Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Coalitions are a big part of the game. NC., DelkCo, CFC, HBC, SoCo, etc. these groups of Alliances band together for a single purpose, usually for war. No one Corp or Alliance can be on 23/7 to defend, attack, scout, spy, refuel, set timers and all the other great wonderful things that don't go "boom"



Proposal

I propose an in game legitimacy of these Coalitions by having Top Teir (Directors, CEOs) level chats and sharing of standings, as well as POS and JB access coalition wide. This would be for the soul purpose of easing logistic worries and allow for a better top down view for war efforts.

The recent addition of War Tracking can still be confusing at a glance, seeing who's winning, who is on who's side, and by legitimizing Coalitions, a lot of the clutter can be cleaned up to show a better overall glance of how wars are progressing.

Alliances and Corporations would still maintain autonomy and still have to fund their own part of the war. No changes to tags, and no limit to the number of alliances that would be allowed in the Coalition.

The executors of two alliances would be required to form a Coalition, costing 10 billion isk, and an additional 5 billion for each additional alliance that joins the Coalition, with a 50 million/month upkeep fee. There would not be a "Leader" position for the Coalition, all top teir personnel would be equal as no Alliance information that isn't already available would be seen or be able to be changed by anyone not in an Alliance.

Alliances would obviously have to be accepted into the Coalition and would be given the option to bow out of a coalition if they choose within 24 hours of a coalition war dec with no penalty in game other than political ramifications in the metagame. Corporations would not be given a choice. If you don't want to fight, then leave your Alliance.

Once a Coalition is formed, All member alliances would share bookmarks, POS and JB passwords, and a new option on the starmap to show Coalition wide space and JB routes.




I haven't seen this proposed before, so what do you guys think? Any thoughts or suggestions to add are welcome!

No offense, but coalitions are destroying the game... People blue up entire sectors of the map, and then complain about the lack of PvP.

They need to solidify non-invasion pacts, where you blue up with your neighbor only to defend against Sov invasions, but shoot each other the rest of the time....

The best small-to-medium scale PvP happens when you have a dense population, with lots of targets in every direction. Large regions of blues creates stagnant and boring conditions!!! I certainly don't want CCP to enforce that playstyle...

Even worse when you find out the other half of the galaxy is empty.

Seriously, the wormhole I live in has a nullsec static, and we haven't gotten a populated system in over a MONTH.
PS: for those that aren't too familiar with how long a wormhole lasts; that's a new nullsec system each day MINIMUM. More if we collapse the hole early.

It doesn't work like that. If you make it disadvantageous to blue people, they'll simply set their allies red and the enemies neutral. Or even have lists of friends and foes. Any artificial system for forcing people to un-blue each other is pretty pointless because there's always ways around it.

I didn't say make it disadvantagous to blue people, I said to make it disadvantagous to blue a large amount of people. TEST and the CFC are well known for bluing everybody and thus a large reason we can blob is because we DO have so many blues willing to fight with us.


If coalitions make things stagnent in 0.0, what about renters? do they not also do the same only as a different form of government?


All I hear from you is "coalitions make 0.0 stagnant, and there's nothing that can be done!!!" well thats why we're in here.

If you don't like them, then what do you think could help limit their power?

My original post wasn't to suppliment the roles of alliances, it was meant to help from a top down view of top teir logistics, and provide a money sink to help limit large groups of alliances from blobing smaller ones (IE: Delve 5)

1.) I want to encourage non-alliance sov next door, not discourage it... Discouraging it will only push people farther apart, which is counter-intuitive to what we want. An incentive to shooting your neighbor would be more along the lines of:
-- Farms and fields that can be raided for profit by your neighbor. It is difficult to create this in a balanced manner, but something along the lines of, raiding your neighbor's farms & fields is a profitable activity, hence raiding becomes a primary income source for the average joe (rather than ratting). This would need lots of refinement and balances, or it wouldn't help anything....
-- Alter stations to earn income based on the industry and market activity. Imagine revamped stations, where the station-holding corp cannot directly deny docking or station services. Instead they collect taxes charged on station services (docking, repair, medical, the Market, etc), which apply to ALL (?non-alliance?) players equally. I'll admit there needs to be a few significant boons to owning a station, but that's for development in some other thread.....
-- Think along the lines of game designs that encourage pilots nearby, especially pilots that you can shoot...

2.) There are many ways to define system activity.... mining, ratting, POS activities, station activities, PI, PvP activity, pilots in space, and on and on... the main reason system activity hasn't been incorporated into Sov warfare is probably because it's fairly ambiguous and hard to balance between the wide variety of player activities. So the current sov system is a plant your flag mechanic, where your flag encourages system activity by the boons it provides. The problem is, planting your flag is all about bringing large numbers, which only encourages large amounts of friends. Don't get me wrong, big fights are good, and should be encouraged, but small fights are also good, and should be encouraged too. In terms of the Sov conquest, the small alliance that continuously fields a 20-30 man fleet all day every day for a week should kick the ever living crap out of a large alliance that only fields a 3000 man fleet for 2 hours once a week. Balancing this is very difficult however, as there are other things to consider: Conquests should not happen overnight, but they shouldn't be dragged on for 3-6 months either. The more vulnerable industry is, the less likely it will be installed (i.e. some system security is a good thing, but too much is a bad thing). This is just a really big balancing act, which is not easy.

3.) A new intel system could come in many different forms... I know what I'd like, but many disagree. A new mechanic does not require a new module, and it can be automatic. Ships (covops) could also be role-bonused for gathering intel too, and fleeting up could be an efficient way to automatically share intel. There are many ideas that would make a wonderful balanced intel system, and there are many horrible ideas that bias intel towards one party or another. I won't disagree with you that an INTEL SYSTEM is essential, that it needs to be balanced between the hunters and the hunted, and that it needs a level of automation to bypass unnecessary tedium, but it certainly doesn't need to be as omniscient as "local chat" currently is!!!

Finally, ship scanning is already too easy in my opinion... I can get a hit on a ship very quickly, especially if I had probes pre-positioned in space. I'm not opposed to a "filter fleet members" or Alliance members option, but the scanning process itself should be slowed down somewhat. Perhaps double the scanning time of combat probes.