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An Alternative to Dominion Sov
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Adrien Crosse
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#1 - 2014-08-02 16:46:18 UTC  |  Edited by: Adrien Crosse
A lot of talk has been going back and forth on how to "fix nullsec" recently, and a fair amount of boredom over the last couple days, combined with a small bit of shower-enlightenment have pushed me over the edge to sit down and see what a sov system implementing all those things being talked about might actually look like.

I'm aware that without inside knowledge on whats being already worked on and considered by CCP, whats actually doable and what isn't, and other such inside things, designing a system like this is mostly a moot effort - but since I haven't seen anyone else do it and was fairly bored at the time, I figured it can't hurt (except when it can, be gentle please oh god D: ).

Everything below is copied over from the (public & commentable) googledoc, so if you prefer to read it there, here is the link.



tl;dr

- system capture similar to FW mechanic
- inhabited systems harder to capture
- fighting spread out across constellation
- constellation/region hubs
- reuse most Dominion sov structures
- reuse some Dominion mechanics
- inhibit the role of coalitions in sovereignty warfare


Disclaimer

This whole thing is a work in progress, and is primarily meant to spark some discussion on current and possible future sov mechanics. Any feedback regarding the concept itself is of course much appreciated.

I’m also not a boss when it comes to current sov mechanics, faction warfare, or tons of other things in EVE, but I have run this by some people who are, and who have provided some awesome feedback and new ideas to improve upon the thing.


Basic Principles

The basic design ideas behind this concept has been discussed a lot over the years, and seem to be more or less non-controversial in terms of their sensefulness:

- Sovereignty through occupancy/residency
- Incentivising spread-out fighting over massive node-crashing blobs piled into one system
- Drastically reducing the effectiveness of coalitions should promote a more diverse nullsec
- Retain, reuse and repurpose existing mechanics (limitedish development overhead)


Infrastructure Hubs

Infrastructure Hubs would retain their role as a sov structure, but get a full revamp.

System sovereignty would depend on the capture index of the system's ihub. The maximum cap of this index rises and falls with the system's sovereignty indices, providing a larger buffer to active and inhabited systems. The index itself rises and falls depending on attacking and defending players present on grid with the ihub (more on that later).

Strategic, military, and industrial indices will thus provide significant increases in the time it takes for attackers to flip the system, making active systems much harder to capture than worthless, barren ones.

Once a system is attacked by hostile fleets dropping on the ihub, the system index starts to flip based on non-cloaked attacking and defending player numbers on the ihub grid. More attackers than defenders will decrease the index, more defenders than attackers will increase it up to the capped amount based on current system indices (strategic, military, industrial).

To encourage fighting to spread out over multiple systems, capturing speed will be significantly faster if multiple systems in a constellation are attacked simultaneously. Example: 50 people capturing 5 ihubs simultaneously might need 6 hours to capture them all, 250 people capturing them one at a time might need 3 hours each, 15 hours total (out-of-my-arse numbers, just to give a general idea).

At this point, concerns may come up that without timers, losing one's space overnight might be too quick to happen. However, the mechanic that attacking multiple systems at once should help there: this mechanic makes constellation invasions a pretty big deal, and hard to keep under the hood. Singular systems would not be flippable within a single night, and while constellation invasions might, they will be hard to keep quiet.

If push comes to shove though, and an entire constellation does fall within a single night, the constellation hub won't.

(contd.)
Adrien Crosse
University of Caille
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2014-08-02 16:47:07 UTC  |  Edited by: Adrien Crosse
Constellation and Region Hubs

In order to give capitals and supercapitals proper objectives and spice up constellation warfare, two new kinds of ihub would be introduced: Constellation, and Region Hubs.

Those hubs act as central and unique defence points in each constellation and region. Each constellation can have one constellation hub, each region one region hub. Placement of these hubs is up to the owners.

They would take significantly longer to capture than regular hubs, and thus would be difficult or impossible to snipe due to their "capture hp" combined with the mechanic that capturing single systems takes longer than capturing multiple at once.

Constellation hubs provide a defensive capture bonus to their constellation, and region hubs do the same to their region. Constellations are contested as long as any of their systems are held by an alliance not mutually blue to the alliance holding the constellation hubs, regions are contested if any of their constellations are.

Since timers would go away completely with this system, the constellation and region bonuses to capturing time for defenders would help ease the feeling of making attacking and flipping someone’s home space too easy.

A rough idea on how effective those defensive bonuses would be: one defender with full constellation and region capture bonuses might count for 1.2 attackers while on grid with the ihub (meaning attackers would need 120 people to capture against 100 defenders).

Constellation and region hubs would replace regular ihubs in their systems, and could be more effective at providing system bonuses than their regular counterparts are - for example through a percentage based increase in ihub upgrade effectiveness.

A secondary effect of this would be breaking up the dull monotony of nullsec regions by creating hub systems in each constellation and region, chosen by the inhabitants, which have tangible benefits and increased ratting/mining/etc capacities for living there.


Sharing and Contesting Region and Constellation Hubs

Since not all alliances will be big enough to control entire constellations, or even regions, mechanics would have to be put in place to either share or contest the constellation and region hubs. Standings could play a role here: defensive bonuses from constellation or region hubs could apply to any alliance residing inside their constellation or region if the alliances are mutually blue to each other.

If they aren’t, mechanics to contest region hubs could be put in place (example idea: weaken all hubs until all but one are destroyed, and give that one some measure of resistance for the near future).


Capturing Infrastructure Hubs

A pretty central new mechanic in this entire system would be that of capturing ihubs, and how that works.

The basic idea would be to have one defending alliance, that being the one holding the ihub. Once hostiles land on the ihub, the capture process begins, and depending on the ratio of attacking to defending players, the capture index will rise or fall.

While it would always be clear which alliance is the defender, the attacker role would be variable, based on which alliance has the most pilots on grid. As such, the role of the attacking alliance, and thus the only alliance counting against the defending alliance at any one time, could flip multiple times during one battle.

This mechanic could potentially cause some pretty amazing non-binary fights, with defenders fighting everyone, and attackers fighting among themselves to remain or become the dominant attacker on field, and end up winning the system once the capture index hits the bottom.


Dominion System Indices

Under Dominion Sov, strategic, military, and industrial indices rise with how long a system has been held, ratting activity, and mining activity, respectively. The latter two fall if their respective activities go down. This functionality, including how all the ihub upgrades work, would be preserved under the new system.

However, the indices would gain a new functionality: higher system indices make the system harder to capture. This would be the implementation of "sovereignty through occupancy": active systems, through higher indices, take more time to capture.

Military and industrial indices rate system activity, and the strategic index gives the defenders a bonus if they've been holding the system for a long time.


Sovereignty Blockade and Territorial Control Units

SBUs and TCUs would lose their roles in sov warfare - they could be repurposed to act as influencers for the rest of the system, but for the time being there are no plans for them, and they would be obsolete in regards to system sovereignty.

Optional idea for reusing them: SBUs could be anchored by attackers to accelerate capturing a system, TCUs by defenders to slow it down. Both could be renamed to reflect their new purpose.


Nerfing Coalitions

Under this system, coalitions would lose any role they can effectively play in sovereignty warfare itself. While allied alliances could still help with fighting players, they would not have any effect on sovereignty structures whatsoever, and having too many allied alliances on field could even be detrimental to a controlled takeover.

The sovereignty dispute would be restricted to one defending alliance, and one attacking alliance at a time (but as mentioned above, the role of the attacking alliance can flip multiple times during a system dispute).


FAQ

see the googledoc