The Age of Sovless Wars

World War Bee (or the War of Sovless Aggression) taught us several things I think are worth pondering over.

The Fozzie sov system had its first epic test in the most recent great war and it demonstrated one truth is still true: all things being equal, the side with N pilots is defeated by the side with N+1 pilots. No amount of strategy or doctrines could have saved the Imperium from the wall of enemies arrayed against them, but what for certain doomed them to lose sovereignty was the lack of numbers to defend their space. The Mittani can blame it on Fizzle Sov and how the any attacker can aggressively  entosis while only the sov holder alliance can defensively counter-entosis, but really he's just trying to deflect blame from the Imperium's failures in diplomacy, grand strategy, and leadership.

Another lesson from this war was the sheer concentration of ISK in the hands of gambling site owners. This war would not happen without the infusion of ISK from IWANTISK bankers looking to settle a score with parts of the Imperium. While the ISK was not necessary to the victory over the Imperium, it was necessary to motivate several parties to make the effort to see it happen. Once they found the Imperium unable to withstand the assault, natural predator instincts took over.

I fear the results of these rich individuals learning of their power that the ISK can buy. Its possible we are entering the Age of Sovless wars where holding or taking sov is a secondary consideration, and the real factors have to do with who the ISK holders want destroyed. After all, if you can be paid to fight instead of having to rat for your ISK, wouldn't you take that option too?

The war for Deklien may be over and parts of the Moneybadger coalition breaking up, but I expect hostilities to continue for a long time. It was years before CVA restored their dominance in Providence and the area of the North that was razed was many times larger and is now being balkanized into semi-friendly/semi-hostile kingdoms. And don't think for a moment that the Goons will sit in Saranen forever pouting over everyone in the playground coming to kick their sandcastle over. In the end, this upset of the status quo in the North is good for everyone involved and the new life breathed into the Reasons To Be for both winners and losers will fuel wars for much time to come. 

The real question is how will citadels and capital changes affect the next war?

Interesting times indeed.

Migrations

Picture I actually took!

Over at Target Caller blog Talvorian Dex had a post called Into The Great Wide Open in which he discusses his dissatisfaction with null sec under the new sov mechanics and how he has decided to move elsewhere in EVE:

For my part, I’m not interested in sov null right now, at least as a defender. I want to search for those enjoyable fights, fight outnumbered, and use the sp Talvorian has, similar to how we did when RP was based in lowsec. As I considered the kind of content I enjoyed and looked at the time zone activity of corporations who engaged in it, one strong option came to the top.

Adversity. is a slightly smaller corporation with a good pedigree and the kind of activity that really appeals to me. Their doctrines are expensive, but perform admirably. I haven't even moved all my assets out yet (Archon 2.0 on the way...), but I've already gone on a few fleets with them. I've gotten to fly my dreads and T3 cruisers. So far, everyone I've spoken to has been friendly, welcoming, and very capable. I'm always impressed and energized by how friendly dirty pirates and criminals are to members of their community. We have, I believe, one blue. It’s the wild west, baby, and I should have plenty of opportunity to shoot all the things.

And while null may have had the wind knocked out of its lungs, lowsec is getting more crowded by the day.

A couple days later Stabs at Stabbed Up blog posted about his first day in Faction Warfare with Brave:

All told I've spent about 8 hours of the last 24 doing FW and had really good fun. Of the 10 Merlins I brought down 8 are dead but I've got 7 kills and am the corp's top killer!

A couple weeks ago I posted about seeing famous faces in my roams lately, like Elo Knight of former Black Legion fame.

Low sec, especially in the Caldari-Gallente war zone and neighbouring systems, is getting very busy lately. There definitely seems to be a migration from null sec to low sec this fall and I wondered exactly why that is. There seems to be a general flow of unhappiness from current null sec overlords about Fozzie Sov but as Rixx Javix on the most recent A Podcast Apart episode said, the complaints actually describe the system working as intended for the most part.

I have a theory.

As much as the null sec coalitions were unhappy with Dominion Sov, they largely adapted their social structures and operations around it. The large entities developed No Attacking Sov treaties and simply roamed and farmed each other for the "good fights". The static stagnation of null sec was boring in one sense, but offered a rich environment to make ISK relatively risk free and still have fights with each other that were all about the killmails and less the strategic objectives.

