New Space, Colonization

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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This is an idea for discussion, not a feature, a feature would have a lot more detail.

As I have often posted IMHO some caps and supers should have come with new space, rather than have these ships end up dominating existing space. The idea here is to “retrofit” adding the new space that always should have been and changing many/most/all caps and supers to roles colonizing these new systems. Hopefully returning fleet combat to sub cap.

New Space
New space would be created by adding an additional 25,000 to 100,000 systems. None with gates. (New Eden is ~5200). Considering a large alliance could potentially control 1000(?) systems that doesn’t seem like much.

Current wormhole space would actually be existing systems within those new systems that can be reached by wormhole. Tactically valuable systems to say the least!

To reach the new systems, besides via wormhole, would require a colony ship and a colony ship is the only thing that can build both ends of a stargate.

Gates would not be able to be built in New Eden, only in the new space.

Caps/Supers -> Colony Ships
Some Caps/Supers would be recast as colony ships. A colony ship would be able to jump to an ungated system, potentially carrying other ships and players as variations on colony ship roles. A colony ship would be able to establish a stargate, both ends.

Sub Caps, and possibly carriers not converted to colony efforts, would return to viability in fleet combat.

Gameplay
Very large alliances would “progress” to the next level by setting out to own a piece of space where they control everything, including the stargates and the knowledge of the location of the stargates. Generally jumping many systems away before beginning a network of stargates and stations.

Smaller alliances and corps would have opportunities in existing space vacated by the alliances that left.

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Sorry but you want to expand the game by x20
How would anyone find each other? what would be the point of any warfare?
Eve works because there is a finite amount of space to go around, that drives the player interactions and Corp/Alliance battles for system.

Give every Alliance all the space they could use and you have nothing but grinding rats.

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I think this idea was already proposed and denied. As much as I love with all my heart the uncharted territories offered by wormhole space, giving this feeling of discovering new places each time when compared to a used route using secured Jumb Bridges inside Delve & Querious, with the supercap umbrella nearby to protect whatever I am carrying, EVE Online would suffer from that implementation.

Let’s be honest here : before we can even think about discovering new systems, we should focus on getting more people on the game first. We currently have systems that are simply never visited, or at least established even by solo player, so adding as much as 100 000 new explorable stars would be our doom. In the current state of the game, this idea is simply not viable, sorry mate. Although, it was a pretty nice one !

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I could be mistaken here, but I think the design goal is to have an area of space that meets the following two criteria:

  • No CONCORD presence.
  • No capital or super class ships.

I am not convinced that how exactly this is achieved is of particular import to the OP, so I think it’s likely that he would be willing to entertain other proposals that aim to achieve that end.

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My initial thoughts are.

  • There are areas of space now that are often very empty, how would adding 25 too 100k systems be useful.
  • Could CCPs infrastructure actually handle that many new systems even at the lower end of your estimate.
  • how would you find the ungated system to jump to in the first place given the max jump range of ships.
  • are you saying that supers and caps should not be allowed in current systems and only allowed in these new unagated ones?
  • Why would very large alliances relocate there in the first place rather than just stay where they are AND take over that new space so that they can rat and make money in peace.
  • How would people that want to attack those systems find them.
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First of all this is no sec, sov/wh like space. There is no free sov space and there are many corps that would like to hold territory but cannot.

Having “empty” system is a good thing, it allows up and coming corps to have some space.

Debunking the “empty space myth”.

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so it would be like NPC null in that you cannot “own it”
What about the other points I wrote?

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much of null sec is already empty but owned by the alliances that make way to much isk, any group that moved out there must rent or go to the alliance as is. we added new space, the drone regions, the main alliances quickly launched an attack to claim the area just because.

my null sec alt i finally had to pull out of null sec after 2 years because i cant run comms anymore didnt have very many people on in alliance anyways pther than the people warping around in their supers/vni farming sites and every no and than a roaming fleet.

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sounds like your alliance was just bad.

