Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Point income sources like moons are good things because they drive conflict; the problem with them is not the income itself or that it's "passive" (which is nonsensical garbage but we'll leave it be for now) but that their relatively low value (go ahead and calculate the hourly value of the 5b isk a dysprosium moon spits out in a month, I'll wait) means you have to take a lot of them to get income an organization can live on, and that the mechanics let you get away with taking a lot of them.

As to renters, also not inherently bad. Again, the problem with renting is the hourly value of the rental fee for any given system is tiny. 5b isk, even 10b isk a month? 10b isk a month is ~14m per hour. When you think about the value the renters themselves are getting out of it it's actually kind of hilarious how cheap renting is. So, all the huge quantities of unused space we take gets rented out and collectively becomes good money.

But, wave our hands, pretend everything's a lot more localized and holding five regions is a laughable idea, maybe you just hold one if you're our size (I don't think anyone can argue that in a "utilization matters" system that Goonswarm couldn't hold all of Deklein...), maybe less. But maybe you're entirely a PvP alliance, like Pandemic Legion. You just don't PvE enough to really bolster your space the way you need to. That's okay - rent it out, rely on the renters to get the utilization you need, plus put some cash in your pocket. In that case renting is really a hell of a lot more symbiotic relationship than it is now, as both parties have something the other needs and if you just go and play absentee landlord, people ****ing all over your bears are, in short order, going to render your space exceedingly vulnerable to attack.

So tl;dr neither moons nor renters are inherently bad on their own right now, nor would they be bad things in the kind of future Manny's envisioning.



Where did I say anything about lack of escort? Freighter running along one of those superhighways unescorted is just as vulnerable as a freighter flying anywhere else in nullsec, hth. Now, are you going to actually read what you reply to and make useful points that make sense or are you just here to spit nonsensical grrgoon garbage?


It would and that's not a bad thing. Read above.

Because small entities wouldn't be living in one place and then trying to protect some asset far away... and the point of the thread isn't about the current sov system ;) one of Manny's suggestions was being able to do more immediate damage to a sov defender.

The threat isn't that goonies or n3 or whoever turn up, the threat is that they can so easily cover vast distances with huge force at very little risk to anything on another front.

Manny,
Your changes are very dramatic, that being said I will not say some are not needed. I believe the game needs to back track to 2009ish and before! Titans/Supers killed a lot of the game play that happened and required more and more pople to bunch together to make their Super Fleet "the biggest". I miss the Large Dread fights and such.
I think with a bit of rewind with SOV/Big toys could cure a bit of the Grouping of people. More people would prob branch off to do things!

Alright.

We need to make holding large areas of space challenging while making it so the fewer systems you still do hold on to can support a large number of pilots. Here we go:

1. Taking Sov require activity: % ownership determines who owns the system. Multiple entities can hold % control at the same time. You need 75% ownership before ownership flips (think democracy/anarchy from TPP). Stations and the iHub flips when ownership flips. For every aniom run, X m3 of ore mined, x mods/ships produced your % ownership goes up by a small percentage. Overall, it should take a day or two to take a completely inactive system from someone. Every day it loses a flat 10% ownership to the local pirates as upkeep that goes up every day there is not activity (10, 15, 20, etc). Simple to recover from if you are active. If you are not you will soon find your hundreds of systems falling in to pirate control to be taken by someone who is more active in the area.
Pluses: No more EHP grind. Make money while taking SOV. Difficult to hold regions of space.

2. No more notifications: You should only know that someone is taking your space if you actively patrol your space. No more anchored POS notifications, No more POS RF'ed notifications, no % ownership reports, etc. unless you pass through the system to get any reports.
Pluses: Smaller entities can take inactive systems without alerting the afk overlords. No need to hold large areas of space to see if anyone anchors a POS.

3. Ring mining: No more moon mining. Shift all moon goo to asteroids.
Pluses: No more need to hold large swaths of space to control valueable moons. No more SOV holders complaining about the amount of effort it takes to keep those moons running.

4. Redo anioms: Think incursions. Each systems can be above HQ, HQ, Assault, or Vanguard system. Each system starts out spawning 5 beacons. Each beacon is the gate to an aniom. Above HQ system is essentially 80-100 man fleet sized incursions with difficulty bumped up to accommodate.
4b. Roamers can destroy these beacons in around 5 minutes with a 30 man fleet (2 min to RF, 3 minute RF timer that counts up as people warp away, post RF timer you can finish it off quickly) with a reasonable fleet. Each beacon destroyed disallows that beacon to respawn for an exponential amount of time (then 30 minutes after for the first, 1, 2, 4, 8 hours for the rest) and has a small bounty payout (250-500 mil isk divided up across roamer fleet)to the roamers. The roamers also gain a small amount of system control for each beacon destroyed. SOV holder can buy back beacons early at escalating costs (1, 2, 4, 8, 16 bil isk).
4c. Player owned stations can have mission agents. Standard lvl 1-4 missions for those who don't want to do anioms or too new.
4d. Each system has an iHub. From there you can purchase beacons, upgrade to HQ, HQ, assault, and VG for an flat isk fee, hire more mission agents, reassign them to different stations, buy belt upgrades, etc.
Pluses: Fewer systems can support large numbers of pilots which means you need less space for PvE (upwards of 500 pilots in the above HQ systems). Fleets required to do the anioms are premade PvP fleets with active people to defend space. Roamers have an incentive to roam. SOV holder wants to prevent destruction of the beacons so they can make isk.

