Stand by to Repel Boarders (Blog Banter 21)

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Rhavas

OOC: As regular readers know, this blog is generally IC in nature. However, part of the inspiration to start this blog was a desire to participate in CrazyKinux’s Blog Banters. So I’m taking a brief intermission in Shattered to do my first.
Welcome to the twenty-first installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month topic comes to us from @ZoneGhost who a few month ago asked “Is Low Sec the forgotten part of EVE Online?” Is it? I’d like us to explore this even further. Is Low Sec being treated differently by CCP Games than Null Sec (Zero-Zero) or Empire space is? Can one successfully make a living in these unsecured systems where neither Alliance nor Concord roam to enforce their laws? What’s needed? Or is everything fine as it is?

Is Low-Sec forgotten? Hard to pin that down – I don’t think other players travelling forget it. I can tell you I was terrified to cross into Low-Sec space for the first six weeks I was playing. I still have a sense of dread as I jump into Otou on the Hek-to-Jita run. I bought a cloak for my Mammoth for a reason – sheer Low-Sec paranoia around my PI planets. Forgotten as living space? Yes, and getting worse, as Omnis Arcanum documents quite well. Forgotten by CCP? Well, maybe. I’ll leave that to those who live there (see below).

I live in High-Sec, and have for the short four months I’ve been playing. I’ve ventured into Low-Sec many times now, and have had some experience cruising through 0.0 and getting the duct tape blown off my Rifters. But what was once a place of terror is no longer, since like others have noted I often am surprised by how empty it is. Since I don’t live in Low-Sec, there are others better qualified, like Mynxee of the CSM and Life in LowSec, to put together the gripes of that group.

What I can speak to is the two things I do there.

1) Anti-Pirate PVP.

I think LowSec needs to be the wild west. If high-sec is the “old world” and 0.0 is the “new world”, low-sec is the hardscrabble frontier in between, where weapons are quick to be drawn because law is scarce. Today a few things I would suggest to get us there.

  • Make security status changes operate differently in Lowsec. Kirith Kodachi stole the words from my brain, so I’ll steal them from his blog: “The biggest problem with low sec is that people who wish to not be pirates (aka anti-pirates) cannot enforce security without incurring the wrath of security status loss (requiring a lot of work to regain through boring ratting/missions) and coming under fire from the sentry guns if you engage hostiles whose sec status has not dropped below -5.” I couldn’t agree more. Why do the “marshalls” suddenly become pirates when they attack pirates? Low-sec should be “weapons free” – anyone can shoot anyone, and there’s no security penalty, or else the security penalty is instead a security modifier. You shoot someone with positive security, you get negative, and vice versa.
  • Ditch GCC in low-sec. Same reason as above.
  • Make sentry actions, emplacements and NPC motivations different in Lowsec. Given the above, I think you need a fair fight, and fair risk. What might that look like? What would you have in “wild west” space? Stations with guns? Absolutely, those stationholders would be paranoid and bristly. However, they might support different groups. Maybe some would shoot pirates. Maybe some would shoot anti-pirates. Maybe some would shoot anything that moved. Gates could be revamped – so that there are “defense gates” and “standard gates”. “Defense gates” are the borders into highsec. If you are an empire, you put a big defense on the outside of a gate. You station your sentry ships and your big guns at the point of entry to “repel boarders”. However, you don’t spend money or diffuse your resources further than that. So… what if gates between high and low (e.g. Otou-Hek) are decisively anti-pirate, and even more heavily armed than now … but those defenses never leave that gate, and all other gates – low-to-low (e.g. Otou-Miroitem) and low-to-null – are completely unprotected?
  • However… I do think that bubbles need to stay out in 0.0, though – they are the defensive equivalent of CONCORD’s offense. I think Low-sec would be better duked out rather than unbalanced.

2) Planetary Interaction.

Given my aforementioned paranoia, I’ve been cautious. All of my PI planets are in 0.4, in systems off the beaten path. Low-Sec planets are orders of magnitude better than High-Sec, but I keep myself to the things right off the High-Sec lanes because picking up mass quantities of goods in a hauler made of cardboard is a big fat risk.

I think CCP missed a huge opportunity with the Primae. It could have been an awesome ship that could survive the “wild west” scenario postulated above. 2-3 midslots, some sort of bonus to warp core stabilizers, align time or speed, and shield extenders, and cargo room to match a midsize hauler and you have yourself one hell of a PI ship that you could actually survive a couple of pin attempts and go a few systems deep into Low-sec. Now, you might say that would be unbalancing against the pirates. Against a pirate, yes. Against pirates? No. It would need to be balanced so that a small pack (2-4 ships) could take it down. The flashies still have the advantage if they work together.

Your opinions on my opinions welcomed. 🙂

Recommendation:

If you’re a Low-sec regular, put your opinion in with Mynxee’s Making Low-Sec Matter Committee.

Other Blog Banter 21 Participants:

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2 Responses to Stand by to Repel Boarders (Blog Banter 21)

  1. Kenza says:
    September 30, 2010 at 4:10 AM

    Good post !!
    Nice idea of defensive gates
    And Thanks for the mention
    😀

    Reply

  2. Pingback: Feudal Eve: An Introduction | Interstellar Privateer

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