Player Features and Ideas Discussion

The feeling that I get from reading most of the intelligent comments here is that the best thing that could possibly happen to the game is for someone to get a director level spy in all alliances and hit the big shiny disband button. They would also need to go beyond the game to alliance coms servers and forums and lock them down too.

Short of this there is really no way to change the way the game is going away from the monolithic power blocks. Yes I know this wouldn't be good for anyone in the short term but it is the only way to break the stalemate that the game is in.

The point is that CCP can't revitalize null, only someone on the inside of the power blocks can, and that only by destroying them. Somehow I doubt that someone in the position to do that would sacrifice everything it gives them just for that purpose though I do suspect there are several people actively seeking to get in position to do just that.

I think what would be nice at this point, is some more interaction from the Dev's.
To my knowledge there is only one dev post on this thread!

But the general idea from all i think, is find away for smaller units to hold null, whilst making it a pain for larger units to maintain it.

Come on CCP, give us your thoughts. So we may agree or disagree, we are the paying customers after all!

Hard to keep the faith when players have been asking for CCP to look at sov mechanics for what, 4 years now? The reason EVE is the way it is, is because of CCP inaction. Instead of addressing real concerns they have rebalanced ship lines a couple time each, and added gimmicky **** that is essentially useless in practical usage situations.

Even this industry change is just change for the sake of change. It is already more profitable and efficient to produce product in Nullsec. The changes to industry are not going to make people go rushing to null any more than they do now. In fact all the changes do is "punish" people for not living in Null by making their production slightly less efficient than it was.

"Kicking the can down the road" CCP Games.

Simply adding more systems would just result in the number of systems held by the current blocs being incremented by X. Maybe some small skirmishes to begin with, and then we are right back to where we are today.

Sup bros and broettes.


So you all know CCP is actually working on all this right now. They are just giving it to us in small digestible pieces. The industry changes they are making is feeding in to a much larger picture. This as well as all the anchorable units like Mobile Tractor beams and etc. 2015 will be the year just believe with me just believe. This conversation ITT however is important we are helping them see new options , poke holes in existing theories and ideas. We all have to understand I am sure CCP developers have alot they would like to say on this subject. However I am sure they understand its better to let this conversation happen organically versus wading in and injecting bias. They are watching bros so lets keep this going.

You've put your finger on the heart of the problem but I think your analysis is flawed.

If logistics is manageable player effort will always scale up. I believe Mittani said in the Halloween War that they didn't want the extra space because it would burn out their logistics team. They still have a team that can maintain sov structures, ihub upgrades, defensive sbus, poses, moon mining over the whole left side of the universe. It's too easy to manage. It's currently a design feature that a logistics team that isn't so huge that it can be easily inflitrated by spies can't get through the work of managing more than about 10 regions. That's on a spectrum, want PL/BOT and CONDI/PBLRD to run less space make logistics harder.

Now space logistics is not good content.

Not only is it content for only a very few people but it's more or less pvp free. Occasionally a blockade runner might get caught on a gate but generally logistics is done without generating any pvp content at all. Eve is meant to be a game where the economics feeds conflict but this huge economy of renters and moon goo exists while rarely generating content.

I thought the idea of the Farms and Fields proposal was that people should hold sov by being active. I think that's still a direction worth exploring. So you control your space by mining and ratting and that attracts ganks which in turn encourages defence. To make defence viable we'd need to take a hard look at hotdrops. I can defend a mining fleet by putting out scouts next door against conventional roams but the possiblity to being hotdropped means that any neut in local suggests I should dock everyone up until they go away.

We're getting to the heart of things here - home defence should be viable and necessary. It really isn't now - I've been in a null sec alliance where we got told not to do home defence on the basis it would encourage trouble.

The key to a game of conquerable space countries is that the mechanics should force people to pvp to hold the space. If someone invaded a port in the real world and started blowing up buildings a country would respond with troops. In Eve they are usually best to just dock up. For example Black Legion took every R64 in Tribute, mostly unopposed, earlier this year. They then got outnumbered, deployed elsewhere and the poses were recaptured by the CFC. Player v POS, it's dull.

