Its because they now function more like gates than the old bridges, you’ll be able to link to gates not owned by your alliance instead of the current bridges that require you to own both ends, people will be able to operate “public” gates that allow anyone to use them so you never know
Because sov is required to anchor those gates, they may eventually expand them in to NPC null but historically they have never allowed achorables like that in NPC null to make that space worth less to alliances looking to build those types of structures, they won’t bother expanding them outside of null because people will just build too many super highways, it will also allow them to deliberately avoid any of the random low sec systems on popular routes
I hope they don’t and actually increase fuel / jump costs based on per ship per mass basis.
As for PLEX to jump, if I understand this correctly you can already set an ISK cost per jump, nothing stopping anyone from converting that ISK into PLEX.
It will go like this:
Botting / multiboxing / RMT corp joins a big nullsec block.
Botting / multiboxing / RMT corp will pay off the nullsec block on a monthly basis (just like they have always done and continue to do so) billions and sometimes even trillions of ISK and/or provide them with materials to build more caps.
Botting / multiboxing / RMT corp will build “public gates” with price per jump and use the generated ISK for more RMT / botting.
The big nullsec block will gladly defend their gate(s) because they will have free jumps and still be paid by the Botting/multiboxing/RMT corp. This will go on for a year, or X years.
Someone will eventually slip up and the whole Botting/multiboxing/RMT corp will be reported to CCP and about a year or 2 later AFTER that and after enough â– â– â– â– storm explodes in the public forums etc. CCP will finally take some token PR action and give some of them, but not all a 3 day warning ban at which point the Botting/multiboxing/RMT corp will simply strip the SP and make a whole new corp elsewhere to rinse/repeat the process.
In the meanwhile the big nullsec block that protected them and have been a part of the whole thing will put their propaganda officers to work and we will get the following:
We didn’t know they were bots !!!
We’re too big its impossible for us to tell the difference !!!
Really guys we hate them as much as you do …
etc. etc. same old blah blah blah