Fozzie Sov combined with Phoebe jump changes modified the environment purposely to break up the stagnation, and as much as the null sec overlords have adapted to the new rules the line members have found themselves thrown out of their comfort zone. AS much as everyone hated Super Capital Enforced Sov and wanted Occupancy Based Sov, it required a lot less effort on the part of the alliance members to maintain it the former compared to the latter. Suddenly its not just make ISK and have good fights, its work to defend your space and keep indexes up.

So these disgruntled pilots look around and what do they see? Relatively safe space and plenty of good fights going on in low sec all the time. As and former allies and enemies make their home in low sec, more pilots are enticed to leave null sec and give it a try.

But its not all bad news for null sec, oh no! Although the existing power structures have some crumbling around the edges there are still a lot of pilots invested in staying in null and maintaining their empires. And, a lot of small groups previously locked out of the null sec game are squeezing in using the new mechanics to dip their toes in null and have some fun. Additionally, a portion of the newcomers to low sec will eventually get the urge to try their hand at null sec domination once more and will migrate back. But for now, the cluster is turned on its head.

Where will you be?

Reply to Tweet From Susan Black

On twitter I got a message from Susan Black (@gamerchick42) about my post from earlier this week:

In a comment on that post, Ripard Teg provided a better looking graph of the data which I will post here:

The purpose of my earlier post was not to compare overall base logged in numbers from 2014 to 2015 because, as many people point out when I post about those numbers there has been a lot of mechanic changes in that time period from Phoebe on out which can contribute to that decline such as the jump changes regulating a lot of cyno alt characters to the logged off bin and ISBoxer get the much needed ban hammer.

What I was trying to investigate, and perhaps did not explain properly, was whether or not the trend of the logged in player numbers going down from the start of the summer to near the end of summer as demonstrated by 2013 and 2014's lines in the graph above, would be replicated by 2015's numbers and how closely it would match and whether it would show any deviation upwards or downwards to indicate if FozzieSov had a positive or negative impact.

My conclusion was that the low point in the summer seemed to have ended earlier than previous years so might be evidence that FozzieSov has increased player activity compared to where it would be this year had FozzieSov not been deployed. There is no question that activity is not as high as previous recent years but, as stated above, there may be mitigating mechanics changes to account for some if not all of that drop.

I hope that clears it up!

FozzieSov Preliminary Report Card

We're three weeks into the Fozzie Sov era and its time for a preliminary report card based solely on the question: are more people logged in and playing?

For a baseline, let's first look at the summer of 2014 to get an idea of the ebb and flow of players logging in over the summer with its related holidays and good weather (at least in the Northern Hemisphere).

So we can see the PCUs dip as June and July unfold and typically pick back up in the end of August.

Now, let's see how 2015 is doing:

So far we see the traditional dip starting in June but July has been trending higher than we saw in 2014. Not gob-smacking outrageous improvement, possibly not even a statistically significant improvement, but the low point of the summer so far was prior to Fozzie Sov's deployment on July 14th, not post. 

There's not enough there to say that Fozzie Sov is a success in its current form, but I am happy to report its not a failure either. And I recognize that the July 14th deployment was one more milestone on the imfamous three year plan of CCP Seagull, so the stage is set for the next big part.

Charts courtesy of EVE-Offline

N+1 Problem Redux

Listening to the latest High Drag podcast episode I was struck by a misconception some of the hosts had that I heard before. Specifically, that FozzieSov will break up large fleets into several smaller fleets during an invasion or fight over a particular station or structure as they move to cover all the command nodes exposed, thus alleviating the N+1 problem that plagued the fights in Dominion Sov.

To reiterate from a post I wrote last October when discussing the Phoebe capital ship jump changeshttp://www.ninveah.com/2014/10/clearing-cache.html, the N+1 problem can be stated as thus:

All else being equal, the side with n resources is at a disadvantage to the side with n+1 resources.

There is nothing in Fozzie Sov that will prevent this axiom from continuing to hold sway.

