Players who CRAB have no other choice than to join the blocs. If a small group cannot offer CRABing, there is no reason why these people would remotely consider joining them.
Let’s take a hypothetical example:
Someone wishes to join a group to mine and to run CRAB beacons.
Right now their only choice is to join a big bloc.
Now if FCCP were to remove CRAB beacons from the game, the person cannot CRAB anywhere and only joins a group based on mining capabilities which it can do both in the small and large group.
Removing CRAB beacons in this example is a buff to small groups, can you see that?
(I am not asking for removal of CRAB beacons - this is merely an example.)
Now we are talking about removing things to make the argument work, not just limiting. 
But sure, if CCP removed them, these people would only have mining left as their activity of choice. They join a small group, get ganked by roaming gangs and big bloc camps a few times, and since this small group has only a few systems, there is also no way for the miner to switch systems to a less traveled, less active, harder to reach, better to defend system. Then they leave the small group because they cannot mine.
Well yes… I did not want to go to the extreme of removing CRAB beacons.
But one can also partially reduce the incentive by limiting it’s use even without totally removing it. Same effect, just of smaller magnitude.
My point still stands, reducing incentives for players to join big groups is a buff to small groups.
That’s always a risk of joining a small group, and another incentive to join a large group instead.
After all, as I have been saying there are many incentives for players to join large groups.
But not everyone joins small groups just to mine, and not everyone is immediately leaving when they lose some mining ships. Plenty of people are in small groups today.
All I’m saying is that the game would do better to reduce some of the incentives that exist solely to push players into big groups.
And ‘building tall’ is one of the things that benefits large groups of players far more than small groups, and would be another incentive to join the big group that not only builds tall, but also because of being able to build tall can cover everything with a defense fleet in jump range.
Small groups have no such advantage anyway, so gain not much extra from being able to build tall over taking a few more systems instead.
Building Tall will allow the Big Alliances to stay powerfull with less Drama and the small Alliances will immediately also feel their space improved while being able to offer less crowded Space.
There is no negativ in allowing big alliances continuing having the bigger pull in new members while also allowing smaller Alliances to advertize that their space is not shitty anymore cause of the Buff of able to Tall Build their own Space.
I think there is a negative in allowing the largest alliances to have even more incentives to draw in more players. I think they already have plenty, and could live fine with fewer incentives.
But I guess we disagree there.
What you suggest either has no impact on the health of small groups (if we stick with the CRAB example) or makes the lives of small/medium groups harder.
Right now, small groups can in theory do everything big blocs can do. They can mine like big blocs, rat, build big ships, own Keepstars, have capitals, in theory even run CRABs (if it weren’t for the map telling everyone and their dog where people are running them 
That’s one thing that was supposed to hurt big blocs by attracting hunters but it more so hurts small groups who can’t do that in secrecy). See Drone Lands, Delve/Querious. But that comes by virtue of being able to cooperate. CCP wants to punish this cooperation to hurt big blocs.
How so? You want to make it hard for people to sprawl. Now it’s suddenly okay to take more systems just because you are a small group? That’s exactly how the big blocs accumulated their vast sov holdings.
I think that’s where some topography changes can help more than making it toxic to be part of a group the game designers deem too large, while at the same time glorifying gigantic groups in every promo bit they release.
Have you seen the recent ansiblex nerfs?
These allow sprawl up to a certain limit.
A small group taking a couple extra constellations will not feel this limit yet.
A big group taking a couple extra regions will feel this limit.
I am not for limiting sprawl entirely, I am in favour of limiting sprawl beyond a certain point where small groups are not yet affected but big groups are.
I have seen them. The sprawl limit of the ansis is one thing, which indeed does not impact small groups. The rest of the ansi changes does and I dare-say that these other changes are far more damaging to the health of small groups than to big blocs.
I am waiting for another Okami tea leaves reading session to see if he sees reason or just ploughs on with this.
Oh definitely.
