Assembly Hall

Even if an attacker had to commit more, that would still be the case. All it would do is raise the minimum. For an unused system, the commitment should remain low, but for a system that is used, the defender shouldn't have to go chasing every disposable frigate entering the system. One of the perks of system ownership should be that it requires more work from an aggressor.

Have you done this though? Sure it's easy enough to defend, it's boring as **** though. You already know from the moment they arrive that you're not going to get a fight. You're going to get them evading you as much as they can and then likely cloaking up. Even if you do manage to get a point, the attacker loses effectively nothing. Without the need to commit to an attack there will be no real conflict generated by the mechanic.

A solo pilot can contest sov in a disposable frigate. While he might not take it, he require a response every single time from a defender.

If you owned a pos and I kept flying up to it and shooting it with a frigate and you kept chasing me off, would you have to keep doing it forever? No, you'd realise I'm just a frigate and ignore me until you needed to respond. So why does a POS require more to threaten than an entire system?

And no, having to have battleships would simply mean that attackers would have to attack sov properly and would create conflict. All they are doing now is triggering notifications and running away when defenders arrive. It's whack-a-mole sov and it's bad for the game. The playercount not going up for such a pivotal change is a sign of how much of a failure it is.

Oh bull. Nobody is "poking a system" to find out how many defenders respond. The "fleet" doesn't show up at all, because the people sending the interceptors have no interest in sov.

Even if an attacker needed 1 battleship, the defender would still set it. They might respond with just 1 man or they might arrive with 250 battleship or a full on super fleet. Whatever the minimum bar is set at, the defender will set the difficulty between that and the number of members of their coalition.

Alternatively, we'll just do what we've doing. Crawl into an even igger blob of non-aggression pacts and roll in isk through renters. If CCP leave in terrible mechanics we'll simply opt out to the extent we can and it will be worse than dominion. I doubt they will though as they have sense enough to want to drive conflict in null, not drive further stagnation. So look out for the upcoming changes.

We do chase lone interceptors. The difference between that and this is that hellcamping is something people choose to dot. Sovtrolling is a design flaw that all sov holders are forced to deal with. Bad design is bad design. It's going to get changed, it's just a matter of time.

Of course it will be. Games being entertaining is pretty much a must-have. Them making the game less boring is a good thing, even if you're so "grr goons" that you'd rather see the game die.

There is something to keep in mind, keeping people in ceptors happy trolling sov or changing nullsec so that it will be a diverse and interesting place?

The idea of a diverse and interesting place is a NS with more people in it overall. That is, the idea of a fallow system with an outpost as a FOB for either a war of aggression or defense will no longer be a Thing™.

To have NS be like that you cannot have too much instability. People don't make huge investments in terms of time and (in game) resources when things become more risky (and the rewards stay the same). What happens when the members of an alliance think their alliance is about to cascade? Move a bunch of ships and assets into their sov? Or move their **** someplace safe(er)? What happens when a NS alliance gets war decced in HS? Do they move more stuff around in HS with in-alliance characters, or do they switch over to safe(er) OOC alts, preferably ones in noob/NPC corps, or maybe make use of Red Frog?

That is why the linking to the NS statement on TheMittani.com was a bit disingenuous, IMO. That entire document was about moving NS to being more self-sustaining, more developed, and having more people in NS. And yes, it seems the alliances in the Drone regions are woefully behind the ball on pumping the average number of people in their systems.

lol what is this? Do you call that group "The Collective of Old ISK and Stable Renting Empires" ?

Fozziesov was supposed to hit people like you and this post is a mere confirmation of its working. Not that your arguments got no substance, but that list on its own is a hilarous collection

This is starting to remind me of when I reach the top of the tech tree in some SIM or the get the best gear in some RPG.
It gets harder and harder to find the game fun.

Kind of like in Eve once your Alliance has all the best gear.

After awhile you find it hard to keep doing the same ol Sov HP grind, so you complain for the Devs to come up with something better.

