These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

How to make nullsec more inviting to small entities
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2011-09-24 20:51:35 UTC
Let's say we want to keep the current system with TCUs and iHubs and what not.

In order to make it more viable for small alliances/corps and less inviting to large blue blobs I suggest the following:
* Make TCUs much more expensive, both to buy and to keep alive.
* Make iHubs cheaper (essentially move the costs from iHubs to TCUs).
* Add a new sov claim unit that is a combination of a TCU and iHub that can only be deployed once per corp.

The new sov claim unit, let's call it a Home Claim Unit (HCU), can only be deployed once per corp. However it is cheap and costs very little to maintain. It also gives a SIGNIFICANT bonus to defensive and offensive capabilities of the ships belonging to that corp inside that single system. Outside that system, no bonus, and any other ships (allied or not) will not get any bonuses. Indicies like the military index and industry index will also not increase if not done by the owning corp.

The idea with this is:
* The more expensive TCUs will mean that large alliances don't claim space they don't use.
* The cheap and powerful HCUs will be used by the large alliances, but are much more potent in the hands of smaller entities that only live in a single system.
* Large alliances can spam HCUs around themselves using holding corps but they will be very limited in their usefulness as only members of the corp will have any use for them (and holding corps usually don't contain that many members).

Thoughts?
(I'm sure there are many holes in this, but as a general direction?)
Laechyd Eldgorn
Avanto
Hole Control
#2 - 2011-09-24 23:41:54 UTC  |  Edited by: Laechyd Eldgorn
making stuff more expensive hardly helps any small entities, especially when they have difficulties on defending stuff, and on other hand money has very little meaning to bigger entities

maybe rethink a little
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#3 - 2011-09-25 00:02:36 UTC
Smaller entities wouldn't need any TCUs, at least to begin with as they would do fine with the HCU. And while large entities indeed have a lot of money, still wasting it on a TCU that does nothing other than sucking it up is not that smart.
Dex Nederland
Lai Dai Infinity Systems
The Fourth District
#4 - 2011-09-25 03:19:25 UTC
Suggestions:

HCUs act as stationary Fleet Commandships for the owning corporation. A 3-Command Link bonuses must be selected for the HCU. These would be the same Command Link bonuses a Command ship can provide. This means it is fairly simple to level the playing field (field a commandship), but gives the defender an advantage against roaming adhoc gangs/blobs.

HCUs provide an index growth bonus to the owning corporation. Other alliance member corporations provide the normal bonus. This is to allow alliances with a strong central corporation to include some auxiliary corporations who can still contribute. An alliance with a core 200-man corporation, 2 or 3 50-man corporations, and 5 10-man corporations may aspire to hold a system, but half the alliance could not contribute to the development.


Lai Dai Infinity Systems
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#5 - 2011-09-25 11:34:00 UTC
Dex Nederland wrote:
Suggestions:

HCUs act as stationary Fleet Commandships for the owning corporation. A 3-Command Link bonuses must be selected for the HCU. These would be the same Command Link bonuses a Command ship can provide. This means it is fairly simple to level the playing field (field a commandship), but gives the defender an advantage against roaming adhoc gangs/blobs.

HCUs provide an index growth bonus to the owning corporation. Other alliance member corporations provide the normal bonus. This is to allow alliances with a strong central corporation to include some auxiliary corporations who can still contribute. An alliance with a core 200-man corporation, 2 or 3 50-man corporations, and 5 10-man corporations may aspire to hold a system, but half the alliance could not contribute to the development.




One system can't support that many people, especially given that they won't have any sanctums or havens (no way they'd get the decent truesec systems). You can do whatever you want to ihubs and TCUs, but until systems with poor truesec can actually support more than a handful of people at a time, and actually earn those people more than L4 missions, no-one's going to want them.
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2011-09-25 13:51:25 UTC
Dex Nederland wrote:
Suggestions:

HCUs act as stationary Fleet Commandships for the owning corporation. A 3-Command Link bonuses must be selected for the HCU. These would be the same Command Link bonuses a Command ship can provide. This means it is fairly simple to level the playing field (field a commandship), but gives the defender an advantage against roaming adhoc gangs/blobs.

