Tuesday 7 April 2015

FozzieSov - my perspective and confusion

Firstly, I think it is time for a sovereignty revamp.  There are some goals coming with the Fozzie Sov model that I am very much in favour of.
  • Harder for large renter organisations to hold vast territories of unused space.
  • Similarly easier for smaller organisations to take unoccupied systems in nullsec.
  • Simplifying structure setup.  No one that has ever set up a POS thinks it should be this hard and counter-intuitive.  I think this even when I personally have benefited that someone else failed to set their POS up correctly.
I understand that this is going to mean some changes.  Some may benefit, and I fully expect some to be harmed.  Before you pay too much attention to anyone's whining (including mine), please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking .

Some things I like:  back into the structure
Instead, we want the user to make a conscious choice after it has been deployed, and decide if they want personal, corporation, alliance or public use. That’s right, we want those structures to be used for the wider audience, so if you wish to establish your own Market Hub somewhere, make it open to everyone and set your taxes to be shamelessly expensive go right ahead.

We will lose our forcefield, and to be honest I don't care. Before the WH groups all evict me (and we really should get that defector first), I care about what the POS forcefield allows.  We can see the overview and dscan while 'safe', and that there are no docking games because I can enter and leave safe space unless there are (clearly visible and destroyable with station guns) bubbles.  Allow me to check for safety, clear moorings and enter warp (unless there is a bubble) and I will be content.  This probably includes me wanting to swap from docked to moored and back again.

CCP is thinking about playing with fuel (Back into structure).  One point we are considering is to remove fuel requirements to online structures and move it as a requirement to operate service modules.  I want overall requirement for fuel to either stay static or even increase. Reducing total overall fuel requirements will have shockwaves through the market and even worse, will nerf my PI wormholes.

I don't understand when structure will be activated, deactivated, reinforced or captured, and when will it be destroyed?  Entosis links are used to wrest control. Politics By Other Means refers to capturing stations. But then Back into Structure refers to destruction of structures with special containers.  Maybe I am slow today, but I can't work out when something will be destroyed and when it will be captured.


I want there to be places that a small group can hold.  I am an industrialist and believe that in Eve, destruction is good for business.  However it is only good for me if it is someone else's stuff that gets destroyed.  If I am going to store billions of ISK of ship and loot, I really do want it to take more than 2 people for 1 hour to steal it from me.  It is common to have 2 to 3 pilots on sporadically over a couple of hours (eating meals, looking after kids etc).  It looks like a single pilot with 40 minutes up their sleeve could make everything vulnerable.  If so, that would cause me to consolidate and reach for more numbers than I have.  If it takes 4-5 well trained pilots to defend a class 1 or 2 wormhole for 4 hours/day, but it only support 2-3 medium skilled pilots running sites for that same time, then there is a problem.  There are always PI alts but ... PI alts are usually just that, possibly with POS gunning or the ability to fly a scanning ship.


Docking up in stations to hide is being strongly discouraged. Trolls can shut down services to cause fights, or simply to punish the AFK. (Politics by other Means)  Although reinforcing of Sovereignty structures may only occur during the owning alliance’s prime time window, station services can be disabled at any time through use of the Entosis Link for between 5 and 20 minutes (depending on occupancy levels).

Today, to bash out a large properly configured POS in a c1-c4 system requires either at least 2 weeks of building a capital, or a couple of squads of kitchen sink battleships (give or take, less required for well fit ships), over 2 days.  What I am trying to work out is what will it take to either disable my wormhole services, and possibly take my POS replacement away from me.  I think it is entirely proper that a well put together couple of squads, over 40 or so hours can evict us.  Similarly, 4 or 5 pilots consistently on over a couple of weeks with enough strength to cause us cower in stations would similarly be acceptable.  So I repeat myself : CCP Please do not let a single bored pilot with an hour to spare wait for us to go offline and reinforce our small corp wormhole stations by stealth.

I am currently spreading my time between wormholes and tending a nullsec market, and probably doing both badly. I spend large amounts of my in game time tending these, 


Market hubs are interesting and powerful places. I would love these to be scaleable, and available in wormholes.  Something small that that could take a set of PI buy/sell orders for my PI farming wormholes, up to something that can support the fleets of the largest alliances.   I do see that, with effort, station contents including market hubs, should be at least partially lootable.

