If you think anything can engage a ceptor gang, then you don't play the game or have a relevant cognitive disability.

Here's the new cheapo sov-taking ship of the future.

Aligns in 1.7s, locks out to ~117km, goes ~4km/s. Good luck stopping a fleet of those from running around and targeting every structure they can find.

There is no excuse for being able to use your 'prime time' window to exclude entire time zones from participating in alliance/corporation activities, it is simply a divisive, segregating mechanic that will disillusion entire groups from attempting to participate in sov warfare, it HAS to go, i dont know how to respond to anyone who supports it as it only reduces content rather than increase it

Ayyy...As said, the cognitive issue is real. The ceptor can choose every single engage he gets in, the any-other hull dies or is unable to kill it.

You don't get that I don't disagree with the fact "sov needs a revamp". But from needing supers and titans to get sov to be able to contest a system in a frigate there must be a freakin mid-point.

You can't kill what you can't catch, hope that helps.

That's BS. If you are EUTZ and your alliamce has aa USTZ window, you can still go attack other EUTZ sov. Therefore you are still participating in sov warfare. If you want to take part in defensive sov warfare in your USTZ window then alarm clock for it. Or leave and join an EUTZ alliance.

uiuiuiuiui, .... took some time too read through all of it.
its amazingly easy and provides lots of opportunity to fight. Now i even consider going there.

One question for now (more tomorrow) :
What happens, if a ship that has applied the link, dies? is its progress deleted? can its progress be continued by friend? does this friend have to have a secondary link already active to be able to continue? If it is like the timer in FW atm, where the timer stops if nothing is active and can even be continued later in these 4 hours, then +1 for this point.

the misles will never get to this ares, not eaven from cerberus.

Remeber every second this ceptor do another 4 km, so every second you lose another 4 km from the missle.

Missles will run out of fuel before they can get to any of those interceptors.


Sniper naga would be much better for this. Chep max range, will track ceptor on this insane orbit with no problems.

the interceptors are an actual issue with the system

first off, plz bring a 100 of those in my space. its pretty easy to just kill them all without a scratch on my naga. or has noone heard of tracking enhancers on sniper ships? and that nice align time isn't gonne help you since you got a module on which blocks you from warping and has a quite long cicle time.


Only thing i think is going to be a problem is the Ihub. An Ihub cost around 350 mil which isn't that big of a deal but the upgrades in there are. At the moment a fully upgraded Ihub costs around 6.5 bil without taking in consideration that you have to move a lot of the upgrades in by fraigter instead of JF couz of the size. And with the new changes you can blow these things up in around 40 min. Looking at the ease of how you can blow one of these up and how mutch they cost, i think the Ihubs need to be rebalanced. Basicly make them less m3 including the upgrades and make them around the 1 bil total cost. Else it will not be worth it hanging something so easely distroyed up in 0.0 , but without them, its not even worth living anywhere in 0.0

at least, thats my vieuw on it.

have you ever been to nullsec

serious question

And all you need is one ship with your own link to stop them. Any additional ships will be for picking off the T3s

What I am concerned is that with other things happening around the grid, a gang of inties with the module running all the time orbiting 250 km will be hard for the defenders to actually do something about them. Best case, it would be annoying. There are a lot of factors involved and I think that it is extremely disadvantageous for the defenders.

But what do I know about SOV. And I do not speak for my corporation, just inputting my opinion for ccp to consider.

Also Waffles.

No local, no afk cloaker. The answer is to just delay local and actually make nullsec challenging to live in. Guard your gates, scout the routes to your home. There should be consequences for being lazy nullbears.

The biggest reason probably comes down to "we still want to be on top if this game ever becomes fun again".

Questions:

- What happens if a pilot is not in an alliance and still go and activate the Entosis link on a structure in an empty system?

- Will there be any roles given to the pilot who actually uses the Enthosis Link, so he can go capture on behalf of the alliance? If not, how can an Alliance leader controls who to attack and who not to when every member goes crazy attacking everyone. Standings and politics get hit. New type of awoxers rise.

- Assuming most of the structure shooting is out, what happens to POCO's? Will the new system be implemented on their ownership switching also?

- Jump Bridges need more explanation for their status during the change of hands of the solar system.

- In stations, when having a research/manufacturing job(or in POS'es manufacturing a capital) the station changes hands, and new owner set crazy tax on indy works, what happens to the active jobs?

Thanks,


Good or bad, change is always good on the long run.

