We live in interesting times in New Eden; the metagame of nullsec is

changing, and I don’t just mean in espionage. These are a

number of long-term gameplay adjustments that are only now becoming

obvious, and they will impact everyone who plays style="font-style: italic;">EVE,

not just those participating in territorial warfare. Let’s

examine them:







The

Death of the Fleet Battleship:

When the first detailed plans for Dominion began to leak in September

09, the more prescient among the fleet commanders began calling

attention to the potential for a massive change in the way the game is

played. Since the dawn of the conquest in 0.0, the ultimate tool of

alliance warfare has been the sniping fleet battleship. In some corners

of the galaxy, it is heavily tanked; in others, it is a more

maneuverable glass cannon. Even after the rise of capital fleets, the

vast majority of pilots involved in alliance warfare used battleships,

particularly because only a properly-fit BS could hope to survive the

AoE Doomsday weapons used by the Titans of that era.







alt="EVE Online picture"

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/34652"

style="border: 0px solid ; width: 250px; height: 156px;"> href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/34652">alt="EVE Online picture"src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/34652"style="border: 0px solid ; width: 250px; height: 156px;">

Nowadays, there’s nothing unique about a BS that a HAC or a

Supercarrier can’t do better. The biggest influence here is

the rise of the Logistics ship; with enough Logistics in a fleet,

almost anything can survive in the post-Doomsday age. The current vogue

is split between two primary fleet types. One is heavily armor-tanked

HACs backed up by armor logistics, using skirmish mindlinks and

boosters to lower the signature radius – and thus incoming

damage – to anything in the fleet. The other doctrine appears

to be

some combination of shield logistics plus massive numbers of

Drakes, relying on the high alphastrike of the Drake missiles with the

durability of their inherent resistance bonus.







Personally, I think this is long overdue. There is now a tremendous

‘debate’ (of the sort which is played out in

unpredictable – and thus entertaining – combats) in

the metagame of fleet composition, and no clear winner has emerged. For

more than six years the unquestionable endgame subcap ship was a

sniping BS, but outside of a fleet context these ships were not much

fun to fly – and utterly helpless if caught out alone. The

shift in tactics to HACs, battlecruisers and logistics ships

has opened up a lot of avenues of subcapital gameplay which simply

weren’t available before, or were consigned regretfully to

the province of small gang warfare. In the present moment,

we’re seeing alliances calling for pilots to train ships for

main fleet work which would have been unheard of six months ago.







Supercarriers

and Power Density: This is

the flip-side of the end of the Battleship Era. Previously, to

participate in nullsec politics on a grand scale, one needed massive

fleets to contest for sovereignty. Now, however, Supercarriers have

become so singularly powerful that they are a counter for themselves.

A

large number of Supercarriers (between five and ten on the field at

once) is, itself, a power bloc that can only be answered by another

blob of supercaps. While this is certainly less game-wrecking than the

old Doomsdays, it does have an intriguing shift in the power dynamic

away from large numbers of pilots. We’re beginning to see

small, wealthy alliances with under a thousand pilots but with a very

large number of Supercarriers wreaking havoc with traditional Great

Powers. Who needs a battleship fleet if you have a corp with 30 Nyx

pilots? The other side effect of this is that demand for Titans has

flatlined; Supercarriers are much cheaper and still stupidly durable,

and more capable of engaging in combat with subcapital ships.







Diplomacy

as a Team Sport: As the Great

Powers begin to balkanize and these smaller, supercapital-dense

entities begin throwing their weight around, diplomacy as a profession

in EVE

is radically changing. In the past, one could have one or two people

filling the role as an alliance diplomat. Now, however, there are so

many entities involved in nullsec that diplomatic corps are beginning

to expand into entire sections.







alt="EVE Online picture"

src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/34654"

style="border: 0px solid ; width: 250px; height: 156px;"> href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/34654">alt="EVE Online picture"src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/34654"style="border: 0px solid ; width: 250px; height: 156px;">

This also has the practical function of making the lines between

intelligence gathering and diplomacy blur, as there are now so many

smaller entities around that it’s hard to fully infiltrate an

area with spies. For example, the recent conflict around Scalding Pass

and Insmother would once have merely been a contest between Atlas,

Goonswarm, and Pandemic Legion. In the modern environment, however,

these two regions were an ugly nest of squabbling microstates. While

the blocs were certainly involved as main forces of pressure, the

infighting between Honorable Templum of Alcedonia,

Gentlemen’s Club, Cult of War and Primary required multiple

diplomats working overtime just to keep track who was pissed off at who

at any given moment.







Grief

as a Sov Mechanic: After the

disastrous attempts by the ‘Southern Coalition’ of

Atlas, -A- and IT to dislodge the Northern Coalition, there are few

people left in the game who honestly want to bother with the tedious

process of the Dominion sov system, with its excruciating

‘sit around and guard a widget for between three and eight

hours’ mechanic. Yet war and grudges must continue, lest we

all run off and play href="http://www.worldoftanks.com/" target="_blank"> style="font-style: italic;">World of Tanks

(which, incidentally, is massively populated with style="font-style: italic;">EVE

players). One of the more interesting workarounds to the whole SBU/TCU

rigmarole has been using mass-scale griefing tactics to essentially

harass the victim entity into giving up their territory and cutting a

deal to evacuate. This was what was primarily used in the

aforementioned Scalding Pass/Insmother conflict. Also of note is the

fact that the ships used for griefing are never traditional fleet

battleships, so this trend further accelerates the turning away from

fleet BS.





