Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So since I read a lot about the new sov mechanics, that are more or less as boring as the previous mechanics, I thought about the reasons behind this.

The question that needs to be answered is how to encourage a less stale scenario on the sov map. Yes?

This leads to the question why fight and for what? And I think the answer to that is the same as in the real real world. For resources. Fighting for Glory or your God only works if you can amass enough zealots.

At the moment the big players get the space that is most profitable. The weaker alliances take the rest.

So what would happen if the resource distribution is also dynamic? Let's say the Moons stop producing so much resources, the respawning asteroid belts get smaller. Everything was exploited too much, bla bla. So we need to look for chunks of resources floating in the interstellar space. [insert some lore]

Game mechanics wise this can be like spots of high resources (whatever lore wise) spawning semi-randomly on the map, wandering around aimlessly. Meaning that every sov holding entity has to think about setting up logistics to harvest, and protect the harvesting process, or even try to take a resource rich systems away from another alliance or miss out on those profitable resources (static stuff, moons, asteroids, etc. should yield only the bare minimum to keep your alliance running). How fast this new resources float around is up to balance considerations, a day would be probably be a bit crazy, a week to a month would offer a more strategic element and could result in higher investments while still retaining the dynamic nature.

Yes small alliances would have problems if some high resource spot comes knocking on their door and a big alliance just crushes them. Hadn't time to figure that out yet.


TL;DR: If you want a more dynamic sov, make the sov map dynamic, people fight for resources not for flags (even if the line troops think they do). Give alliances something to fight over every day/weeks

nah we just need to get rid of all pve together since this is a "PVP" game

What do you call combat sites, missions, belt rats etc. then?

So alliances are supposed to clash with fleets worth billions and up to possibly farm the ressource that might dry up in 2 days due to dry up mechanics?

I think you mean isk faucets?

There was a time when I would've been in support of moons depleting after a certain amount of time, but having dealt with the moon mining, probing, and reactions; and given the POS system we're still stuck with for at least a year, there's no way I can support it.

Seriously, try moon probing a whole constellation by yourself to get an idea of what it's like. About 5-7 people to probe a region (a high estimate since most of the time it'll be one or two people doing the legwork) comes to about 1 constellation per person.
It's horrendous to have to do, and having to do it every 3 or even 6 months would burn out logistics pilots even faster.

Not seeing the merits of the idea without a sov system and structures that support nomadic empires.

The moment HS incursions and L4s are limited, this is not an awful idea. Until then, its sort of bad - you can barely get people to live in sov as it is, and one of the reasons is that HS has lots more available, accessible, and risk-free income sources. Why conquer, defend, and maintain space when its not very profitable in the first place, and will be even worse when depletion sets in, when you could just do all your income generation in 99.99% safe high sec?

If everything depletes or only regenerates at a set rate, you set the stage for interesting things to happen. As it is, this seems mostly just pointed at null empires while ignoring some of the most exploited and limitless resources in the game.

This is more a question of balance between HS, LS, NPC 0.0 and SOV 0.0.

But I do think 0.0 should be highly profitable, just not that static as find the right moons, online your POSes and play tower defence as long as you can and have fleet engagements just for what? Killmails alone?

I think there should be short term incitements for conflict (eg. wandering resources) together with long term objectives (eg. access to certain NPCs, ease of logistics, ...) for taking and holding SOV.

Target practice.