EVE General Discussion

Agreeing with the weasel. Moons have historically been a very good feature in nullsec; and honestly they still are, all this "otec" gnashing of teeth is really overblown. Tech costs a lot because of a mechanics change CCP put in two years ago, not a defensive agreement between moonholders. Furthermore, moons, even in their broken state, have driven conflict perfectly well for over 3 years. Now, in a seasonal nullsec lull period which happen all the time, nullsec is suddenly "dying", according to the uninformed masses anyway.

The basic idea of moons works really, really well. Just get the balance right, and introduce dynamic means of maintaining and tweaking that balance. The stuff that has historically killed nullsec is risk/reward balance with hisec, lag, and the supercap debacle, all of which have seen huge improvements. There's no need to change the fundamentals of nullsec, just keep fixing the worst singular elements, one of which is now moon balancing.

As usual, most people chiming in the loudest here for a complete revamp of fundamental nullsec mechanics have no idea how nullsec works, and should really just keep their uninformed opinions to themselves.

As if Soundwave would need any props to stay as our highest ranking Super Villain ...

Comes with the job I guess ;)

I mean, we could outfit all our newbies with firetails instead of rifters or something silly like that, but ultimately when wars are won and lost with subcaps, morale is what matters. Not isk. Capital battles can be decided by isk (can't afford to replace) but usually the issue with those isn't isk, it's actually having enough replacements at any price. Supercaps though, are a massive isk sink that can't be matched by a new alliance and if supercap supremacy (or cap supremacy) is needed a newer and poorer alliance is unlikely to win no matter what their morale or motivation.

I am not disagreeing with you. A point I would like to make is in null, especially in null, you have to be part of a power block if you want to think about holding onto any moons of real value. You don't fight your neighbors, you are fighting the map. Factor in effort free intel, structure mails and an assortment of other effort free mechanics.

Maybe CCP really only wants 2-4 power blocks at most in null. I see people say they want to see more players in null, but the only option is joining one of the power blocks already there. How is that dynamic at all?

Your pilots stop logging in if you lose enough subcap fights you are at any risk of running out of money. That's why isk doesn't really matter at that point: nobody wants to spend 2-3 hours getting ground into paste several times a week even if you're replacing their ship. On the other hand, if you're winning your pilots will spend their own money even if you're broke.

see: Legion of xxdeathxx

Oh I agree 100% on morale. There is way more to running a huge, successful organization like yours besides ISK. But there is still a cost, and I think there should be a cost.

Taxes

Since people are thinking about replacements for alliance income, why not add the ability to tax mining. Perhaps CCP can come up with some easy way for alliances to identify the amount of minerals mined and perhaps an automatic deduction. CCP has talked about a new intelligence system and this could be added to that. Allowing tax evasion (an identifying the culprits) might be an option as well.

The other industrial activities are associated with POSes which alliances can currently tax through rents. I suppose CCP could also make taxing those easier if there was a need.

I like what you are saying. Keep posting.

Just a note on "home" and mobility:

Why can't I pack up my station and move it when we get sick of an area or want to redeploy elsewhere? Part of the problem with territory conflicts becoming too static is that the cost to redeploy or move currently means you effectively waste all the isk invested in any station / ihub / upgrades etc. because you cant take any of it with you.

There really should be a mechanic to take down stations, i-hubs, upgrades and other stuff without destroying them (and including destroying them for stations).

Once alliances and groups have the freedom to move more easily more conflict will happen. Admittedly conversely more benefits need to be possible for staying put and 'building' a home in order to stop everyone doing the vagrant thing and only moving round to stomp people.

You'd need to allow scope for the "builders" and "demolishers" to both be happy in equal measure. Static resources like moon minerals could be a good driver of the building by having the resources be "buildable/discoverable" anywhere but requiring some time to develop/cultivate, but also eventually expiring or depleting. I hate to sound all rural here, but having a system like with a rural village is optimal - planting in spring, tending to the fields and crops in summer and harvesting late summer/autumn before the cold winter comes. This kind of cycle binds people to the territory spring to autumn then frees them up in winter to move on or prepare for the next cycle (if that makes sense).

Moving to some group activity based resource gathering for these resources (elite farming! ) like the suggested ring mining would definitely improve things, so long as you scale these group activities so 1 guy afk in a hulk can't just sit there sucking out everything over a week, but at the same time 1000 guys in hulks cant deplete the resource in 1 hour either...
A wide range of PVE activities need to take place like mining/ratting etc to keep the resources flowing at an optimal level.

Just my thoughts. Cheers.