Lienzo
Amanuensis
95
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Posted - 2017.02.28 03:03:40 -
[1] - Quote
War needs a focus. Even in a sandbox, you need to have a sense of traction.
Humans are a skittish bunch. When we are uncertain about outcomes, we usually hang back unless we have no choice. Occasionally, wars are just a means to feel out the strength of outsiders. New Eden is an environment will self-contained consequences though, so it makes sense that we should test one another often and with general enthusiasm.
Conflict with other players should have economic as well as political dimensions. We have structures in high security space as well as elsewhere, so it makes sense to leverage them as much as possible. Things that can't be logged make for an excellent locus for our fleeting attention spans.
At the present state of mechanics, war declarations serve as little more than an obstacle to travel, and frankly a self-limited one at that. It's a mechanic with a fairly limited scope. Something meatier is needed to create a sense of boundaries for players. Boundaries are a good because you can push at them, and they feel like something tangible, something real that can be engaged.
Wars should be about pushing other groups around, and particularly about pushing their investments around. As turf wars between gangs, assuming Concord's perspective, they should have a certain finitude to them, with their own constraints. Once again, this seems to suggest a focus on structures, and on owning and operating them profitably. This could be storage, repair services, refining services, construction services.. everything should be opened up and place within the profitable purview of private corporate interests.
My suggestion boils down to doubling down on the utility of structures, of broadening the profitability of all station services, and in seeking out ways to make them more central to economic activity in New Eden. Wars should be territoriality limited at any given point in time, and should largely exist between actors with physical, tangible interests that are in competition with one another. No structure should mean no basis for a sanctioned war. If the sandbox truly requires that fly-by-night outfits with no physically vested interests also have a place at the table, then they should have their own scaling mechanics that define the boundaries of what both parties can accomplish.
There should always be plenty of room for criminal or extralegal acts. In fact, I would encourage the development of more avenues to tweak the noses of other players. There's also no reason we can't accommodate all the minority interests like mutual wars by preserving the fundamentals of existing war mechanics.
Sand in the sandbox is also a language, and without boundary conditions, languages don't work either. A sandbox without boundaries is just an empty space. |