These forums have been archived and are now read-only.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

Dynamic 0.0 Resource Allocation: Balancing Accessibility and Profitability
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#1 - 2012-07-18 13:48:28 UTC
I think 0.0 would be more interesting if resources were handled in a more demanding manner, popping up in relatively remote locations rather than spawning on command as a function of ihub upgrades. While the ihub upgrade system has made much more of nullsec worthwhile to live in, it has also removed most of the incentives for exploration or relocation. What if resources were treated as depletable stocks which slowly regenerate rather than fixed, player-installed assets?

For example, what if you eliminated the fixed truesec system. Let's assume that ihub upgrades should always enable systems to generate some useful amount of resources. What if hub upgrades could produce basic ratting / mining anomalies, but the most valuable resources simply piled up slowly in all nullsec systems regardless of upgrades? In this way, a large alliance's major, densely-populated station systems might have lots of anomalies to run (due to upgrades), but other resources (say, the rarest ores, faction and officer rat spawns, etc) might be quickly picked clean. On the other hand, some remote system far from population centers and off well-traveled jump bridge routes might gradually accumulate a wealth of resources-- at least until some adventurous people set up shop there and harvest them.

Basically, what if you made the truesec system in nullsec dynamic, so it automatically adjusted itself based on the degree to which areas of space are "civilized." The more people live in a system, the more infrastructure is installed, and the more pirates are pacified, the higher the truesec becomes. As areas get "overfished," resources would appear to migrate to more remote, less-civilized areas of space as the readily accessible parts are stripped bare.

The current system of player-installed ISK-fountains makes for a very boring nullsec environment, where players tend to congregate in a handful of extremely well-equipped station systems which provide not only the best amenities, but the best income potential as well. A dynamic system might do better job of encouraging people to lead less-sedentary spacelives. The more people move around and are forced to operate in more dangerous space, the more interesting the game becomes, both for the prospectors and for their natural predators.
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#2 - 2012-07-18 15:32:38 UTC

In general, a dynamic true-sec rating seems like a good idea...

You run into interesting situations that need to be addressed:

1.) Can High, Low, or Nullsec ratings ever cross these barriers (Highsec turns to lowsec, or lowsec turns to nullsec, etc)???
-- This could open up a large number of potential problems, but it could also create interesting conflict environment.

2.) The rate of change is critical. It needs to be fast enough to be meaningful, but slow enough to warrant investment.
-- If the change is too slow (like it takes 6 months to go from -.3 to -.5), this won't change much, except in the very long run.
-- If too quick (like it takes a week to go from -.3 to -.6), there is too little time for an alliance to reap the rewards of upgrading a system.
-- Nullsec industry, where it actually exists, needs a turnaround-to-profit period. This also need to be taken into account, or you nerf it further.

3.) What mechanic do you use to base sec status changes??
-- How gameable is the system?? Meaning, is it something that a large alliance can easily manipulate to create several super-systems? Or should it really be a built in wax / wane effect with limited player infuence?
-- Does it encourage people to spread out rather than group up??? While this creates less blobbing and more targets of opportunity, it also leads to less fights and more ganking, as people will lack the critical mass for home defense.
-- How does mining, PI, moongoo, industry, etc, play a role? How are they effected??
-- Would some type of new incursion be better?? (think incursions with bounties / no LP, limited/no system effects, sov upgrade to encourage their appearence, with perhaps more smaller gang oriented sites....)

4.) Current Game design really work against this (note: I'm not saying dynamic sec is a bad thing, I'm just pointing out these need to be addressed when you create a dynamic nullsec system):
-- No system is safe from invasion, and any constellation in the game can be conquered quickly (<1 week).... As such, when a system becomes valuable, only the really strong can defend it.... Your system pretty much puts a lifetimer on small nullsec alliances (which are already far too few) that inherit quality systems.
-- System defense: Either you have enough people in a system to form up a countergang and defend against raiders, or you don't and people safe up. Safing up is bad and boring for the game, and any mechanic that "spreads out" targets of opportunity will enhance the "safe up" mentality that is already WWWWAAAAYYYYYY to prevelant in nullsec.

Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#3 - 2012-07-18 18:00:40 UTC
I was thinking systems would always remain nullsec, but would vary between -0.1 and -1.0. Also, I think you misunderstood my OP-- I meant that the more people and infrastructure go into a system and the more ratting / mining occurs, the higher the truesec goes, meaning the "worse" the system gets. You'd want to set the system up so that even a -0.1 system provides some basic quantity of resources (so that space never becomes completely worthless. Even -0.1 should be better than lowsec, for example) but make the difference in resource wealth between -0.1 and -1.0 great enough that people would be encouraged to move around.

The truesec formula could take any number of things into account (average number of pilots docked and in space per time period, rat kills per time period, mining per time period, number / quality of ihub upgrades, etc spring to mind) and the rate at which truesec changes could be adjusted easily once the system had been coded.

My thought was that primary resource gathering activities (IE mining site / belt ore quality, belt rat / anom quality, officer / faction spawn rate, and the rate and value of complexes / profession sites) would benefit from lower truesec, while industry, trade, etc would all benefit from increased infrastructure investment (which would in turn make the truesec worse). The idea would be that you could live in a very developed part of space with lots of friends nearby, lots of JBs, stations, manufacturing slots, etc etc, but that to do so you'd have to put up with inferior ratting / mining / whatever. If you wanted to get the most out of a primary gathering profession, you'd have to move to a less-developed / populated area to do so. Alliances would need to choose whether to "develop" their space (to make it a good home) and leaving it "wild" to ensure the best resource farming.

I think this would help combat the sort of "urban sprawl" that's been occurring in nullsec over the past few years, where every other system has a station and alliances of thousands of people carry out all their normal activities using only a handful of heavily upgraded systems. IIRC CCP has been making noises about find a "solution" to outpost proliferation (some kind of station destruction, I would assume), but I think it would be cool to implement a dynamic trusec system that would provide some incentive to avoid sprawl in the first place rather than only providing your enemies with ways to knock down your space-castles. I think this kind of "inverted" dynamic system would result in much more natural migrations of people (as the trusec in an area gets lower, people bandwagon over to cash in until the bonus resources are used up, then they move on to the next hot zone) as opposed to the current situation where people just upgrade a few systems and then sit there until their alliance implodes / is evicted.
Batelle
Federal Navy Academy
#4 - 2012-07-18 21:18:51 UTC
these are all great ideas, but you neglected to mention the most broken and un-iterated nullsec income stream of them all - TECH MOONS.

"**CCP is changing policy, and has asked that we discontinue the bonus credit program after November 7th. So until then, enjoy a super-bonus of 1B Blink Credit for each 60-day GTC you buy!"**

Never forget.
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#5 - 2012-07-18 22:30:13 UTC

I did not mis-understand your post.... but perhaps I wasn't clear in mine....

If, having 20 people ratting in a system results in the lowering of sec status, alliances will typically concur more space, and impose limits on their members on how many or how much they can farm a system. In the extreme, this results in 20 systems with 1 person ratting, rather than 1 system with 20 people ratting.

The dilemma is, if 20 people are together in a system, and an enemy fleet comes in the area, that's 20 people that can quickly form up a gang and go blow them up....

If those 20 people are spread out across 20 systems, it will take much longer to form up, and much longer to respond to an invading force. Given past results, the typical response will be 20 systems of people safing up rather than fighting a roaming gang.

^^^ This is a BAD THING...

Additionally, if it costs 1billion to upgrade your system, but then it will lose its worth within a week because 20 people are farming it, then it no-longer becomes worth the price of upgrading the system... This needs to be monitored with your proposal.

