EvE SOV Mechanics Change:
The current SOV mechanics in EvE do allow a bloc to claim vast areas of space easily and, due to the easy force projection, to protect it with a relatively small number of people in fleet compared to the space claimed.
The objective of this change is:
a.) To remove the Strategy Index from the ADM calculation to make sure the ADM reflects the actual system activity and hence the SOV mechanics are much more effectively driven by activity rather than pure “ownership”.
b.) To allow smaller groups to impact SOV and claim space more easily and also have other means to defend it. .
c.) To make any PvP activities, even single ship kills, meaningful with regards to SOV claims or SOV defence
d.) To weaken the time zone tanking effects but in turn make highly active core systems even more protected.
The Suggested changes in turn leads to a more easy way for large blocs to defend their home territory but will lead to more complexity in defending anything more remote or far away from the home territory because activity levels need be kept up in order to keep ADMS high. A simple Ishtar spinning will not suffice as any other entity can get in at their prime time and mine or rat at any point in time and negatively impact the ADM
The principal idea is, on top of the existing SOV mechanics, to have ADM logic drive system infrastructure, including the anchored structures services enablement or disablement and have an ability to trigger SOV Hub nodes without entosis.
In case the ADM drops below 1, the SOV Hub becomes abandoned, which in turn means a regular entosis attack can claim it, if the attacker is from a different entity as the current SOV Hub owner and the ADM is brought back to a level where a SOV hub can be regularly anchored (so ADM1 or higher).
Mining and ratting activities will be counted as a positive gain against the system ADM if the players engaged in these activities belong to the entity that holds the SOV hub.
In turn, players that do not belong to the SOV holding entity (standing do not factor in here) will have a negative impact on the ADM if they engage in ratting or mining.
ADM Basics:
1. All System ADMs start at 0
2. All System ADMs are no longer influenced by the time an entity hold that ownership of the given system. There is no automatic Strategy Index Level.
ADM Strategic Bonus:
Strategic Bonus will be based on the SOV Hub ownership
Capital System = +2 ADM (only 1 Capital per Constellation is allowed, any alliance can only hold 1 capital System by Region)
Infrastructure Additions add Strategic Bonus:
• Active Cyno Beacon: +0.5
• Active Cyno Jammer: +0.5 (First active one counts, so more jammers do not increase the ADM bonus)
• Active Ansiblex: +1
• Active Metenox Moon Drill: +0.1
In case the above infrastructure services go offline (inactivated by the owner or in disabled or abandoned state), the respective strategic bonus is removed and the ADM drops respectively.
ADM calculation will be adjusted to reflect the change on strategy Bonus
• Military Level 5 = 3,5 ADM
• Industry Level 5 = 3,5 ADM
• Strategy Bonus is capped at +3 ADM
In a nutshell, a system with only ratting will have a max ADM of 3,5, which will provide the ability to host Skyhooks and Medium Structures but nothing more.
Theoretically, a system with 30 Moon Drills will reach ADM 3 and respective Industrial Index will go up according to the industrial index impact (not defined yet), so it might be possible to reach an overall ADM of 6 by running just Moon Drills, however, the expense for this passive platforms will scale up quickly and is anyway unlikely to happen, due to the capacity limits of a single system.
A Capital System will automatically start at ADM 2 and will have the ability to reach 5,5 only with Military Index being pushed to Level 5
The ADM will be contested (lowered) by activities of other entities:
System under siege:
In case the activity from the combined efforts (mining and ratting) of the entities that do not hold the SOV Hub, reaches a critical level and the ADM drops to -1 level after downtime, a progress bar will show up to tell the owning entity that the system is under siege.
At this moment, also PvP kills against the owning entity will lower the ADM while PvP kills of any other entity will increase the ADM. This can happen at any ADM level.
