Player Features and Ideas Discussion

There is a security disparity between High, Low, and Null Security regions.
Highsec has CONCORD and their insta-pop Alpha attacks. You betcha that the Empire NPC factions (NPC Alliances) are in charge of this space.

Nullsec has PCs and their capitals, and territory warfare. A good alliance takes care of security in its space.

Lowsec has, um, gate guns. The NPC alliances are not putting up the effort do defend their territory here. If SOV warfare were allowed in Lowsec, it would barely take any longer than Nullsec vs an empty system. Other than fiat that a game engine enforces, there is no logical reason why PC alliances couldn't be fighting the NPC alliances for these systems. At a minimum, NPC navies should be coming to the aid of victims in lowsec . The navies would not defend pilots with bad standing and security hits would not be awarded to the attackers of negative standing defenders.

A real twist would be to place NPC navy owned Territorial Claim Units in all lowsec systems. Allow PC corps to place SBU to bring it down. Placing these would spawn at some interval a number of Navy defenders. NPC stations are invisible to this warfare. If the PCs win the SOV, the NPC faction that should own the system will daily (semi-randomly) place SBUs and attack the TCU. Each day, the NPC navies will field stronger forces. No SOV taxes would be charged since this is technically an illegal action. The Navies will have Sleeper AI while engaging in SOV warfare. PCs who do not engage the NPC ships but do engage other PCs would not be engaged by the NPC navies. The NPC navies would always engage any member of the holding alliance (and would not spawn for criminal acts until SOV returns to the navy.) The strength of the attacking/defending navies would not vary with security status. The navies need to defend the fringes more strongly to protect the core, they have better access from high-sec closer to the core. The cool-down, once the NPCs recover the system should uncount the days it took to reclaim it. So, if an attempt to retake the system by any Alliance 2 days after the NPCs recovered (after the PCs held it for 40 days) then they should see a 38 day NPC fleet (40 day strength - 2 days recovery). An assault day should suspend the cool-off for a day. So if they system gets attacked at 38 day strength daily for a week, it would always be at 38 day strength. Navy ships should have no bounties and no rare or high-quality loot. (Ammo and Meta 1 or 2 items)

As it is, low-sec doesn't make sense why the Empires have it but nobody feels safe in it. Empire needs to make some effort at keeping it and keeping order in it. Otherwise, Empire doesn't deserve to keep what it won't defend.

PS, Add TCUs to High-sec, allow placing SBUs, flag it as a criminal act, and watch the dropper and the SBU get popped by CONCORD.

The NPC navy fleets would grow with each passing day, and daily attempts to recover SOV would be made. Eventually, the NPC faction would win. (And there's nothing to stop other PCs from joining the fray on the NPC's side.)

There are still plenty of smaller alliances that don't.

It won't affect ownership of the existing NPC stations and nobody ever needs to build more outposts seeing as how there are multiple stations per system. So what's the point of taking sov in low-sec? Do you want jumpbridges, cyno jammers and CSCAs in low sec?

Oh well then gameplay be damned. As long as Eve MAKES PERFECT SENSE.

Brb I'm off to grind sovereignty by anchoring SBUs at 51% of the gates because they magically make certain invulnerable structures in a system vulnerable to attack. Then I'm going to shoot some structures, but they're not going to blow up because they have to go through a period of invulnerability where they can't really be shot for a certain length of time. I'm going to do this to an Infrastructure Hub which somehow magically lets people build Jump Bridges, CSAAs and Cyno jammers in the ssytem. Then I'm going to shoot a station through several reinforce timers down to 0HP at which point it will, instead of blowing up like all other things with 0HP, magically switch to the ownership of whoever was shooting it. Then I'm going to dock and rather than flush the former occupants and their stuff out of an airlock (like you would), I'm going to leave them there because the game won't let me do anything with them other than setting docking rights so that they can't get back in if they undock. But the station has infinite storage capacity so it's no big deal...

MAKES PERFECT SENSE. IT WAS SO REAL! I WAS THERE!