The truth is, we don't want large alliances to sprawl out and take over all space... they already do that to the extent its already difficult for a small alliance to get a starting point within the sov game. Personally, I'd prefer game mechanics that encourgage alliances to huddle up and develop their resources. Ideally, these resources should be open to plunder by casual raiding gangs, but the population density would typically be sufficient to respond/thwart such casual threats.

There should be a general dis-incentive to blue up your neighbor, and only done when you can't defend your own space from a casual roaming gang. There should be a disincentive to claim an entire region worth of sov space, that is until you have enough pilots to utilize every system in that region on a daily basis!
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#6 - 2012-07-19 03:05:02 UTC
I'm actually interested in your point of view because in my experience clustering has lead to a much worse solo / small gang pvp environment than previous dynamics. I've noticed solo or small gang PvP is incredibly difficult these days due to the fact that any incursion into hostile space is almost instantly met with huge numbers of defenders due to the fact that people all tend to live within 1-3 jumps of each other and usually have access to JB nets that span the defenders' whole regions, which they can use to quickly maneuver around a hostile gang.

With regard to alliances claiming space, in my experience alliances tend to claim (and heavily upgrade) whole regions regardless of whether or not they'll use the space. They seem to do this as a security precaution if nothing else (it allows them to monitor the space and accumulate strategic indexes that they can use to re-route JB nets in a pinch, jam systems, etc. Just look at the way Deklein is used (for example)-- I'd venture a guess that 2/3s of the systems in Dek aren't really used at all, but they're all sov'ed and there is a prolific JB network that links the entire region to a handful of capital systems where ~80% of the people live.

None of this is very conducive to small alliances holding nullsec space or to small gang PvP being a thing. What's especially bad is that hunkering down in a handful of systems (which makes everything a lot safer for the occupants) has no real downsides and instead is actively encouraged by the system (since the more people you cram into a small area, the higher your indexes and the higher the quantity / quality of resources that spawn. IMHO it leads to very safe gameplay for the occupant where an attacker either needs to bring a very large fleet (at which point the defender has a choice of either fighting or blueballing) or remain irrelevant, since it's very easy for defenders to lock down the handful of systems they need to secure to continue making money. With a spread out system, people may dock up, but at least then you're shutting down people's income by preventing them from making money, whereas with the current setup only a very big incursion can accomplish this (trust me, I've gone into hostile space with a gang of 4-8 people and watched as people in ratting hubs just shrug and continue running anoms in their carriers because they know there's nothing your small gang can realistically do to them while they have 30 friends including other carriers in local). If people are spread out to begin with and need to move around their space frequently to make money, that would generate a lot more manageable targets rather than limiting incursions to blob-warfare where 50-man roaming fleets are sort of the minimum gangsize required to really accomplish anything.

I also agree with you that there should be general dis-incentives to bluing everyone and their dog, but I tend to think of over-abundances of resources as making bluing easier than resource scarcity (since there's no reason not to share resources). Resource scarcity drives conflict, not plenty.

Regarding tech moons I'm sure CCP is working on a better moon balance and possibly a revision of the static moon system in general (IIRC they're not big fans of the way moons currently work).

Regarding upgrade costs and trusec changes, I was thinking that in general upgrades would be used more for industry and logistics while entities that wanted better truesec would deliberately leave space untouched. It would be a sort of strategic decision / tradeoff, so "how long will my space be useable for ratting in" wouldn't really be a concern? The whole idea would be to find out what systems you want to basically give up (WRT ratting) in order to get nice facilities.

v0v I'm trying to think more about it right now but my brain is tired from not sleeping for 2 days, so I'm gonna stop :3
Ari Kelor
Frontier Explorations Inc.
#7 - 2012-07-19 04:40:31 UTC  |  Edited by: Ari Kelor
Very interesting idea's, and I support the move to a more dynamic True-Sec system.

I also support the idea of also having Sov levels developed in the same way. The safety of the system in Sov 0.0 need to be tied to how settled a particular system and must be inclined to be opposite of the Soveriegnty level of the system.

