Jita Park Speakers Corner

While writing [url=https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=168355&find=unread]this[/url keeping the aspect of emergent game play in mind, I felt more strongly that CCP wants to keep the current relationship as a status quo.

To wit: Null mini-empires ship their excesses to Empire and pick up the low end materials they need.

It doesn't have to be Jita it just is, that's emergent game play. The players decided Jita was the place to go when the system before that was nerfed.

Empire dwellers for there are many who don't want to do the null sec life no matter how rosy are already there producing as much materials as any alliance can purchase.

Check out the outposts being built on dot-lan. Two from the same alliance in one month, that's pretty good going - are the materials locally produced exclusively? I doubt it. Could it be produced locally? Probably.

Perhaps what null empires need is more softer targets that is required to be anchored and defended to maintain Sov. Like pos's but without the deathstar/sponge pos set ups. Something anchored around planets and or moons that is easy to build (at the alliance level) but has the hit points of a tiny tiny uber small pos. Multiply that so you need to anchor 51% of moons and or planets and it's very easy for a roaming gang to hit.

This won't mean they threaten the sov though.

Okay...

Why should a small roaming gang threaten the sov of an empire?

Okay tie the bonus's to outpost service levels with diminishing returns below 50% coverage.

Sorry rambling.

I don't think CCP wants to cut out Empire so it will have no effect on null alliances.

Hmm.. interesting read..
now I know why (as an industiralist) I have even less desire to move to Null Sec..
What was that about narrow interest groups and perspectives in the opening arguments of the article..

I don't get the impression CCP wants to maintain any status quo where 0.0 is concerned, I more get the impression that the renewed focus on "spaceship gameplay iterations" as supposed to "Jesus Features" combined with an ambitious project like Dust 514 (Itself, perpetually at risk of being a Jesus Feature) has led to a year+ of attacking low-hanging fruit and procrastination on the real challenges like balancing mining incomes (hell, ALL incomes really) from highsec to lowsec. Same with fixing 0.0 sov, or rebuilding POS's - none of these are easy or fit nice and tidy into a single expansion, and needed some substantial design runway time before work could begin in earnest.

We're beginning to see signs that this runway time is indeed being invested in preparation for 2013, and it looks as if we'll be seeing the more concrete plans at the upcoming winter summit. Whatever CCP presents us with, ending the trend of "iterating on everything BUT eve's most important issues" and knocking out a couple expansions dedicated to these larger-scale efforts is one of CSM7's highest priorities right now in terms of internal messaging.

This is a pretty spot-on article describing the current state of the game, I threw down a few words in the comments because I thought the author would appreciate that we're on the same page with the overall direction things are headed.

http://emergentpatroller.blogspot.com/2012/11/ooc-entry-58-winter-of-our-discontent_14.html

Looking at it from the outside, the lowest hanging fruit seems to be a refining array that allows you to get to 100% refining. Make it require sov, so it's anti-empire, anti-WH and anti-npc null. Empires should be able to build everything locally. Shuffling either their miners or materials back and forth outside their space because of artificial limits is just poor game play.

Once the members are actually in their own space, a lot of the other things can be worked on.

As far as high sec goes: it's best suited for small, casual corps and people still getting their feet wet and learning the game (not that it's the only place to do either, of course, that's just what it's especially good for). So if it's possible to mine some, mission some, trade some and explore some, and earn a decent enough living to stay in the necessary ships and save up for a shiny thing or two, that's a good baseline. Taxes and fees are the price of life in any empire, and lore says that the empires are wary of giving access to their advanced tech to capsuleers, at least for use in their space (i.e., T1 manufacture should be by far the most available). Factional Warfare would be the obvious exception.

For nullsec, I'm going to guess that the stick of getting rid of mineral compression (or at least, nerfing the heck out of it) combined with the carrot of better access to resources in useful proportions, would go a long way toward making nullsec resource harvesting a real thing. Also, there is no reason why a nullsec or WH resident shouldn't be able to buy research, refining, and manufacturing facilities on par with anything in Empire. The POS tax needs to go, except maybe for small, cheap models.

I'm not as sure what to do with lowsec. Maybe it should be split up into different kinds of space, since it is anyway by factional warfare? I don't think its current role as "that place that's between high sec and null sec" is of any help in establishing an identity for it. But the Empires funding FW would be less hesitant about sharing their military secrets with the capsuleers who are fighting for their cause (i.e., lowsec POSes should be more able to do T2 and T3? manufacturing than is possible in high sec, in addition to capital construction).

The real trick is that farms and fields don't coexist well with war zones. I don't envy the people tasked with untangling that problem.

[quote=Gizznitt MalikiteIn truth, I agree that enhancing nullsec industry should be highly encouraged. I could provide a long list of tweaks to encourage nullsec industry, but I'm sure you've heard most of that already..[/quote]

I haven't .. enlighten me ..

How about miners/industrialists are not cannon fodder to be used as target practice by anyone passing by.. Until there is a significant change in attude by those in 0.0 (and I'll ignore the issues of getting there through low sec) to neutral indistrialists who don't want to be part of some amorphous entity then the majority of them will stay in higsec.

Anyone who is in Nullsec is cannon fodder... that's just part of living in nullsec. Like Israeli's, you learn to bunker down when the rockets are incoming, and then go about business after the attack.

You asked for a list, so here you go:

A.) Minerals: Nullsec has great ABC ores, but **** poor sources of basic minerals like Trit, Max, Iso, and Nox. These basic minerals are needed to build everything, and they are needed in large supply. The two common means of acquiring them were Drone Poo (which was removed) and importation. And why bother importing minerals to build some module when you could save time, risk, and logistics costs when you could just import the module?

