The Dantelion Plan - War in High-Sec, Of HQs and Diplomacy
In this part of the Plan, I plan on discussing Conflict Drivers in High-Sec and how Lack of Scarcity and Lack of Participation affect them, I will also introduce the idea of HQs and Diplomacy, ideas specifically thought out to address those problems.
Let's start with this:
Null-Sec has the whole Empire-Building that makes people identify to a Corp, a Culture, and conquer and contest space in the name of said Corp, Alliance, or Culture. Low-Sec has Faction Warfare pitting sides that are antithesis to each other, both in space and in ideas, and W-Space gives you a hole that is yours to own and also yours to maintain.
Those zones give you reasons to care, reasons to conquer what you want, and defend what is yours.
High-Sec is a notable exception to that model.
Nothing in High-Sec actually matters. Rocks eternally respawn, Missions are always offered, and Stations are open to anyone and belong to no one.
The only piece of territoriality comes from Custom Offices. By themselves they are fine, but as a sole source of conflict, they suffer from ease of access as content, asking for significant amounts of firepower, and from lack of reward thanks to the High-Sec tax on them. Same deal with the recent Refineries in 0.5 systems, very few actors have the willpower and firepower to contest a Moon-Mining Structure and profit from it.
A Lack of Scarcity is present in that very few resources that would be worth fighting over exist, and a Lack of Participation exists in that the ones existing ask for a level of organization and firepower that limits the amount of people that can participate in contesting them.
So Lack of Scarcity and Lack of Participation work together in making what High-Sec is today, a zone where only people who don't fight, and Wardeccers, thrive.
It is a problem if you are a game that thrives on ships shooting each other as a significant part of your activity. It is a problem when **ALL** of your players are introduced to your game through a zone that never puts them in the position of contesting things and does not even encourage them to, that makes for even less chances that they get to learn to fight, organize, and simply learn to EVE.
If the Purpose of High-Sec is to be where to train and prepare our next generation of pilots, it has to have the resources worth fighting for and accessible enough that they will make them learn how to deal and profit from Conflicts.
For that we have to start from the basics:
Before talking of What to fight for, we have to take care of How to fight for it.
The War Declaration system is the only system that allows for Conflicts in High-Sec. In its current form it is lacking in three essential aspects:
- A war has no Spatiality. Wardeccers are essentially highway brigands who have no obligation to show up and don't need to be in the business of contesting lands. The war is not tied to any space, it's just a threat somewhere in the air.
- Wars are heavily tilted in favor of the Attacker. The Attacker can maintain the war for as long as he has funds, and that regardless of what the Defender does. Even if the Defenders fight back there is no way for them to push their advantages into an end of hostilities.
- Lack of Accessibility. It's easier and less crippling to an established, heavy entity to wardec others, due to deeper pockets and war cost being tied to corp size, than it is for challengers or smaller entities to wardec them.
From the myriads of solutions I have seen, the most tangible and the most feasible one is the introduction of the War Room module.
A service module slotted into a structure that would allow its owner to declare war.
Wars not using that service module would be heavily constrained in order to encourage people to use that service module and thus open themselves to some form of Risk, but not make it impossible to declare war without one.
This simple idea is lacking in one department: The service alone is not enough. Even the lowest Astrahus is a major step-up for a small corporation or a regular player, and making everyone unable to field one because they'd have to be able to put an Astrahus, would defeat the whole point of making Wars accessible.
So something else has to be added: The HQ.
Bear in mind, from there we are going to assume the existence of the system of different Corps I talked about in my previous post. To sum it, a Social Corp would be a corp of Rank 1, and with its penalties would come the advantage of not being targeted for wars. A Corp could get to Novice/Rank 2 and get some advantages like a proper Tax or Corp Wallet, but then would be legit target for any Corp that can target Rank 2 corporations. This will be important for the rest of this post.
The HQ would be a Structure starting as size Small, yes Small, that would specialize in everything that is Wars, and Diplomacy (more on that later).
- It would be able to equip War Room service modules and would have deployment times ranging in minutes instead of hours.
- It would be considerably cheaper and easier to field than the regular structure. Have shorter reinforcement timers. But have considerable lower EHP and armaments.
- With a War Room service, the HQ can be used to make War legal in up to X systems from where it is anchored.
- Only one of those per Corps/Alliance can be placed in a singular system.
- HQs can only be anchored next to a Station. A Station can have up to 5-10 HQs depending on system sec.
The goal of the War Room is to finally give Spatiality to Wars, turning them from something that was up there in the air into something tangible that can be measured and attacked.
The goal of the HQ is to make fielding a Structure that would serve as the start and an anchor point to Wars affordable.
