Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Thanks for providing the TL;DR version.

The fact that goonswarm does this does not mean a **** load of space is left unused. Hell even some of yours is. I really don't think SRP is he reason for the unused space tho.

As for moon mining... There is a simpler approach than removing it.

Allow Siphon's to be anchored anywhere on grid of the moon. This will allow them to be positioned outside of POS weapon range, so that attacking and defending them becomes a small gang activity. This allows players to disrupt moon mining operations at will, and really undermines moon mining in general.

Fair point - Deklein looks pretty damn busy in terms of NPC kills. So does the East, which might spell trouble in the future... My perspective is coming from Delve, which is obviously a very different environment. Maybe I need to get out more.

Anyway, I was inspired by your response, and some others in this thread, and started looking at Dotlan and Eve-Offline statistics. While the PCU is trending down and PLEX prices are trending up, the number of null sec ship kills is only slightly lower for June 2014 than it was for June 2013 - despite the fact that "Eve appears stagnant."

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/stats/2014-06

Something is clearly happening somewhere. As you are aware, that can be the problem from relying on anecdotal experiences rather than taking a good look at the numbers.

Active mining could still happen at moons. Player fits his moon beam mining laser, targets the moon and orbits the moon. Haulers come by and pick up the cans, empty the MTUs. Rovers and pirates come to play and gaurds, something few do any more, need to put down their beer, turn off the TV and get to work.

FT, I like the core premise of your idea. It's too easy for big blocs to make what seems like monopoly money to most of the line members, essentially making PvP risk free.

This is only possible though because there is a core group of individuals in these blocs who sources this monopoly money. If you were to nerf moongoo income, would that not simply make them focus more on organizing whatever means of new income source that is introduced? And if it is more individual based, then just more rental space? In fact, the current expanses of renter spaces were a direct result of moongoo nerfs.

I understand that the second part of your suggestion is to prevent this kind of activity at scale. Again, nothing that a few clever organizational tools couldn't probably get around. Nevertheless, I think they key is in the second part of your idea. Because whatever new decentralized income source you come up with will be co-opted into the rental framework.

Though I appreciate the humor of the argument, it doesn't sway me much.

Income and player dentistry ... well so what? Humans are forced to deal with the consequences of their birth and geography everyday, why must Eve have a homogenous distribution?

If some group chooses to live in a resource poor area, it is their choice. That may grant them a comparative advantage in some other regard, such as, few people bother to go there, so they can live a bit more carefree.

Resource poor areas, that would not justify another trillion in fees for larger groups, would be ideal for smaller groups that could easily generate the 100 to 200 million ISK in fees.

As for 5-10 systems, granted it is an artificial and somewhat arbitrary boundary, it would be with any sort of escalating cost idea, be it doubling or a 5% increase. The same could be said for any idea that attempts to limit size, regardless of the mechanic involved.

There is an even simpler idea, do away with sov all together. If you are not there, you don't own it. Simple as that.

Scaling costs can impose limits on larger groups without having an impact on small groups at all. Large groups, well-organized groups, such as the two dominant coalitions, will undoubtedly find ways to get around those attempts to limit their power.

That is why CCP needs to be more bold about shaking things up. CCP gave us a sandbox and then basically let us break it. Since there is no incentive for the kids running the sandbox to let other kids play, CCP needs to adjust the rules and see what happens. At least it will make things interesting for a bit.

Taking away moon goo as a passive, centralized income source is a step towards giving some power back to the individual player and taking it away from the centralized power blocs. If nothing else, it gets more pilots into space to collect it.

Why should we frown on large, well-organized groups. Honestly, it takes a fair amount of work to make that happen, and they provide a lot of benefits to the game.

Moon goo is not the main issue. Again, if you really want to solve the moongoo issue, simply allow siphon's to be anchored outside of weapons range of the POS.

If you want to really shake things up in Nullsec Sov, then change the Sovereignty mechanics. Right now, taking Sov ONLY involves shooting 100m+ EHP structures with multiple RF timers. There is no room for a small entity to compete in that environment.

Reduce the HP grind, and base RF timers on system use. If the system isn't used, it gets NO RF timers to protect the system. Only highly active systems should have RF timers. There is still the dilemma of how to define system activity, but we already have two indexes that incorporate two aspects of using a system. Simply add Player Ships destroyed and Jumps into a system so most flying-in-space system activity is covered (since that is what we truly want people to be doing).

Think about it. If you could destroy an unused systems sov in 10 minutes by dropping 10 dreads on it, you'd easily erode away the sov empires. Sure, they could reclaim it, but the only way they keep it is to start using it. This puts pilots in space, which makes the game better!

So you want to add a management level to the process and think the current SOV holder who already know how to deal with the management requirement won't be able to use the system better than others who don't?