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Monday, October 26, 2009

Cogitation

(yes it's a word, go look it up...)

I got thinking. Very dangerous I know. We're currently going through a slow period for both blogging and EVE content in the media. A bit annoying if you like reading about EVE but the truth is we're in the pre-patch doldrums pretty hardcore at the moment. Even if, as a pilot/corp/alliance planing on continuing with wormhole space regardless of what happens in 0.0 space come December first, there is not much directly that will affect me and mine one can't help but be affected by the hopes and expectations of the rest of EVE.

Lets see what we know, bit ticket items first:
  • Sov changes
  • Super cap changes
Then there's some minor but interesting things:
  • Planets look revamp
  • Stars
  • Faction and Pirate ship re-balance
  • Fleet finder
  • New mail client
  • Moondoggie (in game browser based on chromium)
  • Projectiles adjustments
Lets go over the two major itmes, using our crystal ball and see where we're headed. I'll save the rest for future blogs.

Sov changes

This is the big one everyone is holding their breath over. What we know for sure so far is that they are doing away with POS being the space holding mechanism. What we know about the new mechanism is that there are going to be 3 major features to system sovereignty. There are claim markers - these can be anchored anywhere. I figure right in front of an offensive death star will be the common spot. Why offensive you ask? Simple because you want to shoot the people coming to kill your claim marker. Even if you're offline your POS won't be (it will work better with POS gunners obviously). This in itself will just about guarantee that dreads and carriers will be involved in any serious attempt to take system sovereignty away from someone else. Sure you can disrupt their claim and slam their system down to it's base values but actively removing them will involve cap fleets. Plan accordingly.

The second major feature will be the system hub. Still no clue where this will be located and defenses it will have etc... But the idea is by working on this item you can improve what spawns in your system and therefore what you can extract from it. This will also include things that will enable you to anchor modules like cyno jammers at POSs in the system. So the system hub will be something of high importance for any system which is intended to be exploited. Of course we still don't know the level of concentration that will be possible and the costs yet. We'll have to see how this develops.

The third major feature will be claim disruptor modules. Apparently these need to be anchored at all gates in a system in order to make a flag vulnerable to being attacked. We'll have to see how these work in conjunction with the flags to control sovereignty in a system. The initial thought is that it will make defense of hub systems easier than dead-end ones. We'll have to see how it all works out.

Supercap Changes

The Titans are loosing their existing "kill all the small fry" weapons and getting a "Exterminate that one ship NOW" button. Motherships are becoming Supercarriers and gaining fighterbombers - an anti-capital ship type of fighter drone. Look, we've already established that claim markers will probably be established at deathstar POSes (I'm pretty sure they would be less well defended at other locations). A bunch of POS gunners at such a POS would probably make mincemeat of any sub-capital fleet that attacked, so any serious attempt to dislodge a sov-holder will involve dreads. Which means that counter dread defensive fleets will be called for. This is where we'll see supercaps involved. I suspect that we'll see supercaps involved whenever a cap vs cap fight develops.

The impact of it all

This is the big question. Have a conversation with any high sec resident with 0.0 aspirations and they are pinning their hopes on this expansion providing them with the opportunity to head to 0.0. The fact is that most current large alliances may have industrial stumps but the truth is that they are 90% PvP due to the need to blob in 0.0 warfare.

The theory here is that sovereignty will equate to income for the alliances. The current reality is that moon mining equates to income for alliances.

I fail to see how this will translate unless they make moon mining part of that sovereingty. The truth is even with the changes to the relative value of moon minerals, moon mining will still account for 90% of a 0.0 alliances income. Throughout all these changes I have failed to spot any part where there are any changes to moon mining and it's mechanics per see. The truth is that moon goo in the aggregate will be just as valuable as before. The value will be better distributed amongst the moon minerals but the value itself does not look like it will change significantly. This means that an alliance will still control as much territory as it can in order to provide lines of communication between it's critical moons. Basic sovereignty does not look like it will be too expensive. So I think we'll see plenty of large alliances do the land grab thing again. The smaller entities will simply get squashed by roaming steamrollers keeping the space lanes clean between the moon systems of major entities. They won't care about developing those areas but they will care about what they will see as encroachment on their moon mineral webs.

The supercap and POS invulnerability changes should make things interesting however. All supercap yards will be permanently vulnerable. Roaming battleship gangs no longer face instant decimation at the hands of a Titan. I think we're going to see more roaming gangs. I also suspect that due to this we're going to see a resurgence of Minmatar ships on the PvP front as 0.0 becomes a game of raid and counter raid.