The War Room would come in different Qualities and Sizes that would influence two things:
- The Type of Corporations that can be targeted for War.
- The Range of Systems that can be affected by the War.
A basic Small War Room would only allow you to target Corporations of approximately your size/Rank and that only in the system it is deployed in.
A grand XL War Room would allow you to target any Corporations or Alliances of Rank Z+ (Z being higher than what is considered a Rookie/Social entity) everywhere in the EVE universe.
On the Defender part, Destroying the War Room or Provoking the deactivation of the War Room would invalidate the War in the systems in its Range.
The Location of the Structure housing the War Room that started the War would be known to the Defender.
What the War Room achieves is giving the Defender a way to get a hold on the Attacker if they can muster the willpower and firepower to do so. By attacking the Structure housing the War Room, the Defender has a say in the continuation of the war.
Suddenly, the offroad highwayman has to fight for keeps (literally). The Brigand becomes a proper Warrior.
The HQ could be the sole structure being able to house War Rooms, or just be one bonused for it. In either case, it would give the... structural parameters needed for a War.
Regular structures having the tendency of having deployment times ranging in hours, and reinforcement times close to a week, they are impractical for a War system.
By having its own sets of timers, the HQ could be designed to accommodate wars instead of working against them. Plus the reduction in EHP and armaments would make them less of a factor than a regular structure, and more importantly would make them less annoying to reinforce than a regular Structure.
Also, the more HQs you have, the more space you can attack but the more you make yourself vulnerable by increasing the points of attack against you.
Both the HQ and the War Room would work in giving Wars some Spatiality, in making what is a system that favors Brigands into something that can actually generate the fights and battles we want to sell to our newbies.
But the HQ can also be an avenue to deliver Conflict-Drivers into High-Sec.
The goal here would be to encourage Corp members to group up and shoot things from the very beginning in High-Sec. The numbers would start low, especially in higher sec zones. But would exponentially increase with the sec level of the system. For example: 1.0 -> 2, 0.9 -> 3, 0.8-> 5, 0.7-> 10, 0.6-> 20, 0.5-> 50.
This is a clear indication to players from the very beginning that what is expected of them is to increase in size, to get bigger and bigger and thus more organized with time.
With this lesson ingrained in the very first Conflict-Driver they come across, they will understand that size matters in EVE, but at the same time the limitation on rewards will send the message to entities that get too big for the sec that they need to move out and get to better plains.
Let's start with this:
High-Sec is devoid of meaningful reasons to fight each other.
Null-Sec has the whole Empire-Building that makes people identify to a Corp, a Culture, and conquer and contest space in the name of said Corp, Alliance, or Culture. Low-Sec has Faction Warfare pitting sides that are antithesis to each other, both in space and in ideas, and W-Space gives you a hole that is yours to own and also yours to maintain.
Those zones give you reasons to care, reasons to conquer what you want, and defend what is yours.
High-Sec is a notable exception to that model.
Nothing in High-Sec actually matters. Rocks eternally respawn, Missions are always offered, and Stations are open to anyone and belong to no one.
The only piece of territoriality comes from Custom Offices. By themselves they are fine, but as a sole source of conflict, they suffer from ease of access as content, asking for significant amounts of firepower, and from lack of reward thanks to the High-Sec tax on them. Same deal with the recent Refineries in 0.5 systems, very few actors have the willpower and firepower to contest a Moon-Mining Structure and profit from it.
A Lack of Scarcity is present in that very few resources that would be worth fighting over exist, and a Lack of Participation exists in that the ones existing ask for a level of organization and firepower that limits the amount of people that can participate in contesting them.
So Lack of Scarcity and Lack of Participation work together in making what High-Sec is today, a zone where only people who don't fight, and Wardeccers, thrive.
It is a problem if you are a game that thrives on ships shooting each other as a significant part of your activity. It is a problem when **ALL** of your players are introduced to your game through a zone that never puts them in the position of contesting things and does not even encourage them to, that makes for even less chances that they get to learn to fight, organize, and simply learn to EVE.
If the Purpose of High-Sec is to be where to train and prepare our next generation of pilots, it has to have the resources worth fighting for and accessible enough that they will make them learn how to deal and profit from Conflicts.
For that we have to start from the basics:
War has to be made an Integral Part of Territoriality
Before talking of What to fight for, we have to take care of How to fight for it.
The War Declaration system is the only system that allows for Conflicts in High-Sec. In its current form it is lacking in three essential aspects:
- A war has no Spatiality. Wardeccers are essentially highway brigands who have no obligation to show up and don't need to be in the business of contesting lands. The war is not tied to any space, it's just a threat somewhere in the air.
