Sunday, July 27, 2014

Creating The Red Ring Of Death; Sunrise Over New Eden

Like each of the members of the PCCC, although I share a general belief that sovereign nullsec is broken and what needs to be done to fix it, the particulars of my view are my own. Here we go:

The first thing that is wrong with sovereign nullsec is sovereignty. Is EVE a sandbox or not? Seems like the proper answer right now is no. My associate PCCObliteration attempted to placate a certain post in his reddit thread wrt "flag planting". That was wrong of him. The hardcoded ownership of Sovereignty is a cancer upon New Eden.

Sovereignty for supercapital ships has to go. Sovereignty for PI has to go. Sovereignty boosts for fuel costs has to go. TCUs and SBUs are a waste of time. As are IHUBs.

Since there is no sov, supercapital fleets lose some of their oomph. Sovereign nullsec becomes just an upgraded version of NPC nullsec.

You can read PCCObliteration's Reddit post for the general idea of how the PCC believes sec status should be replaced with a more dynamic index system. I do disagree somewhat with the specifics but that's for another post. In general some activities raise the index and some lower it, regardless of sovereignty. Groups that open up their space to the public may gain a good index boost through such an action, perhaps at the cost of a bit of security.

Multiple stations should be possible in each system, one per planet. This may well result in the proliferation of stations but who cares.

In the post sov world renting becomes pointless. Aside from the activity issue involving the economic development indexes, you can't "own" space in the same way. You can build your own station if you lack docking rights at another station. And even major blocks don't have the power to station every single system in their current renting empires. Indeed it would provide little value for them aside from keeping others from possessing stations. You don't have any restrictions on lucrative activities like PI or building supercaps, which previously were restricted to Sov holders.

Furthermore the old sov influence maps become pointless. You can't claim to own a system where a dozen unaffiliated corps have higher activity scores than you. Map painting becomes effective impossible.

Massive blocs have little incentive to fight hard over space where they can't derive any value, not even rent. In my new world the logi changes, details in the air, that pccascendance proposed are in effect. Hotdropping and supercap deployments become a little less safe. Slowcats are no longer effective. You no longer have tons of timers to form up your massive army while small corps and alliances have to scuttle away in shame.

Which brings me to my next change. No more timers. At all. Outposts and POSes function simply on supplies. You need to haul in a large amount of "fuel" to power the shields, possibly strontium which no longer has a purpose without reinforcement. Strontium powered shields possess 90% resists and 10x the health. Sadly, yes, you still have to deal with high structure HP. Outposts function in a similar manner except instead of being destroyed they change ownership. Strontium powered shields do not take reps. They recharge over timer, consuming stront at a constant passive rate. You cannot rep shields up to retrigger reinforcement, flip timers to your strong TZ or any of that. Outposts are simply much larger POSes as far as defenses are concerned. Because the shields cannot be insta recharged by reps that aren't affected by resistances, you can beat down on an outpost, leave when you need to log off, and then come back to finish the job. Much like a medieval siege, as long as the attackers continue to exert pressure, the defenses slowly collapse.

Further you cannot enter a stronted outpost. If an outpost or starbase has enough damage on it to count as besieged, its offlimits. Assets in a station will be secure regardless of ownership.

Shields hit 20% on conquest. So you need to keep the enemy off the outpost or starbase to get back to 100%.

I know this seems like a grind. And it is. It should be. What do you suppose stopped mass conquests IRL? Evicted owners can try to apply tons of pressure to a system and its structures to make it not worthwhile to stay.

Oh do you have a 40000 man coalition? Not enough to own half of null anymore. What use is teleporting around in supercaps if you can't conveniently space out battles using timers? Multiple front wars just became much harder. Now we don't need to limit supercap mobility as much as might otherwise be the case.

Fighting has more of a purpose now. You expand to a system because you need that space for something. You need to require that space enough to fight a concerted battle for it. This is on top of the fact that indexes drop during prolonged periods of conflict, especially if assets in a system frequently change hands.

That's all for now. More specific detailed posts may appear later. Note that I am aware I didn't cover every tiny little detail in my plan. Try to stick to major holes when you whine about how my ideas are stupid. Try not to worry about the WHY of fighting. I have plan for developing drivers of conflict.

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