What I imagine is Sov level and true-sec being like yin and yang, opposing forces that need to be balanced. The balance is player controled. There should be a sov/truesec 'velocity' meaning that depending on the actions of the players levels will change at specific rates. The sov level change is represented much like stock market predictions, is the sov increasing, level, or falling.

The goal is to limit the manipulation of a single factor to gain a desired effect. Factors to increase sov and consequently drop true sec more rapidly would be something to the effect of;

-How many POS's are in sytem; Based on the number of moons in the system and the value of any moon minerals located in system. (This is based on the current moon mining model and should adapt with a new model)
-Does the system have a station in it; The presence of a station will intrinsicly gravitate to a higher sov level and a lower truesec.
-The cubic meters of ore mined in the last 24 hours, and the value of that ore (Starting with Veld as the lowest and Arkonor as the highest)
-The cubic meters of PI exported from planets
-The amount of NPC bounty collected in the last 24 hours
-Alliances should also be able to 'tax' bounties collected in the system to help pay for sov bills or increase the sov of the system more rapidly (essentially adding that tax to the amount of bounties collected in the system), sov bills will decrease as per the tax system until it reaches 0 isk, then the taxes would feed into the corp wallet normally.
-The average number of pilots in system in the last 24 hours (at 1/2 hour intervals)
-The number of jumps in the system in the last 24 hours.
-Does the system have a Cynogenerator/Cynojammer/Jumpbridge.
-The adjacent systems sov/truesec velocity should also effect each other (a system joined via JB counts as adjacent)

-Important Note: True sec decreases should happen more slowly than it increasing, systems need to 'lie fallow' for a longer period of time to become more valuable.

The factors stated above should be analyzed given statistical data gathered over the last 6 months to 1 year the and the sov/truesec velocity is extrapolated and applied on a daily basis. Theoretically to make a system reach 1.0 Truesec, that system and any adjacent systems must be almost untouched for 4-6 months. On the other hand it should take about 3-4 months to gain sov 5 even with all the upgrades and full occupancy. Maintaining JB's and other Sov dependant effects should require a minimum amount of activity in that system, and will encourage people to hunt down/bait out and fight back against intruders.

A base amount of isk should be used to achieve sov, and support the TCU and IHUB. Anything beyond that should be becasue the system is being used by actual players.

As a side note I also think that the amount of timers that are needed to conquer a system should be directly influenced by the sove level at the time. There only should be 1-2 timers for systems with sov level 1 and anywhere from 8-10 timers to flip sov from a sov level 5 system. I don't have any specific idea's on how this can be achieved but would like to state that. It should be harder to conquer a system that has higher sov levels. The fluff space that large alliances hold should be easily flipped.

TL:DR - Basically oulining ideas about how truesec and Sov levels should be opposite and the factors that should increase sov and decrease truesec. The higher the sov level the lower the truesec.
Gerrick Palivorn
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#8 - 2012-07-19 05:50:36 UTC
Ari Kelor wrote:
Very interesting idea's, and I support the move to a more dynamic True-Sec system.

I also support the idea of also having Sov levels developed in the same way. The safety of the system in Sov 0.0 need to be tied to how settled a particular system and must be inclined to be opposite of the Soveriegnty level of the system.

What I imagine is Sov level and true-sec being like yin and yang, opposing forces that need to be balanced. The balance is player controled. There should be a sov/truesec 'velocity' meaning that depending on the actions of the players levels will change at specific rates. The sov level change is represented much like stock market predictions, is the sov increasing, level, or falling.