HCUs provide an index growth bonus to the owning corporation. Other alliance member corporations provide the normal bonus. This is to allow alliances with a strong central corporation to include some auxiliary corporations who can still contribute. An alliance with a core 200-man corporation, 2 or 3 50-man corporations, and 5 10-man corporations may aspire to hold a system, but half the alliance could not contribute to the development.



I was thinking a bonus more significant than that a command ship could provide. The small entities must be able to defend their home system against a much bigger entity. Remember they essentially have to defend themselves against the blob. Roaming gangs is not the problem, the blob is.

As for the other suggestion that sounds reasonable, but then again we don't want to give the large alliances too much use of the HCUs, maybe this would make them too good? It's better if they are specialized, in the end we don't want the large alliances to use these at all.

Danika Princip wrote:

One system can't support that many people, especially given that they won't have any sanctums or havens (no way they'd get the decent truesec systems). You can do whatever you want to ihubs and TCUs, but until systems with poor truesec can actually support more than a handful of people at a time, and actually earn those people more than L4 missions, no-one's going to want them.

That can be changed. And besides, if you're living in nullsec for real then money is essentially not an issue, raw materials is. What you need more is a good supply of ore, production facilities, and some way to acquire materials for T2 production.
Dex Nederland
Lai Dai Infinity Systems
The Fourth District
#7 - 2011-09-25 15:43:45 UTC
Daedalus II wrote:
Dex Nederland wrote:
Suggestions:

HCUs act as stationary Fleet Commandships for the owning corporation. A 3-Command Link bonuses must be selected for the HCU. These would be the same Command Link bonuses a Command ship can provide. This means it is fairly simple to level the playing field (field a commandship), but gives the defender an advantage against roaming adhoc gangs/blobs.

HCUs provide an index growth bonus to the owning corporation. Other alliance member corporations provide the normal bonus. This is to allow alliances with a strong central corporation to include some auxiliary corporations who can still contribute. An alliance with a core 200-man corporation, 2 or 3 50-man corporations, and 5 10-man corporations may aspire to hold a system, but half the alliance could not contribute to the development.



I was thinking a bonus more significant than that a command ship could provide. The small entities must be able to defend their home system against a much bigger entity. Remember they essentially have to defend themselves against the blob. Roaming gangs is not the problem, the blob is.

As for the other suggestion that sounds reasonable, but then again we don't want to give the large alliances too much use of the HCUs, maybe this would make them too good? It's better if they are specialized, in the end we don't want the large alliances to use these at all.

"Quantity has a quality all its own." Breaking up blobs is a challenge and any major bonuses to defenders will only encourage larger blobs and roaming gangs to scale up to blobs. Blobs are easy to command and point at a target and thus appeal to those with readily available manpower. If that is the goal of the defense bonuses, some other mechanic should be evaluated.

Perhaps something like a HCU provides a mass/second, jumps/second limit into the system. The owning entity can set this to a number between 25M kg (2 Battlecruisers) and 1,000M kg (10 Battleships). The upper limit will encourage growing entities transition to TCUs and large entities to not use HCUs. It breaks up an attackers entrance into the solar system and makes moving large quantities of ships time intensive. This immediately favors small entities, who are going to be more local and have fewer ships, while large alliances will be handicapping themselves by using the HCU.

Daedalus II wrote:
Danika Princip wrote:

One system can't support that many people, especially given that they won't have any sanctums or havens (no way they'd get the decent truesec systems). You can do whatever you want to ihubs and TCUs, but until systems with poor truesec can actually support more than a handful of people at a time, and actually earn those people more than L4 missions, no-one's going to want them.

That can be changed. And besides, if you're living in nullsec for real then money is essentially not an issue, raw materials is. What you need more is a good supply of ore, production facilities, and some way to acquire materials for T2 production.

Sanctums & Havens, might I suggest a starbase or two (which are useful for things other than moon mining)?

