Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Something to fight for.

Lately I feel wars are fought more over principles than anything else. An old enemy fighting each other because is what they have always done. What is OK but it doesn’t provide as many fights as I would like to have.

Nowadays holding territory has no meaning, and I feel this has to change for war to be universal and fighting frequent. The idea is to turn sovereignty from and isk sink into and isk faucet. If the plan behind the isk sink was to compensate the passive income from Technetium moons, address that problem instead of breaking sovereignty.

Basically, if your alliance holds territory, it will have a passive source of income. Something like:
Sov Level 1: 50 million isk/day
Sov Level 2: 60 million isk/day
…
Sov Level 5: 100 million isk per day

From here we can add details to refine it.

• Require to have both the military and industry level at a minimum for the top levels. For example, for Sov 5 you need one of the indices at five and the other at three. And if you don’t keep them there you lose Sov accordingly. A system that is not taken care of should lose a Sov level every week or so.
• To develop a system to Sov x you need all the surrounding systems at Sov (x-1).
• Enemy activity at your system detracts from your indices.
• Only one system can be developed to level 5 by alliance/corp. Then perhaps this one should produce more isk, like 500 millions per day.
• Sovereignty can’t be gained if there is another alliance at the next system.
• Hide sovereignty information, so to gain intel you have to actually go there. Lets give a slightly better chance to the small alliances.

Ideally, increasing and maintaining the indices shouldn’t be a pain in the ass, but at the same time it must be an activity that can be disrupted by small gangs. For example, to add to the index it is necessary to keep doing it (ratting/mining/something else) for a whole hour. If you cloak, dock at a station, enter a POS force field or change system before the hour is complete it doesn’t add to the index.

Um... ISK Sinks are needed for the economy, if I'm correct.

So you think that a single player should be able to fight an organisations of thousands and win ?

When CCP say that everyone's actions matter, and one person can change stuff, they mean that one person (if they are dedicated enough) can build their own alliance, add some coalition allies and then bring down the whole galaxy.

And when they say that 'You are safe from no-one' they mean that any individual pilot is never safe from any other individual pilot.

To put it simply, why should the collective efforts of your ten man gang be able to undo the collective efforts of my thousand man alliance ? Particularly since there is no effective way to prevent small gangs getting into your space (covert portals being a perfect example) it would mean that there is no reason to build up infrastructure. Ever.

Do you know how tough it is to move freighters into 0.0 ? How many man-hours it takes to keep huge networks of POS fueled and armed and ready for war ? Or how much it costs in both time and money to secure and upgrade space so that the sheep in your alliance can run sites all day long ?

And you think that your runty little ten man gang who any large alliance probably can't even be bothered to organize a fleet to hunt should be able to wander in on a quiet day and start wrecking up the place ? That's balanced is it ?

The way that eve has always been is to favor the defender in sov wars, partially because that is that way all wars have historically been. Also, CCP thinks that after the vast amounts of effort it takes to make space worth living in, it should take a similar amount of effort to damage and capture it. It ensures that if you invade somewhere you are serious about it, and not just dicking with people. It's a check and balance.

Think it through.

If a small gang can effect sov, then drive by sov attacks are going to be the norm. Not by invading enemies, by bored jerks who couldn't find ratters to shoot, because that by far is the largest group of pvpers in 0.0. And when any random guys can just wreck stuff you have spent months setting up, people just won't bother. And that means that 0.0 sucks and theres nothing to do except pvp. And so people just go out and wreck up other peoples systems.

But it is already possible. And CCP even gave you a guide. Join them, climb up the ladder, get to the top, hit the disband button. There are multiple examples of this being done in the history of EVE.

Or is that too much effort for you?

No...

While the majority of PVP does involve large numbers of people, there is no hard reason why one person can't start a one man crusade against whoever he fancies.

And assuming you have made a 1 man alliance, you are free to go and take sovereignty somewhere or try to anyway.

Its not impossible.

It is totally possible with the mechanics that are available to you to show up, deploy SBUs and shoot someones POSs (and IHUBs and stations). It's not the mechanics that are the problem here. Assuming you have enough time, there is no reason what so ever why you couldn't do that. Other players might stop you of course, but that's your problem, not the game's problem. It is incredibly hard, but I have known at least a handful of people who have solo held sov in 0.0 just for giggles.

This is why it appears (to people who don't look too closely) that one person doesn't change much in PvP. Because every sov-attacking fleet is met by a similarly large sov-defending fleet. That's because both sides want to win, so they bring out as many people as possible to improve their chances of victory. That's what its all about. More people = More dps, more tank = Harder for the bad guys to win.

Again, one man CAN tangibly effect a massive sov battle, assuming he is so inclined. I recommend void bombs aimed at guardian formations, or regular bombs aimed at fighters. Either of those things can turn the tide of a battle, and even the tide of a war. Of course it has to be in the right place...

Eve is a social game, and it wants people working in concert, not thousands of individuals dicking with each other individually. That's what has built all the outposts, and filled systems with sanctums and high end ore.

If a solo person wants to out-weigh the efforts of all of these people, then he has to strike at the exact right moment. Or else he'll just die in a fire.

Sure that's how it should be ?

One man can't walk into Washington and proclaim himself king (although if he can, I hereby trademark, copyright and patent this idea and officially call dibs on doing it first, and I will ******* SUE). Now if your millions strong army can carry you on a tide of blood and terror to the capital building, then yeah, you probably can get yourself crowned. Alternatively, if you want to be the man who rules the nation, it will take years of hardwork in the dark. And at that point you can sell all our secrets to the chinese, if you so like. Or be a good president.