Hello, my name is Seraph IX Basarab, member of Psychotic Tendencies., and I’ve been a writer here at EN24 since 2011. Most of the articles I author are critiques that express my personal opinion based upon analysis of available information. The following is a critique of another article written elsewhere. Kcolorr of Eighty Joule Brewery, a member of GSF, writing as ‘kcolor’,’ recently wrote an article entitled “Easing the Burden of Owning Sov” in which he expresses the opinion that sov ownership is too difficult and offers some suggestions on how to address the issues. In this article, I’m going to offer point-by-point rebuttals to each of his complaints and each of his solutions.
Editor’s note: Quoted content is provided verbatim from the source article.
Kcolor: Sov owners have to defend their sov during their prime time. The attacker can fly a cheap ship and simply fly away 4km/s when confronted. It should not be the driving force for sov warfare. Sov owners cannot do anything outside of their sov because they have to defend their territory.
It’s not THE driving force for sov warfare. Nobody is taking sov purely with frigates from any entity that is actually defending their sov. Risk in attacking sov is mirrored by risk in defending sov. For example, 1 Tristan entosising by itself is countered by 1 Tristan that is not fit with an entosis module. The module itself makes the ship much more expensive and limits its combat capabilities. The attacker is already taking more risk than the defender, with all other elements being equal. The larger the attacking and defending fleets, the smaller of a difference the price of that entosis module makes. However, the defender still has home-field advantages: proximate reinforcements and allies, easier access to their heavier ships and, generally speaking, the ability to out-escalate the attacker in both scale and depth. Furthermore, the claim that sov owners can’t go elsewhere without having to worry about their sov isn’t an issue. You can still deploy elsewhere, you just can’t just lock the door and go away for weeks at a time expecting your home to be safe. Why would you expect that you could? “What do you mean I can’t go to war and just assume people won’t attack my castle if I leave it undefended? Outrageous!” Talk about entitlement here. What happened to farms and fields? Granted, the defenders already have a huge advantage. First off, simply entosising a system does not flip it. It’s simply reinforced, something which is much easier to flip back as a defender. There’s also natural regeneration on top of that, meaning if the attacker does not come back you don’t have to do anything. This notion that “defending sov now requires a tz to be in slave duty” is nonsense. You can farm your field when you aren’t attacked, but yes you’re expected to pick up a club or spear if someone comes raiding. That’s kind of how this game is supposed to work.
It’s interesting that this article was even published. A couple of weeks ago, Kcolor’s peer, Asher, also wrote a piece on Crossing Zebras arguing that interceptors were making it dangerous for players in their 70’s and stay-at-home moms with their kids to rat in peace. No, I’m not kidding, read it yourself. What we’re seeing here is essentially a media push by certain parties in Eve to further krabify nullsec. In true Eve fashion, I must advise both individuals to “htfu.”
Let’s look at some of Kcolor’s suggestions and clarify why they’re terrible ideas.
Kcolor: Entosis modules should be limited to Battlecruisers and above. Citadels should only be vulnerable to DPS with an upper limit of one dread.
Basically, “only come and take my sov with something slow I can catch and blob” but “if you really want to smash my face in, you can only do it with one dread…which that too I’ll be able to blob off the field.” Will such a change increase or decrease the amount of traffic in 0.0 for fights? Decrease of course. If you’re trying to ensure your space tribe has less potential danger so they can krab more, I can see how this is a logical desire. Actually, I have a suggestion regrading the entosis module. Grant Assault Frigates a bonus for using the module either for fitting or speed of capture. This will be a buff to their utility and we’ll likely see more of them in space as a result.
Kcolor: Natural regen should be buffed. When an attacker captures a node all regenerating nodes should be reset to their full time.
Kcolor seems to have a huge problem with people having to undock and actually defend their sov. To be fair, he’s OK with undocking and defending sov, but only under the terms that favor his side and wishes for CCP to change the mechanics to make them lean in his favor even more. This is just another iteration on that ideology. If a smaller entity can go through the trouble to entosis some modules, why can’t the defender?
Kcolor: Systems should gain ADM ranking based on near by systems. ADMs should “radiate.” This helps smaller alliances taking sov.
No it doesn’t. Smaller alliances taking sov will be farming in their newly-acquired space. This is purely an “old money” problem where you have certain coalitions holding huge swaths of space that they can’t realistically upgrade to ADM 6. Trying to hide it as a plea for the new player is a complete joke. You want to make the attacker have a harder time taking sov and you want the defender to have an easier time holding onto it. Why even pretend otherwise?
Holding sov is not intended to be easy. It’s supposed to be difficult and the value of nullsec resources reflects that intent. Don’t let anyone lie to you and tell you otherwise. If it wasn’t, then Kcolor’s alliance wouldn’t be holding it. His article is not about helping game balance, it’s about ensuring that the current system remains in stasis at least as far as one particular organization goes. It’s also quite ironic Kcolor is writing about “meaningful fights and balance” considering he’s usually the guy dropping a dozen super carriers on frigs and destroyers engaged in sov warfare, entosising systems.
Here’s the bottom line. Not everything in Eve is going to be awe inspiring and fun. Some of it will be tedious; hauling ships, fitting, managing logistics and so on and so forth. But those are the sort of actions you need to take in order to make losses and gains meaningful. The changes proposed by Kcolor as well as Asher in his particular article only work to turn Eve into a theme park where a particular group can sit back and farm with little or no risk to their security.
~Seraph IX Basarab