We hear the assertion that most systems can only support a dozen to two dozen pilots frequently, but what is this based on? Is there data or is anecdotal?

Lai Dai Infinity Systems
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#8 - 2011-09-25 16:17:28 UTC  |  Edited by: Daedalus II
Dex Nederland wrote:

Perhaps something like a HCU provides a mass/second, jumps/second limit into the system. The owning entity can set this to a number between 25M kg (2 Battlecruisers) and 1,000M kg (10 Battleships). The upper limit will encourage growing entities transition to TCUs and large entities to not use HCUs. It breaks up an attackers entrance into the solar system and makes moving large quantities of ships time intensive. This immediately favors small entities, who are going to be more local and have fewer ships, while large alliances will be handicapping themselves by using the HCU.


I like it :)

This might even be something you could consider adding to all gates to make it more annoying to move blobs around.
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#9 - 2011-09-25 17:37:22 UTC
Dex Nederland wrote:
Daedalus II wrote:
Dex Nederland wrote:
Suggestions:

HCUs act as stationary Fleet Commandships for the owning corporation. A 3-Command Link bonuses must be selected for the HCU. These would be the same Command Link bonuses a Command ship can provide. This means it is fairly simple to level the playing field (field a commandship), but gives the defender an advantage against roaming adhoc gangs/blobs.

HCUs provide an index growth bonus to the owning corporation. Other alliance member corporations provide the normal bonus. This is to allow alliances with a strong central corporation to include some auxiliary corporations who can still contribute. An alliance with a core 200-man corporation, 2 or 3 50-man corporations, and 5 10-man corporations may aspire to hold a system, but half the alliance could not contribute to the development.



I was thinking a bonus more significant than that a command ship could provide. The small entities must be able to defend their home system against a much bigger entity. Remember they essentially have to defend themselves against the blob. Roaming gangs is not the problem, the blob is.

As for the other suggestion that sounds reasonable, but then again we don't want to give the large alliances too much use of the HCUs, maybe this would make them too good? It's better if they are specialized, in the end we don't want the large alliances to use these at all.

"Quantity has a quality all its own." Breaking up blobs is a challenge and any major bonuses to defenders will only encourage larger blobs and roaming gangs to scale up to blobs. Blobs are easy to command and point at a target and thus appeal to those with readily available manpower. If that is the goal of the defense bonuses, some other mechanic should be evaluated.

Perhaps something like a HCU provides a mass/second, jumps/second limit into the system. The owning entity can set this to a number between 25M kg (2 Battlecruisers) and 1,000M kg (10 Battleships). The upper limit will encourage growing entities transition to TCUs and large entities to not use HCUs. It breaks up an attackers entrance into the solar system and makes moving large quantities of ships time intensive. This immediately favors small entities, who are going to be more local and have fewer ships, while large alliances will be handicapping themselves by using the HCU.

Daedalus II wrote:
Danika Princip wrote:

One system can't support that many people, especially given that they won't have any sanctums or havens (no way they'd get the decent truesec systems). You can do whatever you want to ihubs and TCUs, but until systems with poor truesec can actually support more than a handful of people at a time, and actually earn those people more than L4 missions, no-one's going to want them.

That can be changed. And besides, if you're living in nullsec for real then money is essentially not an issue, raw materials is. What you need more is a good supply of ore, production facilities, and some way to acquire materials for T2 production.

Sanctums & Havens, might I suggest a starbase or two (which are useful for things other than moon mining)?

We hear the assertion that most systems can only support a dozen to two dozen pilots frequently, but what is this based on? Is there data or is anecdotal?


There won't be any sanctums or havens. A system where a single corp can get in, as this proposal allows, would be one with very bad truesec. The kind that give no good anomalies, and that have poor belt rating. Without a good way to make money, for the average pilot, not the guy with the jump freighter or the guy with all the moon mining poses, this proposal just won't work.
Dex Nederland
Lai Dai Infinity Systems
The Fourth District
#10 - 2011-09-25 18:12:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Dex Nederland
Danika Princip wrote:

Daedalus II wrote:
Danika Princip wrote:

One system can't support that many people, especially given that they won't have any sanctums or havens (no way they'd get the decent truesec systems). You can do whatever you want to ihubs and TCUs, but until systems with poor truesec can actually support more than a handful of people at a time, and actually earn those people more than L4 missions, no-one's going to want them.

