You are biased as well, as you want to preserve your big bloc and audience you get from. But it is just an assumption that mass anonymous organizations with RL company like IT in EvE are necessary for something. Also the bigger the more the lines are blurred between RL money interests and the game.
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Itās not the groups themselves that are the problem, they shall thrive and get rich in their null-empires and wage epic wars against similar sized opponents, good luck to them.
Itās the design of mechanics allowing and rewarding them for curbstomping smaller groups quick and easy.
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This is true when done in a stupid and adverse way. I donāt think Iām advocating for that, nor anyone else.
But when done in a way that gets people excited, it sees people move from big groups to small, not quit the game outright.
Itās a bit of a tricky one Brisc. I donāt think the idea of wanting to make super-sized blocs as viable as they are now is necessarily tied to nerfing them per se. I also donāt think itās unfair to say that the nullsec environment was much more vibrant in the time before megablocs started sucking in all the smaller alliances.
Maybe itās rose-tinted glasses (definitely an element of that!) but if you spend some time outside of the big blocs you soon realise that the attitude and mindset that the majority set up for their newer players are pretty corrosive to having a good time in Eve.
Ultimately though, this doesnāt really get down to the why of it all - itās just surface fluffery. Thereās a lot of stuff floated about trying to explain this why - from ansiblex power projection to risk-averse hyperfarming and so on. But, for me, I think the answer is a pretty simple one: asset safety. Now that thereās no sink of stuff left behind - either trapped or firesaleād out to the victors - there a distinct lack of consequence in nullsec for losing your space territory.
Of course, wholesale stripping asset safety away is not the right result - that was never the case back in the day, you had to either take a massive haircut on selling off your crap to the new owners, or had to wait to come take the station back again. However, thereās maybe a way to bring some of the āfight or lose everythingā wormhole attitude back into nullsec by playing with these mechanics. I think maybe putting in a āConcord Uplinkā module into an iHub that provides access to both local chat and asset safety would be a mighty fine addition. Wang a reasonably high monthly cost onto the module that varies on the value of assets stored in the system, and you may just have a gimmick interesting enough to liven nullsec up.
I am doing my best to be as objective as possible here. Big groups are a fundamental part of EVE, they drive most of the story lines in null, and they are a large part of what attracts people to the game and makes them stick around long after the honeymoon period has ended.
And the āRL money interestsā ā¦ yeah. Right. Everybody in the big blocs is making bank on EVE, got it.
/eyeroll
There arenāt really any mechanics that reward big groups going after smaller groups, at least not any specific ones I can think of. As for allowing it, there really arenāt any ways to stop it that donāt create more problems than they solve.
You arenāt going to get people excited about not being able to be a part of the group theyāve been with for a while, or identify with. Any kind of attempts to create artificial ways to reduce group size either wonāt work, will just create unnecessary tedium or, in the off chance they are successful, will drive folks out because they arenāt going to want to make the shift from large to small group status (or theyād have already done it).
Itās rose colored glasses. I donāt see anything that we do that would be ācorrosiveā to having a good time. Unless having content, having people willing to help educate and teach, and having esprit de corps and activity are suddenly corrosive to having a good time.
In a perfect world, asset safety wouldnāt exist and would never have existed. But we both know that its not going anywhere. Those who like to play the game without asset safety have Pochven and Wormholes to play it in.
There is nothing CCP can do to nerf large blocks without murdering the smaller ones. Cap players in corps, more corps. Cap corps in alliances, more alliances. Even if you cap Blues, there will just be a out of game list. CCP cant stop players from banding together.
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I strongly disagree with this.
Its not that there is nothing they can do, itās more of that CCP set up the mechanics in such a way that it is lazy and with a single minded goal with no thought or respect towards the smaller groups that would also be impacted ā similar to how they generally forget WH people exist except when it comes to changing all NS holes to have different and more favorable rules to NS due to an abundance of NS complaining about WH groups bypassing their intel bots and directly warping attack fleets into their mining fleets and killing them all, or bypassing all of the bubbled gates as they warp to a WH and ācannot be chased down and killed by a larger group pincer attackā.
There are numerous ways that the EXISTING mining for moon goo mechanics can be changed to reduce the highly negative anti-small corp aspects of the existing system. Here are two examples:
1 - return of the mobile siphon unit. Let it steal ore from the moon chunk while it is being drilled and before it is launched for the mining crew to mine it ā obviously, at a much higher m^3 rate of ore compared to the old raw moon goo volume, and with an extra 200% residue to the owners.
This would once again require NS to ACTUALLY BE IN THE AREA THAT THEY OWN AND CHECK IN ON IT REGULARLY, as opposed to 2-4 hour window once a week during the period where all of the athanors pull their rock and the rorqs demolish it.
The centralization of Nullsec where 5% of the systems are actually populated, 1% heavily populated, and 94% being empty buffer zone occupied only by intel bots continues to be a huge issue, and this is one step towards the PI aspects requiring NS to routinely occupy their space.
2 - allow the mining to be completed outside of the schedule window with a hefty penalty to moon size, but still following the āthe longer it drills, the bigger the rockā
The current system highly rewards the ātoo big to gankā mining efforts of nullsec. The intel tools available from scanning an athanor during off hours makes it much to easy to set up a gank, whether cyno, blops, or other onto the mining point for the ore due to the long lead-up to the moon rock extraction. Allowing it to end early and immediately within a 30 hour window prior to the planned extraction, even if it comes with a 25% total volume of moon pieces extracted, will greatly allow smaller groups to partake in the moon goo extraction without their mining operations being easy, predictable targets.
and thatās just the first two that come to mind, Iām sure there are better ideas out there now, if not spending some time to brainstorm and consider 2ndary impacts to make sure that the changes meet the intended goal without causing unwanted side effects.