5. Make alliances in game entities with the ability to have a tax.
Pluses: Allows for a more coordinated and fair taxation of pilots if the alliance chooses to use it. Taking away moon goo and such so there should be a way to still easily gain alliance level isk.

6. Nerf power projection: Now that capital ships are pretty much useless for taking/holding SOV they will pretty much be only used for PvP. I am a big fan of non-JF capitals needed to take gates to get around with 2 full range jumps every 4-6 hours or so. Makes it so you can still get from place to place, just not quickly or safely, while preserving the ability to hot drop. Titan bridges work the same (2 bridges in 4-6 hours). The countdown timer is tied to characters. JFs get unlimited jumps as they are needed to haul in lots of minerals and such.
Pluses: Caps are useless when it comes to taking SOV. So having 1000+ supers won't make you any better at SOV grinding. Other than that "localized conflicts are better" etc.

All told smaller entities can take less wanted space. Large alliances can support large numbers of pilots with far less space and without moon goo. Power projection is fixed. Roamers have an incentive to roam. SOV holders have an incentive to defend. Did I miss anything?

"Possibly interesting alternative routes for movement in null" = "profit for me".

Get out.


"People who don't play in small groups as I prefer should not exist." What was that about personal motives again?

Handcuffing everyone into creating content/conflict closer to where they live would just seem to make the game smaller which, to me, would just make it frustrating and boring to play. Soooo....why not make it bigger?

Yes I'm going to go there but before I do I wanted to mention the system upgrades. Why do they need to be tied to SOV? Can't they just upgrade the system when they are anchored and used as intended? I'll be the first to admit that I don't know as much as most about "SOV Upgrades" but I'm sure CCP can figure a way to keep them running as intended after they..........get rid of SOV.

SOV seems to be the only reason I keep hearing for these Coalitions and SC blobs to exist so if CCP got rid of it wouldn't we have the following happen:

Now the little guys can deploy to those hundreds of unused stations/outposts across 0.0 and actually use the space. 30,000 renters can say "**** you" to the man and fight to keep their current station and systems etc.

With all the stations/outposts open in 0.0 and corps having the option to upgrade systems you're going to see pirating come back, and new local Alliances, or even just Corps, using only the space that they can police/manage.

How about someone can just move in while your gone? Why all the costs, indexes, and shooting structures again and again etc.....

Clean the SOV slate and open 0.0 up to breath and get new life into it. Let the blood flow and after a year step back to see if making outposts destructible makes sense still. Now I know most of you are going to go bat **** crazy over "docking games" and station services being available to "everyone" but with all the effort you'd put into crying about the "best SOV" system, with that gone, put your efforts into the "best station" services system for those who live there vs. those who don't etc.

If you "live" in system does it mean you have to fuel the station and therefore the docking radius is bigger for you but a kick out station for everyone else? If you "live" is the system does it mean you're the only ones that can put clones there etc.? Like I said, with a little effort the benefits to "living" in a system can translate well to what the station can offer if we put our heads to it instead of proudly looking over the hundreds of unused stations littering 0.0 ffs.

I gotta say that the moment you handcuff a SC/Titan pilot to going system by system to move, it might be the last time you see them log in. If you're trying to solve SC proliferation, that might be the way to do it. Keep the jump ranges the same as they are now.

Make jump bridges Alliance only and not tied to SOV. Who cares if they run a chain around EVE, its more beacons for pirates to camp etc. Cyno Jammers and other "SOV" items can be tweaked to work without needing SOV.

The folks that keep coming up with these complicated and intricate ways to “fix” SOV just stagnate the process. Focus on adding new content drivers rather than trying to fix something that's "never going to work as intended".

Sorry for the rant, just can't believe that this issue has lasted this long in a game advertised as a sand box as we look out over the slab of concrete we have produced with the "game mechanics" we have on hand.

X_D on reddit said this and I think its a good idea.

Perhaps they have a identity they don't want to dilute by becoming co-dependant on someone else. Perhaps they don't want to bend the knee to a space fuhrer. I think most rent because realistically they have no alternative with the current status quo. What would happen post changes cannot be accurately predicted by anyone.

You could not be more wrong.

A small group enters null in the current situation. Boom! 1,100 warm bodies show up from all over the north, west and south side of the coalition block to engage in glorious battle with the 150 newbros. The small group has no choice due the impossible odds they could win against that.

Now if those 1,100 had to make a strategic choice on amassing everyone into one system and abandoning their assets from all those distant regions away...

Do you honestly think they will still burn 1,100 from three corners of the game to deal with 150 guys? Considering that some will have to engage in combat along the way. Things that will slow them down and possibly kill them, thus forcing them to start over. Also not to be ignored is while they are out, their territory and assets are left undefended and ripe for the taking?

Unless of course, you like the current situation where they can zip (almost completely immune to any danger) to anywhere, camp in a fraction of their force (netting little to no fights) and zip back home in time for lunch. All the while their territory and assets were in no danger what so ever... just like the way things are right now.

The groups living in those regions would get crushed by the coalitions that'd continue to exist elsewhere, as new rules or not they'd still have an overwhelming advantage in basically every way.

Variations by region or constellation or even system in the "terrain" would be intersting but at some basic level everyone has to be playing by the same set of rules.

E: either that or the area with the different, more restrictive rules has to be designed as to invalidate the rules of the more permissive region. In regular parlance, we call that wspace.