EVE General Discussion

Ok point 1

Stagnation is not a balance, it was that kind of thinking that got people burned at the stake for saying that the earth was round. Because it is the way it is now in no way makes it right or balance it just makes it what it currently is.

Point 2. There is nothing stopping them at the moment from rolling out 15k alts and controlling hi-sec industry by just doing it in hi-sec. The fact that they seem opposed to new indy players from within the game will mean that while they take there own alts to Null, while other Null sec alliances making welcoming gestures to Indy players will actually become more powerful as 15k is only a drop in the bucket compared to 450,000

1. The idea that there is industrial balance is highly debatable, and arguably nonexistent. Consider the following issues nullsec faces:

• Severely reduced manufacturing capacity
• Reduced POS refinery efficiencies and limits on refining capacity over time
• Potential profitability of highsec manufacture and export exceeds that of local production
• Vulnerability of production facilities

2. So long as a scorched earth approach is avoided a balance can be created where infrastructure development is rewarded while not destroying highsec production. Production capacity may not even have to be touched directly in highsec. Though I would say that perfect refine capability in NPC owned assets needs to be eliminated. There would also need to be a sharp increase in slot costs to counteract POS operational cost and leave room for a reasonable extra profit.

Combine this with the often asked for increase in manufacturing capacity and remove or raise maximum POS refine efficiency constraints and you have an approach that doesn't kill off manufacture in highsec yet still gives reason to do it elsewhere.

Those reasoned arguments have already been addressed in this thread, several times.
I'm not sure what the deal is here. CCP has no incentive to take my arguments over yours, I trust that they're capable of looking at the reason within our posts and balance them against each other. That is, if they decide to read this thread. In any case, "radical" is in the eye of the beholder, so any change that CCP makes to industry will likely be considered radical by some, and not enough by others. So making a statement against radical change is merely making a statement against change.

Before Dominion and it's leadup would have been 4+ years ago. I could not tell you firsthand what the larger playerbase felt about the status of EVE design would have been back then. But a quick perusal of the CSM 3 archive points to the Goon representative (Zastrow) making this interesting proposal back in Aug 2009:

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Individual_Pilot_Income_Generation_in_0.0_(CSM)

Going by that, it seems at the time the problem was perceived as a steady decline of individual revenue for nullsec residents that had to be addressed. Apparently, nullsec's (and EVE as a whole)'s much smaller population 2003-2005 made the revenue from activities from mining high-ends, faction modules, and other non-industrial, resource harvesting PvE activities, much more profitable then they were in 2006-2009. As corps became alliances and alliances solidified their control over 0.0, (edit: also cumulative pilot SP and wealth) more resources could be extracted from 0.0, steadily increasing supply and decreasing individual pilot income. This problem was then exacerbated by the introduction of the Drone Regions, from which miners everywhere suffered. Since this was back in the day before anomalies and grav sites existed, that meant the only null income that could be derived was from belt ratting and mining, meaning its inferiority to highsec level 4 income (specifically mentioned) was even more pronounced then present. Again, mid 2009.

Zastrow (and CCP) felt that the solution to this was to increase the level of raw resources an individual could extract from an otherwise barren and useless 0.0 system (of which there are hundreds, probably thousands), provided it was heavily upgraded with hypothesized sov benefits. In retrospect, this was the wrong approach. But apparently there were people calling attention to these problems even back then.

Then Dominion happened and nullsec had outright playability issues that went unfixed for years until Incarna and the Jita Riots began. To rub salt in this, CCP quickly nerfed the ability to extract income from these sov upgrades.

Akita T calling for increased low-end mining yield for 0.0 space back in 2008

As for why the clamor has returned? Probably because now that supercaps are no longer ruining its gameplay and drone loot no longer hideously distorting its economy, and CCP seems to be working on moving away from moon goo (soonTM) consensus was reached on those problem, now consensus is being reached on the problems of EVE's economy on a different scale.

In short, those "diminishing returns" will be achieved anyway with a less defender-orientated sov system.

Gweedy, Gweedy.

You hab no wabbits?

yes but

So day be gweedy.

They hog all dem wabbits.

Or, you could have read my post which states "diminishing returns" and "say 5%" which are a TLDR version of your text.

If you had dimishing returns you could still take 100% of the territory but it'd be so pointless or hard to keep it that alliances would naturally settle down to the "largest known best size", 5% being a "say" as in "example number" not set in stone.

1. This point is subjective and can be argued either way if you consider one side more fair than another, but its still a point to consider.

2. Null players can come to hi-sec, hi-sec players can't necessarily go to null. If you supplant hi-sec industry, hi-sec industrialists will be out of a job because *many* don't have a null home. That will leave industry probably in the hands of the CFC and HBC, they are the biggest and most powerful and have the most secure space. I think that's something to consider. You don't think this is a legitimate point, but the Devs might.

Except you're talking about "putting in" and "prevent", which is a warning sign that there would be specific mechanics (like, say, increasing sov costs or the like) which would be "put in" to "prevent" alliances from "taking more than, say, 5%".