The goal is to limit the manipulation of a single factor to gain a desired effect. Factors to increase sov and consequently drop true sec more rapidly would be something to the effect of;

-How many POS's are in sytem; Based on the number of moons in the system and the value of any moon minerals located in system. (This is based on the current moon mining model and should adapt with a new model)
-Does the system have a station in it; The presence of a station will intrinsicly gravitate to a higher sov level and a lower truesec.
-The cubic meters of ore mined in the last 24 hours, and the value of that ore (Starting with Veld as the lowest and Arkonor as the highest)
-The cubic meters of PI exported from planets
-The amount of NPC bounty collected in the last 24 hours
-Alliances should also be able to 'tax' bounties collected in the system to help pay for sov bills or increase the sov of the system more rapidly (essentially adding that tax to the amount of bounties collected in the system), sov bills will decrease as per the tax system until it reaches 0 isk, then the taxes would feed into the corp wallet normally.
-The average number of pilots in system in the last 24 hours (at 1/2 hour intervals)
-The number of jumps in the system in the last 24 hours.
-Does the system have a Cynogenerator/Cynojammer/Jumpbridge.
-The adjacent systems sov/truesec velocity should also effect each other (a system joined via JB counts as adjacent)

-Important Note: True sec decreases should happen more slowly than it increasing, systems need to 'lie fallow' for a longer period of time to become more valuable.

The factors stated above should be analyzed given statistical data gathered over the last 6 months to 1 year the and the sov/truesec velocity is extrapolated and applied on a daily basis. Theoretically to make a system reach 1.0 Truesec, that system and any adjacent systems must be almost untouched for 4-6 months. On the other hand it should take about 3-4 months to gain sov 5 even with all the upgrades and full occupancy. Maintaining JB's and other Sov dependant effects should require a minimum amount of activity in that system, and will encourage people to hunt down/bait out and fight back against intruders.

A base amount of isk should be used to achieve sov, and support the TCU and IHUB. Anything beyond that should be becasue the system is being used by actual players.

As a side note I also think that the amount of timers that are needed to conquer a system should be directly influenced by the sove level at the time. There only should be 1-2 timers for systems with sov level 1 and anywhere from 8-10 timers to flip sov from a sov level 5 system. I don't have any specific idea's on how this can be achieved but would like to state that. It should be harder to conquer a system that has higher sov levels. The fluff space that large alliances hold should be easily flipped.

TL:DR - Basically oulining ideas about how truesec and Sov levels should be opposite and the factors that should increase sov and decrease truesec. The higher the sov level the lower the truesec.


So what you're saying is that you want it so AFK Cloakers will be effecting sov now, and not just being annoying.

MMOs come and go, but Eve remains.  -Garresh-
Gizznitt Malikite
Agony Unleashed
Agony Empire
#9 - 2012-07-20 01:34:15 UTC

My viewpoint is very biased by my life in Agony.... While we've dabbled with Sov, it is not something we strive to have.

What we care about are fights....

We don't have blues, we are not afraid to lose ships, we just want to shoot some people in the face!!

Thanks to WH's, we take gangs into EVERY nullsec region. And while it's fun to gank the occasional ratter, the idiot that didn't pay attention to local is not what we truly desire...

You mentioned the ratting carrier that doesn't bother docking up because he knows he has lots of support in system... Well we'll gladly tackle him with a gang we KNOW cannot destroy him... Why? Because we know he'll ask for help on comms or in local... and then we can gank the foolhardy knights that warp in piece-mail to save him...

Population density encourages far more pvp than naught: I've personally taken small gangs into I30 & VFK, ganking pilots not paying attention to intel/local. I'm talking bringing something like a 5-10 frigate/cruiser gang, when there are 30 of my enemies in system, and another 60+ pilots nextdoor in VFK. Eventually the gang pisses off the wrong person, who gathers a gang to chased us off... but even being chased away is entertaining and exciting, and it provides us with the opportunity to kill scouts and pull off tricks. If those systems weren't populated, those opportunities wouldn't exist!!