- Wars are heavily tilted in favor of the Attacker. The Attacker can maintain the war for as long as he has funds, and that regardless of what the Defender does. Even if the Defenders fight back there is no way for them to push their advantages into an end of hostilities.
- Lack of Accessibility. It's easier and less crippling to an established, heavy entity to wardec others, due to deeper pockets and war cost being tied to corp size, than it is for challengers or smaller entities to wardec them.
From the myriads of solutions I have seen, the most tangible and the most feasible one is the introduction of the War Room module.
A service module slotted into a structure that would allow its owner to declare war.
Wars not using that service module would be heavily constrained in order to encourage people to use that service module and thus open themselves to some form of Risk, but not make it impossible to declare war without one.
This simple idea is lacking in one department: The service alone is not enough. Even the lowest Astrahus is a major step-up for a small corporation or a regular player, and making everyone unable to field one because they'd have to be able to put an Astrahus, would defeat the whole point of making Wars accessible.
So something else has to be added: The HQ.
The HQ and the War Room
Bear in mind, from there we are going to assume the existence of the system of different Corps I talked about in my previous post. To sum it, a Social Corp would be a corp of Rank 1, and with its penalties would come the advantage of not being targeted for wars. A Corp could get to Novice/Rank 2 and get some advantages like a proper Tax or Corp Wallet, but then would be legit target for any Corp that can target Rank 2 corporations. This will be important for the rest of this post.
The HQ would be a Structure starting as size Small, yes Small, that would specialize in everything that is Wars, and Diplomacy (more on that later).
- It would be able to equip War Room service modules and would have deployment times ranging in minutes instead of hours.
- It would be considerably cheaper and easier to field than the regular structure. Have shorter reinforcement timers. But have considerable lower EHP and armaments.
- With a War Room service, the HQ can be used to make War legal in up to X systems from where it is anchored.
- Only one of those per Corps/Alliance can be placed in a singular system.
- HQs can only be anchored next to a Station. A Station can have up to 5-10 HQs depending on system sec.
The goal of the War Room is to finally give Spatiality to Wars, turning them from something that was up there in the air into something tangible that can be measured and attacked.
The goal of the HQ is to make fielding a Structure that would serve as the start and an anchor point to Wars affordable.
The War Room
The War Room would come in different Qualities and Sizes that would influence two things:
- The Type of Corporations that can be targeted for War.
- The Range of Systems that can be affected by the War.
A basic Small War Room would only allow you to target Corporations of approximately your size/Rank and that only in the system it is deployed in.
A grand XL War Room would allow you to target any Corporations or Alliances of Rank Z+ (Z being higher than what is considered a Rookie/Social entity) everywhere in the EVE universe.
On the Defender part, Destroying the War Room or Provoking the deactivation of the War Room would invalidate the War in the systems in its Range.
The Location of the Structure housing the War Room that started the War would be known to the Defender.
What the War Room achieves is giving the Defender a way to get a hold on the Attacker if they can muster the willpower and firepower to do so. By attacking the Structure housing the War Room, the Defender has a say in the continuation of the war.
Suddenly, the offroad highwayman has to fight for keeps (literally). The Brigand becomes a proper Warrior.
The HQ
The HQ could be the sole structure being able to house War Rooms, or just be one bonused for it. In either case, it would give the... structural parameters needed for a War.
Regular structures having the tendency of having deployment times ranging in hours, and reinforcement times close to a week, they are impractical for a War system.
By having its own sets of timers, the HQ could be designed to accommodate wars instead of working against them. Plus the reduction in EHP and armaments would make them less of a factor than a regular structure, and more importantly would make them less annoying to reinforce than a regular Structure.
Also, the more HQs you have, the more space you can attack but the more you make yourself vulnerable by increasing the points of attack against you.
Both the HQ and the War Room would work in giving Wars some Spatiality, in making what is a system that favors Brigands into something that can actually generate the fights and battles we want to sell to our newbies.
But the HQ can also be an avenue to deliver Conflict-Drivers into High-Sec.
Diplomacy and War
Now with the HQ and the War Room, you have several things achieved:
- Corporations have to stake something in order to contest.
- Corporations have to stake something in order to contest.
- Space has to be taken into account. What systems are you trying to deny the enemy.
- Defenders can work their way into making their space once again safe.
- Defenders have an option to end the war.
- Defenders can work their way into making their space once again safe.
- Defenders have an option to end the war.
From there, what is needed is reasons to fights for the aspiring Corporations that are to be born in High-Sec.
And for that, a unique aspect of High-Sec as to be used:
And for that, a unique aspect of High-Sec as to be used:
High-Sec is the space of Empire powers and forces.