B.) Moongoo: While the majority of moon-goo is mined from nullsec, the goo in nullsec is not well distributed. Nullsec residences want/need t2 items, which require access to most moon-goo materials. Since there are no local sources, to build those t2 items, one need to again import.... begging the question again, why bother importing goo when you can just import the module?

C.) Refining: Nullsec stations don't have perfect refine rates, like highsec. POS's are even worse.... they are inefficient and SLOW. As mentioned above, a single hulk can out harvest what a single refinery can refine.... This is just bad.

D.) Facilities: Highsec is full of huge industrial systems that have multiple stations, each offering up to 50 S&I slots a piece. The fees for using those stations are negligible, and the abundance of Manufacturing slots makes it trivial to find open lines. In contrast, Nullsec are limited to one station per system, and barely have enough slots to satisfy one serious builder, and definitely can't support even a small industrial corp! This leaves building in POS's, which is risky logistically and strategically, and don't have any serious benefits to help offset these risks and costs.

E.) Markets: Nullsec markets just aren't as robust / thriving. There are less people around to buy your goods (typically only your corp/alliance). There are less people to buy goods from (datacores, moongoo, minerals, PI components, etc). While I personally make tons and tons of t2 modules, ship them to my corp's home system, where I create a nice local market hub, those hubs don't move items all that fast. I ship half of what I build to Amarr or Jita because the local market velocity is easily outpaced by production. FYI: I currently dominate the Amarr FW trade hub of Kamela, where I typically sell modules at Amarr prices, and I still easily outproduce what I sell in terms of t2 items.

In the end, what this non-risk adverse PvP'er / Industrialist wants when producing in nullsec, is the ability to produce at a competitive rate. In other words, building items in nullsec should be cheaper than building them in highsec, such that even with the cost of shipping goods from null to high, I can easily compete with any Jita price.

It actually really does, not in the sense that this thread will ever refer to. When we talk about what industrlialists can and cannot do in 0.0, we're talking large scale operations, like along the lines of actually being able to supply a large amount of ships and modules for whatever alliance they're a part of. Self-sufficiency and all that. 0.0 doesn't have the industrial capacity to even attempt to do that, and that's the problem at hand. It's got nothing to do with the risk of being shot at, and it especially doesn't have anything to do with a lack of willing or able builders - I'd be willing to bet that a large portion of successful large-scale building operations in highsec are done by null alts.

Given all of this in combination with your first response to this very real problem being "WELL MAYBE YOU JERKS SHOULDN'T SHOOT NEUTRAL SHIPS", the only "fail assumption" is that you have the faintest idea what any aspect of nullsec life is like, and as such, you should kindly shut the **** up about it.

I agree with a lot of your post, especially the above line.



I disagree with the above statement, but not for reasons you might expect. I don't think the security status has anything to do with small, medium, or large gang fights. I think it is game mechanics that foster they different levels of combat.

For example: POS's and Sov Structures foster Fleet Fights, because they are large-HP structures, sometimes with deadly static defenses, that require a lot of firepower to take down. They also utilize relatively long RF timers that allow large groups to organized large fleets. You find these in every space, and security status has nothing to do with it.

Hunter Prey also happens in every space: From suicide ganks and wardecs in highsec, to Pirates in lowsec, to day-to-day life in nullsec. Any mechanic that encourages people to fly a ship in space encourages this play style, and this is the fundamental impetus for creating small gang PvP.

Ambushing travelers also happens in every space: Different security levels offer different tools for this, but it is still a ubiquitously found. Anytime someone needs to travel from Point A to Point B, their enemies will setup ambushes...

Unfortunately, Small to Medium Gang combat honestly lacks a lot of supportive tools. Medium Gang combat happens, either by escalation of smaller-scale combat, or by simply forming up a medium sized gang and poking around enemy space until you get a response, but there are no mechanics that foster it.

One of the reasons FW has been boosted, is the current System Control encourages individuals to fight.... If you don't fight, you lose the system, and while that's part of the equation, it is not the secret ingredient. The most important, fundamental reason why FW is the center of non-Fleet PvP right now, is because taking a system does not require large fleets. It only takes a couple pilots running the plexes. This sets the groundwork for escalation from solo to small gang to medium gang to bigger fights... The second major ingredient is urgency. Those plexes run on a short timer, creating a need to act now or never. Together, these form a secret recipe for small/medium gang combat that really should be implemented into nullsec too.

As it is right now, Sov-nullsec residents aren't encouraged to start a fight with that hostile medium gang, small gang, or even solo pilot visiting their system. Bring a hostile gang into local, and it's a game of patience. Once the locals get safe after the initial intrusion, the hostile group can't DO anything, because every single nullsec target is a massive EHP structure. As such, the hostiles can only wait, hoping to get a fight, or they can leave. On the other hand, the locals either form up and attack or wait in safety, and there is absolutely no sense of urgency involved.

I'm not suggesting turning Nullsec Sov into a copy/paste form of FW plexing, but I'm strongly advocating the creation of small-scale tools that:

A.) Allow a small group to adversely influence the locals. Adversely influence "can" mean the destruction of stuff, but it could also mean reducing the efficiency of in-system or in-constellation activities (Ratting, Mining, PI, Manufacturing, Research, etc, etc) for a prolonged timeframe. The number of people that are adversely influenced will often be proportional to the size of the ensuing engagement. Disrupt 20 miners from mining, and you'll get a 2 pilot response.... Disrupt 40 ratters from ratting, and you'll get a 15 pilot response.

B.) Induce a sense of urgency, such that the locals need to react fastish. The timescale of urgency will often be proportional to the size of the engagement. Give the locals a 30 minute deadline to act, and they can form up a 20-30 man response gang. Give the locals a 5 minute deadline, and you'll only get a 1-5 pilot response...