In short the wall of text is my attemp to make soverienty mechanics enjoyable to play by;
- make citadels a key mechanic in soverienty. Affecting how a region is maintained and the tactics of war
- incorporate every aspect of the game and not only make it usefull or benificial. But in many cases neccisarry.
- make it almost nessesary to break up the blob fight and spread out your forces acrossed a region.
For along time soverienty mechanics have been a seemingly unfixable part of the game. Well I propose not fixing it. But rebuilding it. From the ground up. And I think now there are enough established components to do it. (May require some new things as well.)
Let’s start with what should be the heart and core of soverienty.
- Citadels. -
There’s really no avoiding it. We need soveriegnty citadels. Citadels that have moduals and specific strengths that affect how your assets act in sov you hold. They should affect just about everything from production quality to d-scan, probe streangth/efficiency, syno distances and the list of what should be manipulatable just goes on… But Sov citadels should be restricted to how many you can place in a region by how close together they are. And each will expand how manny connected systems are under your controll.
For the sake of simplicity I’ll use these values as reference.
Sov Astrahus- Small ammount of systems
Sov Fortizar - Medium ammount
Sov Keepstar - Large ammount
They’re are a few options as to how to limit the number of citadels. The one that makes the most sence to me is number of systems connected to the syatem the sov-cits are anchored in. (Just for the sake of creating a concept I’m going to use more arbitrary figures.) For example:
You can’t place a citadel in an area it’s new soverienty overlaps 2 systems you already own.
Any over lap beyond 2 systems into non-allied space will not be added. Any space shared with non-alies is consideres contested space. No additional citadels or structures can be anchored by any one. (Contested space can never exceede two systems.)
Other options to limit the ammount of sov-citadels that seem unfair would be aliance/corp population.
Just an all out cap.
Or no limmit at all…
So in my brain I imagine the Sov Keepstar being the item that marks your territories capital. So it not only needs a good location, easy to defend but for good and benificial reasons to defend it. But also benificial reasons to destroy them. And only one allowed per alliance.
Sov Keepstars once anchored will have the abbility to fit moduals that link the Sov Keepstar to a single Sov Fortizar and apply buffs dictated by the fitted modual. (I dont see why you couldn’t target a different Sov-fortizar when ever you felt likw) These moduals will send these across space. I imagine a beam that acts much like the lines that show your route on the sky box.
Sov Fortizars could primarily act as off grid boosters for what ever the group fits it for. Minning, pve, pvp or what ever. These buffs will be totally dependant on the mods they fit. But only reach out out a certain number of systems based on the mod.
As far as sov goes. I think these sov-citadels should be the key to making the Sov-Keepstar vulnerable. Instead of timmers for the Sov-Keepstar there should be stages/levels.
For simplicity lets say there can be a total of 4 Sov-Fortizars the can have the modual that makes the Sov-Keepstar invulnerable for a specific level. So youd have a level 1 mod, level 2 mod, level 3 mod and a level 4 mod. Or you could have 1 mod and every Sov-fortizar destoyed would lower a level.
Now a probobly unpopular alternative way to make the Sov Keepstar vulnerable is to have to take out all 4 Fortizars nearly simultaneously.
First thing you have to do is force these 4 Fortizars on the same vulnerability timers. So all 4 go vulnerable at the same time. You split your forces into 4 fleets. One for each fortizar. Once a single fortizar goes into reinforced mode, a timer for 5 min will start and if all 4 fortizars are also reinforced within the 5 min. Than you have succesfully taken down all 4 and can now go take on the Sov-Keepstar. If one or more miss the timmer. The fortizars are reinforced but get to skip the next vulnerability timmer. I only sugjest a mechanic like this because sov holders should have to split their forces and not blob a single location. Causing tidi and boring fights.
And the final structure will be the Sov-Astrahus. These will simply be for claiming territory. The smallest of amount of territory…but still. They could grant some smaller regional bonusses but. …
So by now your thinking, great a sugjestion for more structure grinding.
Nope Thought of that also. This where point two comes in
-Incorperate ever part of the game-
Right now living in sov is PVE, PVP, Minning, Production/industry and the meta stuffs.
But there are parts of each type of gameplay that could be added to actually Sov-warfare.
But first what should Sov warfare be? Just taking teritory? Well kind of. I personally think Sov space should be the place every one of anny play style goes to contribute to a larger cause. In order to do that you have to make every part of the game necessary.
I personally think that Sov PVP and minning/industry is pretty well established and doesn’t need any tweeking to be effective in what I’m proposing.
But there are some parts of eve that could be adjusted to give people advantages.
The first is hacking/sabotage. Right now hacking is only used in one area of eve. Exploration. But we could make it a tool in Sov.
First get the idea of the current hacking mini game out of your head. It would have to be something new.
In order to get a good idea imagine this scinario.
Your in enemy space, cloaked over their Sov Fortizar.
Your using the new cloaking devise that manipulates the Cidales sheilds to keep you cloaked even while sitting at 0.
You activate your hacking mod and after succesfully hacking in (phase one) gain access to see how the citadel is fit and a single modual of your choice. In order to gain control of the modual you have to succesfully hack passed phase 2. You remain undetected until your first error. At which point any hanger in the citedell basically goes into red alert. Informing every one the citadell is either taking damage or activly being hacked. And the hacker sufferes a penalty to how affective their final hack(if succsessfull) would be. If some one has permission to access the citadels fit, that person could see wich possible moduals are being hacked. The defender would have to right click the suspected modual and activate a counter hack. Once they find the modual the hacker is actually hacking the defender is put into the hackers mini game and now the mini game becomes a 1v1 mini game.
If the defender wins the hacker is locked out and decloaked. If the hacker wins they do an amount of damage to the modual, lowering its stats and modifiers.
Now translate this to the sov system I propose and add something new. You hack into a Sov-fortizar. You make it past phase one and can see their modual that if offlined would make their Sov-keepstar vulnerable for one level. Imagine you being able to place a virus on that modual that will offline the modual for x amount of time. Give your mates a window to attack.
What about PvE. Let’s face it first we need to up the dificulty of null rats. After you do that. You should be able to employ rats to defend non key but benifical deployables that are helping you.
Imagine a network of sensor arays that alert you enemies are in your territory. For an amount of isk you could employ a limited number of rats that will defend said structure.
Or you could hire gate rats…
Let’s not forget about explorers. I think it’s time to start thinking about allowing for a certian type of scanning that travels to systems your not in. “We already have alts for that” Yes but thanks to local chat the most Intel you’ll get is local population.
No what we may need is a more dificult way to scan but will allow you to get relativly old information on whats in system. Maybe information from an hour ago…or something
Maybe make the snanners so large only new large ships designed for it can use it. And the power output be so massive you can’t cloak. Of couse you’d have distance limitations.
