Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This is an idea inspired by the verite influence map, and the fact their is things like corporate HQ designations.

At the moment, the sov mechanics are less tedious than they used to be with megahardened shield poses spammed all over the place, think the sbu's are not a bad idea, but would like to see it expanded more, and modified to sort of reduce large alliance space, allowing multiple smaller alliance controls.

First off, this won't really reduce alliance controls as much, but make more coalitions more than anything, but would be interesting for holding and attacking as well.

First off is a center of influence is needed, this would be an alliance designated HQ. Your Ihub level is a form of connector to this HQ. The higher the level, the greater the influence in the system minus distance from the HQ. The more Ihub you have connecting to a system, the longer it takes to blockade it. To SBU a system, at least one gate must not be connected to an Ihub system. Also, the more Influence is a system, bonuses occur like in wormholes of some sort, depending on Ihub configuration, attack, defence speed or the like for the defenders. Possibly npc ships could take up operations at gates when sov influence gets high enough or paid for or gate guns?

To summarize, this is how it would work.


Pros:

HQ: The more Ihubs surrounding it, the stronger defences are. Alliance/blues gate guns and npcs, bonuses to ships

Alliance systems, Similar to HQ, but bonus reduces as you head out from HQ

Border systems: To limit enemy takeover, alliances would want to hold borders at constellation bottlenecks, etc. Maintain shorter borders to keep sbu timers up


Cons:

Large alliance fronts difficult to defend, more access points.

Attackers on borders far from hq benefit from shorter SBU timers

Proximity to HQ would result in tougher battles for attackers

Only alliance gets system bonuses


Why

To sum up, make small alliance space more common and easy to defend. Help get small alliances in null security. Larger alliances can still hold larger areas of space, but their frontiers would be more prone to attack, gotta show to keep, but if gets tag teamed, last stand fights still possible. Can slow down combat somewhat by preventing mass spamming of SBUs, because they are not really that expensive. Maybe they should cost more?

Would the distance be calculated in lightyears? So the more ihubs you have within a certain radius of your HQ the more defenses the HQ has? And the distance in lightyears between an ihub and the HQ would determine the ihubs strength as well? Or are you thinking distance in jumps?

Also what would determine the control radius of your HQ? Alliance member count maybe?

This could be the beginnings of a good idea but it needs some work.


So far the reasons I like this idea is that:

If the ihubs out in the distant frontier regions were really weak they could be a valid target for small gangs and roaming fleets instead of needing to call a full on CTA once every few days to structure bash.

If your alliance was totally badass they could just headshot someone's HQ right off the bat without having to go through the tedium of sov grinding each and every system they have.

if the HQ control radius was based on alliance member count then you could beat an alliance not through sov grind but just by demoralizing them until they leave.

Even though people will still have massive blue lists it will help to geographically break up the giant power blocks. A massive alliance is more likely to go defend one of their own out of the way systems that happens to be someone else's trade hub or jump bridge system than they would be to defend someone else's out of the way system that they own. Also if an alliance owns their own trade hub and local jump bridges than living out of their coalition space they are more logistically independent and have more of an opportunity to do their own thing if they want to.