So all for all multi tz alliances we now see sov decided in one tz's 4 hour window.

How clever is that?

Will the Entosis cycle be affected by TIDI? ( I hope so otherwise Wyvern > Levi >Avatar > Aeon supremacy )

I feel like the 4 hour window is to short. (I would recommend 6)

Can a Entosis module be used by a ship in Triage , Siege or Bastion? ( I hope not. )

Will sov cost reduce or increase with Indices? ( If not you are missing the boat )

Besides the name on the map why would anyone choose to move to nullsec? ( Incursions , level 5's already offer more isk per hour than nullsec. )

How does all the Risk of Living in Nullsec compare to the rewards of other safer areas in Eve?

Supercapital Role ?


Now let me play game designer if I may. I would use this system along with the Phoebe jump changes. With a few changes and additions. Entosis cycle would be affected by TIDI and would not be able to be activated by a ship in Bastion , Triage or Siege. Sov cost would have a base median value and indices would gain negative values. Meaning @ 0 use they would slowly dip towards negative indices values. The lower the negative value of indices the more expensive the sov bill. The higher the value of positive indices the cheaper the sov bill. Furthermore sovereignty owned by an alliance not connected to the main body of sov would have a premium charge ( a fixed % increase over base sov cost ).

Next I would seek to create incentives for people to reside in nullsec. One of the biggest is the ability to be self sustaining via local resources. I would then give the orca , jump freighter , bowhead & rorqual the same fatigue as other ships. I would reduce the JF range of that to all other ships. Doing this would make nullsec so much healthier. A real sense of community when the welfare & supply of the alliance is shared by all. Instead of what we currently have " A few guys and some cynos whisking off to Jita to procure everything players need" When you do this you end up with more players in space doing things to supply the alliance and its members with all the goods and materials they need to function.

Furthermore this makes attrition style warfare real. It also adds to the dynamics of living in nullsec. It answers the question of what do "off prime time players do"? Raiding and interfering with groups logistical and production efforts now has real and meaningful ramifications. Defending against those who would seek to raid also has important value. No longer are PVP'rs the end all be all of alliance members. In a nullsec where the chord to easy supply ( Jita) is severed productionist , logisticians , miners now have a important role in nullsec which leads to a more inclusive dynamic atmosphere in alliance culture.

It's means empire bordering nullsec regions now have new and unique value that due to the Jump Freighter became unimportant years ago. Conversely deeper remote regions with great riches have unique value due to higher abundance of resources. This all adds to reasons for people in space doing things. Reasons for conquest reasons for defense.

These two points seem clear, from the dev blogs:

1. TiDI = yes
"Both the cycle time of the Entosis Link module and the actual capture process will be affected by time dilation."

2. Battleship position on the graph: one can draw different conclusions from the same set of data. The graph headline was "graph of PVP damage by class" - that implied all PVP damage, everywhere. Therefore its legit to say the figure could be biased in favor of BS damage during SOV grinds, pos & poco bashes - everywhere. Rise's point is that the BS class is getting used and applying lots of damage during the graph period, but for many players, the way they are used (structure grinding), or the fact that their group does not use them or see them around for various reasons, is more important.

Why not allow the first attack to occur any time but the reinforce end during the prime time?

1. if 2 systems are in reinforced and come out of reinforced within say 2 hours of each other its entirely possible that the command node fight form the first will still be going on when the command nodes for the second spawn. How will we be able to differentiate between the command nodes for the different systems ihubs/stations? Also since you are de-linking station control from ihub control how will we be able to differentiate between the command nodes for the station and those for the ihub in a given system if they are spread out across the constellation?

1 bobm run later or sniping t3, you ahe to start all over and you have to do it x10 to win, seems pretty meh

Ah i missed that, such a long devblog :P, nice catch and good to know

Your probably correct, which would be the way to go, but that said, its not actually stated, seems like an important part of the mechanics to have fleshed out when proposing a system.

I couldn't agree more. We all know that CCP employs statisticians to run some numberporn for Eve Fanfest each year. So surely they must be aware that with statistics and graphs you can prove any point of view on the data. In the presented case the statistics were used to prove your own point instead of reality.

