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Rain honey, I was thinking the exact same thing

Just thought I'd throw some thoughts out, think we need all the comments we can get on such a game-changing system.

First, absolutely 100% capital underlined NO on the Prime Time nonsense. This has to be one of the worst ideas that have come forth from CCP in the 5 years I've been around. Why in the world would you want to DISCOURAGE alliances from recruiting contributing members from other timezones, and on the flip side why would any corp want to join an alliance where they wouldn't feel like they make a contribution just because they aren't in the right timezone? This is just blowing my mind, it's a huge detriment to the single shard universe concept.

Second, I do agree that nullsec needs a large overhaul, but I have a few problems. What you have laid out sounds over-simplified, childish and halfassed for lack of a better word. After reading the ideas, I am starting to wonder if any of you actually play the game or you just throw out ideas that might work without knowing what you are talking about. That being said, if we knew what was coming in the future we may not feel that way and you should lay out your vision better (I know it's a work in progress).

This much of a change should honestly be released as a true expansion, along with new content and ALL of the supporting elements such as a capital rebalance (which will obviously be needed) and the POS changes. Releasing one without the other would be like giving your child 1/3 of a bike and promising to build the next 1/3 at some point in the future, then you'd focus on the last third. Ya it's great having that first 1/3 as the child and thinking it's awesome, but it's a broken piece of crap without the rest of the vision.

So please consider just doing like an end-of-year true expansion with these MAJOR changes and adding new content. It would make more sense, and would allow more time for refinement and community input to make it truly good. This is huge, and will have very serious consequences if it is a complete piece of garbage.

Exactly, let the TZ of the players decide when they can and cannot contest a timer, not an artificial mechanic that decides when a timer can even exist, let the laws of reality gate the tz's, not a CCP enforced mechanic. From what you have said there is still no purpose to declaring a prime time....

These are not the changes you were looking for.

These changes favor massive numbers, and coalitions. Exactly the thing that you were trying to discourage. "Constellation geography" doesn't matter when you have enough numbers to hell-death-camp every system in that constellation, and more than enough isk to throw as many linky-thingies at it as it takes.

Your "sov holder vs. everyone" mechanic is pointless too. A coalition that can death-blob any attacker or defender trumps your mechanic.

Occupancy based sov should be occupancy based sov. If you live in the space, and control what happens there, you should gain an increasing claim to it over time. For someone to take it from you, they should have to want it more than you do, and likewise exercise day-to-day control, and/or keep you from doing so. That's the only way you give the advantage to the entity that actually wants the space. You don't need a contrived mini-game.

When you release this, there will be a rush of people reinforcing stuff, and then the numbers will roll in, and the pointlessness of it for any purpose other than griefing will become apparent.

One last thing. These mechanics make the role of capitals and super-capitals extremely limited. The risk of fielding them would in no way be justified. You've taken away most of their logistical reason for being. If you are going to make them far less relevant in sov warfare too, what do you expect their role to be, other than a material sink?

These two points seem clear, from the dev blogs:

1. TiDI = yes
"Both the cycle time of the Entosis Link module and the actual capture process will be affected by time dilation."

2. Battleship position on the graph: one can draw different conclusions from the same set of data. The graph headline was "graph of PVP damage by class" - that implied all PVP damage, everywhere. Therefore its legit to say the figure could be biased in favor of BS damage during SOV grinds, pos & poco bashes - everywhere. Rise's point is that the BS class is getting used and applying lots of damage during the graph period, but for many players, the way they are used (structure grinding), or the fact that their group does not use them or see them around for various reasons, is more important.

Manny is referring to this "fixed" chart http://i.imgur.com/z4ynWV9.png

The graph released by CCP seperates HACs, Cruisers, and T3s. I think that's pretty clearly erroneous

okay so after some thought, cool down and think time I have some questions which I think would be good to know the answer to and are pertinent to the sov system at play.

So for each structure TCU, IHUB, Station, the entosis module initially reinforce it after x time as is my understanding. After ~48 hours structure comes out of reinforced and command nodes spawn across the constellation. You must take 10 command nodes in order to secure your claim or destroy the structure ./ control the station/ freeport the station. Command nodes are taken by using the entosis module for x amount of time.

1. if 2 systems are in reinforced and come out of reinforced within say 2 hours of each other its entirely possible that the command node fight form the first will still be going on when the command nodes for the second spawn. How will we be able to differentiate between the command nodes for the different systems ihubs/stations? Also since you are de-linking station control from ihub control how will we be able to differentiate between the command nodes for the station and those for the ihub in a given system if they are spread out across the constellation?