Take for example a fight in Faction Warfare over a system. Two opposing fleets are clashing to run the plexes and either keep control or take control of the system. All else being equal, the side with more pilots in ships will win the battles, drive the opponent out, and have more time to run the plexes. There are a lot of variables in play, of course, such as what fleet hull size can fit in which sized complexes, like if the defender is flying a fleet of 10 frigates in a novice plex and the mixed 15 ship attacking fleet can only get 7 of their frigate ships into the novice plex, and these situations create terrain and conditions that requires planning and proper execution to overcome. But in the end the side that has the bigger fleet and can cover all the plexes has the advantage and will win the system.

In Fozzie Sov, the scenario is different yet surprisingly similar. As far as I know, their won't be any gates preventing ships of certain sizes from helping take over command nodes and the command nodes being attacked are spread over a constellation instead of a single system. But in the end the side with more ships and superior coordination and discipline will win the battles and complete the command node hacking. There is no where for a small fleet to hide and at the same time prevent the command nodes from being capped.

Further to this, I am not sure that fleets will even break into smaller fleets to attack. In Faction Warfare, a fleet may spread its forces around to multiple plexes, but a single commander still directs the fleet and any threat see the disparate pilots coalesce on a point to attack or retreat. I suspect fleets in Fozzie Sov will react the same way, although the large distances involved may prove me wrong.

All of this to say, Fozzie Sov does not solve the N+1 problem.

What it does do, however, is introduce more variables into the decision making and actions of the fleets involved. Where Dominion Sov was characterized by massive fleets smashing into each other at one timer or another, Fozzie Sov will hopefully be characterized by more dynamic fights over multiple systems where the battlefield terrain and distributed decisions will hopefully allow for more things to be unequal over a fight and give more chances to a smaller but more coordinated and capable fleet to win the fight against the larger but less professional fleet.

In other words, Fozzie Sov wants to turn this:

Into this:

And everyone in null sec and beyond is eagerly waiting to see if it is going to happen.

Capitalizing the Changes - Part 2

Yesterday I laid out the current situation facing combat capitals in the proposed FozzieSov sovereignty system. It can be summarized thus: the new system takes away the niche of structure grinding from capitals leaving them adrift in the changed meta.

So today I'm going to lay out my ideas for changing the four combat capital classes of ships to adapt to the new sovereignty mechanics as well as the new meta in low sec, wormhole space, and perhaps beyond.

WARNING: This post is not for the timid.

BRACE FOR IMPACT!

Rationalization

One of the most striking features of Tiericide for the sub-capital ship classes has been how the amorphous blob of ships of various power levels was transformed into ships with defined roles.

This has two benefits: first it prevents ships from being obsoleted by better ships with the same role but superior stats (i.e. the old tier method), and secondly it makes the ships easier to balance when they have a specific main role they are supposed to accomplish as opposed to jack-of-all-trades multi-role. There are downsides too, such as pigeon-holing ships to specific roles and limiting player inventiveness and counter-expectation fitting, but overall I think these concerns have proven to be insignificant and the health of the overall sub-capital meta is extremely good right now.

Capitals, on the other hand, with the notable exception of the Dreadnought, are multi-roled ship classes with many of them overlapping roles with other classes, especially in the direct damage department. For example, all four have considerable direct damage applications, every one except dreadnoughts can do warfare linking, and both carriers and super carriers have bonuses to logistical modules. Yes, there are marked differences between the classes and the exact best application for each varies, but the fact remains that its a muddled mess that is hard to balance and find appropriate roles for in light of a structure-grinding-less future.

With all that being said, onward to my ideas.

Proposal

Let's start with the easiest and work our way to the hardest. Or another way to think of it, the least radical proposals to the most.

Dreadnought - this ship class needs no changes in my mind because it hits the sweet spot in several dimensions. It has a specific singular role and it does it exceptionally well, its not an insurmountable barrier to entry to any area of space, it has applications in null, low, and wormhole space. Even a blob of dreadnoughts does not guarantee success against all comers as the slow tracking weapons and lack of mobility limit their effectiveness on smaller targets. This ship class should be the starting point of any refactor and rebalance as an exemplar of capital ships done correctly.