Ok, thanks - I think I get it. The "fixed" graph stacks all the more popular ships that can actually move, and shows they are all together doing about 5 times more damage than BS class, which has fewer ships in it. Perhaps CCP can be accused of a little bit of sweeping under the rug in plain sight, but I can ask questions about the stacked graph. (Though I'm very late to that party.) It demotes battleships to the second most popular size class by applied damage.... would any number of people complain if they were removed entirely? (Slight sarcasm there.) Is there a similar graph, from prior to the warp speed changes? What is a healthy metric for battleships? Doing maybe half of the combined damage of those three groups of cruiser size hulls - two of which can be set up to be... very damaging?

Welcome to Griefing Online!

I've read the blog a few times and tried very hard to find something positive, but I just don't see it. As someone who has lived in nullsec in small and large alliances, I can tell you this will be horrible.

Major problems:

1) Griefers in interceptors will be pinging our SOV for giggles 24/7

this thing locks at 250 in sniper mode while going 7km/s , and it locks at 175 in speed mode, while going 11km/s (9kms if you dont use snakes+quafe zero) and will speedtank any sniper fit in the game at that speed and range.

http://i.imgur.com/t29IKHD.png (yes thats a whole 3 dps at 175km)

sniper fits are setup for 100% max tracking, with the smallest guns that will reach optimally at that range + appropriate ammo, hence their lack of targeting range in that graph. If you can find me a fit that tracks anywhere even close to well ill be shocked.

It also goes too fast to probe down, and can do the cloak mwd trick so hard its 30km out of a bubble before the MWD stops cycling, so its pretty much uncatchable at gates.

Anything lands on grid capable of actually catching it and tackling it (only other T3 destroyers fit with a scram), it can just immediately warp off to a safe and cloak, wait for them to leave, then fire up the sov laser again.

Yes, i misspoke and edited my post, he would simply have to burn away until warpoff timer expired.

That naga fit wont hit at all either.

You do realize thats 0.4 Damage per second right way less than even the passive shield regen on that thing.

If you are talking high sec Incursions, null anom farming is much better ISK. Level 5 missions pulls in less ISK per tick as well compared to null anoms. (I could be misinformed about this though)

It looks unbalanced to me. If I invest 12-42 minutes of my time I can send the defender on a goose chase taking them 10x12 minutes of player time. Lots of timers will be created especially in border regions. Many IHubs and TCUs will be destroyed because defenders will burn out, not necessarily because defenders lose fights.

If I get disrupted my capture will only be paused and I can come back later to finish (in reduced time). Capture progress should be reset at the end of the vulnerability window.

I don't see much need to have both IHubs and TCUs. With their roles degraded I think it would be better to consolidate them into a single structure. Having both just increases the grind.

Probably mentioned before, but ah well.

One weird thing to me is offering t1 and t2 versions of the link. No one in their right might is going to use t1 *at all* unless it offers some significant advantage over t2, which it doesn't. Just remove the T2 version and give the T1 version the T2 stats.

Offering T1 and T2 for this module is complexity for complexity's sake, which is just a bad idea. A little naggle maybe but still. You either have a link or you don't.


Also, it feels like the initial entosis link concept (capturing a structure) is basically the same as a structure grind, just with a different weapon. I feel like this is a bad idea - continuing the concept of the grind, just dressing it up differently. Why not keep the tcu, make it invulnerable and make it a king of the hill style battle to capture it, a point system rewarding presence rather than a grind. If the attacker manages to stay on the grind and maintain a better presence they win, and if the defenders manage to take the domineering presence they win.

Of course, i currently don't have the perspective to offer a better solution (although i still insist that a purely activity based system is far better than anything involving structures) i do think the current (proposed) system leans way, WAY too much on structures and a certain form of structure grind, rather than actually rewarding living in systems and constellations. I think the devs may be stuck in a certain mindset and are unable to take a (large) step back to remove themselves from the details of sov mechanics and start over completely, rather than what is basically patching the current sov system.

The thing is, even if you land DIRECTLY ontop of the svipul through some kind of insane miracle, its burning at 11KM/s, which means its out of your scram range in a single tick, it takes an absolute minimum of 2 ticks (seconds) to lock something and activate a mod.

The best thing i can imagine is just hitting it with a 60KM web after a lucky warpin, but even then it can STILL burn out of range of any ship capable of fitting a 90% web....

I'm also concerned about these structures being placed next to a death star pos. I feel like that raises the bar dramatically in what is needed to contest sov. To a degree that goes against the goal of having this new system become more available to non-bloc groups and enables AFK style empires.

Defending sov should require real players. Not some automated system to do the work for you.

