EVE General Discussion

Sorry, you misunderstood my intent. I wasn't pointing fingers at anybody, simply illustrating the problem I perceive in my locality and attempting to elicit information about how wide this is as a phenomenon in eve at this time. The fact of who it is is irrelevant, aside from the fact that it applies to large entities. The issue for me is what appears to be happening as power becomes consolidated into fewer hands with no natural mechanic in game that allows effective challenge to a broken system of force projection.

Im a total noob when it comes to null sec as I dont have the capabilities or a corp/alliance with big enough ambition but what Im gathering from this thread is that. An alliance can claim a huge territory and the moment something is up they can just insta jump a fleet there?!? essentialy removing the need for guarding the borders of your territory?

Sounds a bit broken to me (but like I said I havent actually been out there)

That's basically the gist of it, and yeah, it's totally borked.

The problem comes with creating an advantage as incentive for players to go through the huge hassle of maintaining a massive alliance. It takes a lot of time and effort to organize these things. In order to encourage development of massive space empires, jump bridges were created. In order to encourage big fights, titan bridging was created. Unfortunately, a combination of the two has created a mechanic where the largest alliances can move gigantic death fleets back and forth across the cluster at the drop of a hat.

It isn't that they don't have to defend the border, it's just so easy for them to mobilize and get there they can fight on four or five fronts in a single day and not lose a system. As soon as your tiny alliance's TCU goes online in that unclaimed system that you thought was abandoned you have a giant target on your head.

Space is small now. The days of smaller alliances carving out a piece of space on the fringe and trying to grow themselves are gone. There's a handful of megalliances that distribute fiefdoms to their friends and servants. If you can't get in with one of these groups on some level your nullsec aspirations will end in NPC space.



You are definitely correct that force projection is a valid concern in warfare, and something that should exist. However, your analogy isn't great when you think about the differences between the tactics involved in RL warfare and internet spaceship warfare.

IRL you don't just blast a structure and call it a victory, otherwise Al-Qaeda and the Taliban conquered the US in 2001. IRL the planes can perform attacks on a country very quickly, but no country can be conquered until ground troops arrive to occupy.

It could take weeks to move the proper forces into position to stage a full scale invasion of another country, and if the US devoted 100% of its military resources to a target in the middle east, what would happen if Mexico decided to say screw it and invade? The US would probably lose some of its Sov along the southern border.

Modern IRL military forces also don't have the convenience of a set timer letting everyone know exactly what day, hour, minute, second their strategic foothold will come out of protection from a magical invulnerability shield.

No, an IRL military analogy is not appropriate for this discussion at all. Though I agree that some force projection should exist, and it should be a consideration when starting a military campaign.

Yeah it's basically just from me scouting around and looking at things, once you get past a certain point, it's empty space, I even made a thread about it in the Crime and Punishment section, I took a pod, flew all the way to the edge of GoonSwarm space, stayed there for a few minutes, got bored and then logged, a few people in that time had come in to look at who was in local and they didn't even bother to try and gank me.

The excuse to not gank me on the forums was that they couldn't be bothered since they were busy fighting for territory elsewhere. Alliances are only defending the chokepoints and trying to gank everyone that comes in, the problem is they've made what would normally be neutral territory unusable which is why no one has come along and done mission running or manufacturing much.

There is no economy in 0.0 so that means no high sec players will ever come there to set up shop and cause the established alliances trouble, I do think nowadays that low sec is a pretty useless idea since all it is now is a sort of no man's land between high sec and 0.0. it may well have been intentional design. However it just isn't working because people can't be bothered dealing with gate campers at every jump or being ganked while trying to make any progress within the game.

You are pretty much powerless in 0.0 even if you have ISK if you can't get ore or aren't friendly enough with any of the local alliances.

Believe it or not Zhade, another thing I know I'm going to get hate for is that I think Wormholes are actually an answer, think about it, it's another way for small alliances or corporations to gain access to 0.0 space if they can't go toe to toe with the big alliances just yet. They can harvest their own rare ore etc. and get what they need to fight them gathering strength, then when they're strong enough they can go and pick some fights.

I think we should actually increase the number of wormhole systems and maybe even the size, I really like the exploration in EVE and think it's what a sandbox should be really about, I think if we increase the number of wormholes though maybe a good thing to do would be to put more in low sec, to give people a real reason to go there rather than just to play tag with each other until one of them gets bored.

Whatever happens, 0.0 needs a serious change, I'd say it's the attitude of the alliances that needs changing, but I'm realistic, we just need to change the gameplay so the blob doesn't win anymore.

p.s. I propose AoE self-destruct freighters loaded with explosives that can take out entire fleets :P

Why should space feel large?

Okay, space is big. But when I log into EVE, I want to play, not spend 3 hours traveling.

i am a tumble weed, i move swiftly and almost silently through this thread lol

I started out in 0.0 in an ISS Station in Lotka Vloterra space(C3-0YD) in Tennerifis.

There was always about 100+ in local (mostly noobs).

That was 6 years ago.

ISS, IAC etc. are gone now.

I think the CSM should have concentrated on setting up neutral 0.0 training grounds in alliance space.

Make an alliance with non-aggression pacts to major alliances, with directors from the major alliances as overseers
Block out parts of alliance space for noobs.

That is a major part of the problem. Almost all 0.0 alliances of substance are involved in Non-Aggression Pacts. While a singular alliances projection might cover a region, a NAP can (and do) cover up to 10 regions at a time.

Rather than break the tools used to project force, jump bridges, titan bridges etc - break the ability of any one who is blue to use said tools.

Some folks ITT seem to think that 0.0 alliances guard their borders and investigate every neut in system or something. These folks obviously have not been part of such an alliance. Neuts roam null space all the time, border systems are not camped by the alliances 24/7, they don't care, too much :effort:

Gangs hostile to the all powerful nullsec alliance will often freely move around the alliances systems, even when the alliance isn't deployed. The invading force gets to choose when they show up and in what fleet comp, and the owning alliance has to actually care enough to form up and fight, which depends how much they want to stop ratting, or sometimes they're all too drunk =P

When you see a gatecamp bordering null it's more likely lowsec corps camping areas of opportunity rather than alliance camps. Folks posting with no null experience are spreading disinformation through their lack of null experience.

Regarding force projection, take away the ability to set your medical clone in any station other than the one you are currently in, then take away jumpclones, and you'll hamper some mobility. Stopping fleet movements though, good luck with that, that's not as easily resolved.