The CFC will be loving this

A non aggression pact is where you agree not to shoot each other.

A defense pact is where you agree to share enemies.

http://evenews24.com/2016/03/28/drone-walkers-invade-northern-imperium-space/ has an incomplete list of alliances in drone walkers, who ... are now apparently at war with Shadow of xXDeathXx.  https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4e7c74/legion_of_xxdeathxx_declaration_of_war_against/

Day of the revolution

Revolution Day +2

Understanding is a three edged sword: Your side, their side and the truth (whatever that is).

I am confused about why this conflict came into being, but this is my poor understanding.

Once upon a time there was a B0tlrd agreement between the CFC and PL (pandemic legion).  The CFC and PL could provide protection for all, PL under the Brothers of Tangra (B0t) banner.

Fozziesov was announced, and Xxdeath took over many of the PL (Bot) systems, and 'ownership' of the renters.

Fozziesov dropped and the renters largely stopped paying rent, but still existed at the pleasure of PL and Xxdeath.

The CFC and their allies have been needled by the goblin for a while, showing that the CFC were not all powerful, and resistance was not entirely futile.  The Casino War happened (now also called World War Bee) CFC space from the south burned.

The Ex-Renters formed Drone Walkers and with a rumor of acknowledgement from Xxdeath, and took Tenal, previously controlled by the CFC.

Xxdeath even joined the party and took G-LOIT and E-SCTX from Lawn (affiliated with the CFC).

Drone Walkers have visions of independence but were (at least at a line level) focused on CFC territories.

Something got up Xxdeath's nose.  Was it one of the sov transfers going to the 'wrong/right' group? Was it CFC saying please explain to Xxdeath?  Is it Xxdeath wanting dreams of servant renters paying oodles of ISK again? Was it really Xxdeath complaining about Drone Walkers taking space ... when Xxdeath was also taking space?  Maybe all it takes is Drone Walkers not following Xxdeath orders.

This has split the Drone Walkers to a degree, with especially BlackNova Mercenaries and Southern Syndicate declaring for Xxdeath.

As of writing this post, Tenal is Drone walkers, with a few timers to defend.  Cobalt Edge has Xxdeath systems still in flames.  Oasa is kinda quiet, and for the first time ever, I have seen sov space unclaimed.  Peregrin Falls has Drone Walkers systems in flames with some defensive operations to come. In Malpais,  Phonix Company  ( part of Drone Walkers) is taking heat from

I am a slow blogger.  Each post can take me days to write.  I start off with a 1/2 baked idea, and try to work on it with research.  I have posts that are simply not keeping up with the whiplash of events.  Who knows, by tomorrow, this is probably out of date

I have a grr bias, and support the smaller group, especially when the larger groups show weakness.  I do not understand why any small group is actively supporting either Xxdeath or the CFC.  Bending the knee and quietly docking up makes some sense.  Deciding to be part of something epic (and on the winning side) makes sense, even if I don't like it.

As a (would be) independant, actively being in the front lines fighting for those that only want you to bend the knee makes no sense.

I have my eye on the prize, and anything else is a distraction.

There are plenty of groups that want to fight the slumlords that have outlasted their usefulness.  Contact DoToo Foo in game, see the Drone Walkers forum ad, I hear Spectre Fleet is taking pilots.  Reddit's eve jobs has lots of adds at the moment.

Fozzie Sov troll mechanics are a good thing.

Oasa now held by 6 different alliances, with systems changing hands every few days. Cobalt Edge with 5 alliances, and 12 systems changing hands.  These are regions I pay attention to.

I know far less about providence, but even Goons recent war there showed the strength of the new system. They burned abandoned systems, and mostly failed in systems where the locals fought.  (As a message to the propagandists, a similar burn exercise as before would have been even harder for Providence to re-eject the goons.)

Landlord coalitions are crying over being run ragged with what they perceive as pointless fights, attempting to hold vast but empty regions.  Some of them no longer have passive income from renters.  Previous renters are adjusting to the new mechanics and forming fleets (some successful, others very much otherwise).


These are very good things.  Small groups are taking ownership of their own space, and can bounce back far more easily.  Of course in any war game, the bigger, better organsied and funded war machine can roll over the smaller group, but with the new sov, smaller groups have the ability to retake land, or tie up those the larger groups.

