“How people stored their stuff”

Historical context is needed to fully understand the scope of the perceived balance of mechanics and game design, or more often than not in CCP’s case, imbalance. This context is something that’s often left out or not properly explained in-depth. How these game mechanics compare and contrast to prior iterations, as well as how they were balanced for different areas of space and for different scales of conflicts is also an important factor to take into consideration.

Up until the introduction of citadels, you had two options if you wanted to stage somewhere. If you lived in a wormhole, wanted to stage in hostile territory, or needed somewhere to park your supercapital, you used a player owned starbase or “pos.” Upon the destruction of the pos, the maintenance arrays that held your assets were destructible and would be lootable by the attacker. For everything else, you operated out of an outpost. The function of empire and npc nullsec stations essentially has not changed since Eve’s release.

The ability to deploy outposts, aka stations, in sovereign nullsec was added mid-2005. Prior to this, the only sovereign nullsec stations you could dock in were a handful of “conquerable stations” that had been seeded by CCP at the launch of Eve. Sovereign nullsec outposts were created by anchoring an outpost platform, also known as a “station egg.” Each race had their own station egg and corresponding racial bonuses to match in order to suit whatever the alliance anchoring the outpost needed. In an era where supercapitals either had yet to be introduced or were a rarity, the decision to invest in an outpost was a significant investment made at the alliance level. Outposts were limited to one per system, if you wanted to dock in the system you had to flip the station. In 2007, the ability to upgrade outposts for additional bonuses such as material efficiency, production time efficiency, and corporation office slots was added thus placing further importance on player outposts and their control.

“How people lost their stuff”

Until Dominion was release in late-2009, sovereignty was determined by the number of poses your alliance had anchored in system. If your alliance controlled the majority of the poses in system, you owned it. Once the attacking alliance seized control of the system, the station could be shot and flipped without any timers. This allowed for stations to flip rapidly after pos control was gained. This also meant that much of the “gameplay” was based around shooting poses that were undefended, and required constant upkeep and fueling of poses. Poses didn’t run off fuel blocks, and required a number of different fuels to maintain. To say that this was tedious for both attackers and defenders would be putting it mildly.

When players felt that their alliance was likely to lose control of their outpost, they would evacuate their assets to the nearest lowsec, npc nullsec, or to another outpost that was further from the conflict zone. Players that personally didn’t have the means to relocate or have the alliance infrastructure to have someone else evacuate their assets, had a few options to recoup the loss of access to their assets.

Players could firesale their assets on public contracts, ostensibly to be purchased by the attacking alliance at significantly discounted rates. Tech one hulls would often be insured and self destructed. A jump clone could be installed in the outpost to move a trapped ship at a later date. Often players ended up simply not having the time or means to relocate their assets. In that instance, players could insert an alt into the alliance that had captured the outpost or one of their blues with docking rights. Failing all that, if a player returned to the game after six months of inactivity, GM policy was typically to move one ship and whatever assets could be fit into the cargo bay, to empire space.

In an ironic twist, the entire premise behind the Dominion “Storming the Gates” devblog introducing the previous iteration of sovereignty via IHUBs, TCUs, SBUs, and station flipping timers reads as a cautionary tale attempting to avoid mechanics that are tedious and unengaging. That nearly decade old dev blog is just as applicable and relevant to the current system of Aegis sovereignty and citadel reinforcement as it was to the pos sovereignty system of the early days of Eve.

Solar Fleet lost their primary staging point in Outer Passage, R3P0-Z to the combined forces of N3PL on April 21, 2013. In the case of major staging systems, alliances would often “hellcamp” an outpost by deploying anchorable bubbles and having a fleet deployed at the station undock in shifts around the clock until the vulnerability timer arrived. The station undock had been hellcamped for days prior to the final timer, preventing members of Solar Fleet from extracting their strategic assets. The final tick of damage was done to the station by a character in the Deadzoned alliance, an alliance only containing a handful of PL’s trusted leadership’s alts.

Deadzoned did not issue docking rights to any other alliance, thus effectively freezing out the outpost. Up until this point, no alliance had ever tried locking out another alliance to this extent. Legion of xXDeathXx finally retook the station and freed all of Solar’s assets in December 2014, a month after Pheobe and while the N3 was in the process of disbanding. In early 2015, Solar and xXDeathXx set each other blue, and Solar finally had access to their assets nearly two years later.

