I concede being wrong on the moon-goo thing. Talk in a few days.
That’s great.
Thing is, though, that’s such a fundamental, basic error as to have conclusively proven what I said before: You’re not familiar with the cap game. You’re not familiar with the sov game.
I’m not telling you that you’re not an expert on these things, I’m telling you that you’re not even familiar with them on an elementary level, and we both know that for a (now clearly demonstrated) fact.
While it may be the case that, according to rigorous logic, you could technically still say something correct about the subject purely by chance, it’s pretty unlikely.
Just about everything else you’ve said is a mismatch with reality as well.
For instance:
We have structures in every single sov system we own, or near enough as to make no difference.
A staging is just that: Staging. It’s not THE ONE system in which we consolidate all our resources and infrastructure. It’s one of SEVERAL systems we leave ships and jump clones in for deployment.
This idea that this would force us to defend structures in every system? We already have to. Except…
…there are only a few entities capable of threatening them. We know who they are. They’re not really itching to come over and reinforce our stuff, and similarly, we’re not going to go reinforce theirs, either.
Your perception seems to be that the blocs are all very consolidated to facilitate defense, but actually, they’re not. And they don’t have to be. Maybe you just don’t understand how much area supercap umbrellas can actually cover?
Here are some bloc controlled systems with a lot of players currently docked up, and the list of what’s within their jump range:
Don’t know where Initiative lives, but here’s a populous system atm:
Dronelands are ultra-dense and just about any system in the middle will cover the bulk of multiple regions.
Your idea would cause people to shift around some stagings at best (and this already happens, too!) to maximize the magic-cap-gas coverage, and that’s it. We drop caps to save ratters inside an umbrella, so this fantasy where the plucky, agile upstart group can run through and reinforce multiple structures critical to the now-even-more-valuable cap production? It’s basically just like this. Snap out of it, you got bosoned 5 minutes in.
The blocs STILL have only each other to worry about, even more so because now anyone outside a bloc is going to have close to zero access to caps/replacement hulls, and anything that brings them within jump range of a bloc staging is going to get them crushed out of existence.
So, where are you getting this idea that it would make defense difficult given that:
-We can defend HUGE tracts of space from just a few systems using caps
-You need caps to fight caps
-We have the caps
-The other people with the caps have their own huge tracts of space to defend so they’re not going to come to ours and we’re not going to go to theirs
-The people that don’t have the caps won’t be able to come into our space to get magic-cap-gas that we can defend from just a few stagings because they don’t have caps to fight our caps
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Aside from “EVE =! RL”, this is totally, fractally, and utterly wrong. It’s… pretty far off topic so I’ll spoiler it in a few parts but damnit accurate history matters.
But TL;DR is that Japan’s intended war plans totally precluded her capacity to achieve victory.
Part the First: Prewar Planning and USN Fleet Problems Exercises
The USN had been planning for a very long time how to handle a potential Pacific war with Japan, the main competitor in-theater that they would likely butt heads with. By the early-to-mid 1930s they had initially considered two plans.
The first was the “Thruster” plan, which called for a daring dash across the Pacific to conduct a decisive fleet battle in and around the Japanese Home Islands. After a few years, many wargames, and “Fleet Problem” exercises, it was determined that the USN did not have the logistics capacity to do this at all, and would not be able to build up that capacity prewar.
So the Thruster plan was discarded.
Instead, the second plan they had considered, which was codified as “War Plan Orange”, called for a steady buildup of logistics capacity and fleet strength, before ‘slowly’ rolling across the Pacific ocean, seizing major island chains for forward basing and extending the actual supply lines, before then blockading and effectively laying siege to the Home Islands.
Historically that’s exactly what happened too; the island hopping campaign seized major strategic positions while largely leaving the rest to wither on the vine and starve as supply shipments were choked by the free reign given to American submarines to attack Japanese shipping of all kinds.
Part the Second: Decisive Battle, Industrial Capacity, and Pearl Harbor
The IJN intended to seek a decisive battle with America, because they correctly realized that they did not have the industrial capacity to sustain a long war that they could win- if America had the stomach for a long war, they would lose.
The IJN’s obsessive on decisive battle was ultimately to not just its detriment, but its destruction. The Pearl Harbor raid was intended to both weaken the American battleline- a task it largely failed at as the majority of ships struck were able to be put back into service by the end of 1943, with only a few- most notably the USS Arizona- being total, and tragic, losses.
Much more relevantly, the Pearl Harbor strike galvanized the American political will to bring Imperial Japan to its knees, and accept nothing less- even if Japan were to be able to force and win decisive battle after decisive battle, they were staring headlong into a critical issue:
The Americans simply had too many men, too much steel, and too much oil for them to beat. This was further compounded by the fact that USN war planners correctly identified these weaknesses of their planning (that is, that War Plan Orange required the American people to be willing to be in the war for the long haul), and in one fell swoop the IJN delivered itself into the USN’s hands.
