CCP’s done something interesting with the “Drifter Siege of nullsec structures.” Hopefully CCP can understand why they are so popular. For years now structures have been far too spammable and tedious to remove which in turn has put a damper on other’s willingness to engage in prolonged war. A notable exception of course is when one side has such overwhelming resources and numbers as in the latest conflict in Tribute. With one’s ability to spam structures where even the relatively cheap Astrahaus can take a massive time investment to destroy make it almost impossible to conquer space. Furthermore this has had effects in contributing to the increased safety of krabs rendering most losses as easily replaceable. In short structures are too plentiful, make space too safe, and are too tedious to remove.
The Drifter Invasion could go one of two ways. Either it could be another iteration of Incursions gameplay, or an opportunity for CCP to address some old null mechanic issues that are currently hurting the game. If we remember, the Drifter appearance was the initial catalyst for developing Aegis sov/structure damage caps. So how could the Drifter Invasion address structure spam?
Limit structure anchoring by having them need a celestial to orbit like POSes had. Small structures would be limited to moons, medium structures on planets and large structures on stars. Suddenly each system is unique and the “geography” of the system in terms of celestials and where they are matters. The in-game justification could be that due to the Drifter attacks on structures, the Eve universe developed some kind of anti-Drifter shield generator or weapon that requires celestial basing (or in the case of the star, using the heat off of the system’s sun) to fend off Drifter attacks. People could still put structures up in different areas, but Drifters will be much more destructive in taking those structures out while leaving celestial based structures untouched. This would cut down on structure spam, while still allowing attackers to put forth a forward base if no celestial is open to do so.
The structure issues are numerous including the amount of safety it provides for krabs which in turn causes inflation and lowers the prices of capitals not to mention dissuades small gang raids into bloc space. The Ansiblex Jump Gate providing even more safety than jump bridges, perfect intelligence via local, and not least of all the resource density of space are all massive issues that could be solved. The Drifter Invasion could be used as a pretext to solve all of these issues.
On a fun note, one of the most entertaining aspects of this entire event is seeing Mittens have an absolute meltdown over it. From suggesting CCP’s done this to stop Goons from finishing off NCdot, to just plain making things up that aren’t real, it’s been a wild roller-coaster ride.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/c6l1u2/a_cow_goes_moo_a_duck_goes_quack_a_bee_goes/
The best is when he claims that there are ~people~ who are claiming that this will surely destroy Goons and how much they will cry when it doesn’t happen. Literally nobody is saying any of this. He makes things up that don’t exist and then lambasts said positions in some temper tantrum. He’s hit the perfect ratio of delusion and incoherence and honestly if this is all we get out of this Drifter event I’d call it a win.