I remind those that hark back to the 'good old days':  https://www.google.com/search?q=cfc+win+eve
Before new sov, we were asking if the CFC had won eve.  The result of a large battle was that new accords were re-written to prevent repeats of these events.


For better or worse, because of the troll mechanics of fozzie sov, and the much maligned troll interceptor; smaller groups are standing up to the previous landlords.

I heartily endorse a small group taking land 'out there', but I still get nervous when it happens too close to home.  I want home to be defensible, but I see no reason that buffer space should be held easily.  Land is being taken.  http://evemaps.dotlan.net/outposts/freeports shows that there are still only 12 systems in freeport.  Someone obviously cares enough to hold stations despite all the trolling.

With the latest citadel incarnation, CCP have said that you will again need to apply DPS to the new citadels to capture them http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/citadels-sieges-and-you-v2/ "Entosis links are not going to work on new structures".    Dreadnoughts were a class of ship designed with structure fights in mind, and that role now officially has a place in new structure fights.

Without an autodefense mechanism, and a cap on total EHP to citadel structures, they will be susceptible to trolling attempts, but not as easily as with entosis links.  As a defender, I am not too worried about this as there will be several timers to defend, and customs offices have shown that that while trolling occurs, it is not the end of the world.  For me, the bigger loss is no longer treating all unknown Citadels (outside of highsec) as dangerous.  And yes our POS have shot as many friendly friendly alts as they have killed hostiles.  I like this mechanic, even if I did wish it respected standings granted to individual players as well as standings granted to corporations.  I am also fully expecting to be bitten by these statements at some stage in the future.

One thing that is going away with citadels appears to be system wide vulnerability timers.  ... "players not belonging to the corporation owning the structure need to be on grid to see [timers]" 
At risk of talking about 'when I was young ...' (despite my pilots being younger than many), I actually like the system wide invite of dishonorable third parties to a possibility of a fight.

We are no longer asking if any one entity has won Eve.  I don't want to see a return to massive blue donuts where large organizations dictate who can own what space in null and who can fight.  There should be room for a certain amount of trolling. 

I currently have 2 'hats' in eve, a nullsec trader hat, and the other as a WH PI bear hat.  Today's post is wearing my nullsec trader hat.


This post is a record of me saying that, in my opinion, the balkanization of nullsec is a good thing.

Entitlement

As an Eve player, I expect certain things.


I expect to be able to log on almost 24 hours per day.   There will be times that Eve is down and I will grumble about it. That includes grumbling about downtime during my AU timezone.

I expect to be able to shoot things.  Some things to shoot will be structures, some will be red crosses, some will be other player ships and pods.  I hear that some players even shoot rocks.  There will however be times that I will need to travel a long distance to find my particular form of target.

I expect to be hunted. I expect that if I do everything right, I will get away many times.  I will be elated when I get away, and devastated when I don't.  I expect those hunting me to have 'complementary' feelings (in that if I am happy - they probably are not.  If I become devastated, they are probably happy).

Some days I expect to be bait and you to try to take me down.  If I am better on the day, I will be avenged and you will lose more than I do.  Other days I will fail.

I expect to have opportunities to make ISK, even if I am sometimes bad at it.   When I find a good niche I hope to make a lot of ISK.  As a side note, I prefer my ISK 'indirect', and prefer loot that needs to be hauled rather than ISK to be put directly into a wallet.

I expect a place to live in game.  I expect to be moved along sometimes.  I expect in turn to move others along at other times.

I expect a circle of nerf.  If any one style/fit/game play becomes completely dominant, CCP will iterate on it.  Sometimes CCP will over-nerf.  Other times they will under-nerf. (My poor underused Ishtar)

But there are some things I do not expect. If I want the game to be new, shiny and exciting, I know I need to do new and untried things.  I will like some of those things, and will dislike others.

One thing I learned doing PI, if one area is short on a resource, whether due to overfarming or just market changes make it unprofitable, then move to another area. 

Some hunters could learn the same things.  With consolidation in null, these regions will become target rich but potentially more dangerous.  Both are good things.

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.