Assembly Hall

I'm not really going to even address most of the rest of your post. It smacks of insular empire dweller, the sort who thinks that every gate into nullsec is bubblecamped 24/7 and so on. And besides, I'm one of those evil goons, the major factions controlling everything and apparently sells access to our space (that's news to me, I wonder where my cut is...), and thus you wouldn't believe me anyway.

So we'll cut straight to your idea.



Sure. But it goes both ways. If Highsec factions can invade nullsec, then it goes both ways - nullsec can invade highsec.



e: I should also point out that all of the perks of nullsec that you clearly desire but are not bold enough to join a group and claim are tied to security status, and would thus vanish if your idea came to fruition. So, uh, what would be the point of this again? You wouldn't be playing in nullsec, mining dark glitter and arkonor to your heart's content while your personal tower sucks down Dysprosium. You'd be playing in highsec, competing with a million other miners for ice belts that vanish in twenty minutes and cursing yourself for thinking this would get you what you want.

Highsec cap restriction will be an issue.

Planting either low or npc null pocket with station into every sov null area as staging ground would be a good idea. Of course, not if you're null farmer terrified of neuts. But good for Eve as a whole.

This would have to work both ways, and it wouldn't end up like you're expecting. You would have a horde of newbies and carebears against organized alliances that make their living killing people. Highsec would cease to exist. Whether or not this is a good thing is a subject of some debate.

In the meantime, if you really want to get into null, go to Providence. One of the few NRDS pockets of null, and only one jump out of highsec. As long as you don't shoot anyone or steal wrecks, you'll do fine.

I am 100% ok with that. If you can push Jita to 0.0 by taking and holding the surrounding areas (Perimeter to 0.4 etc, after all all null has low around it), then good for you.

Of course, to do so you'd need to take all the planets as well, using Dustbunnies. But hey, that's what they are for, right? That said, if you 'nullify' Jita, don't be surprised if the Caldari Empire decides to take it back.



As the husband of one of our corpies very accurately commented in teamspeak (he does not even play EVE):

Space is infinite. Why are there choke points at all?

Been there, done that what happens in null to independent alliances is this:

1. Set up goes great, everyone has heap of fun.
2. Lots of activity in system, 10 to 25 players in local all day.
3. Random neuts come in, people start losing ships but enjoy the pvp.
4. Fleets of t2 ships come in, typically cynnabals, falcons and talos. Losses increase, as t1 ships / new players get slaughtered.
5. Player numbers in system fall.
6. AFK cloaky campers move in, typically cloaky tengu etc.
7. Miner ship losses increase.
8. All mining ceases due to cloakies. industry index falls badly.
9. Miners return to highsec because they can't mine any more and are losing isk badly.
10. Ratters return to highsec because their miner friends have all left.
11. Insufficient player numbers active in system to justify the sov bills.
12. Exit from nullsec.

That is typically what happens. The twist is someone like Pandemic Legion flips from blue protector providing top cover from sov invasion, to standover extortionist. That simply accelerates 12, because 3 to 11 is still happening anyway.

We can see CCP's attempts to change the above by other actions, namely the rumours of changes to cloaking, and the massive nerf to t3 cruisers currently in the works. To me, the t3 changes are really unnecessary. The issue in nullsec derives from the map and access issues, not from how powerful or not a single cloaked ship happens to be.

Without highsec islands out there in the raggedy edge, independent alliances will inevitably be forced back to highsec. Seen it over and over and over ... and because holding SOV does not require anyone to actually PLAY in a system, nothing will change (imagine if you lost Sov if you did not maintain military 3 or industry 1 every 7 days). Especially with the cloaky camper mechanics.

So yes, nullsec is dead and empty, but for POS on moons extracting goo for mega corps. Has been that way for years now, I don't want to see that continue for the next decade. Time to change the map and really spice things up.

if everywhere was 0.0 there wouldnt be any hi-sec/0.0 choke points. I for one am tired of empire. EvE is suposed to be a cold and ruthless enviroment were the survivors battle it out over limited resources after the wormhole to the rest of space/earth collapsed.

Concord should only be in the main starting systems, joining a faction upon leaving should be built into the end of the tutorials which makes you an automatic enermy of concord for joining a faction.

Hi-Sec should become factional warfare systems, lowsec should become null. The longer the cancer of eve that Hi-Sec is remains the more broken the game becomes.