This is where the people wanting in on 0.0 action are going to be running into brick walls. They are going to go in thinking "I'll just go grab this quiet system over there and no one will notice". The big alliances are then going to go: "sure but pay us this much per month or we come visiting". At which point - probably a month or two down the road, we will see a new exodus back to high sec. It should however provide for a chaotic action-filled month or two mind you.

Who knows, I may be wrong but I suspect that we won't see much population difference at the end of a couple of months. We'll have to see. In the meanwhile I'll be in wormhole space.

8 comments:

Rayne Stryker said...

I hope you are wrong, because I would love to come out to null sec and establish a corner of my own, but I have a feeling you are correct. I guess I can hope.

Maybe sit at an entrance to null sec in a Velator with a sign saying "All I want to do is manufacture, please let me camp in your space." or something like that. :)

manasi said...

how will the removal or limitation to Dysprosium or Prometheum from T2 production NOT affect you?

The reason these two muons are locked in and protected is this is the SOLE way that alliances can make passive income...with the removal or limitation on these minerals the prices across the system for dysprosium and Prometheum have dropped in 1/2 ALREADY....

in affect we are seeing speculation on the coming changes and I for one think they are positive.

If you fly a T2 ship, if you build T2 mods, if you salvage T2 ships whatever you do this will have a big impact on the market.

I doubt very seriously that the sov claiming marker will be allowed near a POS, if it is then that is idiotic in the extreme, the idea is move AWAY from POS warfare not into the second iteration of it.

The COST associated with an alliance will be design collapse them into smaller spaces ( alliances pay by # of gates they control) so the more gates the more expensive) with people concentrated in systems there will be a LOT of room available where no one 'claims' anything so that smaller corps/ alliances can join in.

Letrange said...

@manasi you're discounting the effect of the increase in demand of the R8-16 moon-goo. R1s will never be an issue since you run into them everywhere, but the mid range will also pick up in demand. What it will do is shift the value from the dispro and onto other moons. The big alliances also control plenty of the other moons so in aggregate the overall value does not change. Your R64's are a little less profitable but your R8-R16 are suddenly more profitable and it's conceivable that R1's will actually start paying for their upkeep (armor plates are going to be hot hot hot). Remember with no pos spam for sov reasons, there's no reason to mine the low values just to try and offset the cost of running a moon claiming POS, so the oversupply of low end moon goo should dry up eventually.

As for the costs, we'll find out this weekend. Initial values seemed to indicate that it's the hub and associated modules that cost, not the raw sov flag. We'll have to see the final numbers to see what is what. If it's associated mainly for the gates and the hub upkeep is an order of magnitude smaller than raw sov then fine. If it's the other way around, then probably not. Even without sov however large alliances have "areas of influence" comprising the areas their large gangs roam when not involved in a major war.

You may concentrate the sov systems but that has no effect on the ability to project power in your area. And it isn't like the new sov systems will do anything to restrict an alliances ability to project power. If anything the lack of doomsday will increase the ability of all large alliances to project power. The new sov changes won't make that magically disappear.

As for FLAGs see this thread:

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=1202032

Flag must be 50km from a POS, but that puts it well within the gun range. So they will be defensible. There is something about outposts and system hubs needing to fall first but we'll see what that's about this weekend.

Letrange said...

Also with the current NAP-fest between the major alliances there are lots of bored PvP pilots looking for targets. Like, say, newbie alliances moving within roam range of their main bases....

Regardless of actual sov held, THAT will determine whether new alliances end up in 0.0. I suspect that we will end up with a lot of UFA style cascade failures within a few months of Dominion starting up. Remember small alliance = chew toy.

Rayne Stryker said...

This post really clarified what is coming for me.

Letrange, I have kind of an off topic request. I am interested in all the ins and outs of wormhole colonization and POS set up and running. Can you point me at a place, as you seem to be the expert, for this information? Or can you tell me what I need to know?

Letrange said...

@rayne
I refer you to "It's a barrier to entry not bottleneck you noob" post I did a while ago.

Anonymous said...

You know what I want to see? Motherships returning as king of industrial ships. Sure, the Rorqual can compress ore. That's very nice. The mothership, on the other hand, should be able to build ships out of raw material. =D

That was... entirely random.

Rayne Stryker said...

Thank you for the link. I was sure you had posted something but was not sure where.