That thing has an align time of 28 seconds - you don't need to tackle it. (would be pointed by the ento thingy anyway)
Just probe and warp on top of it with a long range ship. You'll then have a low EHP target with a 750m sig radius burning in a more or less straight line away from you.

So i've finally gotten round to reading the blogs and looked at it and teh first reaction is you looked at teh faction warfare model and have adapated it to null sec model?

In principle i think the idea is a good one sov becomes vulnerable and able to be taken fairly quickly however i have a few questions that seem to be eluded in the posts

you say that it would be more beneficial to the little guy taking sov ( i don't see this as system is undersieged its about the blob recent mechanics its not about the skill sets its about numbers)

it seems we have adapted a capture the flag and defend the flag mechanic.

the freeport idea is ok to a degree however a defending force with a lower player base(aka the little guy) vs a coalition such as n3 or cfc has no chance and can lose that system in a matter of hours - suggest having a draw back here to stop alliances moving the entire fleet in and hell camping the station. giving the attackers the advantage

stop alliances having the timer 2 hrs before dt and two hrs after dt - that way they have to be active and cannot take advantage of any extra down time .

keep up the good work i know this is work in progress .

Quite true, but the reason for the hyperbolae is quite clear.

When defending a nation/territory, one can have :-

force projection ( in Eve solution well in hand)
Defend one's borders.
Local defence.

Now without porous borders, there is no need whatsoever for local defence, one can reinforce the borders and have great swathes of space unoccupied, and unprotected.

Interceptors and fast frigates, make the border porous, thereby ENFORCING local defence by people living in occupied systems.

THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE CHANGE.

By people campaigning against interceptors they are hoping to fool CCP into undoing all their work.

One of two things will happen.

If they succeed, they will celebrate their plan and CCP will look stupid.

If CCP succeed they will celebrate THEIR plan and those campaigning for "keep it practically as now" will look etc

I know where the smart money is betting............

Will cloaking be disabled while entosis link is active?

Cap escalation will still be a thing - if you end up pitting two subcap fleets against each other, eventually triage becomes a valid tactic which then means you might want dreads on grid which then means you might want supers on.

Prime time is not good as it is, I agree - I've liked the suggestions for spreading out primetime over longer periods as an alliance grows - either on a system by system basis or on a base member count for the whole alliance maybe upto 16 or even a full 24 hours - whilst still keeping it small and manageable for a small alliance to guard their handful of systems.

I'm sure CCP can tie some lore into the command points as required. It's better to have good mechanics and then write a story around those then have crap mechanics because the original lore didn't fit imho.

i just read the whole thing again, and i have to say it sounds and looks very very complicated. I thought CCP was trying to get away from complicated. Looks like its been thought about a little too much and made way over complicated.

Also why do we never hear from CCP Seagull on anything?

Personally i think the whole prime time idea is ridiculous. The system should be vulnerable anytime of the day. It just gives more of an advantage to the defenders especially large alliances to out blob anyone who tries to do anything in their prime time. I hate this idea.

If only CCP would invest the time it took to write this blog, never mind come up with all the sov changes, into updating missions they would get a lot more toons playing....... This is the newest gift to nullbears, among a long list of gifts over the years, to only get a, BWWWAAAAAA that is not what we wanted thread.

It doesnt work like this. Let me explain.
Party "A" is holding sov, party "B" wants to take it. "B" moves to a staging system near region "R". "A" creates a dummy alliance, puts all sov in region "R" into this dummy and sets its prime to the weakest time zone of "B".
Weaponized boredom, as thay called it.

The problem with the Entosis trolling isn't that it cannot be countered. It can. The famous "trollceptor" can all be countered by a Rifter with a T1 Entosis link orbiting the structure at 5 km, freezing the timer.

The problem is that countering Entosis trolling is so boring gameplay that you'll wish you'd still be grinding stations in Drakes. Either a mobile group needs to run up and down in the region whacking moles, or every system needs to have guards who just do nothing (or mine/rat at the keyboard) for 4 hours and respond to the ping. If they fail, everyone yell at them because 2 days later 10 nodes needs to be captured. If they win every time, they spent 4 hours of their lives at the keyboard with a handful of trivial killmails.

Again: 4 hours of focused gameplay and practically no result. At least you could watch TV between reloads with the Drake.

The attacker should commit something worth killing, so the defenders - if did their job well - go home with a nice killboard.

You do realize that sov-holding alliance usually have more ISK than ~little guy~ to hire mercs? Maybe even accept them to the dummy alliance to woop sov lazers.