You may ask why is this important, well, as an FC, i may decide that the station is my priority target to save because it is my staging system or tactically important, or vice versa i may decide the ihub is more important because of the upgrades installed, it would seem i need to differentiate between these objectives, else we could be tug of warring on the same system or different systems accidentally. Basically i want you to enable fc's and skymarshals to be able to make intelligent decisions about deciding which objectives are important.

2. Constellations are typically composed of 6-9 systems, it had become pretty standard in sov warfare to renforce multiple systems at once, and under the new system this would be easier than ever before, if all systems are renforced int eh same day, they would presumably all exit on the same day in the same 4 hour period, each spawning 10 objectives to take or defend, in the same constellation. so we are potentially talking about 60-90 command nodes in the same constellation, this seems EXTREMLY chaotic, to the point of there being a tactical disadvantage of an organized fleet(s). It also means that defense or offense can turn into an extremely long evening, with fights between even 2 alliances being required to go 6+ hours just to capture all the nodes. Is this really what you want reflected in the new system?

Main concerns here is that while i think midsized fights are the best part of eve mid beign 50-250 per side, this could very easily devolve sov warfare into 10 man skirmishes, which I think takes something away from the game, alot of us in nullsec enjoy a good fight with a midsized fleet, and while small gang plays a role an is important this system could easily overemphasize it. Also main concern is time duration of defense/offense, if you consider 2-3 constellations could be in contention at once then holy jesus there is jsut no way to organize this. I dont see a good way to rectify this other than to create a hard cap on the number of structures in one constellation hat can be in ref and hard caps are bad in a sandbox.

3. Strategic index ihub size, upgrades. With a single timer system deciding the fate of ihubs the time you must hold space to gain the ability to use strategic upgrade seems far to long, a rebalanace on how long it take to get beacons, Jb,s, and cyno jamming would seem to be a necessity with this system. Additionally since ihubs may need to be replaced mroe often the 1 hour anchor and 1 hor online also seem to long, maybe 15 minutes -30 minutes a piece would be more balanced, als what prevents the lsoer of a command node battle form using ihub spam to get there ihub down before the attacker? before it was the long TCU online timer ./ SBU presence in system. ninja dropping ihubs seems like it could be a potential path to victory as the system is currently proposed.

4. Timers, 1 timer of 48 hours seems suboptimal, 2 timers of 24 hours would be better in some respects, allow us to make strategic choices in which systems we defend, with a full constellation in renforced which would seem like the way to go, this could shorten wars to weeks instead of months, long wars are good short wars are bad. Addtitionally with the current proposed station freeport mode for second timer you are removing any and all incentive for alliance to stage in conquerable nullsec, msot will likely choose to use adjacent NPC as it is just to risky to keep your alliance military cache in a station essentially conquered in one timer.

5. Entosis timer creation, 1 player bieng able to renforce a structure in a system seems to low, i would say 10 would be a better number. I.E. 10 entosis links activated for the requisite amount of timer on 1 structure.

Thats all I have for now, hopefulyl worthy of some feedback.

CCP made it fairly clear that the idea is that you should have military control over the grid before you activate the module. So according to their plan in the situation that you put forth here they feel that you should not be using the entosis module anyway.

Intriguing changes.

I will be looking forward into how this will turn out. From one side the proposed system seems to favor "harassment" capability of low-sec-pirate like entities like, for example, Mordus Angels from the other hand, the defenders ability to point a 4h "vulnerability" window and predictability of the reinforcement system plus inability to remote rep link guy allows still a numerical advantage of one side to be meaningful.

I mean, obviously if, for example, Goons do not respond to MOA timer creation MOA could in theory easily flip a number of systems around its pocket, however, actually holding of these systems would be entirely different thing as once the system is flipped nothing prevents Goons from applying the same kind of "lol lets create a timer".

Probably after a little while the traditional null sec entities would get also individually competent at small scale pvp (unlike currently where most of them are only good at pressing F1 in 100+ group) and it would be a bit more risky to go generating timers as there would be actually people willing to engage you instead of sitting on their thumb for 2h waiting for a FC to come online.

Dev Blog says by name. I imaginge they will be called HED-GP iHub Defense Node or something like that. So you can prioritize certain objectives.
=> more tactical options.



The new system MAY mean that all alliances have to shift a bit of their tactical intelligence from their few FCs to their hundreds of F1 drones.
I personally think that this might not be a bad thing. ;-)



Why, the station still has 2 timers?