The Games We Play

I previously made a point about the new sov changes that it was moving from an EHP/DPS to a capture the flag mode. This got me thinking. Besides the mechanics of piloting a ship around a grid and pew pewing enemies, the strategic games we play are quite different in EVE.

Consider that sov warfare has evolved to be, in terms of flipping sov, a DPS vs EHP game. The EHP protecting sov forces a rational response from the players, which is to pile on the DPS until the EHP (which represents a time sink) becomes less of a limiting factor. Therefore, whomever accumulates the most DPS and can bring it to bear on a single defensive structure wins most easily - partly because DPS equates to numbers, and numbers equates to defensive and offensive depth.

General nullsec roaming is a game dominated by damage projection and mobility. Slow, tanky ships with close-in weapons rarely see much success because if you roam an area you have a million tacticals, and you kite off your foe while laying down long-range DPS. When the Ishtar got buffed you had a magical uber DPS platform with retarded damage, projection and permarun MWD with low sig. What more do you really want, besides Orthrus gangs?

Lowsec gate piracy is a game of aggression timers, docking or jumping, and the DPS to drop your foe before he can crawl back to gate. You rarely see a gate camper take a fight he can't win or can't deaggress and escape from, unless they suck or get fooled by something like, say, a Nereus.

Highsec station camping wardeccers are playing a very similar game, too, except their targets are limited, usually disorganised and rarely engaged head-on. Gate camping in highsec is also all about the deagression in the face of poor odds, and there's a raft of hulls which suit this sort of game play.

Wormholes, beyond the exertions of flying around a grid, are played out with a game dominated by time and mass. I would also argue that it's also a game of cat and mouse, of intelligence gathering and calculated risk (cloaking and no local forces you to take structured risks, or at least dock up and log off at the first opportunity). Mass dictates the ships you use and places a hard upper limit on the DPS you can field and the EHP you can field. Time simply dictates the life of your chain. Therefore, EVE playing in wormholes evolved to a brawling-centric play style, in the main, dominated by high DPS, highly tanked and relatively immobile ships. Well, till the Ishtar got buffed and everyone could also get mobility plus withering DPS and a respectable tank.

The point of this?

Well, sov warfare is about to change dramatically. The people playing the current sov warfare game have a lot of skill points, ISK, hulls, capitals, supercapitals and even titans (and whole characters) devoted to playing this game. Someone from a womrhole cannot just up stumps and play their game, singly or en masse, without a lot of preparation, some experience and expense. Certainly it's not currently possible, with a few PESKY exceptions, to carve ut sov withut a lot of DPS to chew through EHP.

The people playing the current sov warfare game are staring at a cliff in the middle of the year and keanu Reeves is asleep, nay, dead at the wheel of the bus with his fot on the accelerator and the world is about the end.

Like, if you own a supercap pilot and hull, where are you feasibly going to use it? Or, for that matter, a dread? I-hubs don't need to be flipped, nor SBU's, TCU's. Nada. Nothing needs to be flipped, you just orbit it for 5 to 30 minutes, hope not to get ganked, and then it turns into factional fwarfare to all intents and purposes. Dropping a dread is pointless in a mobile fight dominated by Ishtars, Cerbs, orthrus, Caracal RLML gangs, etcetera. Same, more or less, for carriers, although a few hero triage carriers might drop on field.

So all these people with metric fucktonnes of ISK, treasure, blood and months-long skill trains under their belt are going to have to follow Fozzie's vision, pied piper style, and ship dwn into Svipuls. Except you can't in a supercarrier or titan.

I predict there will be a mass migration to lowsec of all capital classes, and it will become hectic in lowsec. Sov grinding will drive away the apex players, because the apex game can be now achieved with shitty alts and blobs that disappear at the drop of a cyno. Except for taking out cyno jammers (now irrelevant) or moon go POSs (which can be taken with a couple of dreads you shunt through a gate).

This, rightly, culd be the death knell of sov warfare in EVE. It's not going to be the same game, wth the same players, the same ships or the same tactics. It will be interesting to see who plays this game.