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.

Regional Trade NPC is created to exchange racial building materials for other racial building materials the exchange rate would be based off the market trading average. So if you want to trade Helium Isotopes for Hydrogen isotope and Helium is 1000 p/u and Hydrogen is 500 p/u you would receive 2 units of hydrogen.
NPC Traders would be seeded initially in the conquerable stations in null sec and in a smattering of NPC Nullsec stations. There would be a station upgrade available that then could be added into player built stations.
NPC Trader upgrades would be hackable to disable the service for a period of 8 hours or until someone unhacks the hack.

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

NPCs wouldn't be selling anything. It would be a barter/exchange system with market averages setting the value of the item bartered. You couldn't exchange your loot for some topes or minerals. You could exchange locally mined resources for resources not available locally. So Helium for Hydrogen , Nitrogen , Oxygen Isotopes. Things like that. The exchange rate fluctuates daily based off what the gamewide market average is. So if your Helium is worth 1k p/u and the isotope you want to exchange for is 500 you would receive 2 units. HTH

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?

Those jumpfreighters can no longer just jump past lowsec from edge to edge. They have to pass through. Seems like a stealth boost to me. Because people will want to protect there JF's so you will see escorts that you can fight and kill or extort from.

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.

NPCs aren't delivering anything. You are trading something that is deleted from the database in exchange for a item thats created in the database on a fair even and equal level.

Just to reiterate my point here, having NPCs magically run/"exchange" fuel to remote null outposts is a complete Non-starter.

Players should have to deliver those topes to your outposts, not NPCs. Player driven economy is important. You should probably rework your idea with that in mind. All those off-racial towers and caps? Players need to supply them and every part of the supply chain leading to them, not NPCs.

Having NPC's deliver goods does not limit the player driven market. It simply reduces player service opportunity. Organizations like Black Frog would likely get hit, but people would still buy and sell, create and destroy the same products as they do today.

I'd like to ask does anyone think its reasonable that a single player with a jumpfreighter can just jump back and forth from nullsec to empire and buy literally anything from empire and bring it back. Does that seem like a immersive experience? I mean where do you live that Joe the Lorry driver goes off and supplies you and all your mates with what you need to live and survive from a single point.

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.

NPCs wouldn't be selling anything. It would be a barter/exchange system with market averages setting the value of the item bartered. You couldn't exchange your loot for some topes or minerals. You could exchange locally mined resources for resources not available locally. So Helium for Hydrogen , Nitrogen , Oxygen Isotopes. Things like that. The exchange rate fluctuates daily based off what the gamewide market average is. So if your Helium is worth 1k p/u and the isotope you want to exchange for is 500 you would receive 2 units. HTH

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.

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

No I am fine with NPCs delivering goods to and from locations in EVE in exchange for some form of equalized commodity.

Get it myself
Pay another player to get it
Or select an option to have it delivered by NPC over the course of X number of hours and/or days.

If I lose potential for the first 2 options, you better hope I can still get items, or I just won't play because seriously, have you ever tried moving freighters around with ****. Forget about losing your ship, try losing your mind from the sheer irritation that is going 10 jumps, let alone 20+

You may be fine with NPCs magically teleporting Isotopes between all of the stations in Eve, I however am not. And I seriously doubt CCP will entertain the idea either.

So, we have NPCs providing un-interdictable isotope trade between all the stations of Eve. Wonderful. That's totally not worse than what we currently have. Hell, at least Jump Freighters actually die once in a blue moon.

Unless your NPCs go gate to gate in freighters, or cyno to cyno in jump freighters (where players can gank/interdict them), then the proposed system is MUCH worse than the current one.

You know, I never thought I'd have to explain why magical isotope teleporting NPCs are a bad idea, but there you have it.

Or you just allow them to deliver from buy orders making players stock the market as they currently do with sell orders, thus making NPCs only fill the role held by a very few individuals in EVE who already transport stuff around with impunity as is.