Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I posted this idea in another thread and it got some traction so I decided to give the idea it's own thread
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=110157&p=18

How about making sov based on who has the most amount of Player Owned Customs Offices in system? And if nobody has a majority then the system becomes unclaimed.

I know this sounds like a dumb idea (and it probably is) but after living in lowsec for a while I have been REALLY impressed with the reinforcement mechanics of PoCos. If you haven't seen them in action then take a look at how reinforcement works. http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Customs_Office Skip all the PI havesting stuff and go down to the "Managing a Customs Office" section

So in their example if you set the reinforcement exit to 13:00-15:00 Then when the PoCo gets shot it starts the timer a day ahead + however many hours to get into the reinforcement window. The idea was that small groups living in lowsec who are all in one timezone could set their PoCos to always come out of reinforce when they are online no matter when it gets shot.

It's a way more convenient system than stront loading.

Imagine you have a solar system with 9 planets in it. You'd only have to online 5 PoCos to fully control it, (or if you were feeling ballsy you could online one PoCo and just clear out the other planets).

But for our exampel alliance to own the place let's say they have 1 PoCo on each planet for a total of 9. Now they have 9 reinforcement timers to play with. If they were heavy in one timezone they could set all the PoCos to come out of reinforce during the same time window. Also since they can only be set to come out in 2 hour windows then if an attacker hit all 9 planets at once then 2 days later they'd have to camp the system with dreads for 2 hours while each planet slowly came out of reinforce.

If the defending alliance was heavy in 2 time zones they could set half their planets to come out in the first time zone and the other half in the second time zone. Or if they had round the clock coverage they could just make all their PoCos come out at random times.

This means an attacker could blitz a system and clear it out in two days if they were confident they could win fights round the clock. Or do every planet one at a time if they met heavy resistance. So you get the tug of war mechanics back, AND you can blitz systems.

Also as far as structure grinding goes. A PoCo can be taken down by three dreads in 15 minutes. It can fit in an iteron, and it costs about 100 mil. That's well within the reach of any small alliance. Also if you don't have 3 dreads, a gang of 30 dps fit taloses can do it in the same time. It's few enough HP that you have to drop dreads or get 30 people in paper tanked tier 3s, but not so few hp that one ******* in a bomber can take your space.

Yes you can lose a system in 2 days. So in theory you could go away on a 3 day weekend and come back in someone else's space. But this forces people to live in their own space. And even if your entire alliance goes into a 3 day coma you can take your home back in 2 days.