EVE Information Portal

In response to a question about why he tackled the "taking and holding" of sov instead of the "reasons why we fight for sov:"



Having watched the discussions about wealth in nullsec as an outsider, there are clearly a lot of assumptions made by various parties about the terms of the discussion--"optimal/suboptimal" becomes "possible/impossible," or ISK/hr is discussed without reference to the amount of preparation and effort and (character and player) skill required, and I'm sure there are many more ways in which the discussion gets blurred. Right in this thread, I've seen the assertion that any ratting opportunities in systems that might get traffic are worthless.

There are a lot of unstated assumptions flying around, and I don't think that helps to sort this out. So, unless you're prepared to go out and say that CCP Fozzie is lying or an idiot--in which case you might as well go fashion yourself a tinfoil hat--you have to start with the assumption that there actually is a gigantic amount of money being made in nullsec, and then figure out why it doesn't seem to be distributed or apportioned or available in a satisfactory way.

I have managed to read most of this thread, but I feel like it is time to put out some ideas of my own. Fozzie Sovereignty has reminded me that that Eve is designed by the descendants of bloodthirsty Vikings. When the Vikings come to visit, you have four choices:

(1) You bring out a smaller force and fight them. They kill you. Not the worst thing, since death is not permanent in Eve, but bad for the ego.
(2) You bring out a stronger force and fight them. In which case they try to scurry back to their ships and go somewhere else.
(3) You hide inside your castle. In which case, they stare impotently at your castle, call you a coward, then get back in their ships and go somewhere else. Or they AFK camp you just out of spite.
(4) You can pay them Danegeld to keep them from bothering you.

In Dominion Sovereignty, the Vikings have to bring big expensive siege equipment to get you out of your castle. They have to devote time, effort, and organization to besieging you. This creates some barriers to entry for newer players and rewards large, well-organized groups (warfare always will). Additionally, there isn't much that the Vikings can pillage from you outside your castle - there are no farms and fields to pillage. All of Eve's resources are renewable (NPC's, Belts, etc) or require time and effort to kill (e.g. POS, POCO's). Unless they catch an unlucky peasant (i.e. ratter or miner) out in his fields before he can get inside his castle, there really isn't anything the Vikings can do. This is very frustrating for would-be Vikings. It encourages options (3) and (4), which are bad.

I am all in favor of mechanics which encourage people to fight, but I do not think Fozzie Sovereignty is quite there yet.

In Fozzie Sovereignty, the Vikings don't have to bring big expensive siege equipment to get you out of your castle. They can punish you for your unwillingness to come out and fight, by starting a series of timers that will make life suck for you more and more and make you lose your space. Unless you are hyper vigilant and always ready to fight during your designated prime time - in which case you sometimes get a fight or the Vikings will just jump in their ships and scurry away. Of course, if you lose the fight, they can still start the timers ticking on you. The defender has to keep winning, which encourages blobbing. The attackers only have to win a few times before your defense cracks completely.

The need for hyper-vigilance is balanced by the four hour prime time window, which is not the most terrible idea if it was tweaked a bit. My recommendation is to give the defending alliance more choice. First, make it so that we can designate a different prime time for each constellation (if I only hold one system, it applies to that system), rather than one prime time for the whole alliance. Then, give additional choices:

(1) Select one 4-hour prime time window.
(2) Select as much prime time as they want, as long as it is at least four hours total, and at least two 2-hour blocks. So, if someone wants "prime time" to be eight hours long, they have that choice. If someone wants it to be two 2-hour blocks, they have that choice. If someone wants it to be 23.5/7, they have that choice.

Why do I think this is better? Because I have a life. Asking me to guard my space for a continuous four-hour block is a huge commitment seven days a week. If I can split the commitment with my EUTZ friends, then we all get a chance to participate in sov warfare. Eve should not have to be a part-time job to participate in 0.0. Nor should I have to blob up with 10000 other players to cover my stuff when I want to go to the beach for a week.

Additionally, you could make it so there are benefits to having your space more vulnerable for longer time periods - such as better anomalies or other tangible benefits. Which leads to another proposal...

Guns, lots and lots guns. Really? have you ever talked to me about Darkeshi rental rates, dont call me a liar without a fact basis. What you dont get is that those same guns will allow me to extract rent from you in ANY sov system. I may not be able to own the sov but i can make sure you will pay me money by making your sov unusable. I can kill the ihub park a cloaky camper in your system with covert cyno for a few weeks ect. So your either going to rent or im going to extort you. CCP cant protect you from it without making the game not a sandbox.

You know why people rent space in eve? because they dont want the hastle of owning an controlling sov. They pay us to deal with that hastle, your are trying to remove a relationship that both sides are very very happy with.

Yes i have actually. you also charge an extra 3 billion for people who don't want to be in your rental alliance. and yes you are a liar.
No its because they can't take sov because people like you n3 bring your 1000 people and supers and force them out thats why, The reason is because no one can get in sov because they can't hold it and are threatened. thats the truth nothing more. also if your alliance is taking sov then you should be forced to live there or lose it.

