Assembly Hall

Fixes and Additions

Some fixes and additions to existing, basic mechanics would help make this system more fun.

Downtime Spawning Though this rears its ugly head in FW most clearly, it's generally known that the after-downtime TZ has an advantage in collecting certain sites. Fixing the spawn system so that sites would appear throughout the day would be a necessity, if sovereignty will be partly based on such activity.

Treaties: Finally implementing treaties would make this system more flexible. Here's how-

• Development Treaties: This treaty allows a sov holder to grant a corporation/alliance 'rights' to develop a solar system. All this means is that the treaty-holder's activities contribute to the SEI. Otherwise, outsider activities don't contribute to the SEI. This treaty actually benefits the sov holder and not the grantee. A prospective tenant would use a Development Treaty as a bargaining tool, accepting it in exchange for Blue status, outpost docking rights, etc. Development Treaties must be mutually accepted.
• Infrastructure Treaties: This treaty allows the sov holder to grant a corporation/alliance access to the benefits of infrastructure upgrades.
• Privateer Treaties / Contracts: This is made by an alliance on the offensive with a mercenary/pirate corporation/alliance. The treaty specifies a target system or sov holder. An isk deposit is made and held in escrow. The mercenary/pirate outfit is awarded isk out of the deposit for assets destroyed belonging to the target sov holder or located in the target system.
• The other tailored treaties that CCP promised a while ago, concerning Blue status limited to certain systems, levies drawn, etc.

Sovereignty Fees: Removed. Instead, direct that isk towards alliance members. Miners losing hulks to guerilla activity? Ratters having to fit for PvP and suffering as a result? Compensate them. The player-driven market will determine the costs of holding onto a system in the face of enemy opposition.

Local Channel: Haha, just kidding. Not touching this subject with a 10-foot pole. Go search for relevant threadnaughts.

Better Infrastructure Upgrades: Instead of upgrades that increase the amount of site spawns in a system (thus increasing the work you have to do), create upgrades that make the work more effective. Examples -

• Extraction Hub: System-wide boosts to the speed of mining/gas harvesting module cycle times.
• CONCORD Intelligence Bureau: Percentile increase to NPC bounties.
• Securities Exchange Commission Bureau: Reduces the tax on local market transactions by a percentile. Alternatively, deposits a portion of the tax collected into the sov holder's wallet.
• Servant Sisters of EVE Branch Office: Local humanitarian office improves the life of planetary colonies, increasing the yield of PI facilities.

Planned Outcome (Hoped-For Emergent Behavior):

- A better balance between large and small sovereignty holders. Large sov holders will still benefit from economics of scale, jump networks, and overall coordination. However, since effective sovereignty holding now requires local activity, populations will be more distributed and governing multiple systems becomes more complicated. In the real world, small 'lean' corporations benefit from increased focus on the local and better response time to changing conditions than large, burgeoning corporations. Hopefully, this change will allow that dynamic to translate into nullsec as well.

- A better balance between large fleet battles and small-scale warfare. There are multiple strategies available to take territory, between heavily-fortified gatecamps, long-term guerilla warfare, or the traditional 'pop a TCU' megafleet when Claim Strength dips below 75%. System sovereignty can still be contested in the face of bad odds or supercap inferiority. The use of small, fast gangs and PvP regulars can effectively harass an enemy to the point of them giving up ground. Simply bringing a large fleet at a pre-scheduled time is no longer sufficient, as regular economic activity can keep the TCU invulnerable. True space superiority - constant warfare - is needed.

- Because intelligent carebearing is such a big part of Claim Strength, there will be a greater incentive to bring in tenant groups to maintain a system. There will also be a strong incentive to protect them, and/or teach them how to fight. Hopefully this will lead to better-distributed and denser nullsec populations, and more fun all around.

All this does is filling systems with renters and slaves. More tribute = more and bigger blobs.

Not supported, unless everyone contributes to score -> encourage NRDS, creates unpredictability.

So you're basically saying anyone wanting to hold nullsec sov should turn into economic warriors and carebears, since that is the ONLY thing that affects the SEI, which is the ONLY thing that affect claim strength.

Beyond stupid.

What I see is a situation that forces people to spread out among their owned systems and make them actually use it to keep it. The current system is of little benefit to a small corporation seeking nullsec space. Everyone has to care bear to some degree. The proposed system encourages mining/ratting ops that can be attacked/defended.

As it is much of nullsec is relatively empty space. This fact can be verified by taking a covops 20 jumps into nullsec and back out via a different rout and counting the players you see in local. You can also use map statistics, but that doesn't really give you the whole picture. Running through these systems you will see rats on gates, asteroid belts full of minerals, and a few scans will reveal untapped sites ripe with bounties.

Smaller corporations have no hope to take nullsec under the current system. It is impossible to take sovereignty from an enemy of such massive strength and size that they can field 100 BS's and 10 Caps to defend their sov. These alliances regularly patrol the space even though they do not use it and camp the gates leading into nullsec. The same ships that are good for PvE aren't usually as good for PvP so It is not profitable to even enter nullsec unless you are part of a massive alliance as your ships will be decimated before you can earn their weight in ISK.

Everyone has to care bear at some point to make ISK to buy ships to PvP with. If you don't then you are buying GTC's or you have an alt in order to afford those ships. This is not fair to those who can only afford the cost of a single subscription. Also nullsec pilots are expected to live in nullsec. Nullsec alliances are often under wardec so going into empire space is often more risky than staying in alliance space and said pilots are needed to defend their space.

A benefits of the proposed solution is that massive alliances will no longer be able to hold onto such vast areas of nullsec space giving an opportunity for smaller active corporations to move in. These new corporations would be able to erect their own cyno jammers and camp their own gates. With the required amount of activity per system more people will be encouraged to move into nullsec sparking more conflicts and creating more opportunities to PvP.

In theory this new system would create situations like the following; Imagine a region with 3 different alliance operating in it at once. Each alliance has about 150ish people all fairly active. If these people do not get along the skirmishes would be many. If they all did get along then an outside invader would find no lack of potential targets. Massive alliances would still control larger areas of space and be able to field powerful capitol ships, but they would no longer control a monopoly on sovereignty.

As a result of the proposed system nullsec would become more densely populated as smaller corporations and alliances would have a fair shot at taking and holding sovereignty in nullsec space. The proposed solution takes advantage of activities that already take place as pilots need to replenish their lost resources. The resulting population density and activity in nullsec would create many more opportunities to engage in meaningful fleet fights as pilots fight to protect their accomplishments and each other.

yeah win eve by grinding npc's great plan.... wait.

what we're currently lacking is things to burn down. too much **** only creates more money and is near indestructible, even with very little investment.

That is a good point, and as it is the market is over saturated in ISK and CCP is trying to find ways to sink some of it.

I'll be honest I have no good ideas on how to fix that problem.

Cut bounties, incursion rewards and sleeper loot in half.

It is a valid point that there are systems valued for strategic reasons rather than economic potential. It's also a good point that some systems are worthless for PvE and are constantly exposed to raiding parties, yet are good places to set up choke points and cyno jammers. This sovereignty approach would need an alternate mechanic for holding onto such systems. A possibility is outlined below.

Direct Resupply

Generally, when the system's economic activity is strong, local administration is self-sustaining. When it is not, a sovereignty holder must directly provide the local administration with needed supplies in order to maintain their claim on that system.

Supply Distribution Center (SDC): This is a structure that arrives automatically when sovereignty is established in a star system. It is located near the center of the system, off the star but not near any celestial. No POS may be erected nearby. Warp bubbles, however, can be anchored at will. A Supply Distribution Center is marked by a warp-in beacon visible to anyone in the system.

Sovereignty Supplies: A set of items and commodities used to directly improve SEI. These items are manufactured using commonly available minerals, ice, and planetary materials. They can be manufactured anywhere that accepts a normal industrial blueprint. Alliances can opt to buy them off the market, however there are obvious logistical advantages to producing them locally.

Resupply Process: To resupply a SDC, an Industrial, Transport, or Freighter must have Sovereignty Supplies in its cargo hold and move within a certain range of the SDC. The resupply process takes time - the supplies will be gradually removed from the ship's cargo hold and SEI will improve as a result. If the ship is destroyed or moves out of range, the resupply process stops. The supply ship cannot cloak during this time (and will in any case be too close to the SDC to cloak).

Economic Considerations: The rate at which resupply improves SEI depends on local infrastructure improvements. The more improvements made in a system, the more supplies it takes to effectively resupply it. Additionally, the material requirements of Sovereignty Supplies are tailored so that they are an expensive product. It ought to be economically unfeasible to maintain vast swathes of territory via resupply alone. The ideal approach would be to maintain most of your systems via economic activity, and choose certain strategic systems to hold onto via resupply.

While wealthy alliances can simply buy Sovereignty Supplies, unlike the old sovereignty fee system the resupply process can be halted by battles in space.

Running Interference: When a system is being resupplied, SEI and Claim Strength indicators will be updated dynamically. Additionally, an icon will show up beside the system name or sov info. Anyone in the system or viewing its information remotely will know immediately that the system is currently being resupplied.

Groups on the offensive can interfere with resupply in numerous ways, from camping the SDC to camping entrance gates or positioning themselves to attack whenever a resupply attempt is made. Given the length of time needed to resupply, a roaming gang may come across several targets of opportunity when moving through a region.

Alliances defending a system will attempt to creatively schedule their resupplies, protect their supply shipments, lock down gates during resupply, and/or encourage economic activity in that system to offset supply needs.

Intelligence will be valuable. Knowing when and how your enemy intends to resupply a system will allow you to lay a trap. Knowing when the enemy fleets are active and where they like to roam will help you decide how and when to resupply your systems.

Known Drawbacks: Being the pilot doing the resupply will likely be dull work. It'll likely be long periods of monotony punctuated by short moments of adrenaline-filled terror. Then again, this describes a lot of EVE activities in dangerous space.

Interesting idea but I see one main problem with this proposal.

Wouldn't this simply mean that a large alliance will inhabit 3-4 systems in a region which can be easily maintained via activity either due to their high military index for ratting or good resources for mining and then just inhabit and camp the crap out of any nearby low-to-null sec system and other regional choke-points thereby preventing anyone else from accessing that region of space as a whole.

In other words, you will still have large ownership areas, just not as many sov areas, which really wouldn't affect levels of activity in null-sec.

A small alliance would still have the inherent difficulties of getting into a region owned by a large alliance (through heavily camped choke points), setting up and regularly re-supplying themselves, on top being destroyed by the larger alliance as soon as their presence is detected.

Give soemtying to do in thso sytems bring back sanctums wil be full systems again, but wait sanctums not give ney more much isk incursions give more so make sacntums income lvl the same as incursions lvl. Actualy i tink CCP ned to stop give more income with each new feature waht they making, they need allways see sik per haurs and keep its almost in the same lvl. you just make your choise waht you wish to do.