There are many other follow on effects of such self-awareness and planning on the part of the USN, which ultimately built itself into the world-class global navy as a result of the Pacific War, as there was a strong grasp of the underlying details and factors which decide war in the real world, like logistics and systemic focus on technical skills and aptitudes.
As an example, the IJN had such contempt for such that an anecdote of an IJN logistics officer indicates that an IJN commander literally told the supply officer to “stop talking, you are hurting my brain” when the latter was informing the former of the realities of their supply situation.
Part the Third: Midway- The Crux of Victory, or Fortuitous Circumstance?
This brings us to Midway- certainly the battle’s historical course was an unquestionable boon to America, cutting down the pride of the IJN’s aviation power, but even were the IJN commanders at Midway able to shepherd that power much more carefully and preserve it, then perhaps the war would go on for six to twelve more months.
Little more than that was unlikely. It cannot be forgotten that the Japanese goal at Midway was not just an attempt to force a decisive battle that they could- hopefully- win, but also an attempt to capture the island.
A task for which they had no real means to do so; the amphibious invasion force they brought with them was outnumbered by the garrison already on the island, the Japanese had no cohesive doctrine for conducting naval bombardment to provide fire support to the assault force, and what little they did do was largely conducted by lighter cruisers and destroyers.
Of note is that the American garrison on Midway was well provisioned with coastal defense guns, which tend to be significantly more capable than their ship-mounted counterparts thanks to the benefit of being mounted to a fixed, stationary position that can be cheaply protected by vast amounts of concrete, dirt, and steel while also providing much better practical accuracy as the movement of the ship need not be accounted for when there is no ship to begin with.
Most importantly, several of these coastal guns were in a fairly heavy 8" caliber, able to outrange and outgun the vessels the Japanese would typically use for coastal bombardment. Even had the IJN won the naval battle, they would have been incapable of seizing the island for themselves in the process.
In fact, had the IJN so decisively won the battle as to have sunk the majority of American vessels arrayed against them, then they would have perhaps bought themselves 12 months of time- for they still faced the problem that America was committed to a long war, her shipyards and training centers could produce ships, sailors, and pilots far faster than Japan could kill them, and America’s submarine fleet had been given free reign to attack any and all Japanese shipping it could find.
Despite the endemic problems regarding torpedo reliability until approximately 1944, the USN’s “Silent Service” was able to reap a horrendous toll on Japanese merchant shipping, sinking enormous amounts of it while taking little loss in return.
By the time the Japanese began to properly escort their merchant ships, their merchant fleet effectively did not exist, having been totally gutted. Further Japanese ASW practices were atrocious, and while they did claim several American subs, given the scale of the war it was far too little, too late by the time they did.
The moment the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, there would be no stopping of the American juggernaut. Certainly the American victory at Pearl Harbor was a significant boon and benefit to the USN and their allies, but it was not required for victory, and neither could Japan have stolen victory from the jaws of defeat.
Indeed, it could be accurately said that Japan had instead thrown victory into the arms of defeat with their action.
I would actually love to see CCP try this on Sisi and then run a series of long-term-ish (about 6 months worth maybe?) mass tests to see what happens. That sounds really really interesting.
The downside of course is that it would require a whole lot of other non-PvP systems be rebuilt, for example Incursions and high-end Wormhole sites, as it’s my understanding that these are heavily reliant on spidertanking/RR support in order to complete.
Well that or capital memes in the case of wormholes.
Institutional experience matters. Goons have it, CODE doesn't.
I rather suspect that the opposite would happen, as Goonswarm seems like it has a very long pedigree of large-scale organized fleet actions, which is what would be required to actually destroy Goonswarm as a cohesive political bloc.
Institutional experience matters, and when it comes to fleet fights Goonswarm has a lot of that experience in terms of top-end leadership- or so my understanding of the situation informs me, I may be wrong.
I would actually argue that the indication is that ability to accumulate and concentrate resources (or wealth, if you like) has grown so much that it is easy to mass-produce capitals and even supercapitals at sufficient scale that they can be used with abandon by those groups with the means to do so.
The catch being that there are maybe… four, I think? groups that actually possess such material abundance, while the rest must make do with less- often much less- providing two vectors of pressure to conserve supercapital strength by smaller and midsize groups- that being that such assets are substantial investments for them, and that much larger groups are very willing to yolo their supercap fleets into hotdrops of lone opposing capital ships simply because they can, or because they wish to so overwhelmingly escalate that no response can be given in term, thus securing “victory”, for a given measure of the term.
