Null-Sec Sovreignty Re-Design Proposal

[Alistair]

Sov. Redesign Proposal

Sovereignty is now determined based upon a “Sliding Scale”, based on:

--Occupancy/System Use (i.e. PvE Activity)
--Defense/System Use (i.e. PvP Activity)
--Infrastructure (i.e. Industrial Activity/Structures)
--Station Ownership

Based on the four factors above, System “Ownership” would belong to whomever made the most of the ways to “own” via IMPROVEMENT, RESIDENCY and ACTIVE DEFENSE of a Solar System.

The biggest hurdle of this system is setting the valuation of each portion towards the sliding scale. IN my view, Infrastructure ownership would be the most important, putting up your anchored structures and defending them. Second would be Station ownership (as it’s a portion of Infrastructure). Combat (PvP) and Exploitation (PvE) would be smaller, but meaningful contributors.

Changes to System Structures:

1. Moon Mining POS Module Removed, Replace with an Anchorable Moon Mining Facility. Moon Mining Facilities (MMF’s) can no longer be anchored inside a POS. Moon Mining Facilities must be anchored around a moon separately, and multiple Moon Miners can be anchored (i.e. competition). For each addition Moon Mining Facility anchored and operational, the per-cyle yield is split evenly between them.

2. Station Ownership no longer tied to any other factor in system. Stations can be attacked and fought over at any time.

3. System Improvement structures can be attacked at any time.

4. Structure Defense Guns added, and work similarly to (weaker) Low-Sec NPC Gate Guns. Max of ?? per Structure (say, 4?). These can be anchored at Stations, Moon Mining Facilities, System Upgrade Facilities and Gates. They came in all 4 racial flavors, and in all four Weapon size-classes).

5. System Gates can be Disabled (Temporarily). They cannot be destroyed.

6. Most Structures in System go into a randomized 4-24 hour reinforcement when first attacked, and the their shields are brought to zero hp. Structures cannot be repaired or attacked again until they come out of reinforcement. No fuel is required.

7. Multiple Station can be built per system. Station can be built and anchored at any planet. Maximum of one per Planet.

8. Stations can be destroyed, including all assets held with that station. To do so, a group must first attack (reinforce) a Station. Then attack and conquer the Station. Finally, the have the option at the time of conquest to “Self Destruct” the Station, which starts a 7-day countdown timer. If the Station is re-taken within that 7-day period, the timer is stopped, and the next owner can either conquer, or start a new 7-day timer. During the 7-day timer, assets can be removed by players normally, and docking rights access reverts to “unlimited”. Evacuate at your own risk.

9. System Structures would have HP based on a sliding scale, to offer opportunities to combat fleets of differing sizes. For example, taking out a Station would require a sizeable Capital Ship Fleet. Taking out a POS, a much smaller Capship Fleet, or a sizeable Conventional Fleet. System Upgrade Structures could be quickly knocked out with a much smaller Capfleet, or a still-somewhat large/heavy conventional fleet. Moon Mining Structures, Gate Guns, Planetary Cutoms Offices and other possible improvement structures, would have less HP, and could be reinforced by smaller sized fleets, giving a tiered effect of objectives for those looking to attack and disrupt a Sov. Holder, and making defense a more important choice to make.

Purpose:

The purpose of this system is to make living in, fighting in, and improving a system key to owning that system. It makes it harder to have an afk empire without considerable infrastructure investment. It requires defense of structures, many now undefended by strong POS Shields, in order to retain that infrastructure. It makes living in, fighting in and PvE’ing in a system more important to owning it. It should reduce the size of some Empires, and open up opportunities fro smaller groups to hold a system or more by living there. And it provides for more opportunities for fights, at all the various attackable-at-will System Structures, and makes PvP and stopping PvP within a contested system more useful in terms of taking that system. It offers a complex, but straightforward, system that is true to the nature of EVE. Risk vs. Reward, and Ownership via Control of Space, not just control of a POS.

This system could also (with work) be added on to the low-sec Faction Warfare system, providing additional means to determine low-sec National System ownership.