In comparison, taking a gang through 30 systems in a row, each containing a raven/tengu and exequror combo, which instantly safe up as soon as you appear in the omniscient "local chat" is absolutely tedious and boring... "Recon, Joe in system XXX, 1 in local, tengu on Scan... ... ... Yet again, the tengu warped out as I landed on grid... Tengu's now on scan towards a POS... moving to next system"... rinse and repeat ad nausea!!!

It is NOT clustering that kills small gang and solo PvP.... To get a fight, you actually NEED a certain population density... Were does goons take their 100 man frigate fleets? I know were we take our 100-man frigate fleets, and it's not to regions of ratters... We take them to population hubs, because that's where you get a fight. When we form up 10-30 man AHAC, or BS, or TWEED, or whatever theme gang, we take them to population hubs that can actually form up a fleet and come out and play....

What kills small/medium gang PvP, is when the pilots in those hubs respond with an un-engage-able, overwhelming force. I rarely bring a 25 man AHAC gang to large alliance hub, because the response is typically unmanageable. We will take our 60 man cruiser fleets there, because we might get an appropriately sized response gang and a good fight!! For the 25 man AHAC gang, we'll go to other Alliances hubs that respond with a gang of similar size (20-30). Please realize, this doesn't mean I won't bring a gang to VFK; it means the gangs I bring there are small, hard to pin down, 5-10 man nanoish gangs that aren't worth your "effort" to form up big response fleet...

The next thing that kills small/medium gang PvP is a large see of blues. If we have to travel 30+ systems to get a target, we wont bother... WH's help with this, but the reality is, you need to have enemies next door. Syndicate & Curse typically have the best small gang PvP in the game because it's a bunch of small mutually hostile alliances that prefer to shoot each other rather than build sandcastles. Spreading people out is the exact OPPOSITE of what you need to do.... you need to bunch people together, and non-invasion pacts should be the norm, not ******** non-aggression pacts. Provi Fight Club worked great (until Evoke squashed it), and the Stain Bandwagon had promise (although it seemed to be driven by an ulterior motive beyond fun fights)...

In my limited alliance experience, there are several different alliance mentalities:
a.) Some don't want fights at all... they don't want to or are afraid of losing ships... They want to build sandcastles in peace. I've visited alliances that forbid their members from engaging my solo RIFTER... because either a loss is unacceptable, or giving out fights encourages visitors, which they don't want...

b.) Some don't want good fights... they boast near-perfect efficiencies verse their enemies, and to maintain that, will only engage with overwhelming odds. They often care more about winning than the actual fight, and aren't willing to truly risk their ships.

c.) Finally, some just want to watch the world burn... They crave interesting matches where pilot decisions matter, where the outcome isn't predetermined, where they come away feeling giddy on the inside win or lose...

The last major hinderence to small and medium sized gangs: too much of EvE's nullsec alliances have mentalities akin to A & B, and too few have C-like mentalities...

T.L; D.R; Population hubs make locals feel safe, fly dumb, and are great places for small/medium hostile gangs to visit and get good fights. A spread out population rarely comes out to play, so spreading out the population typically won't help... The best small-medium gang PvP environment happens when you have lots of different hornet nests nearby, which you can poke and prod for a good time.
Ganthrithor
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#10 - 2012-07-20 04:50:56 UTC
I hadn't really thought of it from that perspective, but you're definitely right about being able to get gang-on-gang fights more easily in densely populated spots. My impression has been that only goons yield good small-gang / solo kills (god we're completely ********, literally), but maybe I've just been visiting the wrong places. I guess it doesn't help that I usually go live in hostile space instead of briefly roaming through it (locals quickly get wise). You make some good points.

I just find it frustrating when I roll in alone or with a couple of friends and the second you get near an alliances core systems suddenly they bring out a 50 man kitchen sink gang to run after you. It's just kind of annoying-- I've basically gotten to the point where I just write off the first few hours-days of moving into hostile space since every time you do anything a massive drake blob shows up to fight you. Luckily I usually fit a cloak and after a couple of days people get complacent.