Making it’s rounds today was the masterful piece of grandstanding by TheMittani that garnered support quickly throughout null sec leaderships at an astounding rate. When you look at the list of names, you could get easily impressed by the political clout that stepped up to “put aside” feelings and unite around TheMittani for the greater good of null? Call me a bit pretentious, but nothing null blocs have done or supported could ever be construed as less than self-serving, in my opinion. Not that I don’t disagree with some of it’s points, but when I see remarks such as:

“…remove the current need for vast coalitions”

I have to start calling suspect to the true intentions of TheMittani. I was further spurred by my initial thought that this was rather reactionary and sudden when I caught Tales from Taz‘s blog who brought up some of the very suspicions I had myself. In retrospect, I think Taz is right on the money and what we are seeing is a knee-jerk reaction that we all knew was coming when CCP Greyscale warned that his sledgehammer of doom was going to come down again on the subject of force projection.

To go a bit deeper, if we went into an occupancy-based system of sovereignty, what would be the downfall to owning space? Is it going to be more of a time sink rather than isk? Would this mean that these large alliances would NEED carebears from high sec to come rat and mine for them? Serious PvP pilots aren’t going to want to spend a whole hell of a lot of time ratting, much less mining.

Up until now, it’s been an isk sink. Before Dominion, one had to litter the area with towers. In present day, we have so many structures like SBUs to grind through that it makes pre-Dominion look like the appetizer before the main meal. Now, along with all the towers, the isk sink to maintain sov is more expensive. This was a design mechanic and once we got the Tech moon nerf, the situation became more desperate. Instead of pushing the edge of the envelope and the scattering of those moons causing more conflict, the opposite happened. B0tlrd came into being and suddenly the large alliances lost the willingness to risk the R64s. Publrd put a lock on assuring that everyone’s renter income would be secured. The riskiest area in the game had now just become the most risk adverse.

In an occupancy based system of sov, renters wouldn’t have to rent. Instead, the landlords can save all that isk from having to pay for sov and just make like the Mafia, shaking down lesser corporations and alliances for protection money. They could charge the current day amount and not have ANY of the bills to go with it. This is why I believe that there will be some form of mechanic in place if one wants to fly their flag on a map. By limiting force projection, the threat to the lesser entities diminish the further away one is from reach. Not to say that it still can’t be done. The idea to put NPC null stations in every region gives large entities clone bay options to put their foot in whatever region they choose. Who needs force projection when you can just clone jump there and wage guerrilla tactics on whomever you want?

This was PRECISELY the complaint when I was with Li3 and FA. FrFrmPukin and other CFC voices were very verbal in their objections to the fact that here we had guys launching fight after fight against us and there was no way we could totally push them out because they staged in NPC stations. Now suddenly, the CFC puts forth an idea to make that possible in every region of the game??? Ya, I got reservations about that. Call me skeptical.

Larger forces such as Pandemic Legion will always have a motivation to helicopter-dick whomever they choose as long as there’s a fight. If you force the lesser entities to fight and lose, you’ll drive the lesser entities out. The other option? Batphone. There’s quite the possibility that going to this kind of sov mechanic will put more Batphones in more hands and build more alliances out of need rather than convenience. In this way, Coalitions will NOT be forced out of existence, but rather more Coalitions of smaller entities with a Batphone to whatever “big boy” is shaking them down to provide said protection. In this sense, publrd can still continue. Renting doesn’t make one bit of difference.

Overall, this “agreement” MUST be construed as reactionary since it was drafted AFTER the CSM Summit. Otherwise, this would have been the perfect ammunition to arm the CSM with as they sat down with CCP. Instead, TheMittani is acting as a de facto CSM representative, but legitimizing his spearheading by gathering CSM support. I asked TheMittani via Twitter why this was not drafted prior to the CSM summit. He has thus far not responded, nor do I expect him to.

In short, please don’t jump on the bandwagon without taking an objective look at the consequences of precisely what we’re asking for…we just may get it.