[Alain Colcer]

We could bang our heads to kingdom come "redesigning" sov mechanics.....the fact is we are still thinking in the historical terms.....

If you ask me, we should first ask how one could theoretically "control" a solar system and then start devising a mechanic.

My view is that noone could "own" a solar system, just declare ownership of it by projection of power..... in that sense there is a number of options which agree somewhat with your proposal:

1) CONCORD is there just to "recognize" the fact an alliance is "declaring" ownership of a corner of space, they don't have a say in anything else.
2) Structures that "claim" ownership are of military nature only, there should be structures that disrupt or dispute such status.
3) Claimed swaths of space should allow the owner to set a set of services/rules much like NPC empires do in high-sec.
4) Investing in placing and expanding the infrastructure present in claimed space should reward the owner with options to earn money easier.

The nature of structures should be:

Housing (outposts, stations, ship hangars, corporate hangars).
Industry (mining, exploration, reactions, module/ship manufacturing, research)
Military (defense, offense, intelligence gathering, communications)

If we design sovereignity with this mind, and slowly develop a way to integrate it on the game i bet we could produce much better results

Regarding the slow improvement of null-sec so it can support more people per system, i believe CCP did well in implementing the POS arrays that create more exploration and deadspace sites to farm, but perhaps lacked imagination as to how passive sources of income could be created besides station taxes and moon miners.

Other options could have been taxes to use stargates (hackeable with proper equipment), POS rents (everyone is able to anchor in your territory given a proper standing set) and with the latest addition of Planetary Custom Offices, that option is already covered.

Low-sec mechanics could be a spin-off of the same ideas, but based on the concept of being a "NPC-aligned" corporation to a specific faction.

[RoemySchneider]

<insert obligatory "turn all null-sec into NPC space"-post>

[Dante]

I like the idea of putting moon miners outside POS shields. Bit iffy on the rest.

I honestly think you could make Sov warfare so much more dynamic if the TCU/IHUB wasn't just another single static objective requiring a every member of a blob to shoot the same target. CCP kind of had the right idea by requiring SBUs to be defended at the same time but it's still pretty one-dimensional and blobtastic.

Sov battles should be about pitched and drawn-out warfare over tens (or even hundreds) of objectives within a system - capture-able beacons making up a Territory Control Network. Basically a bit like FW sites but without the NPCs and never despawning. To reinforce the TCU would require an attacker to capture and hold over 50% of these microsites SIMULTANEOUSLY. Same again to capture after the TCU comes out of reinforced.

This would result in the most efficient way to capture a system being to split a fleet into small squads or even individuals to capture beacons. A defender could attempt to blob up and retake beacons one by one but it wouldn't be quick enough. A split attacking force would be able to re-secure the objective as soon as the blob left to tackle the next beacon, so a defending force would also need to split up in order to defend effectively. Bam - Sov warfare is now about a mad scramble to secure and hold as much of the Territory Control Network as possible whilst evading larger groups of enemies and ganking smaller ones. Battles would potentially last hours of back and forth, take and re-take. With so many objectives to defend, small gangs could begin to ramp up the pressure hours before a main strike and without at least a modicum of defense around the clock, would be able to reinforce the system on their own given enough time.

Just my 2 cents. You'd still require big fleets and caps for stuff like POS bashing and station capture.

[Alain Colcer]

Sov battles should be about pitched and drawn-out warfare over tens (or even hundreds) of objectives within a system

I would prefer if you could "disrupt" secondary objectives within the constellation or region, and if said actions were succesful make the single system you want to capture more vulnerable.

[Mfume]

This would result in the most efficient way to capture a system being to split a fleet into small squads or even individuals to capture beacons. A defender could attempt to blob up and retake beacons one by one but it wouldn't be quick enough. A split attacking force would be able to re-secure the objective as soon as the blob left to tackle the next beacon, so a defending force would also need to split up in order to defend effectively. Bam - Sov warfare is now about a mad scramble to secure and hold as much of the Territory Control Network as possible whilst evading larger groups of enemies and ganking smaller ones. Battles would potentially last hours of back and forth, take and re-take. With so many objectives to defend, small gangs could begin to ramp up the pressure hours before a main strike and without at least a modicum of defense around the clock, would be able to reinforce the system on their own given enough time.