Carrier - This one is a hard one because despite having many roles, the carrier class overall is in a decent place especially since drone assist has been identified as a problem and is being addressed. That being said, a class that is good at so many roles squeezes out other class from being in some of those roles. So in the end I think its time to break up the carrier's abilities to make the class more focused and leave room for another class to take over some of the roles.

Currently, a carrier can do a lot of things: Combat via fighters and drones; space healing via logistic modules and ship bonuses and Triage mode; moving ships and modules in the Ship and Fleet hangers; allowing in-space fitting changes via the Ship Maintenance Array; and most rarely providing warfare link boosting. In my experience, players first set out to get a carrier for its hangers to allow them to move their assets from base to base, and later on as the player becomes more of a  veteran than move to using carriers for combat roles, most usually in the uber-logistics triage mode supporting a fleet. Alternatively, experienced null players use fleets of carriers in remote repping mobs with hordes of drones as a powerful but slow moving combat fleet.

I'm proposing that carriers are rebalanced only for space combat and space healing roles and the other roles are removed. *Waits for uproar to die down* Yes, I realize that is a huge change but the jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-a-few is crowding out other ship class possibilities from flourishing or even existing. This means removing the role bonus for Warfare link modules (its mostly useless anyways) and removing the ship maintenance hanger/array and either removing the fleet hanger (with a boost to cargo bay size and/or fuel bay) or shrinking it.

Concurrent with this proposal, I think the cost of the carriers should drop by about 25%, a new capital class ship that has a Ship Hanger and jump drive should be introduced (kind of like a Jump Bowhead) for players to maintain the ability to move their stuff, and my super carrier changes coming up next are also implemented.

(I considered going even further and removing combat capability from carriers and making them pure capital sized logistics but I'm not sure that is completely necessary.)

Super Carrier - Ever since CCP turned these monsters from Motherships into Super Carriers they have suffered a series of nerfs: no more non-fighter drones, reduction in number of drones in space at once (with boost in Fighter Bomber damage to compensate), jump range reduction, jump fatigue... and now, one of the things they are still the best at, structure grinding, is going away under the Fozzie Sov system. Poor supers!

I think its time to acknowledge that we don't need another pure damage dealer on the capital scale between Dreadnoughts and Titans. Instead I think its time to take this beast back to its Mothership roots. I envision a ship that a fleet uses as a rally point in extended battles, a mobile defensive base where pilots can reship and regroup without having to put a POS in system.

To this end, I say that the class keeps the large ship hanger, maintenance array, and fleet hanger. It should keep its Fighters and Fighter Bombers, but lose the warfare links (there are better ships for that role) and the bonuses to remote repping modules. Instead give the ship a unique module (or cool Tactical Destroyer like mode shifting) where it can enter "Depot" mode which allows it to project a POS-like force field (20 km radius?) with boosted resists and lots of hitpoints. However, when in Depot mode the ship is immobile and cannot jump, and the cycle for the mode is 30 minutes long (i.e. short enough to not be a major time commitment and long enough to pose a serious risk). Also, while in Depot mode it can still use its fighter bombers and Remote ECM burst. I would think that there would be restrictions much like Deployable mobile structures about where it can be deployed to prevent exploits like activating it right next to a gate to make the gate effectively blockaded or on a station undock, etc, and I think the ship should not be able to receive remote reps or cap while in this mode.

I can see this class becoming a focal point for fights as fleets attempt to use it to resupply in a pitched battle and the opposing force moves to try and destroy them while they are locked in place.

"What happens if someone plops a fleet of these on grid together?" As long as the restrictions on where Depot mode can be activated includes "Not Within 30 km of another Depot Super Carrier" I don't see any issue. Its no worse, IMHO, then the current situation when someone jumps in a Super Carrier fleet except that their utility is currently lower under FozzieSov with fewer targets to grind.

Titan - Much like the Super Carriers, the Titan class has received a number of nerfs over the years as CCP realized that massed fleets of these ships were capable of widespread devastation with very little in the way of reasonable risk, the occasional Asakai or BR- battle notwithstanding. Today the class stands at a relatively decent position in comparison to carriers and super carriers, even under FozzieSov as its dual roles of  Line Breaker (with its Doomsday and large racks of capital weapons and damage bonus) and Jump Portal still have useful applications.

