Terra Nova: Scarcely rare - The Diigo Meta page

• 24 Sep 07
  

  Nicolas

  eveonline minerals pvp scarcity security

  • Minerals in Eve-Onine are scarce for lack of another in-game resource which can be indeed quite rare in some areas:

      

    security. 
  • One advantage of alliances is that much of the security cost of an operation within its borders is amortized by the whole organization (see 1.-3. above).  Without it, the direct cost of security at an operation site can be significant.  As a for instance, operations where a beefed mining security extends well beyond the site to a convoy route is not unheard of (to guard against pirates molesting haulers) .  Whether directly or indirectly, all those guns have to be paid for.  The alliance system helps substantially to defray those expenses by limiting their need.
  • There are quite a lot of internal structuring of Alliance economies, from "libertarian" (focused on individual wealth making and armament) to "communist" (player surrenders wealth and mining time in return for free ships) and all points in between.
  • One interesting thing I've seen, is that many alliances, under severe stress from invasion will resort to a 100% taxation regime to, seemingly, maximise war-chest funds and encourage the more capitalist minded members to pick up a gun and join the front line.

  • "What happens if there was a hegemony, an overpowering empire, a Pax Eve?"

      

    Thats probably the grand fear that motivates why some folk get so passionate about the 'great war'. Both the RSF(Reds, Goons, Tau Ceti) & BOB(&Friends) are both entirely capable of pulling off a complete 0.0 takeover, if not for the factor of the other side. BOB in particular are exceptionally talented, but the presence of the other acts as a stalemating factor.
  • The theory however was interesting. Remedial, the CEO (Who ended up running off with the Goons tax, alas) theorised that the best defense was a strong economy. And noteing the smooth interactions between the Russian, French and Goon economys, all largely free market (I think) , figured the system worked well to be extended. Retrospectively the idea was a failure, but not because it cause any poverty for the Goons or friends, but ultimately the low tax regime and expensive to maintain open empire became a
     financially crippling enterprise in the face of war. I think the current strategy is back to the 'pet' strategy, but with a focus on PVP corps.
  • The game in fact did come rather close to this previous a recent-ish patch that nerfed the titan, as the RSF was close to succumbed by the BOB team, largely due to the fact the Titan had the ability to kill an entire fleet with a button press, and no one in the game had any clear idea how to kill a competently flown one without some degree of metagaming (The previous two where killed by waiting till the pilot logged off, then attacking the ship before the agression timer ran out. Hardly a satisfying 'battle' for either side), and it made the game plain un-fun for both sides. The change made it possible to tackle a titan and removed its ability to kill fleets remotely (previously, one could send in a newbie frigate, and the titan had the ability to use that frigate as a proxy for firing its weapon).
  • If you want to know what happens when one power controls 0.0 space, look no further than the EVE China server. It busted. Big time. Peak concurrent users something around 3000, as compared to 35000 on the main server.

  • Yes, a Pax EVE is desirable for one superpower. It would rent out 0.0 space to people (read = carebears) paying for it. Having no pirates and rivals out there will make complex farming, exploration, NPC pirate ratting and high end mineral mining easy and profitable.

      

    Meanwhile the superpowers PvP player base will still get its dose of fighting from

      

    a) manning the gate camps into 0.0 space
     b) do the occasional patrol or raider response
     c) go hunting in low sec (0.4 to 0.1 security)
     d) declare war on hapless empire alliances and blackmail them, else you will kill all their POS (player owned moon stations) with your (super) capital fleet

      

    And all this is financed by payments from the renters, so you dont have to lift a finger yourself (no need to mine or manufacture or haul or trade, unless you want to). You can PvP 100 % of the time.

      

    Have fun
  • So far as I remember, a Pax pretty much uniformly crushed gameplay in all forms of PvP. Nobody to fight, the PvPers left. Which hurt the economy. With the economy tanking, some mostly PvE/part PvP players left and some played less. Which hurt PvP action more. The servers with a Pax just got *boring*, and while in the real world boring is good these aren't real worlds.
  • On the other hand, sometimes truly epic things happen with free-PvP and Pax-locked servers are not an exception. Apparently on one server in Shadowbane, the Pax there left one enemy guild on an island somewhere to kick around and let their PvP army group have some fun. After some time, said PvP army got to know their opposition/chey toy, decided that they liked said opponents better than their own leadership, and promptly revolted.

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