Just my 2 cents. You'd still require big fleets and caps for stuff like POS bashing and station capture.

just to play devil's advocate, if i was defending under such a system, i'd leave a string of proby cynohics on the objectives and sit most of my defense fleet on a titan, repeatedly hotdropping the outnumbered attackers. once they got good at escaping, i'd start presenting them with a proverbial :gudfitez: then open the cyno once they were in some way committed. systems, stations, space, none of that means shit in sov war, only morale, and i question how long you can keep morale up when your grunt pilots (who are probably not the best at spaceships flying) repeatedly get kicked in the nuts, outnumbered and outgunned.

but this is just my off the cuff idea for shitting on people attacking my hypothetical space, obviously the TQ reality would be different.

[Dante]

just to play devil's advocate, if i was defending under such a system, i'd leave a string of proby cynohics on the objectives and sit most of my defense fleet on a titan, repeatedly hotdropping the outnumbered attackers. once they got good at escaping, i'd start presenting them with a proverbial :gudfitez: then open the cyno once they were in some way committed. systems, stations, space, none of that means shit in sov war, only morale, and i question how long you can keep morale up when your grunt pilots (who are probably not the best at spaceships flying) repeatedly get kicked in the nuts, outnumbered and outgunned.

but this is just my off the cuff idea for shitting on people attacking my hypothetical space, obviously the TQ reality would be different.

The beauty lies in that for every beacon you successfully hot-dropped (realistically 1 per titan every 5 minutes max say?) you'd lose 10. Under such a system you need to defend, retake and hold every objective (of which there could be maybe 30-100). The system needs to be designed so that the most efficient way to reinforce/capture a system is to jump in a fleet and get a fleet member to every beacon and start capturing it. The only way to defend then becomes to 'clean' every objective of hostiles before they can be captured, an activity which cannot be efficiently completed by clumping together and defending them one by one.

[Mfume]

The beauty lies in that for every beacon you successfully hot-dropped (realistically 1 per titan every 5 minutes max say?) you'd lose 10. Under such a system you need to defend, retake and hold every objective (of which there could be maybe 30-100). The system needs to be designed so that the most efficient way to reinforce/capture a system is to jump in a fleet and get a fleet member to every beacon and start capturing it. The only way to defend then becomes to 'clean' every objective of hostiles before they can be captured, an activity which cannot be efficiently completed by clumping together and defending them one by one.

yeah... you missed the most important bit of what i wrote:

systems, stations, space, none of that means shit in sov war, only morale, and i question how long you can keep morale up when your grunt pilots (who are probably not the best at spaceships flying) repeatedly get kicked in the nuts, outnumbered and outgunned.

repeatedly getting blobbed out without even the hope of a single kill to mitigate the loss is not fun for anyone. and making things not fun for the other side is pretty much the universal winning strategy of a serious sov war.

once the other side is no longer having fun and has stopped logging into eve, you can take everything back. easy-mode.

[Smuggo]

Well it's not like current Sov war is fun anyway.

[Mfume]

Well it's not like current Sov war is fun anyway.

I wasn't around for the POS-sov system, but I've hit my fair share of POSes and that shit was just as bad as hitting TCUs, SBUs, and stations. Except worse because you can't always AFK the POS bash because of defenses.

[Smuggo]

Well it's not like current Sov war is fun anyway.

I wasn't around for the POS-sov system, but I've hit my fair share of POSes and that shit was just as bad as hitting TCUs, SBUs, and stations. Except worse because you can't always AFK the POS bash because of defenses.

Yeah I'm sure it also wasn't fun. Partly because, as you say, people can afk this shit. No one really seems to properly fight over Sov. They just square up in supercaps and whoever has the least backs down and then structure grinding ensues.

