Annihilator wrote:hmm, i wonder - why does the Topic starter not meet m2s's small roaming groups? they are so against the blobs, but cannot be found?
Because they're not happening as much anymore for exactly the same reasons.
Norhoop has pretty much fallen apart. It's not that place anymore where you could sneak in and hope to find someone to kill and then see if you can deal with the defending forces. Only F-Navy and SK moved to Brightstone to begin with, the rest just sort of petered out.
Novastrov tends to be well scouted and even when it's not there doesn't seem to be anything happening there. They also never engage unless they are sure they can win which translates out to us standing around like *** waiting for them to hit critical mass and once they undock there isn't much we can do except leave.
After countless hours of roaming and not finding anything I'm personally rather tired of it.
The other islands are just uninhabited and empty. I've heard reports about TOG living out of Darmahol but certainly not a whole lot of them, nWar lived in South Iseitsu at some point and 62nd wanted to move into KKO but I'm not sure they ever did that.
If you think about it, there isn't even any reason for anyone to actually live on beta. There's still no benefit to it. You might aswell sit in some alpha outpost and occasionally start expeditions into beta if you need something there, haul it back and be done with it. All the beta islands are just way too close to alpha islands for it to be beneficial to actually set up a camp in the wilderness.
EvE has this vast expanse of 0.0 (Or is it negative sec space now?) where a corp could basically just decide to move into some remote corner of it, make some deal with the local power block and feel relatively safe actually living there, especially since organizing the logistics back to high sec isn't something you'd want to do every day if you don't have access to a jump bride network or JFs. Or you could just move into some w-space system and hang around there while occasionally fending of unwelcome visitors.
Here everything is the equivalent to a short trip to the shops right outside the door.
This also means that a single corp can prevent you from feeling safe on any beta island in the game because it just doesn't take them that long to check the entire pvp area for targets.
There is no mechanic to hold territory either. It doesn't matter who owns an outpost, everyone can just move in there and prevent you from feeling or being even remotely safe in the area.
Obviously the average player doesn't feel overly compelled to live on beta if he can avoid it.