CSM Campaigns

Cloaky camping: Having spent my fair share of time in nullsec, I’d say that there should be
some sort of change to how easy it is to essentially shut down a system. It discourages active gameplay, from both the campers and the campee, as there is no effective way to remove a camper from space, nor is there a good way to continue activity in camped space. My initial thoughts would be to put a non-repeating cycle time on cloaks (to the tune of 30 minutes to an hour), or to create a way to track down cloaked vessels (though I hear this may be possible with citadels).

Group industry: Right now it is difficult to organize large scale industrial projects. While the
new industry interface is really great compared to the original one, it could use something in the way of project management. I believe CCP is already considering something like this, if the survey I took a while back was any indication. An interface that would allow groups to fill “construction orders” or something similar to this would help industrial organization, similar to filling buy orders in market places. For example, if building a carrier was split between different people, orders for different parts could be accepted by different corporation or alliance members, enabling larger amounts of organization.

Sovereignty value: As it stands, owning sovereignty in space gives a variety of strategic
bonuses, but lends little to the value of the space. This is particularly true in areas with higher true security status, as even with infrastructure upgrades the space is lackluster. While there is a definite need for lower quality space to offer lower quality resources, it feels like activities, namely high-sec incursions, have the capability to generate much more ISK for players than most, if not all, areas of nullsec. Since null security space is the least crowded and is where the player narrative really shines, I think that more emphasis should be placed on rewarding alliances that take and hold their own sovereignty, which would further encourage players to migrate from high security space to the more dangerous sectors.

Highsec wardecs: One large problem with highsec wardecs is that there is a decided lack
of participation in the wars by the defending party. Instead of a mechanic that generates highsec PVP, instead it turns into a way for corporations to farm low risk kills from other players. One way to make this a more active mechanic is to change the bounty system to further incentivize hired defending corporations to participate in battles. This could be an increase on bounty rewards for wanted corporations and individuals, but this would have to be carefully adjusted to prevent wide scale fraud using alt characters. Alternately, wardec costs could increase over time, instead of keeping the same flat rate week by week, and a ‘truce period’ could be added to surrendering, setting a time period where a war cannot be redeclared by the aggressor for a time agreed on by both parties.

Another potential addition that may change the aspect of high security wardecs could be the addition of logistics ships on killmails. This is a change that many logistics pilots have been pushing for, and would change highsec wars because neutral logistics ships will be more easily identified. This change would allow corporations to better prepare for a fight; if neutral logistics pilots are accounted for beforehand then the playing field could be considered more “level”.

Off-grid links replacement: With changes to off-grid links coming down the line, it is
important to both reduce their efficacy in every situation and take care not to nerf them too hard. In order to do this, links shouldn’t be set to be effective on grids considering the new grid sizes. Though the links ship would still be visible to hostile fleets, and therefore easily probed down, it would still largely be removed from combat. Smaller fleets would still have trouble dealing with opposing links, and may just turn fights into chasing links around a battlefield. Instead, I would suggest an AoE effect, with a skill or module that increases the range of the effect. This would require links ships to be on grid, and would likely phase out the dedicated links ships for those that are fit both for combat and boosting. A dedicated combat / boosting ship in a fleet would add an almost flagship like element to fleets using boosts.

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I would note that a caveat to my suggestions is that I am neither a developer nor a programmer. I don’t know what is conceivable to put into the game, but I do have a sense on what areas could be improved, and some ways that could improve them.

Conclusion

My experience in Eve as well as my scientific background outside of the game give me attributes that make me qualified to sit on the CSM. As I have exposure to such a wide array of topics within the game, I have the ability to review and suggest meaningful changes in a variety of areas, for example on mechanics such as cloaky camping and the planetary interaction interface. Additionally, my past in smaller alliances and corporations gives me an extra perspective adds another point of consideration to my thoughts and decisions. If anyone has any questions feel free to contact me here, in-game, or on Reddit at /u/sogorthefox. Additionally, my primary non-professional email is sogortheogre@gmail.com if anyone would like to contact me there as well. Thanks for reading!

See, this one I really, really disagree with. I want to agree with it, as cloaky camping its terrible game play, but there's literally no way to actually harass people in null sec without cloaky camping them. Nullsec is absurdly safe thanks to local, intel channels, derivative tools that use local and intel channels, distance, fewer wormholes to null, territory far away from were antagonists can resupply or escalate, and the ability for the defender to escalate infinitely. Until there is a way to add some risk back to it, cloaky camping is really the only way to effectively antagonize sov residents; ESS was a nice concept, but it has largely failed because people either do not use them or have rats to defend them, and the best thing to do when a neutral is either in your system, or a few jumps out is still simply to dock - avoidance. Almost every ratting ship out there is capable of leaving a site and getting safe well before being at risk; 99% of the time it is not the hunter being good that gets someone caught in null, its the ratter being careless. Game play where one side disproportionately holds every advantage possible is quite boring, i.e. there is still no good way for a roaming gang to cause trouble to the point where defending sov space actually matters.

Taking cloaky camping out of null would be like taking catalyst ganking out of High Sec. Both are literally the last tools available to antagonists, where every other outlet has been solved by the players or mitigated entirely by mechanics.

Bump

Here is the CSM Watch interview with Sogor for the CSM 11 election.
Enjoy!