High-Sec houses the most representatives and assets of the major NPC Corporations.
Outside of Missions, we barely interact with those entities, with their struggles, and with their interests.
Diplomacy can be our way to make Empire forces relevant to the daily life in High-Sec.
Outside of Missions, we barely interact with those entities, with their struggles, and with their interests.
Diplomacy can be our way to make Empire forces relevant to the daily life in High-Sec.
The Diplomatic HQ
Alongside its role in War, the HQ could serve as a bridge between you and the forces housed in High-Sec.
As a reminder, HQs can only be anchored to Stations.
By anchoring your HQ a Station owned by a NPC Corp, you open diplomatic communications with that NPC Corp.
As a reminder, HQs can only be anchored to Stations.
By anchoring your HQ a Station owned by a NPC Corp, you open diplomatic communications with that NPC Corp.
From there tons of systems can be linked into this. More importantly, you have something worth fighting over, the diplomatic opportunity to get closer to a certain NPC Corp. A scarce resource that is directly linked to what is unique about High-Sec.
First off, because that's what you would need to attack to stop a war.
So why would you fight a HQ or for one?
Desire to Rank Up
First off, because that's what you would need to attack to stop a war.
Second, because this is what you would use to Rank Up your Corporation.
This is why I said those Ranks mattered.
Essentially, the HQ would be the place where a Social Corp would upgrade to a Novice, a Novice Corp would graduate to a Standard Corp, so on and so forth.
Depending on the number of HQs and the sec status of the systems they are anchored in, you would get Points and those Points could be traded in for an upgrade of your Corps.
Pretty much, from the get-go, the systems teaches you that to have more features as a group, you will have to open yourself up to Risks, and you will have to enter Conflicts.
The HQ would offer opportunities to meet and fleet up for Corp Missions. Those would be the primary way to get wealth from the HQ and accumulate standings with the NPC Corp owning the Station.
This is why I said those Ranks mattered.
Essentially, the HQ would be the place where a Social Corp would upgrade to a Novice, a Novice Corp would graduate to a Standard Corp, so on and so forth.
Depending on the number of HQs and the sec status of the systems they are anchored in, you would get Points and those Points could be traded in for an upgrade of your Corps.
Pretty much, from the get-go, the systems teaches you that to have more features as a group, you will have to open yourself up to Risks, and you will have to enter Conflicts.
Desire to Fleet Up
- The Corp Mission would ask for all participants from the same corp to be docked up into the HQ before obtaining it.
- The NPC Corp would offer, through the way of a Diplomat, a Corp Mission to defend their interests.
- That Mission would have a soft limit on the number of participants and the rewards, for example the optimal amount of rewards of a Corp Mission could be for 5 participants (the NPC Corps wants things to be hush-hush), if you bring 10, the reward would not only have to be split, it would decrease.
- That Mission would have a soft limit on the number of participants and the rewards, for example the optimal amount of rewards of a Corp Mission could be for 5 participants (the NPC Corps wants things to be hush-hush), if you bring 10, the reward would not only have to be split, it would decrease.
The goal here would be to encourage Corp members to group up and shoot things from the very beginning in High-Sec. The numbers would start low, especially in higher sec zones. But would exponentially increase with the sec level of the system. For example: 1.0 -> 2, 0.9 -> 3, 0.8-> 5, 0.7-> 10, 0.6-> 20, 0.5-> 50.
This is a clear indication to players from the very beginning that what is expected of them is to increase in size, to get bigger and bigger and thus more organized with time.
With this lesson ingrained in the very first Conflict-Driver they come across, they will understand that size matters in EVE, but at the same time the limitation on rewards will send the message to entities that get too big for the sec that they need to move out and get to better plains.
The Validity of those Features
What is needed for High-Sec is not only a way to do Conflicts, but also a reason to do Conflicts. And that while teaching new players things that will help them get the game and enjoy their times there. Competition, Conflicts, Boldness.
The War Room will make Wars into proper battles that have to be fought, The HQ will make Space matters to Conflicts and open up people to more attacks as they get bigger, and Diplomacy will give a reason for Corps to group up, fleet up, and grow together, until they are fat enough to get out of High-Sec.
All things High-Sec should be about.
The War Room will make Wars into proper battles that have to be fought, The HQ will make Space matters to Conflicts and open up people to more attacks as they get bigger, and Diplomacy will give a reason for Corps to group up, fleet up, and grow together, until they are fat enough to get out of High-Sec.
All things High-Sec should be about.
There! We can leave it here for this time, next time I will begin my foray in FW space and its suite of problems, and maybe answer one or two points of feedback that have been sent my way.
Until Then, Stay Golden!
Until Then, Stay Golden!
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