However, the Titan class presents a problem in that its roles are mutually exclusive (i.e. you can't be both a jump portal pig on the back line launching fleet of battleships or whatnot to battle AND a front line flagship breaking apart carriers and dreadnoughts) and the second role, that of jump portal platform, presents a significant advantage to forces that have that at their disposal compared to forces that do not have one at their disposal. This disparity is evident in null sec and low sec; in null sec alliances with Titans have more tactical flexibility to maneuvure their sub-cap fleets (prior to Phoebe they had a lot of tactical flexibility as well but that's been reduced), and in low sec the divide is even more marked as a corporation or alliance with even a single Titan can dominate a region of low sec against alliances without that asset. Black Ops Battleships with the Covert Jump Portal Generator does address some of this divide as its much easier to obtain a 1 billion Tech II battleship than it is a Titan, but since the power versus cost investment ratio of the ships you can send through the Covert Cyno is significantly lower, e.g. a fleet of battleships with tech 2 logistics versus a handful of Stealth Bombers and Recons.

To that end, I think its time to break the Titan class in two: the primary main class keeps the doomsday and capital weapons and bonuses but loses the jump portal, clone vat bay, warfare linking and bonus to fleet members. As a result, I think the cost of the Titan in this version as a Super Dreadnought should be dramatically lower. In conjunction, a new capital (not super cap) ship class is introduced which we'll call the Mothership class which will fit the clone vat bay and the jump portal generator. This will be more expensive than a dreadnought but less expensive than a Super Carrier, will be able to dock, and have virtually no offensive or defensive capabilities.

This smaller ship class would bridge (HAHA Pun intended!) the gap between the small-medium corporations that do not have anyone with access to a Titan and those that do, lowering the barrier of entry to hot-drop/counter-hot-drop gameplay and the interesting emerging outcomes that spawn from that facet of the game.

* * * * *

There you have it, my vision for capital ships in the post FozzieSov universe. Instead of four classes of ships with multiple overlapping roles you have six ships with specific and interesting roles:
- Carrier : Logistics Platform
- *New* Jump Bowhead : Space Trucking
- Dreadnought : Capital DPS
- Super Carrier : Mobile Assault Base
- Titan : Anti-Capital DPS
- Mothership : Jump Portal Generator

These more focused classes will be easier to balance and provide a more gradual progression of power and expensive from the sub capital classes.

Capitalizing The Changes - Part 1

What is to become of capital ships?

Dominion sovereignty is a beast that requires millions of hit points per structure be ground out in order to take control or systems and stations from your enemies. This put upwards pressure on fleet size and ship size in order to maximize time efficiency that, when combined with a maturing demographic with more skill points and ISK to utilize as well as the realization that a super cap blob is in effective immune to being defeated by anything else except another super cab blob, pushed null sec alliances to create large standing fleets of capital and super capital assets in order to be competitive in null sec warfare. In contrast to the downward pressures we've seen in many changes to ship balance over the past couple years, this upward pressure had not been addressed up until the Phoebe changes came into effect last fall which severely limited the tactical and strategic power of capital ship fleet movements.

And now the Fozzie Sov changes proposed for this summer will remove a major motivation for having these fleets as sovereignty warfare will no longer require grinding millions of hitpoints, thus the only remaining upward pressure will be their opponents capital fleets, and like a table with two legs removed (strategic/tactical flexibility and maximization of firepower required) the upward pressure will wobble and eventually topple. If your opponent never needs a capital fleet to attack your sov, why would you expend resources to maintain your own capital fleet?

So back to the opening question, what is to become of capital ships?

CCP Fozzie and others have stated many times that capital ships severely need a turn through the rebalancing machine to turn the classes into something that is more properly integrated into the overall EVE ship meta. But what exactly does that mean? What role should capital ships have?

Note: I'm only talking about the four combat capital ships: Carrier, Dreadnought, Super Carrier, and Titan. The industrial capital ships (Rorqual, Orca, Freighters, Jump Frieghters, and Bowhead) are outside the purview of this discussion and have little effect on it regardless.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock

In any game your ultimate goal is to have a circular balance between choices: choice A is superior to choice B, and choice B is superior than choice C, but choice C has some advantages over choice A. We see this in classic games such as chess and Stratego where there is a distinct hierarchy in power of the pieces but the weakest piece has power to rival the most powerful in certain scenarios (e.g. pawn promotes to Queen, Spy kills Marshal).