Wormholes space is currently best space for a small group to set up shop.  When I first moved into wormholes, we had 3 or 4 of us set up a tower, bash out customs offices, and live out of our space.  This was exciting and stressful times.  I really was worried about that lone Drake taking out our just anchored tower.  Now I know what is required to knock one over, and it is more than that lone Drake.

I am worried that with Fozzie Sov, small corps setting up their first structures be able to be trolled out of existence by every passing 2 man gang.  Will the small corp wake up with all of their services offline because someone had 15 minutes of spare time while they were asleep?

There is a transition plan where existing structures will co-exist but without bonuses while new structures take over.  For me this works.

Anyone thinking that there will not be losers out of the structures and sovereignty changes is foolish.  If the big boys are not screaming blue murder, then it will be the little player, but hearing discontent from some quarters to make me think that it might be OK. 

References :
* Back into structure : http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/back-into-the-structure
* Politics by other means https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/politics-by-other-means/

Someone else I am watching for his take on the new mechanics for WH space is Trinkets Friend from http://localectomy.blogspot.com.au/2015_03_01_archive.html  (NSFW) - especially his March 2015 posts.

Edit : Turamarth's post : http://turamarths-evelife.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/is-ccp-gonna-bust-da-bubble.html 

If you have a blog post on this topic, add it as a comment.  I will turn it into a clicky link at the bottom of this post.

5 comments:

  1. "Maybe I am slow today, but I can't work out when something will be destroyed and when it will be captured."

    I think this is the most frightening part. These mechanics are designed around alliances with thousands of active pilots forcing them to consolidate sov somewhat so that they can reasonably defend it.

    For a wormhole, lowsec, or highsec corp these same mechanics could essentially make their game play as it is today unplayable (or very easily disruptable).

    If only XL structures, and Sov can be flipped with entosis and the rest is grind... that puts us similar to where we are now. If everything can be flipped within a 4 hour window, every day I log in I risk locking myself out of hundreds of million of isk, and if I'm not in the right ship... I'm now stranded.

    The first part of the dev blog says 'we want sov to be fun' - what they are proposing really doesn't seem like a lot of fun.

    There's no depth to this warfare, a cruiser is as good as a frigate and equal to a dread... there's no reason to field larger assets because they don't benefit the capture or the system.

    As much as I enjoy flying in frigates and cruisers... I'd like to meaninfully employ battleships and capitals. This system seems a little too shallow for the politics that are part of the meta or end game of eve.

    Either way, screw the entosis link in wormholes.

    -Noxisia Arkana.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Either way, screw the entosis link in wormholes.

      I think most (if not all) of the wormhole community would be comfortable with that sentiment.

      Delete
  2. "We will lose our forcefield, and to be honest I don't care. I care about what the POS forcefield allows. We can see the overview and dscan while 'safe', and that there are no docking games because I can enter and leave safe space unless there are (clearly visible and destroyable with station guns) bubbles.

    Allow me to check for safety, clear moorings and enter warp (unless there is a bubble) and I will be content. This probably includes me wanting to swap from docked to moored and back again."


    My issue is 'stand-off'... the POS FF gives us stand-off space... we have 15km from the spike to the edge of the FF, a 30km across AREA that is OURS and it is 'safe space'... we can fly around inside it, prep fleets inside it, fit ships and goof off inside it and look OUT of it... and no matter how many of the bad guys are on our doorstep (and dealing with our guns and ewar mods) they CANNOT enter that 30km space until the FF goes down... take it away and we lose that space... and we lose all of those abilities.

    And no, being able to just "...check for safety, clear moorings and enter warp..." is not enough for me...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Turamarth, I get that, but there is *so* much wrong with the POS mechanics and code that CCP is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

    Now is the time to be a politician : and suggest what is possible. What do *you need*? (Hint it is more along the lines of look out of it and less along the lines of 'goof of' or have a visual barrier)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have also linked Turamarth's link at the bottom of the post. If you have a blog post on FozzieSov, especially in regard to wormholes (or label linking a series of posts), add it as a comment.

    ReplyDelete

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