That can be changed. And besides, if you're living in nullsec for real then money is essentially not an issue, raw materials is. What you need more is a good supply of ore, production facilities, and some way to acquire materials for T2 production.

Dex Nederland wrote:

Sanctums & Havens, might I suggest a starbase or two (which are useful for things other than moon mining)?

We hear the assertion that most systems can only support a dozen to two dozen pilots frequently, but what is this based on? Is there data or is anecdotal?


There won't be any sanctums or havens. A system where a single corp can get in, as this proposal allows, would be one with very bad truesec. The kind that give no good anomalies, and that have poor belt rating. Without a good way to make money, for the average pilot, not the guy with the jump freighter or the guy with all the moon mining poses, this proposal just won't work.

I misunderstood your reference to Sanctums & Havens (high-end anomalies) and not places that pilots can go to ground.

So, why do the large alliances claim low quality systems if they are not valuable? Large alliances waste 6M/ISK per day on these very same systems today in order to have their flag planted there. The proposed change increases this cost, increasing the penalty for alliances claiming space they do not use.

It would be worthwhile for the small alliance/corporation leadership to encourage their pilots to do more than just rat/work anomalies. Pilots could do things like produce planetary commodity starbase fuels and mine more common ores. There is maybe a day or two of training to be able to do those activities and the skills are cheap. By mining ore, a small alliance can raise its Industrial Index and choose to either increase the number of exploration or mining sites generated. A small alliance living in one or two systems has every reason to raise the Military & Industrial Indexes of those systems and make available to themselves more anomalies.

Will they be able to compete with very low-true security systems? No, but that is not the point. It gives them the opportunity to build in null-sec and potentially grow to the point where they can challenge a large alliance for better space to live in, potentially creating more dynamic null-sec interactions.

Lai Dai Infinity Systems
Barbara Nichole
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#11 - 2011-09-25 18:58:33 UTC
Quote:
How to make nullsec more inviting to small entities


kick out the big entities? lol

small entities are nearly as much a threat to larger entities as other sized entities.. i think you'll find they are almost as unwelcome as a hot dropping enemy fleet.

  - remove the cloaked from local; free intel is the real problem, not  "afk" cloaking -

[IMG]http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a208/DawnFrostbringer/consultsig.jpg[/IMG]
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#12 - 2011-09-26 11:31:58 UTC
Dex Nederland wrote:
Danika Princip wrote:

There won't be any sanctums or havens. A system where a single corp can get in, as this proposal allows, would be one with very bad truesec. The kind that give no good anomalies, and that have poor belt rating. Without a good way to make money, for the average pilot, not the guy with the jump freighter or the guy with all the moon mining poses, this proposal just won't work.

I misunderstood your reference to Sanctums & Havens (high-end anomalies) and not places that pilots can go to ground.

So, why do the large alliances claim low quality systems if they are not valuable? Large alliances waste 6M/ISK per day on these very same systems today in order to have their flag planted there. The proposed change increases this cost, increasing the penalty for alliances claiming space they do not use.

It would be worthwhile for the small alliance/corporation leadership to encourage their pilots to do more than just rat/work anomalies. Pilots could do things like produce planetary commodity starbase fuels and mine more common ores. There is maybe a day or two of training to be able to do those activities and the skills are cheap. By mining ore, a small alliance can raise its Industrial Index and choose to either increase the number of exploration or mining sites generated. A small alliance living in one or two systems has every reason to raise the Military & Industrial Indexes of those systems and make available to themselves more anomalies.

Will they be able to compete with very low-true security systems? No, but that is not the point. It gives them the opportunity to build in null-sec and potentially grow to the point where they can challenge a large alliance for better space to live in, potentially creating more dynamic null-sec interactions.