We also see this balance in modern computer games like World of Tanks where the five classes of tanks all have advantages and disadvantages when compared to each other:
- Light tanks are most mobile but weakest guns and armour
- Heavy tanks have big armour and guns but slow
- Medium tanks blend mobility with guns and armour but have less mobility than light tanks and less firepower/armour than heavy tanks
- Artillery has big guns with long range but super slow and no armour
- Tank Destroyers have big guns but lower armour and mobility

In order to be successful in World of Tanks all five classes need to work together in a coordination fashion, leveraging the strengths of the other classes and covering their weaknesses.

The current 'balance' such as it is in EVE for capitals seems more to be the latter with carriers at the bottom and Titans at the top (but no spy to bring down the marshal). Of course, its not as simple as that so let's take a closer look at the classes before we propose any radical changes.

Fleet Inspection

Carriers - Eventually almost every long term player owns a carrier. At one time it was the most efficient and practical solution to moving your stuff and other people's crap from point A to point B. It probably still is even with the Phoebe changes to jump range and the addition of jump fatigue because nothing compares to 1 million meters cube of assembled ship carrying capability, 40,000 meters cubed hanger for stuff, ability to jump, AND can dock at stations.

But not only are carriers great at moving stuff logistics, they also have considerable combat capability. They are one of only two ship classes that can use Fighters which can chew up battleships, and they are the pinnacle of space healing Logistics as they can use capital sized versions of the repair and cap transfer modules AND have the ability to go into triage mode which makes them even better at the role with super lock speed and longer ranged and more powerful reps.

Carriers are simply the Swiss Army knife of capitals.

Dreadnoughts - On the other hand, you have the counterpart to carriers which has two modes: damage dealer extraordinaire, or it can go into siege mode and be the "MORE DEEPS" damage dealer extraordinaire but with the risk of being immobile for five minutes.

Dreadnoughts are the hit-man of EVE when you have a target with lots of hitpoints. When battleships are not doing the job fast enough, you call in some dreads and they go siege green for a cycle or two and usually that's enough to take out almost any target not receiving active reps. It has to be a very specific type of target too, i.e. on that is not moving hardly at all because those capital guns do not have tracking or explosion speeds worth talking about.

Unlike carriers, Dreadnoughts do not do anything else.

Super Carriers - They are just like carriers except bigger, right? WRONG! They share some similar characteristics such as the bonus to logistics modules range, a large ship hanger for moving assembled ships, a large fleet hanger for moving other stuff, ability to use fighters, and all on a larger scale than the ubiquitous carrier, but it comes with a few other traits that turns it into another class entirely.

For one thing, no triage module so the effectiveness of its space healing is a fraction of what the carrier can accomplish. Secondly, it cannot dock so the ease of use of its carrying capacity is severely downgraded compared to the smaller carriers. Third, instead of fighters the super carrier class usually has Fighter Bombers which are better suited to striking large immobile or super slow moving targets for tonnes of damage whereas fighters are more capable against smaller targets. Finally, super carriers represent a massive investment of capital, more than 15 times that of a single carrier, so their use has to be carefully managed or one slip up and its gone as every hostile in thirty systems will come shoot you if you get caught to get on the killmail.

What this means is that super carriers tend to be used for the specific role similar to dreadnoughts where they jump in, use their fighter bombers to assassinate a large slow or immobile target, and then jump out.

Titans - This ship class suffers from a dual personality. On one hand, it has a capital-ship-only doomsday weapon and a fierce array of capital sized weaponry (for example, the Ragnarok can fit 6 turrets and has a 125% bonus to Capital Projectile Turret Damage per level of Minmatar Titan skill). But on the other hand, its more often used for its ability to fit a Jump Portal and sling fleets to destinations light years away on unsuspected (or suspecting as the case may be) targets, not to mention its warfare linking bonus which is less often used but still is a support role mechanic as long as off grid boosting is a thing.