Once they do come up with something "better" and you find your "best gear" isn't really needed anymore, you say "who in their right mind..."
I'd rather grind Sov HP in the best gear than this? Even though your complaints about the old system got us here.

But I think the issue goes back to what I was saying before, how once you get the best gear and top out in the game, it can be hard to find the game still fun. It increasingly becomes harder for many.


What do we do?

Well, we could keep trying to find a way to make the game fun again for those who have the best gear, though I think that would be far harder and never please any sense of a plurality of Eve players, especially when more and more have the best gear.

Or we could zero the clock in a sense, kind of like starting a new instance in that Favorite SIM or RPG.

And I don't mean a reboot of the game, that could be even more challenging to find a happy plurality of Eve players than a whole new Sov mechanic.

-I suggest we get rid of all current Supers and Titans.
-Give owners some very high percentage of estimated build costs.
-Refund SP and cost of skill books for Titans to all players.
-Allow them to sell or keep the mods on their own.
-Bring back Titans and Motherships as unique items, that require some special component found in exploration to build.(and are removed after extended periods of non-use)
-And keep the new version of Sov, with improvements over time.

So Sov still doesn't need to be a HP grind, and now we have some "best gear" that can be owned, but only a set number can exist at any time, so we don't get into a situation where everyone has the best gear, all the time.

With only one Titan and Mom per major faction, we could have 6, 12, or 18 different ones, that could significantly influence battles, but not normally decide them.

So, the best gear would be very hard to get for any individual and can change hands due to destruction or terms of surrender.

This idea could fall like a lead balloon, but I think the idea that it gets harder to have fun in a game once you have the best gear is a valid one, at least for many of us.

We could keep kicking around ideas and kicking the Devs when we get the chance, but I think the problem is more within ourselves as to why this game has become tedious for many of us.

Kind of like when you reach the top of the tech tree in a Sim and have nothing else to improve. I think the solution is to limit "the top gear" and allow it to change hands.

Then only a very few are affected by this, and the rest of us can vie to de-throne them.

This could go a long way to improving the game for all, and no longer having it as Super Caps Online, as some like to call it.

Just want to remind people how Goons fight wars and why Fozsov needs to stay, quoting from the infamous thread on Reddit about Goon tactics pre the recent changes.



Their whole tactic was to bore attackers to death. Now the shoe is on the other foot we get so many tears.

What response, though? Undocking an alt in a Maulus? You don't have to stop what you're doing. You don't have to form up. It's an Interceptor.

If somebody really wants to mess with you, they won't send a trollceptor. They'll park a cyno-equipped covops in a safe spot in your system and go AFK.



Because CCP is completely changing the way players interact with structures. A POS is an old-style structure that has overstayed its welcome by a decade or so.

If you want to understand the change, just look at Dominion sov as CCP intended it: they were certain that the giant walls of hit points presented by structures would deter players from destroying them; they would essentially be passive, while players fought players. Well, that didn't exactly work out, so now there are no hit points. There's just a module whose entire raison d'être is to tell the server that you're there to assert a claim on a specific thing. Players can shoot other players. Or station services, if they prefer that.



If by conflict you mean that they could be picked off by bomber wings on region or constellation gates, sure. I understand that the Imperium would very much like to defend at its borders.

Convince me that anyone is going to send that many billions of ISK your direction at that warp speed without a fairly high assurance of victory--say, gained by sending a frigate ahead to provoke a response and relay it back. If you were to go and take a system and you had to have one battleship with a fitting crippled to accommodate this link of yours, what would your support fleet look like? What would be a reasonable number of pilots? How much ISK would you be willing to put on the line?

You say that they're running when defenders arrive. Why are you bothering to muster defenders, plural? It's free intelligence for your assailant, and for an interceptor with comparable tank and DPS to a Venture. Its Entosis Link can be trivially hard countered by absolutely anything with a T1 Entosis Link. Undock a Maulus, lock the station, turn on the Entosis Link. Lock the interceptor, turn on damps. Orbit the station at 500. Run a small shield booster if you want to, just in case the interceptor pilot loses his mind and decides to attack with his dozens of DPS.

What am I missing?