Why? Moons, jump bridges, CSAAs (got to build those components somewhere!), chokepoints, places to drop stations, even just places to hold as a sort of buffer to stop anyone else getting them. 6 mil a day is absolutely nothing, even if you're just paying that much to find out when and where your enemies place a staging pos. If you let some unknown small aliance take the worthless systems in a region you control, you're practically inviting them to come gank your guys, on the rare occasions when the opposite isn't happening, and letting some random guys from highsec come have them as blues is just begging for spies and awoxers.

That said, some people do let small alliances have the space. They just have to rent it first.
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#13 - 2011-09-26 12:22:37 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:
If you let some unknown small aliance take the worthless systems in a region you control, you're practically inviting them to come gank your guys, on the rare occasions when the opposite isn't happening, and letting some random guys from highsec come have them as blues is just begging for spies and awoxers.

And why the hell would they do that? Not all entities that want to live in nullsec only to kill stuff you know. There is a thing called industry in EVE as well.

"What should we do today?"
"Gee, lets go and annoy our uber powerful neighbour that can smack us down within minutes, thereby wasting everything we have invested in this area for a few cheap lulz-kills"

Yeah that's going to happen.

Danika Princip wrote:

That said, some people do let small alliances have the space. They just have to rent it first.

This is the sort of mentality that has to go. The only thing this does is giving even larger nap trains. What is needed is a "good neighbour" (or at least neutral neighbour) relationship, not a master-slave relationship.
It's in the small entities best interest to have friendly relations with the larger entity (which in turn gives trading and industrial opportunities).
It's not in their best interest to be a slave to the larger entity or be at war with it.
Baaldor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#14 - 2011-09-26 14:38:12 UTC
Daedalus II wrote:

And why the hell would they do that? Not all entities that want to live in nullsec only to kill stuff you know. There is a thing called industry in EVE as well.

"What should we do today?"
"Gee, lets go and annoy our uber powerful neighbour that can smack us down within minutes, thereby wasting everything we have invested in this area for a few cheap lulz-kills"

Yeah that's going to happen.


So, what exactly is going to stop said uber neighbor from pushing in their **** any way?

Daedalus II wrote:

This is the sort of mentality that has to go. The only thing this does is giving even larger nap trains. What is needed is a "good neighbour" (or at least neutral neighbour) relationship, not a master-slave relationship.
It's in the small entities best interest to have friendly relations with the larger entity (which in turn gives trading and industrial opportunities).
It's not in their best interest to be a slave to the larger entity or be at war with it.


What are you going to do...force them to be nice? Make them change the way they want to run an empire?
Danika Princip
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#15 - 2011-09-26 14:58:25 UTC
Daedalus II wrote:
Danika Princip wrote:
If you let some unknown small aliance take the worthless systems in a region you control, you're practically inviting them to come gank your guys, on the rare occasions when the opposite isn't happening, and letting some random guys from highsec come have them as blues is just begging for spies and awoxers.

And why the hell would they do that? Not all entities that want to live in nullsec only to kill stuff you know. There is a thing called industry in EVE as well.

"What should we do today?"
"Gee, lets go and annoy our uber powerful neighbour that can smack us down within minutes, thereby wasting everything we have invested in this area for a few cheap lulz-kills"

Yeah that's going to happen.


Yes, it will. if not by the small alliance, who if they aren't blue are just being farmed for easy killmails, then by the guys who joined purely to shoot the bigger alliance. It's nullsec, it is not happy carebear land. If something isn't blue, it's going to get shot, and if someone won't fight for their space, they don't get to keep it for long.

Quote:
Danika Princip wrote:

That said, some people do let small alliances have the space. They just have to rent it first.

This is the sort of mentality that has to go. The only thing this does is giving even larger nap trains. What is needed is a "good neighbour" (or at least neutral neighbour) relationship, not a master-slave relationship.
It's in the small entities best interest to have friendly relations with the larger entity (which in turn gives trading and industrial opportunities).
It's not in their best interest to be a slave to the larger entity or be at war with it.