Ganking is only in HiSec.
Also, the whole rest of your argument leads me to believe that you have never lived in Nul for any length of time, if at all.
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Go read a damn dictionary you uneducated cretin. Iāve pasted the relevant section for you:
Gank (gangk)
verb (used with object) Slang.
1 ā to rob or mug (a person).
2 ā to steal or seize (something of value).
3 ā (in a video game) to kill (a character), especially an outnumbered, weaker, or lower level player character
noun Slang.
1 - (in a video game) the killing of one character by another, especially when the killer character has a powerful or unfair advantage over the victim
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Iāll let this one slideā¦
The traditional definition of a gank in EvE is, and always has been, HiSec only. Everywhere else its just PvP, EvE is intentionally different. I had a friend come visit a few years ago, he was from Great Britain. When he had a layover in a US airport he stepped outside to smoke a cigarette, but unfortunately didnāt have his passport, ID, or phone on him. He tried to reenter the airport but security denied him. He went on to explain to the head of security that his wife was sitting just over there and he just stepped out to smoke a fag. Chuckles were had and his wife and his IDs were fetched.
Moral of the story, words have different meaning in different settings. Gank in EvE, HS only.
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I have said a few times asset safety is a bad thing in null. Get rid of it.
Then groups have to fight or risk losing all thier ā ā ā ā . War then WILL pay. Same as wormhole life does. Mabe even make keepstars to 1 per region. Then if you head shot the keepstsr the loser has a bloody hard time doing an evac of big caps.
As for local in null systems like -0.7 and lower get no local and way better sites then corps need to do proper intel and scouting.
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I love the sentiment, but the mechanics of nullsec just mean that they have MORE of a reason to punch down and be rewarded. See the hard knocks story of evicting everybody until they had no more content to fight in wormholesā¦only NS pays so much more from passive and non-fighting sources that they would be happy with it ā not a change in a healthy direction for the game overall in my opinion.
That said, you are onto something there. Keepstars being 1 per region, and keepstars specifically having zero asset safety combined with all capitol ships and capitol modules not being able to be saved would be a healthy compromise that sufficiently punishes groups for losing their larger structures without punishing little guys from trying to get a piece of the pie for themselves.
Also, capitols should not be allowed to tether to structures which are too small for them to dock in. Make NS pay the fortizar fuel cost to carrier rat, and likewise Keepstar for the supercarrier ratting. The safety net for those are too cheap for the benefit that they get from them.
This will just be a barrier from small folks from giving it a shot. AKA, even more power consolidation. You can never impose a realistic ācostā, isk or material, to a Sov Block that is unreachable. All it will do is crush others even more.
Using my proposal, have the module be a relatively affordable one to plug in to an iHub, but have the monthly fees scale according to the value of assets stored in the system. Kind of like an insurance policy.
Smaller groups will be mostly using their assets, so no worries. Large groups with several dozen trillion in stockpiles will soon start thinking about how wise said stockpiles are if they much pay 1% of their value each month, or risk giving up massive loot pinatas.
(I plucked the dozens of trillions and the 1% out of my ass by the way. Insert figures that make sense)
ā¦
A realistic ācostā would be a nice loot drop for the attacker if the owner of the station fails to evacuate or protect his stuff. Asset safety is just a crap mechanic that should have never been invented in the first place and should be removed as soon as possible.
I canāt be removed at this point. Too many people have come to rely on it. You saw the amount of complaining and community anger when they brought out the abandoned citadel mechanic. Multiply that by ten billion.
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Pretty reductive, friend.
Have the percentage scale by volume (to hit ore hoards and supertits hardest). Under 1t m3, 0.1%. over 10t, 2%.
Again, number picked out my ass.
Oh, I donāt disagree. The art would come in making it a smooth transition for the big blocs (auto-applied module, just the fees coming in with good notice) so at scale nothing changes immediately, while having the long-term effect of removing the incentive to have unlimited stockpiles of materials, supertits, etc.
I genuinely donāt see a better way to motivate the most powerful blocs to give up their insane power level versus smaller groups than to make them choose between a meaningful hit in the bloc-level wallet, or moving large scale assets to NPC space where they have less control / safety than the deep home pockets.
That it also gives a way for higher risk, cheap thrills for smaller (or yolo) groups to thrive in contested null and also giving some room for hunting meta to return is an added bonus.
Speaking of bonus: give all systems without this module -0.5 to sec status also.
I donāt doubt that for a second. Unfortunately I believe that without removing asset safety, there is no real reason to see large scale wars any more and none of the big blocs can be broken by force. Since you cannot loot what you shot and cannot really drain the enemies reserves as he magically warps all their stockpile into safetyā¦
Well, if they cannot entirely remove it out of fear that the legion of null might cry bloody murder, then at least make steps into a direction that helps. Increase the fees, limit the mĀ³, exclude certain items like caps/supers etc. ppā¦ Null has to learn to have evac plans, empire stockpile depos - and in the worst case trash a lot of stuff, like every WH corp must do for years.
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