Danae Melios
Notorious Legion
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Posted - 2008.04.11 07:42:00 -
[1]
Here is the nub of the issue, I think.
I think that CCP is selecting the wrong type of model to build a fun game around. This definition of borders is one that has been exported around the world by European dominant society. Its primary function is to promote stability. The only way controlling borders would happen in the way that they seem to mean is to be able to shut them down to unwanted guests. Lock down the system, the constellation, the region. That is what protected borders are all about.
There are other models to go off of, however. We had a very interesting discussion in my GIS thesis seminar class about how other cultures, such as many desert regions, use lines of control between population centers. They CAN lock down cities, but often they don't even have formal national borders because nobody wants to be bothered patrolling sand. Think of the Arabian peninsula; most maps show several countries there with dotted instead of solid borders for that very reason. Extension of power only happens through contesting population centers.
I would be more interested in a model that based sovereignty on activity levels rather than static borders. It can be argued that the current situation is a measurement of that, through POS maintenance. But perhaps it could be measured in other ways: total rats killed per week in the system, say. A certain bounty threshold weighted by the true sec of the system to claim, and average it out over each 7 day period. Those that would contest would have to drive the other alliance out of active service in the belts and build a better 7-day average than the other side.
I only mention the bounty thing because it seems a more universal activity than mining in deep space and is theoretically already tracked through Security and standings modifiers. So there would only need to be introduced a way to make those modifiers cumulative for the entire alliance for each seven day period ending with downtime and compare them between the various alliances.
Keep the fuel bonus. Maybe make POS guns anchorable at gates with Sovereignty 3 and EW mods at Sovereignty 4, just for that sense of "controlling the borders" that CCP wants to introduce. But make it on the side of the gate with activity.
The primary thing is, you can't be docked and just send out fuel tech alts to maintain the POS's under this regime. You have to maintain your system control actively, utilizing what seems to be an almost universally recognized and exploited resource. And you have to defend yourself to do it. Alternately, your enemies have to be willing to sit there in the belts and shoot a lot to contest sovereignty, again based on the true sec and on the current sovereignty level.
What do you think about this?
 Originally by: game box
Conceive a new life without boundaries, where murder, plunder, betrayal, and delusions of grandeur will lead you to boundless glory or to the brink of ruin.
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