As for the OP, this idea has been suggested and beaten to death many MANY times in the past. and no offense intended, your suggestion brings absolutely nothing new to the table.
space is largely empty as it is, adding more space would only increase the sprawl, yes its possible that you could add enough space that none of the existing powerblocks would be able to realistically claim it or patrol it, but there are areas of space like that already (they may be nominally claimed by one of the blocks, doesn’t mean they are actively using it.)

the problem is that if you make the new area THAT huge, well then what reason would there ever be to fight for space? if there is more than enough for everyone, then that takes away one of the huge incentives for war.

on top of that, you are proposing the introduction of a bunch of new ship types and mechanics, that frankly aren’t needed.

I do like the idea of k-space systems that are not connected by the standard gate network though, only a small% of the new eden cluster is actually colonized as it is, there are quite a few “empty” stars in between the systems that we currently use. with the introduction of player stargates I would love it if some of those currently empty systems could be opened up, initially discoverable only by WH. but once discovered could be connected via player star-gates. no new mechanics required, adds some extra systems, and ones that could potentially be cut off by attackers shutting down the gate.

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That’s not at all the case. The whole point is too own it.

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So the existing space is owned, the quality of the alliance is not really the issue, if they suck blow them up.

The point is there is really not “empty space” as people think. The existing alliances could easily take even more space. The idea is too have so much space that much of it is unexplored and ready for colonization.

A small alliance would not have to move in 3 jumps from a huge alliance.

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Why fight when I can mine to make money?

Why establish my own space when I can conquer someone else?

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Don’t think CCP can pull it off,not anymore.

Do like the idea of expanding space to such degree that current new eden becomes a tiny dot on a map.

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This is why I did not suggest the systems be new or special, just clone the hell out of what we have and reuse the ships that have really messed up null and to a lesser extend low.

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There are ways to encourage Nullsec entities to limit sovereignty to systems they are actually living in that don’t involve a lot of new space. For example making TCU & IHUB Citadel service modules that consume fuel would change the economics of large empty empires.

I’m not sure it would encourage a lot more players to move to Nullsec - I believe the people who enjoy that playstyle and want to live there already do. Small alliances that aren’t strong enough to stand alone can join the existing coalitions.

The last time CCP showed us the numbers, 70% of players lived in highsec and I doubt that has changed. They may be casual or social players who simply want to enjoy flying Internet spaceships without getting involved in the metagame. They may play the economic game and want to be close to markets - whatever. If the existing 8000 mostly empty systems can’t encourage them to move I doubt adding thousands more would make much difference.

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Why would we want to do that? If space has to be limited or rationed then it is a pretty clear sign there is not enough space.

“Null is empty is a myth” propagated by people who don’t go there.

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The entire point of the colony ships.

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How will CCP host thousands of additional systems? They have enough trouble with what we’ve got.

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A good idea that I myself have posted about before, and in retrospect this is what I learnd:

1.) We don’t need another 25k star systems, dial it back there, we only need like another 100-250
2.) Most ‘new’ regions just get turned into rental space and the like
3.) It would just become a carebare area if there were 100k new systems
and finally:
4.) It’s not that NS needs to grow, it’s that HS needs to shrink

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Not sure if your aware of this, but TCU’s, even without upgrades, already have an upkeep cost of 20m per day per system. with more isk per day required depending on installed upgrades in that system. and those costs where recently re-balanced.
Switching to fuel instead of isk would have some effect on the empires, mostly by making the logistics managers cry. but it wouldn’t actually do that much to change the borders. out of the 3294 null-sec systems. only 1332 are controlled by the 10 largest alliances. or an average of 133 systems each (the numbers get skewed quite a bit by skill urself who owns 239 and Bot with 175, the rest of the top 10 all hover between 100 and 130)
That leaves 2/3rds of null-sec being held by groups with under 100 systems. and for most of them under 50 (#14 on the list only holds 45) and 87 of the 137 sov holding alliances have less than 10.

What that means is that while yes, there is a lot of “empty space” being held by the large groups. you really can’t compress groups of that size all that much more than they already are. and switching to fuel blocks instead of isk cost for holding systems won’t have any real impact on the large groups since for the most part they are already only living in one to two regions, and doing fuel logistics over areas that small is relatively easy.
It also shows that if groups want to take space, they can, otherwise those 87 small alliances wouldn’t be there holding their space.

if you want space, there is room, go and take it. I just hope you can afford the 600m per month per system you want to hold.

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