In theory, EVE’s sandbox is supposed to support all kinds of gameplay, from solo roamers and 10-man gangs to full-blown bloc wars. But right now, small- and medium-scale warfare in nullsec is suffocating under the sheer weight of capital proliferation.
Here’s what I mean:
Carriers and FAXes are everywhere, even in fights that used to be decided with subcaps.
Dropping dreads or supers isn’t a special escalation anymore. It’s the default.
If you don’t bring capitals, you’re irrelevant. If you do, the fight escalates until one side blobs titans.
So what’s left for the 10-30 man group that wants a real fight?
I’m not anti-capital. They should exist. They should be terrifying. But they used to be strategic choices, not disposable war chariots dropped on anything that moves.
Questions worth discussing:
Should jump fatigue or asset deployment limitations be revisited?
Should FAXes have any vulnerability to sustained subcap pressure?
Could CCP add new mechanics that promote capital risk without gutting their use in big fleet fights?
The sandbox is strongest when all scales of conflict are viable, not just the one with the most supers on standby.
Yes, but I think all the poetry readings, sword ceremonies and DEI initiatives will probably torpedo CCP (and thereby null-sec) faster than even capital proliferation in null-sec can.
The problem - again - isn’t Capitals, it’s cynos. Like for almost any other problem in EVE. The instant power projection that enables the larger group to remote-curbstomp any smaller engagement via a magic teleporter is the problem. And it really doesn’t matter if they drop BlackOps, T3s, a normal Fleet via Titanbridge or Capitals on the smaller gang.
Cynos enable huge renting empires, Cynos force smaller and medium groups to be vasalls of the big blocks, else they cannot have the smallest crappy backwater system to live in. Cynos turned LowSec from a flourishing smallscale paradise into a barren wasteland full of Hotdroppers.
This crap has to end and if you look back you will notice that EVE had it’s most glorious times when Capitals were a rare sight outside of POS- or Outpost Sieges, when almost nobody had a Titan to bridge around fleets and barely anyone had BlackOps skilled to hotdrop smallscale or solo roamers.
Best Space in EVE is WH Space, for a single reason: No Cynos. EVE has a handful of deeply rooted problems and Cynos are one of them (among massmultiboxing and Citadel Design). They were somewhat okay in the early ages, because the transfer of power through them took enough time (around a minute before the jumped ships had loaded the grid and could begin to shoot) for the other side to react to the drop and the amount of people owning such power-projection tools was very low. But now it’s too fast, too often, too common.
But, it all comes back to the Root of all Evil in the game: Huge Nullsec Alliances. They want Cynos the way they are. They want Citadels they way they are. They want Massmultiboxing the way it is. They rather want to be the ruler of a corpse than part of a healthy body. And CCP keeps listening to them.
A potential solution that just popped into my head (and I haven’t thought about it deeply, so someone will probably point out the drawbacks…)
Modify cynos so they create a temporary wormhole, very short life span, mass limit. Then limit the amount of cynos that can be spawned on the same grid (because they would destabilise spacetime, or some other lore stuff.) This way you limit the amount of ships that can be moved with a single cyno, and larger group movements would need to be split (making them easier targets.)
Am i back to 2010? I remember the same topics and since then there was a lot of changes adding jump fatique, cyno changes and others. Capitals still are problem?
All nice and fine ideas, but it doesn’t change the fact that it simply doesn’t stop power projection. Even worse, it would in some cases even prevent the dropped side to light an own cyno to get own reinforcements. Because whatever your “limit” is, what prevents one side to just light exactly that number of cynos at once, preventing the other side from lighting one?
