Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I like how all of you assume that making gross changes to the way capitals navigate the known game world will somehow have some mystical ability on players way to undermine even the best changes, to simply make more jumps, or to just quit playing this awful game.

"Power Projection" was a neat catch phrase during the CSM, but when most of the nullsec populace is capital ready (in many cases with several racial variants at that) what you're experiencing isn't 'power projection breaking the game' it's the influx of more and more players with higher and higher skill points.

Making Sov cost more might do something to break up huge swathes of space owned by a single entity, but if the space is unused in a 40k man coalition, why is going to be more desirable to a much, much smaller group? Bad space is bad.


There was a lot more to this, but the forum ate it (twice); this is the draft, and I can't be ****** to re-write it all again. TL;DR Tinkering with Sov, sure; ******* with jump drives, meh.

It is not only sov that is the problem. If we tie up costs to sov we jusut split the alliances within a coalition, not the coalition itself.

If we could make life be more expensive the more blues you have that would result in the ideal solution, the problem lies in how to do it in an elegant way that is not easily circunvented.

That is why I proposed (rough and very very initial idea) that the alliance manteinance bill be tied to the number of player owned outposts it is allowed to dock

I've been around a fairly long time as well, and I can't say I recall the early days of Eve with any great fondness. Yes their is the nostalgia element, looking back on being part of discovering new things, pushing the boundaries of the limited tools we had, being part of things that helped shape the game in a lot of ways etc is neat, but the game itself wasn't all that compelling.

I believe the compelling part of Eve back then, and the nostalgia some look on it with, mainly came from the social aspect and bonds people, and groups of corporations used to have. You actually did a lot of corporation based activities, be it pvp, and or pve stuff, and usually built more relationships. A lot of that went away with large alliances, and even more of it has gone away with mega coalitions. Yeah you have some leadership groups that still converse, but in general the social dynamic has changed. Their are certainly exceptions to this, but in general you don't have that kind of connection with the people in your 1500 man fleet, or your 30,000 person coalition.

That's the real genie you are trying to put back in the bottle, but I'm not sure that it is possible.

CCP is in the unenviable position of having to make decisions not based on just making a widely diverse subscriber group happy, but having to take into account how it affects the sandbox as a whole. The fact that they typically lack the courage to tackle large issues, doesn't help. (wanna guess how many re-balance passes I've seen in 11 years while fundamental game play aspects are left ignored because they are too hard or hot to handle?)

That said, in regards to Manny's proposal, I'm not sure it would have the desired effect, other then making a lot of logistics teams want to slash their own wrists, and coalitions placing fleets of capitals, and jump clones, in every region they own.

I'm also unsure if we even know where CCP stands on power projection. Their is a general assumption among a lot of players that CCP wants to nerf it, but on the other hand, they use the results of that power projection capability as a marketing tool. (see b-r) . If they really are not happy with the mechanic, their would be a certain amount of hypocrisy in making videos and publishing reports lauding it.

I think all the game mechanic changes in the world won't help, until you figure out away to break the usefulness of coalitions, and the blob mentality of Eve that has existed since 2004. Rebuilding Sov from the ground up might go a long way in doing that.

I hope this is obvious.

A common mistake that is made in these threads is to attempt to use cost to limit throughput or power projection. As we can see with the proliferation of titans, cost is NOT a balancing factor; money is just too easy to make in this game for that to ever be the case.

In particular, the popular idea wherein ships or pilots can only execute a limited number of jumps in a time period is actually an indirect attempt to limit power projection through cost. Personally, I own six jump freighter pilots and a jump freighter for each; if a jump cooldown timer was added to jump freighters, I would set up a Pony Express style jump chain and continue business as usual. Meanwhile, people with only one jump freighter are completely screwed.

You would be surprised how most of the players, especially null players, do not comprehend this fact.

But losing simply because you've been around for less time and have less members is just harmful to the game. The issue at hand, i think, is that there should be other avenues of approach. Ultimately the game is really just a game is it really fun when there is no competition? i suppose but it seems like not everyone agrees.

Supercapitals are too hard to kill in large numbers. Capitals are quite well balanced combat-wise, except for problems caused by supercapitals (threat of escalation if you drop dreads on the capitals, mostly).

Another solution to power projection is similar to escalations.

Mechanics:
A SUBCAP Cyno will allow the mass of any subcap to come through its tunnel but is limited to the use of only 1 capital ship. 1 Capital ship coming through the tunnel would result in the cyno overheating and burning out. can only fit to subcaps

A CAPITAL Cyno will allow the mass of any subcap, carrier, or dread to come through the tunnel. 1 Supercapital may come through the tunnel but then the cyno would overheat and burnout.can only fit to capital ships

A SUPERCAPITAL Cyno will allow the mass of any supercap, carrier, dread, subcap to come through its tunnel without overheating.can only fit to super capitals

Supporting ideas:
cynos will now be sized small/medium/large. This would make it impossible for a hound to fit a supercapital cyno in its highs. Larger cynos means more LO

in order for a super to come on grid there would have to be a sacrificial carrier cyno(limited to 1 super) or a super lit cyno. In order for there to be a carrier on grid there would have to be a subcap lit cyno. This would ensure a version of subcap dominance in order to ESCALATE to supers.

supers can no longer get across the universe in 20 minutes. If you want to move a super fleet you will consequently need a super cyno for each mid. Since cyno's last a while the fleet will have to wait for the cyno to end or they risk losing the super that lit the cyno. This would apply to carriers/dreads too.

That would probably be a good start. Honestly just removing ewar immunity would do a lot: it's their ewar immunity that means they just don't give a **** about any subcap that's not a dictor. I'd probably add in some sort of siege-mode like thing so you can't ninja hit things with supercarriers risk-free anymore.