Examples:
-
Current SOV Holding Entity ADM = 4.7 (Military Level 4 20% + Industry Level 2 10%)
Attacking Entities enter System and engage in ratting an mining activities and the ADM drops below 0% Level 4 Military AND below 0% Industry Level 2, the ADM 4 will be lowered to ADM 3 after DT, the siege bar will appear. -
Current SOV Holding Entity ADM = 3.5 (Military Level 5 at 150%)
Attacking Entities enter System and engage in ratting and ADM drops below 0% Military Level 5, which will result in ADM dropping below 3 after Downtime, the siege bar will appear right after DT.
Special Notes:
Once the ADM drops below level 2, the SOV Hub nodes spawn and the SOV hub becomes attackable immediately.
They will not regenerate over time unless the ADM is brought back up to a minimum of 2.
If the ADM drops below 1, the nodes despawn and the SOV HUB becomes abandoned.
Entosis mechanics still stay as is. This is an alternative way to attack SOV.
Entosis timings and vulnerability windows will be more impacted by ADM.
The calculation of the ADM will be real-time as of today, but the results will take effect only after downtime.
This means the attacker as well as the defender cannot fully time zone tank.
For Systems under siege:
The ADM max percentage gain or loss will be -200% or +200%
Attacker can work during the lower activities hours of the respective opponent and gain an advantage up to 200% to offset any potential off hours counter measures.
The gain is capped at 100%, this means anything higher than +100% will be reduced after DT to 100% of the respective level. There will be no possibility to level up to more than 1 level per day.
The loss however will be capped at -200%, this means the attackers have the option to reduce certain levels by 2 over 1 day. This is an advantage for the attacker if the attacker is able to sustain sufficient activity in a given system over the course of one day.
Example:
• Current SOV Holding Entity ADM = Level 4 Military (60%)
○ Defender boosts ADM Military Level 4 up to 180% before they go into their off hours
○ Attacker has it’s prime time after defenders are off and will reduce the ADM to 120% Level 4 Military until DT.
Result after Downtime: ADM Military still level 4 but with 100%
• Current SOV Holding Entity ADM = Level 4 Military (60%)
○ Attacker reduce ADM Military Level 4 down to -100% before they go into their off hours
○ Defender has it’s prime time after attackers are off and will boost the ADM to -20% Level 4 Military until DT.
Result after Downtime: ADM Military level 3 but with 80% (this means worst case, the ADM Level can drop 2 levels within 1 day!)
ADM PvP Impact:
Once a system is under siege, the PvP kills factor into the progress bar.
• Kills of the entity that holds the SOV will be counted as a negative impact on the ADM.
• Kills of any other entity will be counted as a positive impact on the ADM.
In order to prevent SOV holding entities from flushing the progress bar with cheap ship of an alt corp and destroy them en-masse, the respective value of the destroyed ship will be the determining factor rather than the overall number.
Defenders still can destroy out of ally chars ships en-masse to keep the ADM up, but it will become costly over time as they have to do this daily.
Structures, Deployables, Corvettes and PODs will not count into the number, only regular ship kills regardless of type and size.
The ADM will drop or increase by 1% of it’s current level as per below table:
example only !!! exact numbers to be calculated by CCP.
• The attacker has an advantage from ADM 3 onward.
• The accumulation will be done over the course of 24 hours at take effect between downtime.
The Max PvP impact is capped at max. 1 ADM point positive or negative.
Means if the attacker lowers the ADM theoretically by -1.5 points and the Defender is increasing it only by +0.3 points, the ADM will be lowered by -1 point only.
Example:
The System ADM after DT = 4.5 (Military Level 5 =3,5, Industry Level 0 =0, Strategy Bonus 1 Ansiblex)
• Attacker kills: 2.6B ISK worth of ships = dop by 20% in addition to the other activities such as ratting and mining.