The ACL part for example is yet another incentive for players to join the biggest alliances instead of small groups if they wish to have access to space with ansiblexes.
While I like that something is done to limit force projection, I am not sure the current proposed solution is the right one. I think that we need less incentives to join the largest groups, not more.
And being able to ‘build taller’ is another one of such incentives that I think we could do without.
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This bitterness makes me question why you are in Brave thought really.
Were you ever in an Alliance holding Space with ~2000 Accounts?
It is cool that you want less incentive but you clearly lack any knowledge what should be there even less of that would clearly not effect the small alliances as well.
Until you can not bring meaningful solutions as to what that would be I don’t see how your argumenting against Tall Building (which you assume would not benefit small alliances which I think you are wrong) makes hardly any more sense here.
There needs to be incentive for small alliances to go into NullSec. Buffing the Space directly means even a -0.2 System can be TurboCrabbed by them and increase revenue.
The big alliances have that already and just continue to have it.
It is really that simple sometimes.
I am not saying building tall affects small alliances.
I am saying building tall benefits large alliances such as yours far more than it benefits small alliances.
So effectively building tall is an extra incentive to join the large alliances.
After all, small alliances can, after the reduction of force projection, still take more neighbouring systems without running into big ansiblex limits in order to feed a growing population. Big groups cannot.
I’m glad we agree!
I think there needs to be incentives for Null-Sec to stay out of everywhere else.
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The biggest incentive for a small alliance to go into Nullsec is a perspective. Which means it has to be very unlikely that the moment they anchor some structures, some much bigger groups simply bust them up because it’s easy, riskless and convenient.
Which requires,
- Citadel redesign: Better force multiplication, much more EWAR capabilties (similar to POSes), basic auto-defenses that stop troll-refs or driveby-shootings (similar to POSes). Any attacker should always know that losing ships is a high probability whenever he wants to mess around with structures - even when outnumbering the defenders.
- Power Projection nerfs, especially for bigger fleets and heavier vessels. Effort - both in time and logistic - is a powerful layer of protection for small groups against larger groups just coming over and shooting them out of pure boredom. Granting very little loot for killing structures is another.
Combine 1+2 and you have little motivation for a larger group to attack smaller ones, as the effort in time and risk of just burning massive amounts of ISK for little gain is probably not worth it for the larger group to attack the smaller one. Killing structures would only be done for strategical purposes, aka someone really wants to take over the system to keep it.
And this means, a small alliance settling in an either unoccupied Nullsec System or after conquering it from an Owner that was unwilling/incapable of defending it properly, suddenly has a perspective to live there long-time. Which enables them to create a lucrative local industry, spark up some growth in power and members.
Now, the usual “counterargument” always is: “But if you make Citadels stronger and nerf mobility of fleets, it becomes even harder to attack the big guys!!!” - but that is a fallacy. The big groups couldn’t care less how strong a Citadel is, the firepower of the structure simply plays no role in their fights when they can mobilize hundreds of ships for a defense - or even thousands in case of a big war. But the mobility-nerf makes sure they can do that on a regular basis only for their core region and not the outskirts 30 jumps away, it would cost more to “secure” those remote systems in terms of time invested and logistical effort than those systems are worth.
And second: Attacking someones Homeland should be extremely difficult, so only another rival of equal power or a whole coalition of smaller entities could pull it off. There is no problem with a many-thousand-members alliance literally being untouchable in their core-region. You simply don’t assault that, you launch a months-long campaign to take over their border systems, disrupt their logistics, weakening and demoralizing them trough won battles. And Sieging/Capturing their core systems is only the final step and it should come along with heavy investments, huge effort and dramatic losses for the attackers. Exactly the reason why I am all for the implementation of extremely costly but very powerful system upgrades that strengthen defenses if you are able to keep a system for very long.
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There used to be. Small corps like ours could wd null blks and slap their wrists for being too greedy. They already had the best resources, numbers and protection.
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