gate drives is not the solution.

So you want to wish this on the current logistic backbone? A run to jita in a ship that holds 340k m3 and back would not only take hours and hours it would require handholding on alot of pvpers, Its bad enough how the majority of pvpers **** on those who do this grunt work allready but for these logistics pilots to rely on more people? ALso the game was much smaller back then no? There are a great deal more people now, who i know would take great pleasure locking down the entrances and exists to and from nullsec. As it is ccp has made nullsec completely reliant on empire to the point to where you can mine almost all you need but 3 of the needed minerals for ships and have to ship most of that down. Racial ice would have to be a thing of the past, Racial salvage as well. Jump freighters would need to massivly change while either getting bigger hulls or becomine dust collecting peices of ****. There is so much work here ccp would need to do and they allready balk at rewriting pos code why do you think for a minute they would put the effort into this?

If 6 to 8 hour freighter trips are your idea of fun you must be a painter, what with being able to watch all that paint dry and getting errections from it.

After watching blizzard slowly and deliberately kill 2 of thier major IP's it would not suprise me one little bit if CCP went that way.

Judging from what you say here, the only thing that is keeping you in PL are friends or possibility for epic battles.
Sadly PL become more old -A- rather merc they where before.

I really miss that i was not here , when game was having this approach.

That is where I respectfully disagree. Having too many members should be punished if we want to have a flourishing war environment.

Why Europe Is more stable than in the 19th century? Because humans suddenly got more civilized? Nope, because the forces were combined and combined until 2 super powerful blocks arose. Blocks so massive that that idea of an engagement became absurd, because .. no conflict of interests,... no mutually desired resources... no nothign woudl ever come close to matching the risk of such engagement.

That is why the smaller the scale of the parts the more likely they are to engage in conflicts. Because the conflicting interests, mutually desired resources.. etc.. are worth MUCH more compared to the total risks and costs of such engagements.

Deconstructing a single idea due to its poor design is not the same thing as "defendign the status quo." I am not rejecting any changes to the status quo out of hand; merely attempting to cinch off an obviously faulty line of thinking before it gains traction and infects others.

So, rather than criticize further I'm going to propose an alternative set of changes that I believe will better resolve the issues raised by the OP. These suggestions will be based on three core concepts:

1) Logistics to deep null via JF should be possible. However, that does not mean it should be cost effective.
2) Supers, Titans, Carriers, and Dreads are currently the most mobile combat ships in the game. This does not make sense.
3) Null sec industry needs buffs to low-end production beyond what is proposed in Crius.

The proposed changes are:

(A) Cap all pilots and cap ships to 11 LY of Travel or per day.

Example: If Alice jumps an archon 5 LY, both Alice and the Archon are now limited to an additional 6 LY on that day. If Alice leaves the Archon, and Bob hops into that Archon, Bob inherits the Archon's limitation of 6 LY for that day. If Alice were to hop into a Nyx, that Nyx would inherit Alice's limitation of 6 LY for the day as well.

So If someone moved a Hel 11 LY and then either switched to another ship or put another pilot in the Hel, neither the new pilot or the new ship would be able to jump anywhere.

(B) Titan Bridging uses the same cap. If you make a bridge that spans 6 LY, you loose 6 of your LY for that day.

(C) JF fuel consumption and fuel bay are both increased by 100% over Crius values.

(D) Titans and Supers loose 50% of their raw HP. They also loose EWAR immunity (standard points,webs, Tracking disruptors, ECM, damps all work against supers and titans).

(E) Titan tracking is buffed. Due to loss of Ewar immunity, Titans can also receive remote tracking links. Titans and Supers would be able to receive remote sebos as well.

(F) Increase the yield of low end minerals (e.g. Trit) mined and refined in nullsec such that mining low ends in nullsec is significantly more viable. Say, increase low-end yield by a factor of five.

(G) Station destruction, because it needs to happen.

---

These changes would result in a few immediate consequences. First, it would Take no less than 5 days for an entity to deploy supers or titans from say Etherium Reach to Delve or Aridia. Once Deployed, said said supers, titans, and caps would be limited to a maximum range of one 5.5 LY hotdrop + 5.5 LY return trip per day unless POS's had been sorted in the target system negating the need for a return trip. Obviously, multiple smaller jumps could also occur instead. Likewise, your ally's supers wouldn't be able to cross the galaxy in an instant to save you if you **** up.

Second, If a smaller entity knows that the bulk of the N3PL and CFC supers are deployed 20 LY away, smaller entities will be more inclined to use their shiny toys for stupid things. Effectively, you reduce the "And Then PL Dropped Supers" effect and give the little guy a chance to do something stupid.

Third, Titans especially will be something to be feared. While the new tracking Titan is more powerful than before, it is also VERY limited in effective range. And it needs lots of subcap support to deal with Ewar that WILL be present. Insufficient support = overwhelmed by ewar.

Fourth, Subcaps will be the kings of mobility again. If you can't take on their supers and Caps directly, attack a target +11 LY away. If hostile supers move across the galaxy (50+ LY) to invade your space, it will take take them a minimum of 5 day to return to their home regions. Send a couple squads of subcaps to reinforce their home regions while the enemies' super fleet is away. A nerf to sov structure EHP may also be in order.

Fifth, JF Logistics would be possible, but expensive. If an alliance was inclined to move to Stain (for example) they could make the move from Amarr lowsec to Stain in a single trip. But that trip would cost them 300 Mil per round trip from the edge of Amarr Lowsec to the edge of Stain. Costs would increase the deeper they went. In this way, you could initially take some combat and industrial ships, but once you unpack you'll want to setup mining for all of the ores that you need (including mining the new improved low ends) and production for all of your ships.

