Planetary Conquest is part of DUST 514 since it stepped out of beta on May 14th 2013. It enabled mercenaries to claim districts on temperate planets in the Molden Heath region, basically the equivalent to Sov in EVE. These districts produce between 80 (Laboratory and Cargo Hub) and 100 (Production Facility) clones per day, depending on which facility has been installed on the district. After the districts storage capacity is filled up the excess clones automatically get sold to an NPC corp for 110,000 ISK each. Clones are your “tickets” when you attack or defend a district. You can move them between districts if needed, with a clone loss penalty that depends on the distance between those districts.
Districts can be fought over once per day. The timer is set similarly to the reinforcement timers in EVE, between 0:00 and 23:00. The actual time the battle takes place can deviate up to one hour plus from the set time. If the battle is won by the attacker he can launch another attack right away, otherwise he has to wait for 24 hours again. For more information regarding districts, facilities and their mechanics please refer to this Evelopedia entry: https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Planetary_Conquest
Note: Some of the information found there might be out of date.
The players were quick to discover how to make their districts invincible. By attacking their own districts with a friendly corp repeatedly they were able to deny others the chance of attacking. At the time this gets posted the whole of Molden Heath is effectively on lockdown:
The above picture displays an ownership summary of the 245 available districts in the region. There is very little movement in ownership, occasionally someone forgets to lock their district, but most of it is consensual. For example, I purchased seven districts so far for my one-man corp Orbital Flares and I don’t have to worry about defending it. Though members of the alliance Negative-Feedback mentioned to me that it is possible to pick a district lock, they have not disclosed how to achieve this. It was implied however that it is a lengthy process. I would like to shine some light on the consequences of these lockdowns. In order to so, lets take a closer look at the corporation that holds the most districts: Nyain San
The 61 districts they own amount to a quarter of all available districts in DUST 514. Since they’re on lockdown they can create risk free revenue. As a Japanese corporation they also have the advantage of being able to set their timers to something that makes an attack impossible for most. Cargo Hubs produce 80 clones per day, sold for 110k each. This way they are able to generate 16bil DUST ISK per month, which translates to roughly 70-100bil in EVE using third party exchange rates. And keep in mind, I make more than 1/10 of that. On my own, each month, risk free.
This is literally more money than you can spend in DUST. The most expensive thing money can buy in the game is a clone starter pack, which consists of 120 clones and allows you to attack districts without using your own clones. But there is not much use for this under the current conditions.
The most expensive dropsuit fits in DUST clock in around 250k ISK. An average match that lasts 20 minutes will give you roughly the same. Nyain San is able to purchase more than 2,000 of those fittings per day, allowing them to completely dominate every normal player in public matches. And I don’t even want to get into tanks and assault dropships. Like in EVE, though you are never invincible your fitting can do a lot of the work for you. In short: It’s like bringing a gun to a knife fight.
On a side note, this is why I am curious how CCP will handle the money transfer between the two games in the future. Capsuleers could over flood the DUST economy with money easily.
Another issue is that the locked districts can be used for friendly on friendly matches. When both teams are cooperating this can be used for war point boosting. Actions like kills, repairs, revives, restocking teammates ammunition and so on yield war points. At the end of the match these are directly converted into skill points. Every second spend in a match also gives you five of them. Since no effort is being made to beat the opposing team, these matches are really long. This allows for a skill point gain 20 times the normal rate, until you reach the soft cap of 190k SP per week. Combine this with the ISK excess mentioned above and you should begin to see how much of an advantage these corporations have over normal players.
CPM member Hans Jagerblitzen, when asked about the current state of Planetary Conquest and district locking had this to say:
“It’s obviously broken and in need of more than just a few minor tweaks. Whenever the mechanics allow for wealth to be made without risk of conflict, that’s what players will do. PC really needs to be overhauled and hammered into a system where wealth is gained through conflict, not passive ownership.
I don’t fault any player for participating in this activity in the meantime. the fact that this behavior exists is on CCP, and it will continue until they fix it.
While I can’t share details about when a fix will come, I will say on record that it’s definitely got CCP Rouge’s [DUST 514 Executive Produce] attention, there is no question that the situation is serious and in need of repair.”
Hans is under NDA, but I wouldn’t be surprised if CCP will do just what he mentioned in the beginning of his statement. In any case, it seems that corporations like Nyain San, Ancient Exiles and even my own won’t have to worry about money for a long time to come.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I am interested to hear your thoughts about this issue in the comment section below.
