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Re: the comical old Greyscale quote (does he still work at CCP?):

I still think the devs were wrong about the old POS-based sov warfare system. I'm sure they're correct in that all they heard was about how the sov system was grindy and boring, but I think they misinterpreted what that meant: players are always going to complain about "the grind," but the reality was that lots of people showed up to participate in POS warfare, and lots of people actually enjoyed it as well. Stront timing mechanics made contesting systems a drawn out process with lots of smaller fights and skirmishes (to control kiting, for example, or to try and ninja-rep POS defenses) in addition to the major reinforcement timers, while also ensuring that abandoned space would either fall quickly (as no timers were adjusted and POSes would die after a single RF cycle) or even by default (if the attacker just waited for abandoned POS to offline).

The bottom line is this: the POS warfare system created content. Yes, it felt like a big grind, but I remember time when there would be fights over a single system that would run for days at a time, with near-constant skirmishing between sides as the dominant party would try to maintain control over gates and keep the defenders cowering inside their POS in order to keep kiting timers and destroying towers that came out reinforced at strange times of day. Say what you will about the POS grind: at least it gave players (even the ones who couldn't show up to the final structure timer fights) something to log in and do-- the Dominion system usually comes down to uncontested structure shooting for the first few timers, then some massive fight for the final one (if you can't be online for this fight, you miss literally all of the action). In between, nothing happens at all. Maybe the attackers or defenders rep a jump bridge or the guns on their (singular) staging POS. Mostly the systems just sit empty while everyone goes off to play a game that's actually fun while they wait 36 hours for some structure timer. That's bad game design. At least the old system was involving, and-- when all was said and done-- made the winners feel like they'd accomplished something significant.

In addition, the POS warfare system challenged strategists and logistics teams much more than the Dominion system. Defenders had to maintain a large amount of infrastructure in the form of "blocking" POSes in order to prevent attackers from "spamming" systems with POS to gain a moon-majority and take sov; meanwhile, attackers were driven to find ways to out-maneuver their enemies by finding systems where they could expend a bunch of effort, erect a ton of POS, and gain a strategic foothold overnight. This was not easy and exposed lots of people and expensive assets in the process (ask xttz about how many Rorquals we used to lose during POS wars). Hell, even the defenders had to keep their towers fueled, which meant actually sending people around in spaceships.

People will always ***** about how trying it is to grind down another determined group of players, but despite their whining it's what they want to log in and do. It's like climbing some Himalayan peak: yes, it's a massive undertaking. Yes, people talk about how much of a slog it is. Still, a ton of people fantasize about it (highsec dwellers, non-EVE players reading in the media, etc), a considerable number of people go and attempt it (nullsec residents), and some people manage to accomplish it (successful nullsec residents). The fact that players report that "it's hard," or, "it's time-consuming," or, "it's frustrating" aren't necessarily bad things: all these things inspire the spergiest and most competitive players to compete.

What's awful is when systems are boring. Dominion sov is boring: timers can't be manipulated, the fights all occur at one specific time of day (and then nothing happens for literally 36 hours or more at a time, because there are no defense / attack-related activities to disrupt!). There's no great POS networks for a defender to physically go out and construct / maintain (just a couple of sov structures with automated billing), no reason for the attacker to execute some sort of logistical coup to grab a foothold in hostile space (rather, all they need are some blockade runners with SBUs) and there's very little to do outside of the two relevant structure timer-fights.

TL;DR: the old sov system felt a bit absurd at times because of the very high POS counts in systems with tons of moons, but at least it was *interesting*: it required significant logistical efforts on both sides and involved a more-constant back-and-forth between the attackers and defenders as both struggled to physically maintain their infrastructure and contest and manipulate (via kiting) a multitude of structure timers. Players may complain about the old POS warfare system, but the reality is that it was infinitely better than the Dominion system, and with tweaks (such as moving sov POS to planets to reduce absolute numbers) could have maintained a vibrant nullsec environment. Instead, we all complained about the "grind" of POS warfare, and were gifted an even grindier, less dynamic, less involving system instead. RIP, POS warfare. Death to the Dominion system.

The troubling issue with these siphons is that it demonstrates not only a lack of lessons learned from previous timer and structure systems, but a complete lack of awareness of even the basic dimensions of the issue. Considering that the entire game hinges on the designers ability to encourage fun emergent interaction, it basically means that there is either no one left at CCP who even understands the fundamental theories and ideas that make eve successful or their success was and continues to be completely accidental.

It is obvious that the thought process wasn't "What was good and bad about pos? What was good and bad about dominion? Where can we go with the lessons learned?", rather it was "what is some tangential sop to our sophomoric understanding of the issues with nullsec gameplay that fits into our "running around putting out fires" model of game development?".

It demonstrates that this game is ultimately doomed because CCP has either lost or never had the institutional culture requisite to handle the segment of the industry that they apparently stumbled blindly into. Now all they are doing is babysitting a game in decline, while randomly throwing **** at the wall in response to "game through a pinhole" survey feedback.

In the end someone else with some balls and vision will come along and take what CCP got right ten years ago and make something good and progressive out of it, and CCP will have no one to blame but themselves.