To add a little to the confusion is that Titan's sport huge ship maintenance arrays (5 million m3), large fleet hangers (100,000 m3), and clone vat bays which seems to imply that its to be used in a logistical manner for moving war materiel from deployment to deployment.

So is the Titan a front line combat vessel, or a support vessel?

* * * * *

So that is the current state of capitals and the reduced role they face in light of sovereignty requiring no structure grinding on any scale. Next post I'll discuss my ideas for revamping combat capitals into a more holistic design that will fit into the new realities going forward.

Thoughts On FozzieSov

I've had a very, very, VERY insane week so far to think about FozzieSov and what it means to the game if implemented as is right now. And I've had some time to listen to other pontificate / wonder / enthuse / rant about it, so I feel ready to give my impressions and thoughts on the new proposed sovereignty system.

Things I Like

- Separation of Structure Dependencies - I hated how what structures could be attacked and when was all tied together into a flow chart of doom:

It was confusing, frustrating for attackers and defenders, time consuming, and time wasting if the defender had surrendered and moved out. How many null players left the game after grinding through this flowchart in a region the defender abandoned? The new system has three simple flow charts, one for each sov structure:

I think its cool that one alliance can control the Territorial Claim Unit (TCU), one can control the Infrastructure Hub (IHUB), and another can control the Station (if present). It feels more descriptive to me of the actual situation in space than some legal wranglings of a massive flow chart; defenders huddling in a station while the attackers take the TCU and IHUB, for example.

- Freeport! - I love the idea that a fight for a station involves a period of time where the station is a freeport, i.e. both sides can dock. I can see some huge fights and casualties erupting as pilots try to evac assets from a station while the attackers start pouring in.

- No Structure Grinding (Sort Of) -Yay! No more hundreds of thousands or million of structure points to grind through multiple times to take a system! In my time in null I wasn't on a lot of structure grinds but the ones I did go on were tedious and annoying. I couldn't imagine having to do it night after night to take over an entire region.

- Constellation Matters - The idea that once a fight for a structure occurs that the corresponding command nodes that need to be captured spawn across the constellation instead of just in the system is brilliant. Since the shape of constellations varies so much and the position of systems relative to each other determines movement strategies and engagement possibilities, it really makes each battle for a constellation unique.

Things I Don't Like

- Troll-ceptor - If the fitting for the new Entosis modules are too low, its going to enable horrible gameplay where one pilot in a small nearly uncatchable interceptor is going to set off reinforcement timers over a wide area. Such a small investment of effort by one pilot requiring a significant defense response by an entire alliance is unbalanced gameplay. I think the fitting for the module should be able to be used only on a cruiser at the very least, preferably battleship in my books.

- Fast Burn - one of the best things about a battle for a system under the Faction Warfare Distributed Objective system is that a battle for a system can run for days or even weeks as long as the defenders have some ability to defensively plex as well as compete against the offensive plexers. This can lead to massive long running fights over days as both sides tug of war at that control bar. The FozzieSov system seems to resolve a lot quicker meaning prolonged fights for a structure control will be over quickly and not have that epic feel to them unless both sides are evenly matched. To be fair, there are a lot more fights to be had for control of a system (TCU, IHUB, and Station) so this might balance out in the long run.

- Four Hour Vulnerability Window - I've heard people talk about how faction warfare's system is "gamey", but this takes the cake. At least in our system you decide when a system is most vulnerable to attack based on their activity and strength compared to your own side's; the FozzieSov's mechanic of alliances setting a four hour window when they are vulnerable seems like a horrible mechanic. I understand CCP is reluctant to have constant vulnerability of structures to attack so that alliances can build empires and farms and fields and feel like they have a chance to counter, but I think that it would all balance out as pilots learn to defend the structures from attack, especially if there was some sort of de-reinforce mechanic, i.e. Attacking Alliance puts a structure into reinforce any time but they now have to guard it from being un-reinforced by Defending Alliance until the battle starts for control. This would allow us to throw out the silly mechanic for 4-hour vulnerability windows and create running battles like faction war has. Alternatively, I'd like to see the size of the vulnerability window grow or shrink depending on another factor like alliance size (#systems controlled) or something like that.

* * * * *

Overall I like where this system is heading, but I think it needs some tweaks before it hits in June.