T2 Mats and non-regional fuel would have to be imported, but a JF can actually hold quite a bit of those, so it wouldn't be *that* expensive to setup. The vast majority of towers would probably shift to regional ice, which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it adds a certain amount of flavor imo.


I'm aware some of the changes can be gamed by having multiple different pilots sitting in different caps/jf's per account, however I believe this problem will be largely self limiting. JFs will be an expensive asset to use frequently, and the improved low ends should make nullsec mining and production far more localized and attractive. Carrot and stick, if you will. No matter how many combat caps you have, the total area you cover per day with each cap+cap pilot group will be limited.

Anyway, I'm sure the idea is terrible and the post is far too long, but that's what the Eve-O forums are for, so why not?

Two points.

• Having holes punched in arguments is a good thing, either you address the holes and so make your argument stronger, or you admit it's a bad argument and go back to the drawing board.
• Having your own idea is not necessary for the above to be constructive and useful.

And actually a third - I have plenty of ideas and solutions of my own. A couple of them are even half finished drafts over on my blog. It's just a matter of finding the time...


We could just delete them instead.

You need to consider what you're saying when you say better way. A better way will not only solve the problem, but creating interesting gameplay & gameplay choices for all parties, including those you're seeking to nerf.

Really enjoying all the chat about this guys

I always thought that Cynos should be much more restrictive.

Spool ups definitely but not long ones. Around 30 seconds or so.

But on top of that either a mass limit or work like jump bridges with fuel used per mass of ship. Mainly to stop one cyno being able to just bring in everything.

with these two combined you need to be able hold the field with subcaps to allow your fleet to come through. You also need a reasonable amount of logistics to get the cynos in place first each time.


Any thoughts? If this has been discounted before as a dumb idea I'm willing to accept I'm dumb

I had an idea of having the ships being jumped to the cyno using the cyno ships capacitor based off of mass of whats coming through the cyno. This would allow people to neut out a cyno ship to prevent the entire fleet from jumping in, but the first couple ships jumping through could just cap xfer the cyno ship. The big thing about this is people wouldn't be able to use a rookie ship to instantly drop 250 battleships. It would actually give cap batteries some use as well on cyno boats to allow a larger fleet to jump through.

These mega coalitions need too grow a pair and make the sacrifice instead of expecting CCP too fix things which they ofc would moan about anyway ...

dangling a fraction of your wealth too achieve what exactly?

'THE' sacrifice would be all coalitions disbanding completely ... and encouraging many more independent entities too hold SOV and create non capital content .. not renters and pets ... no blue donuts ... stop the ridiculous capital hot drops that happen willy nilly ... amongst other things..

I agree with the main drive here. However (and correct me if I am taking you too literally here) but I do not think these changes need to take place at the same time.

For obvious reason you can't nerf PP first and hope the rest fix themselves organically until you patch them. But I do feel like there could be a resource and industry re-balance, then a sov rework and THEN a PP nerf. While it would likely be more painful than skipping to the finished iteration I sincerely doubt CCP or ANY game company could do this level of re-balancing across such a wide number of interdependent game system at once and not screw it up.

Yeah, gotta say it's time for a blue F&I sticky. Everyone is disenchanted about sov and the discussion will not be productive for long. It has all been said too many times with bugger all actually done about it.

I hear you brother. We can only hope we get back to the gates.

Because it would be the best thing possible for the game as a whole. The problem is that some of the players are afraid to risk losing the control they have, mostly the leadership.

A great war would make it so the great power blocs wouldn't have time to stamp out the little guy wherever he might crop up. It would also make the game a lot more meaningful. The problem lies with the players and the leadership being content to sit on what they have while the game bleeds players, rather than make the game infinitely more interesting by going for the jugular of their only possible opponent that would provide a challenge.

imo, more should be demanded of your leadership.

Before i start, gonna say TL;DR. I skimmed the op, did not really read the replies, but if this has been suggested already then cool.

"Power Projection" is not the problem.


1) Remove moon ore form moons and move it over to active mining. There was an idea by an ex dev called ring mining, which if you combine this idea with Exodus' system wide asteroid betls and comet mining, you would give miners a reason to undock, and alliances would not need as many moons.

2) in these new betls they would have more pockets of npc' for more pve play. also more anomalies and other things to make pve's active.

3) you tie the sov to the industry and millitary index, if you don;t use yoru space, then its a simple matter to take it, just be active.

4) you tie war to a mechanic like FW (i think i understand that mechanic, i coudl be wrong) so pvp now becomes a viable way to flip a system. this means you will have to undock and defend your space or you lose it. This would also make small objectives and counter atacks a viable option.



To lazy to spell check learn reaperese

I like the idea of destruction to the stations. There are way to many stations in 0.0 now and changing this would be interesting.

A option to the complete destruction of the station might be the ability to destroy the individual service modules. So for instance if you destroyed cloning services, first all Jump Clones would be destroyed, all medical clones moved. And to get the service back on you are gona have to call all hands to RE-BUILD it from scratch. Sorta like seeing half of a building ripped in two. Re-building these services would make you put an old style logistics team together to re-build it. Like the old days when it was a whole team effort to put a station up.

Maybe with the station hacking you could be able to syphon resources from the station. Like throwing a wrench in the cogs.

Basically my takeaway from this is that, instead of working on ways to encourage more content generation in EVE, you're working on developing new ways to prevent people from reaching what little content already exists.

Really, though? Please don't let Greyscale near our game anymore. Everything he touches turns to ash.

Finally... A reason from CCP for me to Quit eve... Thanks for making EVE -------> NOT FUN ANYMORE

Capital nerf----

What a load of Crap... I guess when the Patch dose get here, I can stop renewing my accounts...