In the near future outposts will replaced by faction fortizars. Anyone who understands the underlying mechanics of citadels and is being intellectually honest realizes that the current mechanics are abysmal both in terms of gameplay and risk versus reward. The tagline of the Citadel expansion was “Build their dreams, wreck theirs.” Not only was this never delivered, the mechanics are overwhelmingly defensively favored to the point of being diametrically opposed to the ethos of Eve that attracted their core player base to begin with. The implementation of how Citadels should have replaced poses and stations in a way that’s engaging and has meaningful counterplay is an article on its own.

“How people stopped losing their stuff”

At some point in the process of designing citadel mechanics, CCP made the decision to introduce asset safety as a “feature.” Asset safety can be activated at any point. After five days in asset safety, items can be transferred to any other citadel or station in the same system at zero cost. After twenty days in asset safety, 15% of the asset value is charged, and the assets are moved to the nearest lowsec station. The closest mechanic to asset safety prior to its implementation was to be inactive for half a year and then petition a GM to have a single hull without a jump drive moved, and was a major tonal shift on the part of CCP.

If I’m generous to CCP and play Devil’s advocate in their favor, they may have implemented these mechanics as a result of deadzoning and decided that too many people in Solar quit as a result of having lost access to their assets. Even then, actions should have consequences. Successful attackers have earned their spoils of war, and a failed defense should incur meaningful losses.

The five day in system safety mechanic is patently absurd, as it allows assets to be bounced around by spamming citadels while at no point risking any assets being in a citadel at the time of its destruction. Additionally, it allows for the effortless movement of capital production materials. The five day in system asset safety has no place in New Eden and should have never been implemented, remove this “feature” tomorrow and the game will be better for it.

Edit: The original proposal was unnecessarily punitive, especially to returning players. I’ve since removed it, as it’s something I’ve reconsidered and have found a better alternative for.

The twenty day asset safety mechanic removes meaning from attacking structures. Asset safety should look to the current mechanics of assets locked in hostile stations, be replaced with a similar function. If your assets are destroyed in a citadel, you retain ownership, but they are transferred to a hostile citadel in system of equivalent size class (assets inside a dead foritzar would be moved to a hostile fortizar/tatara/azbel) If no other hostile citadels are in that system of that size class, they are moved to the next equivalent Upwell structure to be anchored in that system. This allows for assets to be firesold and recoverable, while also providing a meaningful risk/reward system.

I do not blame players for taking advantage of poor game design to their benefit, I do blame whichever executive made the short-sighted decision to pander to a playerbase that will never be invested in Eve’s niche long-term by attempting to turn sov null into a themepark. If you want evidence of that tact failing, look no further than the rise and the fall of the PCU shortly after a major media or in-game event. As is, attacking citadels that are spammed infinitely feels meaningless, and leads to player dissatisfaction and burnout much in the same way that grinding poses under pre-Dominion was meaningless. No one wants to logon just to have their time wasted. Designing a system that gives FC’s objectives makes players want to resubscribe, login and fight, will do far more to generate revenue than shortsighted marketing of features that are detrimental to the health of the game, or ultimately have no meaningful impact.

2005:

https://www.eveonline.com/article/sneak-peaks-part-iv-outposts/

https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/more-details-on-outposts/

https://www.eveonline.com/article/manufacturing-dreadnoughts-freighters-outposts/

2007:

https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/building-up-your-realm-one-sovereignty-at-a-time/

https://www.eveonline.com/article/revelations-ii-patch-notes-features-fixes-and-improvements-1

https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/of-outposts-improvements-upgrades-and-dragons/

2009:

https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/sovereignty-breaking-the-chains/

https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/dominion-storming-the-gates/

2013:

http://evemaps.dotlan.net/system/R3P0-Z

Current Eve Support pages:

https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/203207992-Inaccessible-Assets-and-Returning-players

https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/208289365-Asset-Safety

Thanks to Elise Randolph, Lucia Denniard, and W4r Destined for their assistance.