Lots of smaller objectives, requiring multiple mobile squadrons to take and defend would make the game far more interesting, make sov war far less reliant on shitty caps and also require your average scrub to maybe get a fucking clue about how Eve works instead of just orbiting and anchor and pressing F1.

[Mfume]

Yeah I'm sure it also wasn't fun. Partly because, as you say, people can afk this shit. No one really seems to properly fight over Sov. They just square up in supercaps and whoever has the least backs down and then structure grinding ensues.

Lots of smaller objectives, requiring multiple mobile squadrons to take and defend would make the game far more interesting, make sov war far less reliant on shitty caps and also require your average scrub to maybe get a fucking clue about how Eve works instead of just orbiting and anchor and pressing F1.

just curious, have you ever been involved in sov warfare? or even been a part of a sov 0.0 alliance?

[Smuggo]

Yeah I'm sure it also wasn't fun. Partly because, as you say, people can afk this shit. No one really seems to properly fight over Sov. They just square up in supercaps and whoever has the least backs down and then structure grinding ensues.

Lots of smaller objectives, requiring multiple mobile squadrons to take and defend would make the game far more interesting, make sov war far less reliant on shitty caps and also require your average scrub to maybe get a fucking clue about how Eve works instead of just orbiting and anchor and pressing F1.

just curious, have you ever been involved in sov warfare? or even been a part of a sov 0.0 alliance?

Yes, it was dull as shit.

[Dante]

yeah... you missed the most important bit of what i wrote:

systems, stations, space, none of that means shit in sov war, only morale, and i question how long you can keep morale up when your grunt pilots (who are probably not the best at spaceships flying) repeatedly get kicked in the nuts, outnumbered and outgunned.

repeatedly getting blobbed out without even the hope of a single kill to mitigate the loss is not fun for anyone. and making things not fun for the other side is pretty much the universal winning strategy of a serious sov war.

once the other side is no longer having fun and has stopped logging into eve, you can take everything back. easy-mode.

I didn't miss your point, I was addressing the false premise - that a defender would easily be able to blob up, gank a few attacking ships and make them give up. Using the tactics you suggested, the defender would lose their system. The attacker might get a few ships ganked, but unless the defender escalated the conflict and used ships to defend all objectives then an attacker could happily conquer the system in inties and dramiels.

[Mfume]

Using the tactics you suggested, the defender would lose their system. The attacker might get a few ships ganked, but unless the defender escalated the conflict and used ships to defend all objectives then an attacker could happily conquer the system in inties and dramiels.

And like I said, actually losing space, regardless of the mechanics involved, means nothing (CSAAs excepted) in a sov war. At some point, one side gets bored or griefed into not logging into EVE, at which point you take space essentially risk-free regardless of mechanics involved.

If you want to fix sov warfare, first find someway to make it something other than two sides doing their best to make it as unfun as possible for the other side.

edit: thinking about it more, if there was some form of "Scorched Earth" mechanic in play, whereas lost sov tangibly lost value to the previous sov-owner in some way, that would probably work. At least until alliances clued in on the fact that storing stuff in destructible stations (for example) was creating an achilles' heel for yourself and moved all their important assets to non-destructible stations.

[Dante]

And like I said, actually losing space, regardless of the mechanics involved, means nothing (CSAAs excepted) in a sov war. At some point, one side gets bored or griefed into not logging into EVE, at which point you take space essentially risk-free regardless of mechanics involved.

If you want to fix sov warfare, first find someway to make it something other than two sides doing their best to make it as unfun as possible for the other side.
This is by no means universal and is in many ways caused by the fact that the current system is a grind. I don't think CCP should redesign or balance the sov system based on some alliances being complete failures - those alliances lose their space whatever the system used. A multi-objective system actually forces a bigger alliance only attacking to grief/evict a smaller one to actively defend and live in the space once conquered, as barriers for entry are lower and retaking whilst avoiding hotdrops is easier - this opposed to lazy defenders just titan bridging in for 5 minutes and blowing up SBUs while otherwise leaving the system empty.


edit: thinking about it more, if there was some form of "Scorched Earth" mechanic in play, whereas lost sov tangibly lost value to the previous sov-owner in some way, that would probably work. At least until alliances clued in on the fact that storing stuff in destructible stations (for example) was creating an achilles' heel for yourself and moved all their important assets to non-destructible stations.
This already exists to a certain extent with the sov indexes and loss of IHUB upgrades. I like the idea destroyable stations personally, but it's pretty contentious.

