Anyway, seeing as Im coming back to EVE and what not, after reading some posts. I’d figure I’d make some suggestions that I myself would think be great additions that would draw in players and balance things in terms of the meta. Here we go!
Fleet Dynamics: One aspect I feel that is under capitalized is the fleet system. Now my idea for this is to have a Fleet cap based on the Fleet Leader’s skill and basically limit how many other players he can have in his fleet. I think factoring in ship size should count towards a fleet’s cap but the general jdea is to create more dynamic fleet vs. fleet combat, and force fellow fleet commanders to rely on tactics versus swarms and hordes. A tradeoff for this balance would be passive bonuses the fleet commander provides like say X is Minmatar, he provides a X % (like at best 5%) bonus to pilots operating X type of vessels or say like X% bonus to Mining laser efficieny. This makes Warfare more tactical, encourages players to cooperate, and force megacorps/alliances to break up the server stopping ship swarms.
Trading Viability: I know most of EVE’s economy is player driven but Trading as a career can stand to be more viable. Some new trade routes could stand to be opened up as well with a few trade hubs requiring a kick in the pants. Now I remember 8 years ago when Hek was a bustling trade hub with 500 to 600 people, now last i remember is at worst 50. The Gallente’s major trade hub system is virtually dead to my knowledge, even more so than Hek. Throw some trade contracts out with some NPC buy orders if you have to maybe soak up some surplus player equipment that is out there.
Jovian Tech: Borrowing an idea from another user that i thought was a decent concept. Introduce a jovian line of ships as a faction, and open their space for limited windows of access time in order to get the materials, blueprints, and components to build Jovian Ships and Equipment with boss tier level rats with their own fleets that require sizeable fleets to do. With the aforemention fleet dynamics idea, and by making jove space NPCnull, you can imagine the alliances going at one another’s throat. On top of that, I recommend making some T3 building materials only accessible this way.
Solar System Environmental Buffs and Debuffs: Introduce some more dynamics by having certain kinds of star systems produce buffs and debuffs, say like I am fighting in a system with a neutron star, my shields are debuffed by X% or my speed is slowed down by X% because I am fighting within the Area near a celestial body with a lot of mass, or my target solution will take longer since i am in nebula. That sort of thing, because his can ultimately define what kind of territory is held by alliances, and where battles are typically held.
Fleets used to have per level caps for squad, wing and fleet commanders. Now it’s more a question of player skill than character skill and the tools your organization has available to help manage large fleets.
Trade in Eve has evolved to a hub and spoke system centered on Jita. The other markets are basically convenience stores. I think CCP would like to move more trade to player owned structures but doubt that will happen - people want “one stop shopping” and haulers want cargo going both ways. Hub and spoke provides that. Under no circumstances should there be NPC interference - the player market is a complex adaptive system that is working well. I believe CCP needs to control growth of the money supply to better reflect growth in the overall economy but, otherwise, hands off!
SoCT are the inheritors of the Jovian technology so it isn’t lost but power creep is not good for the game and needs to be carefully managed. I doubt we’ll gain access to Jovian space anytime soon - we already have thousands of underutilized systems and I believe CCP should be looking to reduce that number, increasing population density and creating more opportunity for player interaction - whether competitive or cooperative.
Weather is a factor in W-space and Abyssal space. I expect to see it in K-space but probable a feature of anomalies rather than impacting entire systems.
But in an open world game how would you enforce this? Players would just make multiple fleets and coordinate in other ways. I guess they could be smaller or command boosts affect less, but I am not sure this would really do anything but be annoying. There are already limits of fleet size and it doesn’t stop the massive fights.
Trading is still pretty viable I think. Sure, the classic secondary trade hubs have declined somewhat, and maybe there is something CCP can do to discourage centralization of trade in one place, but I don’t think NPC buy orders are the answer. That erodes the player driven market, the opposite of what makes this game interesting.
Aren’t they doing this with the Precursor line of ships already. The Triglavians seem to be the first in this new line of tech. But yes, I think new ships and resources of the Jove, and hopefully opening up their space at some point is probably the only way out of the mess CCP has made of the economy. The game needs a power reset, and new space can’t hurt to shake things up (as long as it is fundamentally new and interesting), so +1 to more of it.
This also already exists, at least on the solar system level, in wormhole space. I am agnostic to whether it should be spread more widely or more granularity within a system, but I guess in principle more local effects could be more interesting giving a “varying terrain” aspect to space.
In general, I am not sure how these ideas lure in new players, but making the game more interesting should be the focus, not marketing gimmicks or psychological tricks.
Basically the idea of fleet dynamics is to more pressure on Fleet commanders, and to some extent alliances, to create some margins of error by forcing fleet size cap, possibly influenced by participating ship sizes. It would make it harder for blob and titan fleets to be fielded, but you’d still have you big battles based on how well fleet commanders can coordinate together. This in turn balances things in favor of smaller alliances without completely nerfing the big players on the block.
To be fair on the trading viability aspect, I agree with whomever mentioned spreading out the population. Jita is like a blob, of course, and really I mean if they encourage players to spread out, it be much better overall. I mean having to traverse to Jita to pick up equipment is a pain in the Ars.
Introducing varied terrain in K-space, and by extension SovNullsec, would create Risk VS. Reward. Perhaps even to encourage it is having systems with said debuff with like more frequent ore site drop rates or something like that but give a combat debuff. I think debuffs that target specific ship size classes would be great in some aspects, with aforementioned fleets being compelled to specialize over horde swarming. This can make it harder for larger alliances to maintain territory, giving opportunity for smaller groups to take acquire resources or territory.
The general concept behind some of these ideas is to encourage small corporation and alliance growth. While some of it may seem like its out to screw large alliances, its not really but its to encourages alliances like Goonswarm to delegate territorial control to smaller vassals. Encouraging this kind of growth is good for the game, and cycling out the old with the new by encouraging new and younger players by fostering a cooperative mindset in building their own little empires while placing a strain on older ones.
Trying to rule out an idea based on work arounds is not a good way to ultimately end the conclusion on that idea.
For example, at what point does fleet mechanics potentially become unmanageable. If we reduce fleet sizes to 50 cap, how many fc’s will an alliance be required to commit to a 10,000 player battle, and how much overhead would be required to manage that structure in a practical of enough way to be viable. Infact, if there is some scope on something like this, it is good to a degree, depending on the so-called work arounds. This may just be the scope for skill to take place.
As far as fleet size limits go, I am not saying in particular numbers but the objective of making fleets more dynamic is to break up the Blobs fleets and Titan fleets that discourage SovNull warfare. In return, Fleets can get passive bonus based on their commander’s skills, if not a bonus based on based the disparity between the commander’s skill and the fleet member.
for example, PanHorde has a literally fleet comprised entirely of titans if I recall correctly, What I propose as far as the Concept of Fleet Dynamics essentially prevent shenanigans like that. it would put a minor strain on communications and coordinating but its compensated for by skill as a commander.
To detail how i think this should work is based on ship category: