Wednesday 23 September 2015

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.

5 comments:

  1. I concur entirely, The only thing I would point out in your article is that it is not sov trolling mechanics, it is sov Guerilla mechanics, which is perfectly legit. Keeping the terminology of Sov Troll mechanics simply keeps the goon propaganda machine spinning against the new system.

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  2. Sov trolling isn't about small entities taking systems. It's about few guys capturing without any intent of holding what they got. Often it's even starting capture and never finishing it. It's not standing up to the big guy, it's using bad mechanics to only cause frustration. And nobody profits from that.

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  3. Sov "Trolls" are to player empires as CODE. is to miners.
    Funny how people can support one but not the other.

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  4. @borat, yes.
    @Anonymous : those sov guerillas are keeping the previous rent holders busy to allow groups like mine live without paying rent.
    @ Dejara, I do some hauling so Code is my enemy. I have issues paying protection isk, so am no fan of renter coalitions either.

    All I worry about is us and them. I will leave good vs evil for others.

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  5. I was looking at it from an ecological system point of view. Sov trolls keep sov holders honest about just how much space they are actually using. CODE forces miners to act realistically about how and where to mine. They are both extremely annoying, though I would argue sov trolls are less annoying because 1) they don't do lame ass RP and 2) you can shoot them first without getting concordokkened.

    Of course, by the whining you hear from many sov holders you'd think that the sov trolls were invulnerable and flying Jovian ships. Funny how HTFU only seems to apply to the other guys. /sarcasm

    The situation with freighters is different because there are far fewer options and countermeasures for the freighter pilots due to CCPs designs. There is no skiff equivalent in high capacity hauling (DSTs don't really hold enough). Ultimately I suspect CCP is going to have to rethink parts of concord/crimewatch to allow for more flexible preemptive defense options.

    ReplyDelete

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