Crius is a start of this vision because if your POSes build your ships it's more worth undocking to defend them but ultimately we need pvp that's generated from threats rather than boredom. And I think that's where CCP is going. We know something of the schedule: Industry > Corp & Alliance revamp > POS revamp > Sov revamp > buildable stargates which will likely unlock new regions of space. This was revealed in the Eve keynote at Fanfest.

So if we're going to have all hands on deck red pen level 5 CTAs to defend space that''s a more exciting Eve than "I'll convo PGL and see if he'll bring a fleet out to fight us." And it does seem that that's the Eve CCP is trying to build.

There should be defensive advantage. Like wormhole effects but only applying to the alliance that owns the system. Something like +10% hit points and damage per sov level. That means attacking a major capital like VFK will usually necessitate interdicting ratting and mining first to degrade the sov level so you don't have to fight against people getting +50% damage and hit points.

Do you remember last year when Shadoo proposed an Alterac Valley style war games event in Cloud Ring instead of a sov war? When challenged he simply said "That's what happens now, you guys just don't know it." That's what Eve is now, war by consent, war games not real war. The current Delve campaign is NC. pushing for good fights and the CFC deployed down to give them those fights. It's based in Delve because both sides want to farm HERO and Provi between strat ops. It's all arranged and non-threatening.

To make threatening fights we need to design towards an Eve of small squabbling Balkanised countries. I'd actually like to see most of the logistics side disappear. Want sov? Grab some friends and go mine in an empty system. A one time operation that is done secretly by a dude titan bridging his freighter in is rubbish content.

Coalitions will only crumble if it's not in the interest of the members to stay in and if it's not manageable to defend so much space. And targeting the coalitions in quite a hostile way is the design requirement to make a sov game based on danger rather than consensual arranged pvp.

It does not.
Do you attend elections? According to your logics, elections are useless, because - and I quote - "there is nothing any one person can actually do about it".


No, I'm not posting with my main character here.
And no, you dont need to own sov to get supers and titans. You can either buy them, or recruit players that already have those.
And again no, you dont need gazilions of the big toys to win sov warfare. 2-3 ninja Nyxes can RF an IHUB in a timely manner. Thus even one small corp can be a PITA for the whole coalition. It can create timers and take systems if the blob choose not to respond. If they form up - oh well, try again. And again. And yet again. Time after time you'll see their fleets shrink. Who wants to rep that useless IHUB in a useless system in the middle of nowhere? And this is the time you bite.

Now I'm not telling you that sov mechanics is fine. It's ****. A large issue is a timezone warfare, for example. It's a common practice to set timers to 04:00 at night so that attackers have no chance to form a fleet. That trick was used extensively during the Hallowing War, and was among the major reasons why RUS block crumbled. But fixing it has nothing to do with jump drives, bridges and blue doughnuts.

EVE is more than a game. Why do you think people like The Mittani play it? Not to shoot red crosses for sure, so why? Cause in EVE we have a huge social experiment and it's amazingly interesting to watch it evolves. And guess what? In merely several years we've managed to repeat the history of the mankind from the Age of Discovery to the present. Dont you see the analogy between the current real life political map and EVE sov map? The forum dosnt allow for RL political discussion, so I'm not going into details. But seriously, the two worlds have very much in common. And the thing is - if we keep this frightfully accurate model (which is EVE) running for some time more, we have a chance to look into the future if our RL world.

Call me a madman, but if there's a 1% chance this time machine will work, then it's worth trying.
But if they change the rules, for the sake of "fun" or whatever, the precious model can get broken, and EVE turns into a mere game.

Hell ya. Could even go further and tie moon goo elements into gas and mineral mining using alchemy. Put more people in space.

More mining action.

Mmm, a procurer battlegroup has been spotted moon mining.