[Lusulpher]

CCP needs a Psychologist on staff.
Sov is merely Freudian dickwaving.


Team Aedward says they "own" Place B, Place B has carebears[Team Bella] farming moons at profit. Team Bella sign surrender treaty. Money is automatically deducted from their Alliance wallet TO TEAM AEDWARD[fuck NPC Sov costs! Right in it's stupid asshole.]
Team A gets to name the Systems/facilities, with Universal Map updating at DT in that region/levy taxes/fines/rent, via one Interface. And Team B submits to the pillage, or they fight.

If they don't/can't pay, then the complicated blobbing powercreep bullshit begins. And that can be improved with Capture the flag mechanics on top of AoE localizations. Y CCP make this so difficult?

Then there is maintanence of Starbases, balancing nullsec income v risk, market independence from highsec using storefronts...that shit is complicated.

[Sponk]

CCP needs a Psychologist on staff.
This is the most insightful thing I have ever seen you write.

[Mfume]

This is by no means universal and is in many ways caused by the fact that the current system is a grind.

Then you're free to show me the sov war where fleet numbers on the losing side remained high right up until the point where the last system was lost. How many times do you have to see the pattern of less competent second tier/renter alliances buckling, followed very swiftly by the overlord alliance folding up shop and losing all their space?


A multi-objective system actually forces a bigger alliance only attacking to grief/evict a smaller one to actively defend and live in the space once conquered, as barriers for entry are lower and retaking whilst avoiding hotdrops is easier - this opposed to lazy defenders just titan bridging in for 5 minutes and blowing up SBUs while otherwise leaving the system empty.

No, it does not 'force' the attacker to do anything at all. Once again, for the guys who lost their space fighting the attacker was not fun. If it was fun, they'd still be fighting. Very few going to log in to not have fun by fighting the guys that just pushed their shit in repeatedly, which is why the "we'll wulfpax our old space" posts are so laughable.

Losing fights, no matter how ridiculous the circumstances (10 on 150), kills your participation. By coming up with a sov system that places the attacker in bite-sized chunks to be crushed whenever the defender feels like, while still demanding attackers jump through hoops to gain ground, is literally a bigger boost to the defense than the fool-proof station timers are.


This already exists to a certain extent with the sov indexes and loss of IHUB upgrades. I like the idea destroyable stations personally, but it's pretty contentious.

I personally don't like the idea of destroyable stations, because it's just one more thing discouraging people from actually living in 0.0, but I can't think of any alliance, no matter how bad, that actually cared if it lost sov indexes or IHUB upgrades while fighting a sov war. Maybe if they cost as much as a titan or something equally ridiculous, but right now, just buy a new one and get ratters to hit the system hard for 3 or 4 days, good as new.

[Sponk]

You know what would be good about 'activity level sovereignty'?

An alliance only loses space when it stops turning up to fights.

Turn up and win? yay, you keep sov and loot all the wrecks.
Turn up and lose? sov still high due to activity. Try again tomorrow.
Don't turn up? sov drops precipitously.

[Mfume]

You know what would be good about 'activity level sovereignty'?

An alliance only loses space when it stops turning up to fights.

Turn up and win? yay, you keep sov and loot all the wrecks.
Turn up and lose? sov still high due to activity. Try again tomorrow.
Don't turn up? sov drops precipitously.

That would be good, actually. Although I'd be concerned with it being gamed with alts at safespots, etc. just going through that much :effort: is an indication the alliance is active and relatively healthy.

[Dante]

How many times do you have to see the pattern of less competent second tier/renter alliances buckling, followed very swiftly by the overlord alliance folding up shop and losing all their space?