• Defender kills: 900M ISK worth of ships = rise by 6% in addition to the other activities such as ratting and mining
this means the new calculation of the ADM will be based on
Military Level Index + (-) 14% PvP impact + Industry Level Index + Strategy Bonus (if any)
• Military Level 5 = 3,5
• Industry Level 0 =0
• Strategy Bonus 1
• ***PvP impact 14% out of 4.5 = - 0,63***
New ADM after DT = 3,87
ADM Impact on Anchoring:
Depending on the ADM the following anchoring is allowed.
A structure goes into Disabled mode, means all services go offline immediately, this triggers a new 14 day timer before the structure automatically moves to abandoned state.
Disabled State:
• No service Module is online
• Tethering is still active
To bring the structure back from Disabled mode, the ADM must be increased to it’s level for anchoring the respective structure.
The structure will return to active mode automatically if sufficient fuel is available to bring back all services and the ADM has reached the minimum level to sustain the respective structure after downtime.
A structure goes directly into abandoned state if the ADM of the corresponding system drops too low to support the structure.
The Skyhook & SOV Hub vulnerability window and entosis timings will be determined by the ADM
The other structure vulnerability mechanics and time windows are not being changed, this includes the anchoring/deployment timers as well as onlining timers for POS.
Introduction of offensive Core Module for citadel structures.
Offensive Core can only be used in Citadel structures such as Astrahus, Fortizar and Keepstar.
The Offensive Core comes in two versions:
a.) Tech I expires 30 days after onlining the structure.
b.) Tech II expires 45 days after onlining the structure.
After expiration, the offensive core must be replaced by a regular core in order to keep the structure operational.
This can only be done if the SOV Hub belongs to the same entity as the owner of the structure.
The offensive Core is also needed for anchoring structures in an unclaimed system, but can be replaced at any time with the regular core once the system SOV Hub is claimed by the owner of the structure and the respective ADM level is reached.
To change the core, the structure needs to go into disabled mode for 15 minutes to remove the offensive core and swap to the regular core.
• If the offensive core is removed and the new regular core is not online within the 15min window, the structure is destroyed immediately.
• If the offensive core is not replaced after expiration, the structure is disabled and immediately goes into abandoned mode.
• In Abandoned mode, the structure cannot be refitted. All fitted modules including the offensive core are locked. All services are offline immediately, tethering is offline.
Metenox Moon Drills:
Moon Drills can only be added to a system with ADM 2 or higher. (it does not matter if the entity owning the drill is the owner of the Sov or not.)This rule only applies to SOV Null and will have no effect on other spaces.
In case the owner of the Moon Drill is not the owner of the SOV, the Industrial Index will still be boosted but there will be NO additional strategic bonus given.
The Metenox Moon drills account for an increase of the industrial index.
The formula for this needs to be determined by CCP… they should also think a little bit. Just a hint ( 5 active Moon Drill may result in a stable 99% sustained Industry Index Level 1)
This means the attacker needs to think about attacking those structures to lower the positive impact of the Moon Drill on the ADM or leave it be as the impact is too marginal.
TCU and SOV Bills:
SOV bills are manged on TCU level. whoever owns the TCU pays for the SOV.
TCUs stay unimpacted by this change related to anchoring.
In any unclaimed system a TCU can be placed.
In any claimed system a TCU can fall victim to entosis, but the TCU entosis window will be at the exact hour (+/-) 1 hour the owner has set, so there is no ADM impact on the vulnerability window of the TCU.
Essentially it is possible that an entity owns the space and pays the bills while another entity is owning the SOV Hub and is benefiting from the space, they might even be enemies.
If bills are not paid, the TCU will become claimable by any entity, even the previous owner, via entosis.
if not claimed within a 7 day window, the TCU will explode and the SOV Hub goes into abandoned mode with all the consequences to the system.
TCUs have 2 main use cases:
- Set ownership formally (put the flag in the ground, enable the SOV for use and pay the bills)
- Make deployment of a SOV Hub possible. No TCU = No SOV Hub. (However, the TCU can be from any entity it just needs to be present)
Thanks for not dying by reading this TLDR post.