Chun

Then why is there no rational distribution of NPC nullsec to ensure access to remote systems? Even by your logic, which I don't agree with, the map is really badly made leading to dead and empty regions.

The problem with nullsec is not that it is far away or hard to live in. It is that massive regions of nulllsec it is so utterly dead that there is nothing to do for pvpers. It is unhealthy for any corp to have miners in null and pvpers in lowsec because there is simply not enough pvp to be found in nullsec.

Nearly all the small gang pvp in the game is currently in lowsec. Whole major alliances have withdrawn from nullsec to low, because other than moons (yea that's watching paint dry laugh a minute spreadsheet fun) unless you have a good protecated war with someone, null is just BORING. And it's boring because there are too few people who actually *play* there.

So don't call me a highsec carebear, or try to guess reasons for my post. My reason for posting is I am concerned about the health of the game, and of the success of the Odyssey patch being undermined by the legacy map issues. Space should not be full of choke points, and capital fleets should take a lot longer to move than they currently do so that there is actual strategy in this game again.

EVE used to be a better pvp game. It got dumbed down by instant-always-kill typhoon builds for ganking iterons, and pay to win dreadnaught fleets. Things need to change, because currently if one of the majors lose, rather than a rejuvenation of nullsec we are much more likely to see only the odd moon extraction POS out there, with not a single pvp target for entire reigons.

There were once wars that had been going on for years. But let's be honest about the state of nullsec - many of the old pvp alliances have simply quit the game. Now there are members of the r64 Cartel, and while they occasionally fight over who gets to have which moons, once that fighting is done they will be back to logging in their highsec ganker alts and lowsec pvp alts because there is simply nothing to do in null any more until the next war, which may take a year or two to happen.

Highsec should only be 0.8-1.0 systems and concord response time should increase to at least 30 seconds. Also move Incursions and L4 missions out of highsec.

Highsec could stand to be reduced in size by a percentile of its systems. Lowsec could be expanded by the same margin.

But what I cannot disagree with is that nullsec is broken from an accessibility viewpoint. In terms of physical access routes it is in desperate need of at least twice as many gates in/out.

As for power projection if this is a question of empires being too large and not using the space they already have then let's shorten bridge lengths. Let's condense them. -20% to jump bridge range in the next patch. If successful roll out to -50% of todays bridge range. Condense the empires by limiting their maneuvers and by necessity they will lose some ground, piece by piece.

As for mining changes all I see is inflation going insane. New players can't afford these prices. A caracal today is literally 4x the price of what I paid for my first one and that was when I could barely afford one. Your average newbie I highly, highly doubt practices all disciplines of EVE and certainly is in no hurry to start the mandatory 2-4 alts this game demands in order to be self-sufficient. Botting/ISBoxing is the same thing as far as I'm concerned, they're Pay To Win by virtue of paying more $ for higher productivity and only because CCP keep hamfisting players abilities to get a handle on resources/production. This bizarre and sad oligarchy of merchants and manufacturers I see regardless of whether they are nullsec alts or otherwise are strangling the game to death. If you want to fix mining my proposal is simple: make it impossible to manufacture T2 equipment inside highsec. Maybe even restrict it to nullsec operations only.



Pretty much the same thing I have said for 3 years. PLEX is overused by highsec players to fund their game because they're inadequately able to supply their own materials and ships. They have no real progression laid before them. All advice I see given on forums and places like 4chan is "spreadsheets in space" "zzzzz" or "join a nullsec corp straight away don't do the tutorials". CCP alledeges the latter group have the highest retention rate but I doubt that it's that much higher than everywhere else. Too much time is required to make it in this game, the ratio of winners to losers is skewed with most being losers and a couple of winners.

In a previous CSM summit a CCP person more or less outright stated that it doesn't matter how tiresome or tedious you make highsec, people will stay there no matter what. I know that my first adventures in to lowsec were hilariously dangerous as the spiteful little chimps dragging their knuckles over how good they are at killing newbs was punctuated with lost ships and paranoia. Instead of having lowsec corporations actively recruit members they're encouraged by game mechanics to pillage everything that enters their space which only further cements lowsecs terrible reputation especially when combined with the low risk/reward situation.

I'm getting tired of writing. This is just running over old ground. All of it related to the map and its interdependent game mechanics. I have more fun on SiSi than I do on TQ these days and that's a very dangerous thing because SiSi is pretty one-dimensional.

Every single empire eventually fails, and nearly always they collapse into anarchy, violence and disorder.