This is as it should be. The sov system can't and shouldn't be about sheltering fail alliances. The problem as I see it is that it's far to easy for the larger alliances to hold and defend space they rarely set foot in; by forming up, titan bridging in, blowing up some SBUs and then leaving. So, any solution needs to make it easy to claim sov if you live in and can control a system 90% of the time, but harder for a larger alliance to project power.


Losing fights, no matter how ridiculous the circumstances (10 on 150), kills your participation. By coming up with a sov system that places the attacker in bite-sized chunks to be crushed whenever the defender feels like, while still demanding attackers jump through hoops to gain ground, is literally a bigger boost to the defense than the fool-proof station timers are.

You talk like it wouldn't be trivially easy for a small group of attackers in light ships to just warp off in your hypothetical 'don't defend, just grief-to-win' situation (and light ships are all that would be required if the defender won't actually fight each objective). While I can agree that moral has a bearing on deciding the ultimate winner of a conflict (and it should), there's nothing inherently grief-able about the system suggested. There's also a counter to your argument, where the bigger alliance gets bored of playing whack-a-mole for a system in the arse end of no-where that they don't even use. Forming up everyday and getting blue-balled, apart from 1% damage on a few light ships, whilst also losing sov because your FCs are too risk averse to defend properly would also be fairly hard on morale, I imagine.

Even so, it would be easy to reduce griefing in the design of the system - for example by placing the objective ~70km from a deadspace style warp-in (like FW plexes, perhaps without the gates?), or perhaps making them disrupt nearby cyno fields. You're fixating on small hypotheticals, when the salient point is that having many objectives would be more interesting and dynamic for 0.0 than single fixed point ones.

[Mfume]

There's also a counter to your argument, where the bigger alliance gets bored of playing whack-a-mole for a system in the arse end of no-where that they don't even use.

Killing small light ships in no-tank, instalock Canes or shield Zealots will never get old for a large portion of the playerbase.


Forming up everyday and getting blue-balled, apart from 1% damage on a few light ships, whilst also losing sov because your FCs are too risk averse to defend properly would also be fairly hard on morale, I imagine.

You imagine? You've never actually done this? At any rate, losing systems never bothered me personally, stations could have some inherent value if I still had stuff trapped, but mostly I didn't care. What does bother dudes is getting flatly raped.


Even so, it would be easy to reduce griefing in the design of the system - for example by placing the objective ~70km from a deadspace style warp-in (like FW plexes, perhaps without the gates?), or perhaps making them disrupt nearby cyno fields. You're fixating on small hypotheticals, when the salient point is that having many objectives would be more interesting and dynamic for 0.0 than single fixed point ones.

This is by no means a hypothetical for me. It's similar to the stuff we did in my corp owned ratting system to discourage small gangs from entering, mixed in with some of the stuff FA tried to do while clearing undefended PL sov widgets up north (their SBs got owned by a solo Zealot) and we tried to do with ninja-SBUing when the Northern War went south for my alliance.

Some of your comments ("I'd imagine", "losing systems hurts morale", "multiple objectives would be more interesting") lead me to believe you haven't actually fought a sov war in last year or so.

EDIT:
And the more I think about it, activity level would be better because it would act as a lever to encourage sov entities to respond to roaming gangs, it would force alliances to populate space more or less 23/7 (always good for fights) and it wouldn't mandate the attacker cripple themselves WRT to actual fights by breaking into smaller pieces.

[Takon Orlani]

Base sov off activity levels. Pvp pve industry. If one drops to 0 the sov slips.

[Dante]

Killing small light ships in no-tank, instalock Canes or shield Zealots will never get old for a large portion of the playerbase.
Irrelevant. Being aligned isn't hard. Ships show up on grid before they land and can lock you, even if you find using the d-scanner too hard. Insta-lock is only really useful for camping gates tbh.


