EVE General Discussion

Hi, I rarely ever post on the forums, but I wanted to bring to light the excellent rewards and current power vacuum of Syndicate to the spotlight.


To get all other underlying connotations out of the way, yes, this is ultimately to provide more targets/gangs/people to shoot at in the area that myself and my alliance lives in, but I feel like it's also something the community is missing out on in the larger metagame.


First off, Syndicate. It's a region bordering FOUR other regions, with major routes to each, multiple paths of entry and exit, and very few true bottlenecks.

The first border, I'd like to talk about -- the highsec/lowsec pocket region of Solitude, arguably the best highsec CODE-free mining in the game, easily reachable from surrounding lowsec areas, and jumpable with a Jump Freighter. This region contains highsec level four agents that provide decent LP return for isk, and overall it seems like it could use a bit of an update. Solitude lies on the border with Aridia, arguably one of the richest lowsec regions, with Level 5 agents, plenty of money moons, and tons of clones/mordus/lowsec ISK plexes. It is an easy day trip from a possible home in Solitude, and could be great isk to the right corp. I built my first corp in Solitude, and I absolutely had the time of my life.

The second border, true empire Highsec space, is in Orvolle. I'm sure a lot of you guys have jumped from Orvolle to PF-346. It should be a battlefield border system! It's a miniature market hub with lowsec FW (Placid) and nullsec space right next door, but I hardly ever see anyone fighting here, only gatecamping with bubbles and cloakies. Orvolle should be a thriving metropolis, similar to Thera, but there never seems to be anyone there.

The third true border, is where we live, in Vestouve. Bordering FW, Level 5 agents, and the sought-after route from Outer Ring to empire, people tend to move through this small pipe of TXW-EI. The system is a natural bottleneck, but not TOO much. There are four gates in TXW, a small pocket out of the way, the main pipe, and the pipe to Vestouve. This should be thriving with life too, but we rarely ever see anyone out here.


Syndicate itself previously was a vibrant region. Plenty of money moons, level four agents, tons of stations to dock up in, access to Sov null (Cloud Ring), and a veritable thunderdome of players in the east, I never thought I'd see it die. The region itself is considered -1.0 truesec (for NPCs), and you can find a 10/10 plex nearly everywhere (easily runnable in an Ishtar or VNI with sentries), you can find rare ores in certain pockets that are easily defensible (S-U8A4 pocket), plenty of defensible systems and areas for newer corporations and alliances to thrive, except for the one critical point that matters the most -- other players.




Now that I've described the region a bit, I want to formulate a plan to populate the area. On paper it seems like a rich and bustling region, but it isn't. I pose the question to all of you EVE players -- How can we get more players into this space?

Here's my personal pov on it although I realise not many will see it that way.

SOV null is for massive fleets, NPC null should be for smaller groups. Massive fleets (from my perspective a 100 man fleet is massive because I hate blobs and I prefer quality over quantity), is what keeps me from roaming NPC either solo or with a few friends. If I want that I'll go to sov null and actually do better.

I dont feel it even needs to be addressed at the CSM level, just getting the word out there has done wonders for other regions of EVE

I agree that, on paper, Syndicate is primed to be a hotspot. Even given everything that is against it, it still consistently places in dotlan's top regions for ship losses. To have regular local content, you need local income, and currently, Syndicate is losing this horribly.

Moons are off the table for most smaller groups due to not having the capital assets to unseat them. Eventually yes, smaller groups growing up or pooling their assets and taking them is a cool idea, but you need to survive until that point. DED plexes are okay, but they are not consistent or abundant enough to support that many players; with the recent escalation buff they really don't pay as well as they used to. The Syndicate LP store is slightly improved, but you are still better off doing missions in Hi Sec when you factor in risk and convenience. Basically since you get better income from heading to Faction Warfare or Sov-Null, Syndicate remains but a pale reflection of its former glory. The people that are Syndicate enthusiasts all earn their income from outside the region, but this further depletes local content.

I have no doubt that lots of new players would love to live in an area like Syndicate - it doesn't have gate guns or security penalties like low sec, and it's still close to High Sec. But it will remain a region where things go to shoot each other, not a region where people live, until it has some way to sustain players actually living there.

Certainly in the east, when Ineluctable were strong (before the jump changes) it was an area of hot drop o'clock constantly.

Depending on timezone, it seemed like you couldn't move without a cyno following.

Since the jump changes that occurs a little less, but still happens.

TISHU still hotdrop and neutral alts still abound. But the issue is much better now since the changes. The changes affected logistics though.

On the income being inaccessible I agree for a large part. Unless you are in a system within 5AU jump to easy access to highsec, it becomes a PITA.

We moved ourselves when the jump changes occurred so we could have easy access to Dastryns and then Stacmon for logistics and to take products to market.

There is still a lot of room available with good income, close to highsec, but a lot of the region is further away and requires multiple jumps for carriers. JFs have it easier (currently), but it's surprising how many people seem to want to move fitted ships rather than packaged.

For me, there is plenty of income available and even previously busy systems are now quiet.

It would be good to see more people move in.

Uh...Have you ever actually seen anyone using edge implants? Syndicate's LP store isn't anywhere close to a real pirate faction LP store. Those regions aren't geographically as viable as Syndicate though, especially Stain.

Sig sites mostly.

DED complexes pay well enough and can be soloed. With the sparse population even the anomalies can be run without trouble most of the time.

We run around scanning everything before DT and then form a fleet and go run all the sigs we can in a night post-DT if there is no pvp to be had.

But I also have my industry alt based in Syndicate and do all manufacturing in the region before it's jumped out for sale.

I don't think blues are really that big of a problem in Syndicate.

I'm not all that familiar with the western side, but on the eastern side, there aren't that many blue relationships.

Sure. It's just what I do, because there isn't much competition.

More people competing for the available sites would be good too. More pvp opportunities.

But I'd have to agree. I don't see the income as a huge drawcard for Syndicate. Still. Better than Drone Regions.

Syndicate doesn't need "revitalizing", that region and all EVE npc null regions have periods and ebb and flow. New groups willform, fight, bule up, and disentigrate again. It did so when I lived there (I watched syndicate birth a coalition of alliances Veritas Immortalis, Dead Man's Hand, Doctrine etc that briefly claimed some SOV space) and it will do so again. And again. And Again.

The eternal mistake is thinking you can gerrymander people into space they don't want to be in by upping 'rewards'.s It does not and has never worked. That's why CCP keeps chucking rewards at low sec (FW pve, lvl 5 missions, better exploration and better drops from exploration like the pithum/gistum invuls they added a few years ago, clone soldiers, mordus stuff, incursions that pay better than high sec incursions etc etc) and the population numbers don't budge.

The kinds of people who go to dangerous space will go to dangerous space regardless of the rewards, people who stay in high sec will stay there even if you limited high sec to level 1 missions and veldspar.

It's not the game's risk v reward system, it's the preferences and predispositions of the players that determine activity.