So to a degree yes the EVE playerbase is risk averse in their use of supercapital assets on the “small” scale, but this is I suspect because organizationally those groups which are most responsible for proliferating supercapitals and capitals are also most able to replace such assets and are also the most willing to use and expend them with little regard for the costs involved.
After all, it’s apparently #AlreadyReplaced.
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Are you telling me people use dreads fitted with T1/meta modules only ?
Covered that already, and he was clearly talking about hulls.
That said, T1 guns are actually not uncommon on dreads and are the biggest portion of goo cost (siege doesn’t use much, 25k plates only use up to r16s IIRC) and the unsized modules use little. Carriers aren’t too much worse even with t2 fighters, and supers should be mostly faction/deadspace fit you filthy poors (T2+P4 if you’re building the concord cap mods, the PI in the original T2 and the additional P4s generally outstrip the goo in cost and annoyance).
I’d say that even as a fairly small batch producer of reaction output I’d struggle to use it all up on cap fittings.
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ty for the explanations.
I made the following assertion in my first post in this thread:
It appears I forgot to provide the reasoning behind that assertion. Here it is:
Special Note: The assertion uses the definition of supply provided here
“Supply is a fundamental economic concept that describes the total amount of a specific good or service that is available to consumers”
Premise #1: The term “consumers” applies to the EVE player base
Premise #2: the term: “specific good” applies to ship hulls in EVE online
Premise #3: The following quote (regarding capital hulls) is assumed to be factually true:
Premise #4: In economic terms, when “product “A” > “Product “B” (in terms of quality), consumers will prefer to choose “product A”
Premise #5 the market tends to favor the production of the most chosen products.
Premise #6: The biggest limiting (aka trend reversing) factors for purchasing the “superior” product are: Increased Prices (aka the average cost of ISK it takes to purchase) and lowered Supply
Premise #7: A product becomes cheaper when the required production material becomes more abundant
Evidence: examination of the price and volume traded history for all resources tied to the production of “product A” (in this case, everything appears to be asteroid minerals)
Premise #8: CCP monthly economic reports indicate that the average increase to the supply of products currently exceed its destruction rate. This leads to an increase in unused reserves
Premise #9: The following subjective (definition 4a) statement provides evidence that the trend applies to capital hulls (ie, certain player groups have a large reserve of ship hulls).
Premise #10:
Unless significant changes are made, supply reserves will continue to accrue
Premise #11: Capital hull production current has negligible scarcity
-
The factory job materials (minerals) are an almost infinitely renewable resource
-
Sovereignty currently restricts where cap hulls are made, but not how many
-
Individual character industry job limits can be compensated for by the creation of more alt’s
Premise #12: therefore, the potential exists for unlimited reserves of the “best” ship hulls
Premise #13: In any competitive enviroment, there will always be something considered “best” in a given case.
Premise #13 (conclusion), the excess supply of the most popular hulls needs to be considered in any solution to perceived problem of “the obsolescence of Subcaptials”, buff’s and nerfs will only serve to move the title of “best product” to something else.
Random Thoughts:
This statement also applies to the definition of the term Apex Predator
- Sharks in the ocean are still considered apex predators despite the fact that gangs of (weaker) dolphins can fight them off.
Eve is not the first MMO video game in history to contain an apex predator (ex: The Jedi Class in Pre-CU Star Wars Galaxies)
Lessons can be learned from that games failure.
“Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it”
George Santayana
I originally presented what I felt would be a solution to the problem explained above. That “solution” has been demonstrated to have a bunch of faults. I am retracting it. This post fulfills the commitment I made to @Haulie_Berry . I no longer have the motivation to further participate in this discussion.
I wish everyone here luck in figuring out a perfect solution (that everyone agrees on) I love this game, I do not want to see it disappear.
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yes any idiot can. GENERAL TSOS did during the war of the north. however we were unable to keep it when the blocks pulled out… we were unable to hold the line against the returning block so capitulated the space amicably for a gratuity.
with the advent of Upwel the cost becomes exponential for a smaller alliance/corp. yes we can capture sov, we will have to take it from somebody if we dont want to “rent”, this will most likely pee them off. as soon as we take it & drop upwel assets, they can role back in with overwhelming force and burn it down at little not no cost. our 30 Man fleet will not stand a chance against the supers that are fielded. after all 90% of the null blocks will always bring max force. as the potential loss is greatly mitigated if they can alfa us off of the field.
there is no room for the the smaller entity’s, every SOV null system is an asset to one block or the other. there is no free space in null now. fozzi sov and the cap re balance saw to this
you mention code… this alliance is made up of alts from all of the major blocks so is effectively immune to the politics of null.
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