This is by no means a hypothetical for me. It's similar to the stuff we did in my corp owned ratting system to discourage small gangs from entering, mixed in with some of the stuff FA tried to do while clearing undefended PL sov widgets up north (their SBs got owned by a solo Zealot) and we tried to do with ninja-SBUing when the Northern War went south for my alliance.
We're discussing a theoretical sov system, so yes, it's a hypothetical for you.


Some of your comments ("I'd imagine", "losing systems hurts morale", "multiple objectives would be more interesting") lead me to believe you haven't actually fought a sov war in last year or so.

Ding! Exactly right. I haven't done large scale sov warfare (it's fucking boring) in about a year - in which time the mechanics have changed not one bit. If we must go ad hom, your comments make me think you're a massive gankbear, with very little experience of any 0.0 conflict that wasn't hugely one-sided. Not that any of this is in any way an indicator our our relative ability to understand 0.0 mechanics. I use 'ifs' because I'm rather foolishly responding to narrow minded scenarios where I don't know the participants or background, not because I'm unsure if getting blue-balled is bad for morale or not.


Base sov off activity levels. Pvp pve industry. If one drops to 0 the sov slips.
It's a nice thought, but it seems impossibly hard to make any sort of balanced PvP activity level that isn't massively exploitable. Any idea how it would work?

Do all pure PvP alliances now require pets to rat and mine for them? How do you actually take space off another alliance, refuse to PvP them so that their activity level drops? :p

[Dratic]

I definately prefer the idea of an activity based sov and less of build structure farm sov points and get the afk empire.

A system for pvp points i'd think maybe you could have it so it counts only when the system is contested. Defender and Attacker stake claim to the system and then their activity against each other in pvp scores points which could then be scaled. Cheap or stragetically less important ships score only a few points where as hacs capitals supers score more. You could maybe incorporate something for less points with more people on the mail etc to encourage small scale pvp.

Definately needs more work tho.

[Spartan Dax]

There's not really any need to base Sov off PVP activities though. That will happen naturally.

Sov based off:
1 Building
2 mining
3 plexing
4 ratting

Would satisfy the parameters needed for an activity based sov (lolbots but that's a separate issue)

Sov degradation should be rapid, IE if you afk your Sov meter will drop fairly quickly to a low level of sov strength. The higher it is the faster it will drop. Fighting over sov should not be about reducing the other entities sov primarily instead it should be about getting your own sov higher than theirs. Think "tug of war".

Building can be done in stations as well as poses so we'll have targets for the Capital fleets out there and the other 3 parameters can be accomplished by smaller gangs.

Obvious pros. Challenging sov must be done by getting your own sov-meter up. Those 5 alliances you brought with you might help reducing your targets sov but they can't increase your own sov meter. Going on an extended "vacation" will cause your friends sov to slip. They might not want to stay away for too long.
Mercenary work, A Sov holder attacking someone else will likely/should lose sov strength due to decreased activity in the pve activities. Find their weakspots and hire people to exploit them.
Miners and industrialists add to sov. Industry corps hasn't been seen in large scale in 0.0 since first half 2007. We desperatly need them back out there imo.

Oh yeah.... Offlined poses should degrade to 1% sctructure in a week and not be able to be fuelled again until it was full repped. Fuck all those systems with poses on every moon.

[Malcanis]

(lolbots but that's a separate issue)

And if alliances do try to maintain their sov with bots, well, there's your "small gang objective" guys. You even get killmails.

[Takon Orlani]

Ok then leave out pvp.

That doesn't seem like a bad system at all. Better than the crap we have now where we just secure space for our bots to use.


(lolbots but that's a separate issue)

And if alliances do try to maintain their sov with bots, well, there's your "small gang objective" guys. You even get killmails.

It's easy to stop bots. One neut in system or an awox alt is all you need.

[Mfume]

Being in a pos still counts as "pilots active in space."

[Spartan Dax]

Being in a pos still counts as "pilots active in space."

Semantics have nothing to do with an activity based sov system.

[Redmoore]

sov level based on activity indexes could grant a bonus in the way incursions/wormholes give penalties, making active systems easier to defend. If activity index is based on alliance level then you could even "pre invade" by being active in the area before trying to take sov.