Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Fully aware that this post will be met with venom and animosity from all stakeholders who stand to lose from this proposal, I welcome you to flame or troll. This message is to CCP and anyone with influence toward CCP who is willing to listen.

Null sec today is broken. The barriers to entry into null sec for anything short of a super power bloc or a renter is astronomical and the formation of two key 'nations' in null is testament to this reality. Unaffiliated neutrals seeking to claim a power base will find it very difficult to do without paying homage to and securing support from N3, CFC, etc.

What I propose is to turn ten years of null sov grinding (whether it is for territory modules or POS') on its ear and redeploy the null sovereignty system to encourage a fluid style of play. Advantages:

- Smaller neutral alliances can make a foray into null space and would be able to claim space without fear of being crushed by a mega bloc

- Endless chains of unused abandoned null sec solar systems would be a thing of the past

- Null sec sov grinding would be gone. Instead, taking sov would be fun for a change (as would defending systems)

- The dreadful chore of 'repping' structures would be left to automated tools better suited to the task

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The changes proposed are massive in scope so I will cover them one topic at a time. Let's start with Outposts for today.

Independent of sovereignty disruption to make the thing vulnerable, taking an outpost is a nightmarish affair which requires not one but three visits to conquer.

a) First visit, bring it to 25% shields (Reinforced)
b) Second visit, bring it to 50% armor (Reinforced)
c) Bring it to 0% structure (Then you conquer it)

On (b) and (c) particularly, the outpost owners have opportunity to muster forces to defend the thing. The super power blocs, even with thousands of members, can't cover the massive expanse of their space without these 'timers.' The reinforced timers allow for the redeployment of fleets at key times, and typically, these fleets will be overwhelming in scope unless you yourself are a power bloc attacking it.

This mechanic severely discourages small scale warfare and is a deterrent to smaller alliances jumping into null and kicking over the hornet's nest.

PROPOSED ALTERNATIVE:

Sovereignty must still be disrupted (though in a different way which we will cover in Part 2)

Once the station is vulnerable, the attack begins. Shield, Armor, Structure, then transition to the attacker. That's it. The process would be slow allowing the owners time to get a fleet to defend it in real-time, but not for the owner to have days of prep time to plan for the deployment of an overwhelming force.

If the original station owner wants it back, they come in and do the same thing.

In this scenario you could see outposts changing hands several times a day, but again, this new outpost system still erodes the potency of a mega power bloc from keeping the outposts out of the hands of smaller groups indefinitely for the following reasons:

a) The mega blocs can't be everywhere all the time and if they're out and about attacking other outposts in fluid combat, they leave their own staging systems lightly defended

b) The mega blocs will be forced to centralize their presence on systems with strategic value and not just systems that end up sitting empty

Arguments against:

a) It is too easy to take outposts in this way and alliances with a lot of equipment in those outposts will lose access too easily

Rebuttal: This is why it's important to centralize the presence of an alliance in a few systems with tight defenses instead of expanding in all directions to systems which aren't really used. It's the exact reason why this null Outpost overhaul is beneficial to the Eve Community at large

b) Smaller alliances couldn't defend their outposts

Rebuttal: They could lose them sure, but they could come right back in and take them afterward, or go and attack systems belonging to the attacker. There will be a 'right size' for an alliance to adequately defend a system. The barrier of null entry isn't gone, it's just significantly lowered here


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Outpost Defenses:

With these drastic changes to outpost conquest, the outposts should function more like a POS (except without the terrible AI). Since there isn't the equivalent of a POS shield, the guns need to more intelligently target aggressors. Depending on the type of outpost, gun placements should be able to be established within a radius. Different outposts would have different CPU and grid outputs to allow for different defensive combinations. There would also be a maxium number of 'gun' slots so as, again, not to make the task of conquering an outpost impossible for smaller alliance fleets. Different outpost types and levels of improvement yield different quantities of gun placements.

Introduction of Orbital Weapons Platforms:

I won't go into stats here, but these guns would have the ability to fire (instead of pulse/beam or railgun/blaster etc.) focused blast (single target, high damage, one range fits all) and spread blast (area of effect, low damage, large explosion radius). The platforms would be designed around racial ammunition, with ammunition being available in T1 and faction, identical to other existing POS defenses.

Next part will contain Mobile Structure Regeneration Units, Recommended changes to sov grinding, and sov based stargate defenses

Stations actually used to function exactly like this way back in the day. CCP gave them timers for a reason.

So the problem you're talking about is the coalition level politics and how you don't want to bend a knee to others. If you get a group of skilled pilots together and prove yourself in lowsec, your chances of getting into a 0.0 alliance are decent enough. Apparently though, that's not what you're after. You want to be able to hold 0.0 space without bending your knee.

Fair enough, although I disagree with the premise.

Here's an alternative. Raise the sov bill for systems the less it is 'used'. And by 'used' I mean some formula for NPC kills, gas/asteroids depleted, jumps, moon mining activity, etc etc.

Now here's the problem, you'll only get systems that nobody wants and will also have a hard time getting supplies. I guess you could use a blops convoy w/ blockade runners.