Evelgrivion
Calamitous-Intent
Feign Disorder
351
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Posted - 2015.08.13 03:59:56 -
[1] - Quote
Under the current sovereignty paradigm, there's no reason to own space you don't use, and even less reason to fight over it. Since this has resulted in countless ignored, incomplete contest events, it's clear to me that some iteration and new features are needed to generate player interest.
To create potential for border skirmishes in under-utilized space, some sort of purpose for sovereign territory outside of an alliance's primary home base of operations is needed. I believe that tax collection on NPC bounties and a second layer of taxes on Planetary Customs Offices would be an excellent way to utilize that border space. Disputes over taxes are a natural point of contention. Without substantial development indices, they would not require any dramatic investment in time to pursue, while having real potential for significant, meaningful impact for the interested parties.
Node contests are not the most popular, nor necessarily the most desirable, means of driving conflict in today's sovereignty system. In light of the deficit of structures to explode, I'd like to see Territorial Claim Units and Infrastructure Hubs inside of solar systems with no military or industrial index levels become vulnerable to conventional attack. For a dash of flavor that's consistent with the lore, the defending alliance could activate an Entosis Link, without a warmup timer, to restore invulnerability to the structure, and create opportunities for further escalation.
In order to create consistency between conventional, HP based contest methods and node warfare, some form of auto-regeneration, or automatic defensive capture of nodes is needed. If no one initiates a capture event within two hours, structures should begin to regenerate their node capture state. To prevent abuse of high development index multipliers, this timer should reset any time an Entosis link is activated - including the warmup cycle.
By letting the Entosis Link based systems and conventional asset destruction methods exist side by side, alliances can choose their preferred method of conflict, without creating an obvious weakness for smaller scale entities looking to defend their home space. With any luck, the revised system would drive new conflicts, and cater to a greater variety of play styles. |