Jita Park Speakers Corner

**EDIT** This should probably be moved to The Assembly Hall **/EDIT**

I have a concern and an idea that I want to run by everyone here. I remember, back in the day, when only certain areas of null had arkonor. The "a, b, c's" were unevenly distributed. Under the current system, you can have arkonor anywhere. Each way has pros and cons. The benefit of restricting ore types to specific areas of null means that alliances have something valuable to fight over, however the drawback of this (as it was done in the old days, anyway) is that it encourages the formation of large coalitions and quashes the aspirations of smaller alliances to get into nullsec without having to sell their soul to some large coalition. The benefit of the current way, where resources are evenly distributed, is that anyone can stake a claim over a small area of null and have what they need to keep their home self-sustainable ... however, all of a sudden there isn't much to fight over anymore.

My idea is to have each region of space maintain roughly the same value as every other region, but to skew the distribution of resources between the various constellations within each region. This way Fountain would be worth just as much as Catch which would be worth just as much as Etherium Reach. However, the corporations within the larger region-controlling alliance (and multi-region controlling coalitions) would be forced to fight, or come to an agreement, over who gets the more valuable constellations while smaller alliances have more of a chance of securing said valuable resources (in much the same way that individual alliances, or groups of corporations, would have a good chance of breaking off from their large alliance to claim the resources for themsleves.) Convoluted? Basically I'm arguing that many smaller concentrations of roughly evenly distributed more-valuable space (lol, still convoluted) would help foster small alliances and break up larger alliances. Few, large concentrations of valuable space will do the opposite. Doing what we can to break up the big coalitions is, from my perspective, the best way to promote small alliances and skirmishes. Wouldn't we all like to see some more diversity out in nullsec?

That said, I'd like to keep sov space upgradeable. It'd stick work within the context of my idea above. Perhaps in order to get the arkonor rocks to spawn at all you need to have the appropriate upgrade? And perhaps some constellations of systems have a higher "bottom line" of exactly how much arkonor will spawn once upgraded.

That's just my idea. I know it's not perfect, but I think it's a step in the right direction. If you don't like it, I challenge you to come up with something better.

tl;dr = Small pockets of valuable space in each region are good. Large swathes of valuable space throughout the galaxy are bad. It is important that small alliances can enter nullsec without immediately having to choose between being crushed or selling their souls to the powerhouses (i.e. we need checks and balances against forming large coalitions.)

I mean all of the above. What I'm suggesting is that there be very noticeable differences between the constellations within a given region but that the regions as a whole be very roughly similar. My experience with nullsec is somewhat limited to how things were done within the former NC, and there it was always a point of contention regarding which corporations within the alliance would have access to the best resources (plexes, ore, et al.)

By emphasizing this point of contention within each alliance that owns large swathes of space, it becomes logistically more challenging to maintain a vast empire. Keeping every corporation happy becomes more challenging. In turn, this makes things easier on smaller alliances who do not have to fight so much internally. In addition, by keeping the regions as a whole somewhat homogeneous those alliances just emerging from high/lowsec will stand more of a fighting chance against their larger competitors. The variance between constellations still leaves major points of contention, particularly in the larger alliances where everyone will want the best pieces of the pie. There will also be more contention in regions that are contested between two or more forces, as certain constellations will now have more ISK value than others in addition to the strategic values of choke points and jump drive ranges which are already in place.

Hopefully, eventually this will be a step closer to keeping conflicts local so that alliances don't have to rely on vast jump bridge networks to take a fight halfway across the galaxy to the nearest competitor. There will almost certainly still be major powerhouse coalitions/alliances, but if the system works the way I'm thinking it will they'll have a much harder time maintaining themselves at such large sizes.

**EDIT** As far as the resources between regions being identical goes: of course I don't mean identical. I'm suggesting that they be very similar in terms of overall wealth provided. The drone regions, for example, will always be more mineral rich than regions with pirate faction rats, while simultaneously lacking in meta4 items. As long as the overall ISK distribution between ores, ice, gas clouds, moons, and rats remains similar, the variance between each element can be as huge or minimal as you like. **/EDIT**

VC General has the idea.

does this matter if most of minerals come magically from drone rats

soom tm it will be all null sec will be in russian bot land. that is all

There will always be big null sec coalitions, mostly due to the want of stability, and also because of the large amount of supers and titans in game. Even if every CEO of every null sec alliance pressed the disband button, in a months time of re-organizing and a shuffle of sov holders, there would be even bigger power blocks formed. Its the way eve works. We'll probably never see a time where the sov map looks like feudal japan, but its getting stagnant looking like the 70's cold war era. So, maybe we need a few alliances to say **** it, disband, rob each other, etc. just to spice things up.

