Bang Head Here

Do we need to shoot structures to claim sovereignty?

To answer that question we need to examine how players interact with the game.  Players can harvest resources, transform resources, and destroy resources.  The primary method of harvesting resources is by shooting something at something else for a period of time and then receiving the reward for the your time spent.  Bullets, rockets, mining lasers, hacking modules, core extractors, pick your poison for the job at hand and receive your reward. Then you take your isk, pile of mins, moon goo, drone poo, or whatever else and exchange it for something else.  Now that you have your new shiny bit of flotsam off you go until it is transformed again into another bauble, or destroyed forever.  The great circle of Eve life and it all starts with a bang.

Shooting things for sovereignty then makes sense as a mechanic in Eve. 

Does it have to be that way?

No.

What would we do instead?

Good question.

Having played Eve for many a year it is hard not to notice that the only cost in Eve that truly matters is time.   Both the faction warfare system and sov system have a time component.  That time component serves a couple functions for players.  Mainly it allows defenders time to react.  The structures provide a location on where people are likely to be.  Location plus time to get there, equals space battle. Much rejoicing ensues.

So what we need is an activity that promotes conflict with a lengthy window of time to for the conflict parties to interact. I have several ideas banging through my head, not all that are relevant to this topic so I'm going to pass this off to you for now. What do you think would fulfill those requirements?

Additional reading

Faction Warfare

 https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=124940

Jester’s Trek
 http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2012/11/proposal-tug-of-war-sovereignty.html
http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2011/08/tug-of-war.html

56 Pilots

In Eve Online there is an area of space where players can play that is open to player control and rule.  Over the years there have been a series of attempts to make a "game" of the system by adding rules, consequences, and benefits for controlling a particular area of space.  What if the rules changed?

First topic:  If the current game mechanics for transfer so sovereignty did not exist, but instead sovereignty was based only on alliance population in system, how would the game be different?

Chaos and consolidation! Sovereignty and the mechanics based upon it would be a joke and not even worth the bragging rights of this system is ours. During a big fleet fight sovereignty may change several times during the course of the fight.  A large convoy of ships coming through, there goes the sovereignty of the system changing again. Test Alliance Please Ignore as of this writing has 10,648 members and holds 189 systems.  Some quick math to find out the number of members per system and we get a number of a little more than 56 members per system. 56 active pilots can be a good deterrent a small or midsized corporation invasion. If you factor in time zones, play time, alt accounts, and whatever factors then the space that Test holds becomes even more empty.  In your last jaunt through 0.0, how many systems could you have claimed just by flying through in a Buzzard.

In order to get the benefits of sovereignty status, alliances would have to concentrate their numbers to not lose space to the casual, or less than casual, flyby.  There would be a strong disincentive to leave the space you hold  because of the chance of loosing your upgrades.  That would leave more room for new groups to join the 0.0 club, but would it really worth it?  For the players that are looking for stability and order, maybe so.  Maybe 0.0 would devolve into a bunch of fiefdoms that agree to not mess with each others holdings.  Would grief fleets of hundreds of covops pilots launch from empire space and just try to mess with alliances trying to get sovereignty bonuses?

Population change alone is not going to work as a replacement to the current sovereignty system.  Structure bashing may not be fun, but it is orderly and you have the chance to shoot stuff. When I think about the kind of games I like playing, I prefer the ones that give me choices to make that are both good and bad, and may the smartest player win.  Eve's end game should embrace players making choices, empowering them to make the game decisions that will make or break their empire.

Next Topic: Do we need to structure bash to claim space?