Friday, January 18, 2013

Null Sec: Ownership VS. Sovereignty


I’ve been toying around with this idea lately, relating to ownership in nullsec –specifically the ownership of outposts, upgrades, and etc.

What if ownership wasn't tied to Sovereignty at all? What if anyone could build anything they wanted, and upgrade any system they wanted to, without having sovereignty?

It seems we've always equated sovereignty to be ownership, and ownership to be sovereignty.  Doesn't this limit us? Shouldn't alliances that want to take power be able to take power –and those who care little about power, and just want to build stuff be able to build stuff without feeling like they have to ‘plant a flag’? Or becomes something that they aren't?

Of course, the sovereign party would be able to see outposts and upgrades and other structures being built in ‘their’ space –and perhaps we could setup some sort of handy interface that allows them to send ‘bills’ to these people. We could call it ‘rent.’ (What a novel idea?)

And those getting billed could pay…or not. Maybe they blow off the sovereign party and maybe they hire mercenaries for protection against them. Maybe they build up their defenses, and make it almost not worthwhile to come after them. Or, maybe the sovereign party is forced to ignore them due to imminent attack from somewhere else.

Single players, and very small corps could broker deals with outpost owners…paying docking fees or a smaller version of ‘rent.’ Outpost and infrastructure owners could pay the larger ‘sovereign’ alliances. Small ‘hubs’ could develop, with multiple outposts being built in a single system by different corporations and/or alliances—all sharing in the cost of hiring others to protect the area.

It would be similar to what seems to happen naturally now –a sort of feudal system, except that corporations and alliances could build infrastructure completely under the radar, outside the scope of brandishing ‘sovereignty’ and power.

Farms and Fields or Furrows…or whatever they call it…seems somewhat off, somehow. As does all this talk about ‘using it or losing it.’ It’s like telling a large PVP alliance that overtakes the Amarr/Minmatar war zone that they shouldn't be able to have Sovereignty unless they do a lot of mission running….or that they should have to mine or something. That’s just silly.

Why not just let the warlords be warlords, the farmers be farmers, the builders be builders, and simply give them the tools to come up with their own ways of interacting with each other?

Make sovereignty more about power and control, and less about ownership and industry.

6 comments:

  1. You've just discribe the old American West. Go west young man... But watch out for all those outlaws, indians, etc... The new Eve pilots - Comancheros. Carving themselves out a piece of the New Eden pie. I like it!

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  2. i don't live in null sec, but this does sound appealing. would be a lot to work out, but the general idea is pretty good!

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  3. It's an interesting concept. I'd point out that there's no reason the sort of formalized sovereignty-as-ownership for empire builders can't exist and evolve from the current system _and_ have something like what you're envisioning develop in parallel though. I don't see them as mutually exclusive at all.

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  4. Now, THIS is an excellent idea.

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  5. Sounds like you're going to leave Huola now that you're losing. Shucks.

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  6. Maybe CCP should quit assigning sov as a formal title and let the players create their own sov maps by using whatever statistics they think are important.

    Build anything anywhere in 0.0. Let the stats geeks sort out who "owns" which system - and even if they did it wouldn't matter. The people who dominate a system will know who they are.


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