CCP Announces Iterations On New EVE Sovereignty System

Yesterday, game designer CCP Fozzie announced a batch of changes to the recently-rebuilt EVE Sov system.

We previously touched on the new mechanics, commonly called “Fozziesov” or “Aegis Sov.” EVE’s nullsec players have been crying out for changes to the sov system for years now, and the Fozziesov mechanics are the product of months and months of discussion in Reykjavik. They also came with a promise to improve, patch, iterate and otherwise build upon the new system.

That promise is being fulfilled, as the reaction to Fozziesov has been far from uniformly positive. Many of the features are sound in principle, but require tweaking in practice. Most of the complaints seem to revolve around the amount of wasted time it takes to defend space, even against nuisance raids. Fozziesov has seen the rise of the “trollceptor” fleet: gangs of difficult-to-catch Interceptors roaming through space and triggering defensive timers with no intention of contesting them in battle, merely wearing down and annoying the defender with busywork. More overarching complaints, like the relative paucity of rewards for holding space, will have to be addressed as well.

The general thrust of the proposed changes seems to align with the most common player concerns with Fozziesov, as chronicled by Thoric Frosthammer and Wilhelm Arcturus. It is reassuring to see iteration come so quickly, and the promise of further work on Sov is good to see, as well. CCP put their “superstar” devs on point for this; with Fozzie working on mechanics and Punkturis building the interface, it’s hard to imagine a stronger commitment.

Most interesting, perhaps, is the “preview” of coming updates in the final paragraphs of CCP Fozzie’s post:

Galatea is just the beginning of our commitment to iterating and improving nullsec and sov. We are hard at work on the changing coming in future releases, including formal methods for dropping sov, the ability to turn IHub upgrades on and off, updates to the formula for calculating activity defense multipliers, new PVE experiences for sov nullsec and much more. Nullsec and Sov remain our focus here at Team Five 0 and we’ll be continuing to update you on progress as we go forward. We are listening to your feedback and continuing to observe the results of our changes as we make them.

These Galatea changes will also obviously not be the final changes to the capture mechanics themselves. We have some changes we know we want to make (like partially captured structures returning to defender control at a slow constant regeneration pace to reduce the need for “maintenance linking”) and others that we don’t want to rule out but that also need more investigation and internal/external discussion before making final decisions (such as ship restrictions on Entosis Links). Thanks to everyone who’s been providing constructive feedback so far, we hope you’ll continue.

The promised iterations are to be released, along with a host of other features and updates, on August 25 as part of the Galatea update.