Assembly Hall

So, I read this quote in another thread over at EVE general discussion, and it got me thinking:



Well said.

Titan bridges, jump bridges, jump freighters, carriers, rorquals, cloaky haulers, warp to 0km, interdiction nullifiers, etc, etc, it all serves to do one thing - making EVE a smaller game. Not to mention the fact that null-sec is becoming so crowded with outposts and stations it is starting to look more and more like high-sec. My suggestions to fix this:

Make player built stations and outposts destructible.

And I don't mean "incapacitated". I mean completely destructible, as in a big explosion and all that is left is a salvager's wet dream. The list of benefits of such a change is pretty long.

• It would make null-sec wars more meaningful.
• It would increase conflict in null-sec as alliances would seek to destroy each other's stations.
• It would reduce the current station clutter, and make null-sec more dangerous again.
• It would mean less hoarding of assets in one station, and therefore more travel between empire and null-sec.
• It would make for some EPIC explosions and even more EPIC drama.

It would also open the way for some cool new features, such as manned turrets on stations, that can only be operated from a "Captains Quarters" like room, where you look out on the battle-field and shoot at ships in space, defensive and offensive station upgrades, a station self-destruct button that would be the EPIC culmination of a spy's career, etc.

Increase risk and fuel cost of titan bridging / jump bridges

I know the poor titan pilots have been nerfed one time after another. I'm not out to get them with this. I swear. But as it is now, it is way too cheap and convenient, and with titans it can be done from safety inside a POS. I don't know what the exact number would be, but an increase in the titans fuel bay and a simultaneous increase in the amount of fuel required for each ship to jump would help null-sec alliances spend some of all that cash.

With regards to risk, I think the titan jumpbridge should only work outside the POS shields. No more sneaky bridging of freighters and small gangs. The titan is a fleet ship and with this change it would require a proper fleet to support it when it is bridging.

Additionally, the POS anchored jump-bridges need to have their HP massively reduced. CCP introduced modules such as the cyno-jammer, jump-bridge and cyno-generator as a feature to encourage smaller PVP operations, but then gave them so much HP you still need a large fleet to take them down. Reducing the amount of HP would benefit small-scale PVP in null-sec and would make it more dangerous for null-sec alliances to rely on their jumpbridges.

Stargate upgrades - no more warp to zero

This one is real simple. In the old days of EVE you could only warp to within 15 km of any object in space. Warp to 0 simply didn't exist. It was a way to avoid bumping into things and it made travel in low- and null-sec far more dangerous. I propose that not all stargates should be equal. Some should accept warp to 0, other's warp to 5, 10 and 15.

Won't everyone immediately start making bookmarks then? Yes, but not nearly as many as before. Now that we have corp bookmarks, there's no need for every individual in a corporation to have insta-warp bookmarks. It would also open the way for a stargate upgrade feature for null-sec systems. Alliances could upgrade their stargates so their own pilots can warp to 0, while enemy pilots would still have to warp to 5, 10, or 15.

It's time to make the sandbox big again!

Make built stations and outposts destructible.

Already in the works I believe.

Increase risk and fuel cost of titan bridging / jump bridges

No problem with that.

Stargate upgrades - no more warp to zero

No thanks, why would I want to waste even more time travelling (time I'm paying for) than I do already. I can do anywhere up to or over 30 jumps of an evening if the LowSec or HiSec entry that allows me to access the wormspace I live in collapses and even in a fast ship thats a drag, try it in a freighter or Orca. Then let us not forget the 100 jump roams that I used to go on in 0.0, warp to 15 would I'm fairly sure drop numbers on such events.

Increasing titan bridge cost:

What is your goal? To force people to use gate travel when flying freighters? To make hotdrops something expensive enough that people don't do it casually?

I don't think either of these will be changed without a significant increase in titan bridge costs!!! It already costs 2ish mil to bridge an obelisk. Do you really think you'll limit their bridging by increasing it to 20m? Especially if it's carrying 10b in moongoo?

Even at 2m a BS, people will easily JP large gangs of BS's to a fight, becuase it saves time and is a much safer mode of travel.

As for jump portals, pos cyno's, cyno jammers, etc... Anything located at a (deathstar) POS is NOT something a small roaming gang can typically take on!!!! Those are pretty much Sov Level upgrades, and as such, require sov-level ops to take on. Rather than make them easily destructable, I'd double or Quadruple their EHP... and move them to the IHUB.

Yeah i hope CCP will do something with 0.0 soon the game really stagnates in there

Instant force projection is a bit of a problem as I understand it. I'm not against the ability to sling your ships across the region at a moment's notice, but I agree it's too cheap/easy and needs to be made more challenging. As it stands, surprise has very little value in warfare when the enemy can respond in a matter of minutes, assuming their pilots are online.

Taking away warp-to-zero will just make nullsec less navigable and more tedious than it is today. You won't be making Eve "bigger", you'll just be slowing down transit and making it easier for people to lose ships to mindless smash-everything gate camps.

Titans CAN and typically DO bridge people from INSIDE the POS shields....

Why not do the job properly by removing all jumpdrives, titan bridges and jumpbridges, and make all ships require fuel to drive their engines? Voila, EVE is bigger.

Nah. JBs are well-known for allowing large alliances to project power over vast distances within 30 minutes, so might as well do the job properly and remove them altogether. Same goes for titan bridges and jump drives, way too easy to project power and haul goods, it's time we got CCP to make the universe feel big again.

I do, and I don't. You are right that my proposals have major force projection impacts, but it's neither "small world" or force projection that motivated my suggestions, but rather that I think EVE is getting too easy. More and more tools are being introduced that allows for faster travel, remote interaction with and management of assets and overall more safety for your internet spaceships. As a result PVP is becoming this organized event that mostly happens when two sides have assembled fleets and meet on some field of battle (or the occasional gank at a gate camp), rather than a constant threat of living in outlaw space.

I would like to see more dynamic and random PVP, more conflict in EVE in general, and I think the way to achieve some of those could be restricting the tools of risk free travel. I'd love to see people assembling fleets to actually escort their freighters in and out of null-sec, rather than just a quick push of a button. I'd like to see the main traffic pipes to null-sec hot spots being constantly contested by roaming gangs, while the main alliances attempt to police them.

I'm not saying that warp to 0 or higher jump bridge costs are the only solutions. These are merely some of my suggestions. As you will note I didn't say that all gates should be warp to 15, but a more dynamic system. I imagine in empire the gates would all be modern and well tended to, so they'd mostly be warp to 0, while in low-sec and null-sec it would be up to the player alliances to make sure that they have warp to 0 capability. When you get outside the main pipes that are upgraded by players, stargates in less populated areas might have warp to 5, 10 or 15.

The benefit of that would be that you would have "more dangerous" areas in space where dynamic PVP could evolve.

Hell yes I want more ganks on gates and less reasons to live in 0.0.