I'm confused. If the small alliance has good relations, then they're blue, right? How is this not making a bigger nap train? If they're not blue, then they won't have friendly relations (As they will be getting ganked on a daily basis), and the bigger alliance will continue to rely on it's own members for trading and industry.

if you want NRDS, try providence.
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#16 - 2011-09-26 16:45:21 UTC
Baaldor wrote:

What are you going to do...force them to be nice? Make them change the way they want to run an empire?

Forcing of course won't work. I'd be more in favour of adding the game mechanics that are needed for a small entity to survive against a larger entity, and then hope the result ends up in the way I describe it.
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#17 - 2011-09-26 17:02:12 UTC
Danika Princip wrote:


I'm confused. If the small alliance has good relations, then they're blue, right? How is this not making a bigger nap train? If they're not blue, then they won't have friendly relations (As they will be getting ganked on a daily basis), and the bigger alliance will continue to rely on it's own members for trading and industry.

if you want NRDS, try providence.

As I said there is a difference between being a slave and being a good neighbour. A slave you can boss around and force to do what you want. A slave pays you money to be there, but will help as little as possible otherwise. A neighbour won't pay you rent, but might have a more friendly disposition. If you then also have business relations with this neighbour you wouldn't want to harm that relationship.

The way I think would give the most interesting nullsec is if we had a few large entities that are surrounded by smaller (but standalone) support entities. The larger entity probably outsource stuff to do to the smaller entities so they don't have to be bothered with it. The closer to the large entity you get the more loyal to it the smaller entities would be, while those further away would be increasingly neutral or even hostile.
The important thing here being that the smaller entities are standalone, they are not a coherent mass together with the larger entity and that they can't be bossed around by it. They live close to the larger entity because it is mutually beneficially for both of them. If it stops being beneficial, they move away.

What I'm getting at here I guess is that just because you can shoot someone in the face or totally dominate them in nullsec doesn't necessarily make it the best option in all cases. Letting someone live and cooperate with them might even work out better. In my opinion cooperation yields better results than forced labour. The PvP-is-all notion of nullsec works, but the question is if it wouldn't be a more fun game if there was more industry out there instead. We've seen what the PvP-is-all mentality has given us: blobs and nap trains. Why not try something else?
Ingvar Angst
Nasty Pope Holding Corp
#18 - 2011-09-26 17:09:19 UTC
Why not simply homogenize the resources better, spread things out more so that there's no "ideal" pockets of null space to own. Make all of null space equally viable for people to make good isk in. Even if it takes a change of the sec status of the systems, so be it, but spread it all out. Make it require so much space to control in order to control resources that no one, two or even five alliances can control them all.

You don't need anything fancy, just make it all equally (or close to it) valuable.

Six months in the hole... it changes a man.
Baaldor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#19 - 2011-09-26 17:12:51 UTC
Daedalus II wrote:
Baaldor wrote:

What are you going to do...force them to be nice? Make them change the way they want to run an empire?

Forcing of course won't work. I'd be more in favour of adding the game mechanics that are needed for a small entity to survive against a larger entity, and then hope the result ends up in the way I describe it.


So, we are punishing the players that actually put effort in establishing a foot hold in Null space and rewarding tards that struggle with the rules / mechanics of the game?
Daedalus II
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#20 - 2011-09-26 17:19:00 UTC
Baaldor wrote:
Daedalus II wrote:
Baaldor wrote:

What are you going to do...force them to be nice? Make them change the way they want to run an empire?

Forcing of course won't work. I'd be more in favour of adding the game mechanics that are needed for a small entity to survive against a larger entity, and then hope the result ends up in the way I describe it.


So, we are punishing the players that actually put effort in establishing a foot hold in Null space and rewarding tards that struggle with the rules / mechanics of the game?


If by effort you mean paying to join a large NAP blob and then rat in total seclusion then yes. In my opinion the "tards" that struggle against and don't want to play by the rules set up by the large blobs are the ones that should be rewarded.