The magic in eve is spontaneity, you have bumped into an enemy and you have seconds to decide am I going to engage or not, all you know is what ships they are flying and who they are.
Add an extra 2 minutes onto that and all of a sudden there is time to go onto Zkill and look up their fit’s which reduces risk and also reduces the chance that the fight will even happen.
Add another 2 minutes onto that and you can get lots more people ready and in ships that start to counter your opponent leading to much more 1 sided fights. Even less chance of a fight happening in the first place.
The ess having the payout all in 1 lump sum only at the end of a long 6 min 30 second timer encourages the defenders to take as much time as possible getting as many reinforcement’s as possible researching the people inside finding their exact fits and getting in perfect counters.
Not only this but if the defending side only slide when there is 5 seconds left the attackers feel even more pressure to either wait that 5 seconds and be forced to fight at 0 against a comp that has a much greater chance of winning the engagement or run and always ask yourself should I have waited 5 more seconds.
Now the other side of the coin, null sec people are conditioned to ping’s and pre timed engagement’s so forming up in 6 min 30 sec is actually a tall ask and reducing the timer would lead to all their money disappearing before they are even formed up.
My suggestion would be a spooled approach, the final timer is still 6 min 30 seconds but every minute it pays a small portion of it, this would lead to a little bit of urgency on the defenders side.
1 min 30 sec: 1% payout
2 min 30 sec: 4% payout
3 min 30 sec: 7% payout
4 min 30 sec: 13% payout
5 min 30 sec: 15% payout
6 min 30 sec: 30% payout
Which leads to the full 70%
If there is a solo player inside then 1 defending player sitting at the gate waiting feels they might as well go 1v1 that person inside rather than wait 4 more minutes to gather another 5 friends for a 1v6 inside or he might wait 1 more minute and fight 2v1 against the guy inside.
If there is a big attack fleet inside chances are they don’t really care to much for the money and will wait the full 6 min 30 seconds to feel the full force of the defenders and has a chance to drop that stolen isk again.
To make this all a bit more balanced I would suggest 2 more changes:
- The full amount of tags is dropped from a ship if they are still inside the bubble.
- The bubble drops to 40km’s range from 70 but! if you have tags in your cargo your ship speed is reduced by 50%, effectively making bubble size 80km’s just for the guy with the tags.
- Tag’s dropped inside the bubble create an invuln can which cannot be killed. (This stops the attackers dropping the tags and shooting the can out of spite.)
A small group starts robbing but the attacking force has 5x their numbers which allows the attackers to drop the tag’s from their cargo and escape, this allows the defending side the chance to save their money by fighting and allows the attackers the chance to just leave if the defending side feels like blobbing which is not health combat either.
As of currently if you in the ess with 3 guys in 100mn ships and the defenders all warp to gate with 30 people and immediately take gate the guys inside will only get about 25 to 30 km’s away before the blob lands and they will be 100% dead its a bit imbalanced on that end.
The defenders would then have to think strategically about how many ships they bring, so that they feel engagable and at what time during the 6 min 30 sec to bring that force, a balance needs to be found.
What do you guys think?