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I am absolutely in favour of shaking up nullsec. Unfortunately this proposed change does nothing to invalidate B0TLORD or the big blue doughnut. These are player created social contracts that arise from a risk-aversion to losing their SOV.

The reduced jump drive range would result in more predictable avenues of assault from any attacker. The number of spies in any relevant alliance means that the movement of any sizeable force is reported within minutes. Now both sides may start lumbering towards the expected entry system and take days to deploy. Deployments will no longer have the surprise factor that is crucial when a smaller entity is attempting to aggress a larger. You will essentially see the big blue doughnut shrink to the big blue circle, as established alliances simply move to concentrate at choke points. All existing motivations to "leave sov alone" are unaffected, only easier to enforce. Some people have already posted solutions that will allow large alliances to move large forces with nearly the same impunity they do now.

Jump fatigue does nothing to add meaningful or fun gameplay decisions. It merely makes the act of moving a large capital fleet more tiresome and more of a burden. I don't believe that adding more monotony to existing logistics gameplay is a move that will enhance players' experiences. Nearly every industrial player I know is making plans to seriously curtail activity and even considering unsubscribing in view of the extra burden these changes will place on them. For those players that are mostly sub-cap pilots, this change will not affect them directly (unless they participate in a lot of titan-bridging or BlOps), but they will see a degradation of their ability to play as logistics are unable to keep up demand for ships and modules.

Does it suck having carriers and dreads rained down on someone's head when they try to attack a large enemy alliance? Yes it does, but more often we hear of enemy sub-capital fleets forming and making their way towards us, leaving us plenty of time to disengage when a blob is approaching. Now this will only be easier. More stagnation will result. In most major nullsec alliances, having jump cal 5 is nearly a prerequisite for participating in dread battles as lvl 4 is considered inadequate for most engagements. In fact CCP recently changed the skill requirements for all carriers to include Jump Drive Calibration III, suggesting that a minimum carrier jump range of 11.375 lightyears was a necessity. Is this no longer the case? I think we will simply see less capital warfare and more sub-capital warfare as a result. Blobs will still be the apex force. Nothing about these changes affects this fundamental issue. There is no advantage to moving or fighting with less numbers. This change will shift the balance of power in any engagement heavily in favour of the entrenched large coalition defenders, making the taking of sov that much more difficult.

There are some arguments that these changes will bring us back to the glory days of yore. New Eden is fundamentally altered by the addition of jump drives. Reversing the change will not bring back the past. These changes will not create a nullsec made up of tribes. The motivators for nullsec stagnation have not been addressed. These are risk-aversion and the desire to hold massive rental empires for effortless income. There is no real fun way to grind for isk. We do monotonous anomaly ratting, while chatting on comms to stave off the boredom. All to support the chance that we may get a rare good fight sometime. We grind structures and try to generate content. The only thing that keeps people logging in is the odd good fight, and the social atmosphere.

Directors burn out. FC's burn out. CEO's burn out, LogiBros burn out. Why? Monotony. Trying to do the same thing over and over again with no good results. Even with good results, burn out will eventually set in. Making the game slower and more tedious will not help participation levels at all. This will negatively affect subscriber levels of nullsec players, which are already plateaued from what I understand.

If you want the game to recapture the imaginations and ignite the passion of capsuleers combat needs to be faster. More brutal. We need to be able to fake left and hit right. Sov needs to be easier to take, and harder to rent out.

You already have a perfectly viable solution to "force projection". Wormhole jump mechanics. Make the distance spawned from the cyno depend on the mass of the ship, and add in a factor which also increases by the number of ships that have jumped through, as well as the distance jumped .That way a single jump freighter can still land pretty close to undock, but 50 carriers will end up spread 100's of km apart, when jumping maximum range. Like a shotgun blast.

Take away all sov attack notifications. If you're not using the space, you could be losing it, but it shouldn't happen automatically. Make it so that 6 guys in blops could take a back end system somewhere and no one would be the wiser. Give defenders a home system that they can choose and give them defensive bonuses in that single system, so they have a chance to fight to hold on to their little scrap of sov, but not the fields surrounding their castle. The key is to make fighting, and grabbing something unused easier, not harder. Increase the risk and reward of actually having your own slice of sov. Make it so the renters can simply capture their own little system and provide an insufferable amount of defense with their rag tag ships. Let us burn glorious crusades through the stars lose our ships in the dignity and the hellfire of combat, not the decay and rot of sitting in a station unused until subscriptions eventually run out.

Please, for the love of everything beautiful, don't turn this into a game of space Oregon trail.

Just in case CCP are actually reading this:

1. This will [probably] increase gate use in Nullsec.

Most people are put off fights in null due to TiDi. Not even necessarily the TiDi while in the fight, but the TiDi getting there... Imagine 10% TiDi when you have a few caps in your fleet - meaning everyone warps at the same speed as the caps... at 10% TiDi.. Effectively meaning that no-one will ever make it to a fight before it is over. Screw that. Make sure your servers are up to the task of all the extra gate use..


2. Don't nerf BLOPS too hard, PLEASE.

BLOPS are not a major part of the "power projection" problem (although I admit that if they are entirely exempt from these changes, they will become a major part of the problem.. Perhaps a reduced amount of fatigue.)


3. Freighters are already a HUGE pain in the arse, don't make it worse!

JF's don't need to be killed with these changes - NullSec occupants need to be able to move things in and out to some degree, please think very carefully about what you are going to do to them.


4. PODEX doesn't need to be removed.

Maybe a bit of fatigue instead (other people have adressed this point very well elsewhere in the threadnought - CCP had best be reading everything.


5. INCARNA

Just saying.. be careful.


Additionally: The blocs need to be broken up, this is important, but is ultimately down to the leaders of those blocs themselves.

Is there a particular reason why the cooldown needs to go beyond, say, 6 hours per jump? And what should FCs do with his subcap fleets, just avoid JBs altogether in case someone's been using their char to get to/from the staging system or doing some JF logistics an hour before?

I don't think Caps can take the acceleration gates into actual sites. But they definitely can gatecamp the cynojammed incursion systems - good luck getting an incursion fleet through that. Though tbh nullsec incursions kinda dead anyway, maybe this is just the final nail in the coffin. Will be interesting to see how the lowsec groups react.

To quote you CCP Greyscale: "We considered a range of approaches, some softer than this, some harder. The thing that solidified the direction and scope for us was settling on the target of “long distance capital travel is faster through gates”; that allowed us to close in on our current solution very quickly. The goals were always expressed in terms of (all but) stopping certain types of activity rather than merely discouraging them, so it was clear from early on that we were going to have to make substantial changes to the status quo."

In what sci-fi movie or novel that you have watched or read has this occurred?
Did the Millennium Falcon ever say *screw the hyperspace drive on here, full power to the thrusters ! It's faster !*

You could have chosen one of a million ways to fix force projection and capitals, and this is the one you chose?
Did you read any of the articles posted on evenews24, TheMittani and the like? The masses of people offered some good ways of fixing the problem.

To quote someone from my corp, "CCP took a chain saw to a limb that could have been saved with a scalpel".

I would like to hear what you have to say CCP Greyscale in response to this.

Ah well there it is. Guess I do have a reason to train caps after all!

You sound like my 4 year old nephew when he does not want to take his bath.

aargh i forgot fatigue just has to be less than 1, not zero

man this formula is not intuitive i have to completely redo my jump freighter modeling

Like, oh I dunno, mechanics which don't reward stability and punish attacking someone like it is now, you mean?

This resounds so much with suicide ganking.

So. What?

This is a much needed shake up EVE needed to reduce the extent of null sec control, giving way for newer coalitions to get in. You now need to use your capital ships strategically instead of dropping carriers on a roaming cruiser gang. You expose yourself to more risk - like it should be with a capital escalation. I don't understand any of the tears.

Good work CCP Greyscale and the team which came up with this idea.