Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Death by annoyance is a valid concern, but that's basically the same as any other "keep them under pressure until they break" tactic. Reship times will make a difference in how consistently the pressure can be applied, and the expenses involved could potentially be an issue. Finally, given the fact that the simple expedient of sticking an AFK alt in a passive tanked Drake at zero with a defensive link active essentially nullifies this tactic, or at least forces the baddies to bring around 600+dps to clear it off. So there's counters, they're just manpower intensive to some degree.


That could very well be the case, especially if they're not restricted to be anchored in any particular place in space. That's a long ways off though, most likely, so there'll be a fairly long period where folks will need to deal with Death by Annoyance tactics.

MWD Inty cannot target past 150km, without command boosts. Within the range of damp/ecm ships like Keres or Kitsune. In fact, the 10s cycle time of the damps means that a single Keres could potentially neutralize a dozen or more cepters kiting with entosis links. You can even fit a Backup array in the lows and be nearly impossible to scan with probes while off grid.

There are counters to the cepters. Only a larger and/or mixed fleet will defeat the defenders. Sounds like it is as intended (you need to show up to defend your space).

How many pilots, and how expensive? Also, sov warfare these days is either helldunk or blueball, with no in between. Opening up the envelope to a wide variety of fleet concepts would change that up, at least.


Can't cloak, warp, or receive remote assistance while the link is active, and the T2 version should cost around 80mil apparently. Can't have an MWD penalty, since that invalidates kiting comps, which is against the stated design goals.

I see your points. But I am inclined to think a lone interceptor will be nothing more than a mosquito.

Combat is also about forcing your opponent to react to your tactics. As a defender, the ewar ships will do just that simply by being on grid or d-scan. A troll (or small gang of trolls) will know there is little chance at all to sov troll when they see ewar. As a result, I think you will see larger fleets and mixed fleets. If the attacker brings their own ewar, or mixes their fleet comps to actually engage, then combat will occur.

I for one favor interaction between players/groups as a primary goal of any new mechanics. I think SOV should embody all of the elements of interaction like no other place in the game. It should be the pinnacle of conflict. Psychology is a weapon, as is economics. Denying your opposition their goals (while achieving your own) is true victory.

Interaction does not always lead to conflict. Conflict is just one form of interaction.
Conflict does not always lead to combat. Combat is just one form of conflict.

A single diplomat can be more determinate than an entire fleet of warships.

Then again, it's just a game...right?

It is not the single ceptor that will have any real implications for anything but unguarded systems. You can park an alt in an ewar ship offgrid to deter that (while you do something else until you get a notification). You can respond long before any threat is realized, and the troll will simply find somewhere else to bite. It is the fleets of 50, or 500+ that will be the threat to nullsec. It is the potential to use the mechanics offered to cause widespread headaches for everyone, because the low cost/risk of trollfits.

I think CCP is on the right track though. It encourages you to be the attacker, by virtue of dictating where and when the interactions takes place. And this is how I think it should go forward; offense drives content. Nullsec may very well burn to the ground, but player interaction will be at an all-time high. There will be so much going on, so many ships buzzing around and doing stuff! Whether or not the mechanics are abused, or actually pose new and interesting interactions will have to be seen. And compensated for.

It will not be a time for the risk-adverse. You will be forced to be active and consolidate if you wish to keep what you have. Forced to coordinate with your team, and to confront your opposition proactively. I can imagine the desire for the new structures unveiled in the blogs! You may just have to hang on long enough for them to be realized. Wild times ahead.

Capital ships should have a role in the new sov system. At least, dreadnoughts should. Seige mode is a perfectly parallel module to entosis. No remote reps, can't warp, can't even move. Give it the entosis mechanic, and one is enough, and more dreads really makes no difference.

The trick then is to distinguish them from subcap entosis. I would propose different restrictions on both of them. Ideally, we should promote harassment, but differentiate it from trolling. A focus on the periphery of player empires would give us that. Ideally, it should be next to impossible to knock over an ihub in sov 4 or 5 systems. However, flipping a low level sov system should be quite doable, and trivial without opposition.

The lynchpin is changing how sov levels are achieved. Rather than just require time, require adjacency. To have a sov level two system, it must be surrounded by sov level 1 or higher systems. If one system drops to level 0, all adjacent systems drop to level 1. Up or down changes each take 24hrs to go into effect.

Under such a system, sov 5 can be achieved in as little as two weeks, but it can come down in one week.

