I believe it cannot happen “player-driven” any more. The mechanics are not there or not there any more.
The problem this game has goes far beyond “having more DPS” or “having more miners to replace losses”.
The problem is based on controlling space and other players assets.
Ideas are in the desk, no worries. I am just not sure investing like an hour to write a 3-page essay is worth it.
You can break it down into 3 chapters:
- Power projection: groups should only be able to hold Sov on systems where they can ensure
a) high activity on a daily basis
b) a local defense force to protect the resources of those systems
It has to be mechanically impossible to defend a huge region with a standing fleet that is cynoed around on demand. Big groups need to be forced to split their army if they want to effectively defend multiple borders. And only come together for defending large invasions or launch large assaults on others. Daily business has to make sure the more they blob-up, the less area they can effectively secure.
The whole Cyno Mechanic has to be re-set to it’s orginal values: aka 30-45 sec for a jump, to make sure small and mobile gangs cannot be caught by a hotdrop, strategical or tactical goals can still be secured by escalating big fights.
- Structure Design / Asset Control
Upwell Structures need to be redesigned to work 90% like POSes did (yes, the orginal Devs knew exactly what they did when they made these things), just with the added convenience of being able to “dock” on them.
And that includes every single aspect, from fueling them, limited anchoring locations, limited fuel hangars, limited storage space, limited job numbers, repairable under fire, much more powerful force multipliers aka EWAR, incredibly unlucrative and boring to burn down so no one does it without a good reason (aka trying to really taking over the system).
Asset Safetly limitation to a minium to ensure individual players can save their most valuable assets, BPOs, BlingItems etc… - but all ships and large piles of resources are excluded.
Combat Limitations
Fleetsize needs to be restricted again to 255 people. 5 Wings with 5 Squads a 10 people. Skill bound. Bring more, need more FCs.
DPS on a single target should have diminishing returns like Logi already has. Threshold is open for balancing. Splitting up DPS among different Squads on different Targets at the same time should always be more effective than letting the whole fleet shoot at one target. A smaller fleet of better players could actually outperform a larger fleet of F1 grunts.
More AoE debuff-weaponry that needs to be outmaneuvered in the fight (but isn’t instantly game-ending if it hits). So with constant good aiming you can give your fleet a benefit, with constant good maneuvering you can deny the other fleet such benefits. Skill matters more than numbers.
Standing costs based on the chars involved, including alliance- and corporation maintenance costs. High initial costs, moderate monthly bill. Make sure to have as few blues as possible, else it gets expensive. Or deal with an Overview Chaos. good luck.
Remove ALL remote-ship commands. Every player is self responsible to follow orders. No Regroups, no Drone Assist, no Fleetwarps (!!!). This allows smaller high-skill groups to “fish” for people who miswarp or don’t align properly, and the FC has to decide if he warps back to save them and lose time or not and lose ships. Moving a larger fleet of lower-skilled players safely will be a lot slower than moving a small fleet of more skilled people.
Gates with limited mass/minute on a recharge-timer. Slow to funnel a huge fleet of big ships trough. No slowdown for smaller squads or lighter ships.
We can basically go on endlessly from here…, this game has so many aspects that would have littel or no effect on small groups, but exponential effects the larger a group of fleet gets. The problem is that most players simply don’t care for the good of the game. They only care for themselves. "Uhh we can’t do that because I benefit from it!".