Though the idea itself is interesting, i think there's some small tweaks that would be in order. For starters, i think the difference between the T1 and the T2 Entosis link is too large, and that the T2 link has a too short cycle time, and 250km range is silly. I understand you wish to provide the attackers some option to kite, but this makes them nigh invulnerable, give it 100-150km instead, so, if they go AFK during the cycle, they will actually DIE.
In addition, the story doesn't exactly add up. I mean, WTF does Infomorph Psycology have to do with anything? Anchoring would make LOADS more sense.

I haven't done endgame WHs, but we ran C5s for money when I was in a WH. They were our statics, so we couldn't trigger capital escalations. We ran them in PVP-capable subcap fleets. We made more ISK running nullsec anoms in PVP-fit battlecruiser fleets when we found a suitable hole to nullsec. Once you include the time spent scanning and rolling and fighting (which at least was fun most of the time) the ISK/hr was enough to keep us in relatively cheap ships. We ran a mixed T1/T2 doctrine.

I've done vanguard incursions, though not seriously and not in anything fancier than a T2-fit T1 battleship. I don't remember any remarkable amounts of ISK. I do remember a fair amount of sitting around making 0 ISK/hr.

I've never made much from level 4s, but then I stopped running them quite a while ago, and I find myself physically incapable of clicking the Accept button on a mission now. It has nothing to do with the reward; CCP could multiply the payout by a factor of 10 and I'd still be sick and tired of them.

My point is not that it's impossible to make barrels of ISK under ideal circumstances outside of nullsec, but that it's neither automatic nor typical. The numbers thrown around for ISK/hr from running level 4s in high sec involve some next-level planning and execution, not to mention twisting the intended design of the mission system into something unrecognizable. The level of effort compared to running an anomaly is remarkable.

Also, if you look at where the money really is in high sec, it's with the players. High sec is like Vegas: the naive gamblers bet on the games, and the professional gamblers bet on the naive ones. Once you establish that--why is LP so profitable? because you're figuring out what other players want, going to where there are lots of those players, and then selling at the price they're willing to bear--then you look at null sec and you see a glaring limitation. Is the solution really to make Uncle CONCORD pay out more? or is there something more, dare I say, emergent that should happen? How?



And this is where you're right that it's relative: having never piloted anything more expensive than a Megathron into a conflict, I can't even imagine fielding the sort of iron that was fielded in B-R, and I can't imagine recovering from the loss in mere months.

So, to come back around to the topic: it seems to be one of the goals of this system to require less iron in order to challenge sov--although you may end up throwing a lot of iron at a hotly contested system, it's not an upfront cost of entry. Do you think there will be a cost reduction here, or not?

As the extortionist you may be happy with the current status quo but, I rather doubt that the people paying your blood money are.

While you may be profiting from a broken and stagnant system it doesn't mean that's good for the overall health of the game.

Of course anyone can be annoying enough to make a system bad to live in but extortion models havent really worked out all that well in the past. Renting has worked because taking and threatening sov has been so difficult and time-consuming.

First kill defensive SBU's, then anchor SBU and then online SBU. Unless you have a supercap blob thats hours and hours of effort. The new system threatens all that, since challenging sov will be a whole lot easier and can now be completed in less than 30 minutes. When the pings for sov defence of renters go out I dont see all nullsec pvp alliances rushing to do that, even less if it means they have to go far. Given response times of large entities its not unlikely they wont form up in time before the events are finished.

Will renters actually pay a lot when they cant use their systems productively for x amount of days pr month? I dont see a lot of pvp alliances jumping to defend them either because they look at renters as worthlesss scrubs and have tolerated them only because of isk generated.

If you are director for rental agreements prepare for tons of complaints, convo's, rent rebating, pushing alliance/coaliton mates to respond to sov attacks.The latter will not be easy. The response to defending renters have in general been really bad because they are the lowest caste of eve players. The renter manager role will be the worst role to have and will lead to burnout of a lot of people.

The sov attacks wont only happen because someone really wanted that system, but because it might generate a combat situation. Look at what PL are doing in Catch with Brave. Not that I know the inner workings of PL, but I really really doubt they want Catch. But challenging Brave Sov forces a response and fighting ensues. PL farms for kills using the mechanics and given their amount of veteran players and massive cap/supercap strength its easy for them to do this under current mechanics. With Fozzie Sov a whole lot more will do just that, and not only to renters.

Nullsec powerblocs assertions that this wont harm them has no factual basis, and like the trollceptor should rather be seen as posturing. Saying nothing will be different under the new system is political propaganda, like the trollceptor. I honestly think it's a tactic to change the proposed system before its implemented.

The sarcasm is strong in this one...

Goons play the political meta better than ANYONE else in this game. CFC is the probably the coalition who will be hurt the least by all this to begin with, and maybe even longterm. But not all coalitions have your level of organisation and common culture. My biggest complaint being in the CFC was the mono-culture. I didnt perceive TNT, which I was part of, to have any culture of its own.

Could be useful, I see the advantage. But those damn Aussie's. It will come down to those with the largest Aussie contingent holds their borders.

But it adds an extra layer of strategy. It will be gamed, but it may add value.