There is room for just as much imbalancing in my suggestion as there is if you were to put all of the valuable things in one region and left the other regions as barren wastelands (an extreme example, yet it still holds true.) By re-distributing resources on a smaller scale, with just as much diversity, larger alliances are forced to make tougher calls when it comes to granting available resources to their pilots. With my plan, unless an alliance controls the best constellation in every region, and are therefore spread out all over the map with large gaps in territory, they will never have enough to go around. One really good constellation is still only one constellation.



This is exactly what I don't want to happen.



I think you missed the part where I suggested that each region still retain different resources (angel rats will always drop minmatar biased loot, drone regions will always remain rich in raw materials, etc) while having a roughly equal VALUE of these varied resources. Granted, due to the fluctuation of the player-driven market, it's almost impossible to determine the overall value of any given region over a long period of time ... but hey, that's what iteration is all about, isn't it?



What you're saying here isn't very coherent as it is such a long run-on sentence, but given the context I think I have the gist of it. You want fighting over resources, something with material value, rather than purely fighting for bragging rights. I am with you 100% on that front. That very concept is part of what makes EVE such a great game. Unless I've made some kind of gross miscalculation, the idea that I've presented here is in no way contrary to that concept. I believe my idea is actually a better way of achieving that goal than having entire regions that are vastly more wealthy than others, as greater diversity leads to more (and smaller) battles.

This is exactly what I was going for, except I was thinking that the solution lies on customizing things in a constellation level as well as a regional level. This splits up the high-value space into smaller, bite size chunks that make it much more difficult for larger alliances to control vast tracts of resources. I still remember the days when Goonswarm was able to advertise itself as the only alliance that offered Arkanor, and that is something that should not be allowed to happen again. Or maybe it was BoB ... whichever of you two it was is a little irrelevant but I apologize in advance if I got that wrong.

As far as keeping regions unique goes, I am also very much in favor of this. The way it would work in regards to my idea is ... say that a certain region has more officer spawns. There would be one constellation in that region that has an absolute fuckload of them, several constellations that have a whole lot more than most constellations from other regions, and then some lower-end constellations that maybe have only slightly more officer spawns than the rest of nullsec. The drawback could be that this region has poor moons, or ore, or whatever else. So you can see that while all regions might wind up very roughly equal in ISK value, the flavor of each individual region will be vastly different (and therefore more to some alliances tastes than others.) Want that passive moon income above all else? There should be a region for that. Got an industrial edge to your alliance? The Spire has all the rocks and drone rats you could want (at the cost of **** poor moons, perhaps, or few ice fields.) So on and so forth.

That said, it is important that every region has a little bit of everything. They should all be more or less self-sufficient. There shouldn't be a region that has absolutely no megacyte or morphite, for example. Some regions should wind up with more than others, but every region should have some. And within every region, the constellations should form a gradient from barely-richer-than-highsec all the way to wealth-beyond-your-wildest-dreams.

Ugh, your quote makes it seem like I'm advocating his tepid ideas.

I'd actually like more rarity in morphite, arkanor, and so on. I also think most regions should not be self-sufficient, and should need to export and import things. I also think not every region should have a "get rich area", since the best way to let new guys get into null-sec is to have there be regions not worth taking over and/or not worth renting out. As long as the line for owning that region is black instead of red for the occupying force, whatever big alliances are nearby will take it over.

Null-sec's resource distribution is basically a mess of accidental side effects that have occurred as a result of decisions affecting other parts of the game. I wish CCP would make some hard choices about it. X region is "the best" generally but is easy to invade. Y region has a surfeit of technetium, but terrible ratting. Z region has arkanor, morphite, and ice, but is far from empire. Stuff like that. More differentiation is necessary in order to keep null-sec interesting and dynamic.

I realize that any change in the value scheme is going upset null-sec, the people that live there, the politics, and will generate accusations of bias. But null-sec is badly in need of such an upset, and is in danger of stagnating completely.

Final cracked out thought: More "terrain" might be interesting as well, if outside the purview of this thread. I'm thinking along the lines of "Curse doesn't have local" or something like that.

I also think that if different regions are really different instead of kind of sort of different, then we will begin to see different corporate models arising as a response to their particular niches. To an extent this has happened, with technetium-holding alliances having very different financial models than drone space alliances. I think more speciation along those lines is good. Give us different galapagos islands to evolve on!

While I am on this, I think that a the higher-value portions of the good space should compress people. Have a region able to support 500 people, but have a lot of the resource making opportunities happen within the same constellation. The goals being more people in one area to pvp, an easier time for gankers and defense gangs to find each other, and more population pressure. Alliances used to literally lock down systems while huge mining ops were ongoing, and their enemies would try to sneak in and disrupt the operation. That was a lot of fun, and if CCP made hanging out in belts worthwhile it could happen again.