Yeah, pretty much.

If CCP don't revitalize nullsec with some fairly sweeping changes then this game is just going to disappear over the next couple of years. Games like Star Citizen are going to leave EVE in the dust when it comes to fulfulling pubbies' desire for a super-detailed sci-fi RPG (as a single-player / not-quite-MMO multiplayer experience, that game looks like it will be fantastic) and most of the spergy, competitive players I know from EVE have moved on to playing mostly other things (MWO, War Thunder, Planetside 2). You know, places where you can actually go and experience game content on a daily basis.

I can't help but think that EVE is about a year away from obscurity unless CCP can actually revamp nullsec by this coming summer's expansion: if sperges don't play because the game mechanics actively stifle competition, and the casual players are pulled away by a more immersive and atmospheric game, then who's left playing EVE? Nobody.

I want a mechanic to make people check all their market orders in person to make sure someone isn't embezzling them. It creates more emergent game content if you have to actually travel to the stations you're doing business in because you might have to engage wardecs, etc. Why should you get to use all these highsec stations you aren't actually living in?

I think time will prove otherwise. We shall see my friend.

Your predicted impact on moon mineral supplies has a few glaring flaws for starters.

Seriously? Have you read any of this thread? People have already explained numerous times why this "mechanic" will do nothing for the game other than vaporize a portion of the existing moon goo.

How can you even interpret the siphon mechanic as a "small gang objective?" It's an unattended module that you push out of your ship next to an unattended structure. Scenario A: your module sits there and does its thing unattended while you're logged out, then you come back to an unattended structure and pull goop out of it. Scenario B: your module gets noticed and blown up while you're offline, you come back and find empty space next to an unattended structure.

Claiming that siphons add interesting gameplay or small gang objectives is like saying ghost-capping in PS2 is fun... fly around through deserted space, sit on this structure for a minute or two, move on to the next abandoned structure.

The fact is, there are already ways to disrupt nullsec moneymaking: reinforce mining POSes, actively hunt down and kill PvEers and industrialists (if there are any around, that is). CCP need to be giving people reasons to live in their space and present themselves as targets to other people, not another reason in a long list of reasons why trying to make a living in nullsec is irritating and impractical. Fun in this game comes from direct player-player interaction, not having yet-more structure scouting/shooting to deal with. No reinforcement timers on siphons means no fights, even when they are found (not that anyone would bother defending a 10m isk structure anyway). It's a stupid mechanic in every respect.

As far as the mineral price speculations go, those aren't my predictions: they come from a group of people that have been consistently predicting the economic outcomes of EVE changes for years now... not that it's hard to predict given that CCP tell you right up front how much material will be evaporated by the siphons. That leaves only the question of how widespread siphon usage will be... and given that they're going to cost 10m isk and be insanely annoying, my guess is we can safely assume usage will be fairly pervasive. I know our blackops group will probably use them by the hundreds, and that's just one group of 20-30 active players...

How does Scripture go? "If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?"

Oh yeah, and after reading that gumpf I nearly forgot that I came here to request again that if nothing else is changed at least make these things much, much bigger. The only chance of these creating any kind of PvP content is if you can't drop a shedload of them from a interceptor, bomber or cov-ops.

Look, here's the deal. Based on your own assumptions, it seems like you are the kind of player you keep talking about when you refer to "little guys" practicing "economic warfare." It seems like you don't have much experience playing with sizable groups of other players, and you may or may not have experience in nullsec at all. If you did have experience in nullsec, you'd know that:

• There's already room for small gangs to conduct economic warfare in hostile space. This is done by hunting and killing ratters, industrialists, random travelers, and basically anything else that floats through space alone or in small numbers. It can also be accomplished by doing nasty things like relisting: buying up in-demand commodities in nullsec stations (in their entirety where possible) and re-listing them at higher prices, forcing people to overpay for their ships and gear and funneling that profit into your own wallet.


• Nobody is going to hang around for days at a time in hopes of possibly catching some hostile in a blockade runner that's come to loot a siphon: it's absolutely not worth doing, since you can easily retrieve your stuff from the siphon and then destroy it rather than spending ~48 hours in a Sabre poopsocking a structure, hoping that you'll be watching the screen at the exact moment some fool decloaks their hauler for 3 seconds to do a drive-by pickup. It's seriously not going to happen. The spergiest of spergs can sometimes be motivated to camp things for days at a time in hopes of a cap or supercap kill, but nobody is going to bother to do so over a possible Prowler kill.


• Have you ever even been to nullsec? Let me give you a clue: your average nullsec resident is not very situationally aware. Someone running around planting siphons is just one more hostile drifting through a region: ratters will safe up momentarily until you leave, then go back to ratting. I've moved supercaps through null without being noticed, to think this won't be possible with a blockade runner dropping modules that leave no overt traces is ridiculous.


• This siphon proposal doesn't involve any "gameplay" at all: your use of that term in this discussion is overly-generous to CCP. Pushing a module out of your ship isn't gameplay any more than anchoring a drag bubble is. It's the stuff that happens as a result of anchoring a drag bubble that constitutes gameplay: siphons make no such promises.