Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The majority of people agree that sov is due an overhaul, this is a minor(ish) change that in my opinion would be a good first step to addressing some of the problems which plague sov null space.

The main issue as I see it: Alliances are strongly discouraged by the current metagame to attempt to own sov on their own, for good reason too, without some kind of agreement with a major coaltion they are unlikely to make any headway at all. Nullsec is owned by the few coaltions who are big enough to stand a chance against the other huge coalitions, kind of a rich get richer scenario in a way, meanwhile the smaller powers either get pushed out or join one of these coalitions.

Not only is this reducing the variety of gameplay on offer but arguably also harms the quality of the gameplay on offer too. It has been proved time and time again that when 2 of the major powers collide in any meaningful way it brings the servers to their knees and makes them beg for mercy before giving them a good kicking anyway.


The root of the problem:

That is to say, exactly why I think the current metagame has turned out as it is. There is little to no benefit for an individual alliance/small coaltion to owning more space for themselves, resources are far from limited in nullsec as it stands, an entire coalition could have all it's members rat and make isk in only a handful of systems without seeing much in the way of diminishing returns. Note: I stressed 'individual', on a large scale coalition level owning more space is easier and more profitable as valuable moon goo and renter agreements comes into play, with the relevant space being much easier to take and defend the more people you have.

So basically there's way too much to go around, and having more dudes than the other guy does nothing but net you a bigger piece of the pie.


I do NOT agree that limited resources is the solution to this problem, it fixes nothing, merely reduces how much there is to fight over and the amount of content available. I believe the solution lies in increasing the incentive to fight for your own resources and make sharing said resources with other alliances counterproductive.



I've been thinking a fair bit about a non game-breaking way of doing this, an idea I've been toying with for a while is to simply have a % bonus to rat bounties (and possibly other things?) based on how many systems your alliance has sov over (assuming you're ratting in a system owned by your alliance obviously) hopefully to encourage greed on an alliance level rather than a coalition level as the space owned by your coalition does not matter.
I can however see there are issues with this, for example what's to stop an alliance such as goonswarm taking a large swathe of space and their members getting internet space rich off the massive bounties? I thought about a hard cap on the bounty multiplier but after thinking about it even only a soft cap on it could result in there being an 'optimal' amount of sov to own at which point the sharing and the coalition circle jerking starts to seem a lot more inviting again. The answer here is a bit more complicated.

Past a particular threshold of systems controlled by an alliance they will start to see diminishing returns on the bonus gained from the number of systems owned.
Example: an alliance owns 30 systems (for the purposes of this example the bonus earnings per system is 2% and the threshold is 25 systems, these values are probably not even close to balanced so don't worry about them). They gain a 50% bonus from the 25 systems they own under the threshold, the system then takes into account how many members they have (non-linearly) and penalises the other 5 down to 0.2%. The final bonus is 26%

I do not see this as a definitive solution, I think there are other things that need to be done, primarily changing what are normally alliance/coalition income streams such as moon mining to corp/individual income streams - so basically ring mining that was teased a while back - and in general encouraging more competition for individual resources rather than resources which are easily shared. But I do feel something like this could be a step in the right direction for a more volatile and dynamic nullsec.

A sov mechanics overhaul wouldn't hurt either :)

TL,DR read the top half you lazy *************************** :) I the second half is much more likely to be me talking out my ass.

Here is my completely unjustified opinion on how to improve nullsec.

Reduce structure grinding. Small steps. No major changes.

Small change #1

Get rid of defensive SBUs. I mean come on... a defensive blockade!? There's no such thing.

More easily said than done, I hear you say? Not really.

Make it so that SBUs cancel out all sov bonuses. That will instantly erase any benefits of using them 'defensively'.

This will obviously reduce the amount of time and/or firepower required to attack a system because attackers will not have to remove the defensive SBUs before anchoring their own.

It will also make it more important to actively defend your sov since an attacker could pretty easily strip you of your development indices.

Nor should there be. Null is where people go because they want:

Richer rewards for menial jobs ( ratting, mining, etc)
A safer environment to do those menial jobs
A sense of being part of something better than the highsec rat race and not just running missions.
Something to defend
People they can place a reasonable amount of trust in

Long term residency in Null is not for:

People who want to hold space alone ( some people can, but its because they are useful, and are a trusted 3rd party, no names)
People who aren't willing to defend their space
Special Snowflakes
People who don't/can't know diplomacy

That last bit is the most important. Diplomacy.
The reason Null is in its current state is because its an old boys network. The big names play and talk together in other games a lot more than people think. All the suggested mechanic would do is create holding alliances containing alts, as Jill Chastot said.

No matter the change, Null will be owned by the people that can best organize and co-operate as a large team.

TBH I loved any fight that took it to 10% ti-di. Oh its something to groan about, but it also means that the battle is going to be what many play the game for: Incredibly huge.

A long time ago, i was part of a renting alliance, and was new to eve, and new to null. I died alot, lost alot of isk, used the wrong guns on the wrong ships with the wrong tank, everything a noobie does. I was slowly losing my fascination with the game when a CTA came thru, and the puppet masters told us to go attack a titan. This was when Titans were still mysterious, and Doomsdays were AOE.

One Doomsday took almost all of us out, I think it was almost 200 people that Rifter hero'd it over 20 jumps to get a shot off, only to die when we landed on grid.

Sold me, just with that. 200 people, just on one side, just to attack one ship.

I showed up for every massive fight I could, back before there was Ti-di, and chances are you'd CTD when jumping into the occupied enemy system.

Far from being sick of it, Tidi has made the game worth playing in those supermassive battles. Its something I really wish every eve player could try, at least once.

Hopefully they'd be on the other side.

You cannot change human nature of always wanting to work with a group.. I think what needs to be done is change the massive structure grinds so don't create such a burn out of players from mind numbing, braincell destroying bashing.

Other than changing how sov changes hands, I don't see anything affecting the current sov situation in null.

Unless you are a manufacturer for one of the major alliances, the odds of you being able to hold space anywhere near them is completely dependent upon who you know in the major coalition, how much they trust you and what benefits they have to not holding your space.

You are either a useful, productive member of the region, or you aren't in the region. It's too risky to have unknowns close enough to cyno to a system of relative importance.