This achieves the objectives of making not defending space a risky move, but move it into a campaign format rather than anywhere anytime format. This gives defenders some discretion when it comes to marginal buffer systems. It also gives campaign managers strategic focus on both sides. The more an empire sprawls, the more points of vulnerability it has.

Subcap entosis should be viable in Sov 1 and 0 systems. In sov 0, timers are quick. Dreads should be able to engage entosis/siege in Sov 2 and lower systems, allowing them to expand the field or push harder for a capitol system. However, this should not come easily.

With each ihub level, we allow the anchoring of five modules, one at each level, which each double the size of shields, doubles entosis time, doubles reinforcement timers and doubles the sensor strength of all deployables*. These modules can be made vulnerable by entosis if the system is vulnerable. There is no such anchorable for sov 0 systems. All sov 1 systems have to have a claimed sov 0 system next to them, ensuring empire vulnerabilities to even the weakest forces. The base reinforcement time on sov 0 systems is now 12 hours. (*This includes hostile deployables.)

Ideally, contestation for sov anoms is a 23/7 process. It allows groups to push timers forward or backwards by up to 50%. In this way, an completely undefended system could drop in as little as 6 hours. Ideally, the number of sov anoms that spawn will be a dynamic, demand-dependent quantity, allowing for even the largest blobs to spread themselves infinitesimally. Every occupied anom should spawn two more within a quarter hour.

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In order to become more general combat ships, dreads need a tracking buff. They can maintain their massive target sigs, thereby relying on target painting ships (cough new minmatar BS), but the tracking issue has to be addressed for a flagship role. Titans, meanwhile, don't really need the ability to target subcaps, but they do need a counter logi effect built into their doomsdays.

To sharpen the role of sov, we could even put out some new defender advantages. One could be a module, available only at high level sov, that strips motherships of their ewar immunity. Another could strip ships of their interdiction nullification. There was also a structure proposal for cloak interruption. These would affect all ships equally, obliging people to keep their warships across the Rubicon, but creating great risk for attackers thinking of knocking down really tall walls with the massed amounts of supercapitals they have stockpiled. It becomes more prudent to whittle away at an enemy.

Hopefully, with the new deployables on the horizon, it also becomes profitable to whittle away at them as well. Perhaps it would be reasonable to make the more profitable deployables be too deficient in critical bonuses in capitol systems. That would ensure that profitable assets are located more closely to the periphery. That also requires that sov levels be more strictly a martial component, rather than one distributed between PVE and PVP. Manufacturing should be concurrent with martial sov upgrades, but all extraction and ratting should have an inverse dynamic.

I read this again and again.

As entosis links will be used mostly for trolling, how do you apply entosis links to npc space and lowsec?

as a potential counter to troll-ceptors - limit max velocity whilst using entosis link to 2.5km/s, this will not seriously affect anything bigger than a frig, and won't dreadfully hurt most frigs; it will, ofc be a major issue for the troll-ceptor, and allows a similar fit not using an entosis link to catch it 'relatively' easily

also - what about forcing the ship using the entosis link from leaving the grid, even via just burning (I know it's artificial.... but it's the best I could think of)

EDIT:

further thought, this will not reduce the kiting ability of big ships, but they can always be caught by dedicated tackle ships (hyena/keres), and if the entosis link has a nice BIG visual effect, then it's easy to pick out who's using it and who's not.....

this will lead to a meta of kiting groups all using the entosis, and taking losses, or the entosis link being blocked from time to time.... which I think is a pretty accurate way of determining grid control

the main way I can think of to ruin a troll-ceptor is a ship that can damp or jam far enough out..... couple it with a long enough point, and maybe some webs, and you're looking at needing an arazu, falcon, and rapier on each capture point during prime-time..... how boring......

Or dont bother and use the legions of cyno alts to counter link the structure?

Or let it sit on the timer until near the end and waste its time then contest it yourself.

Why are we still freaking out about this non-problem? There are many and varied ways to neuter this, we're smart people - we've probably not even found the best one yet.

If they're serious about contesting sov, it WILL generate fights. If they are out to troll you, troll 'em right back. Even a moderately upgraded system makes this pretty easy. They'll waste active pilot time and more of it when you waste...12 minutes out a sensor damped alts otherwise inactive evening. I doubt that'll go on for more than 6 weeks (after sov readjusts itself) before people get bored and you see the serious attempts pretty much in exclusivity.

Small fast craft could be considered a vanguard - penetration testing. But when it comes to the crunch, it wont be frigates contesting sov. Not by a long shot.