Okay, kinda-sorta-but-also-not-clickbait title out of the way, I'm actually serious about the topic. FCCP is obviously nerfing Ansis to shrink alliance sprawl, that much is obvious.
And to be honest? To preface this, I'm completely fine with it. But I think there needs to be a carrot to go along with the stick for this to really get the effect they're going for.
Shrinking alliance sprawl is fine, probably healthy for the game, but this introduces a conflicting problem with another slightly important system in the game. Equinox.
Right now Equinox is a very 'build wide not tall' system that encourages and. to an extent, requires alliances to take hefty chunks of space to be able to:
- Install infrastructure
- Install PVE upgrades for mining, industry, and ratting
- Spread those out to keep indexes down, and stop people from crowding systems
- Have enough systems to be able to feed said upgrades
I could be wrong (read: I probably am wrong) but even after the updates and buffs to Equinox, there are still overall less PVE sites available. Be it mining or ratting, there are just less of them overall than there were pre-Equinox. If this is the case, then shrinking alliances down is only going to exacerbate the issue of overcrowding.
So what if FCCP also tied buffing Equinox upgrades to capital proximity too?
Ansi jump cost multipliers shows that FCCP has a back end system that accounts for proximity to your capital, so why not capitalize on that and tie benefits to it too? What if there were bonuses to PVE sites within a certain distance of the capital that made them cheaper? Or for mining, also made them spawn faster?
This would even further incentivize organizations to build very dense pockets of PVE activity centered around their capital system that trickled off and became more expensive the farther you got from your capital system.
I feel like this would have a few knock-on effects like creating target-rich environments for roamers to hunt in, and would be a huge additive push to get alliances to scale down how much space they own.
Am I dreaming (yes, shut up, let me dream) or is this too whimsical of thinking?
**Edit** - I also just realized, tying buffs to the Capital System will also help new, smaller alliances who own just a few systems by making every one of their upgrades the best/cheapest they can be, giving them a better chance to get on their feet.
TL:DR - Nerfing Ansis is a good start, but I doubt it'll be enough. What if we also tied buffing Equinox Sov Upgrades to proximity to the capital as well?