The point I think you're missing here Syndic is that there's not so much need to have all those entities in your alliance anymore. The point of the change is that you dont HAVE to band together to make sure that you have someone who will show up to defend your outpost 24 hours a day. Previously, if you knew you had to defend at 3:00am your time, you knew you wouldnt have many on, so you fill the gaps with people that are not of your timezone to cover your ***.

The point of this change is "Hey, screw it, im going to sleep, if i miss a sap it's not as big of a deal, my stuff will still be in the outpost, my crew will all be here in the morning. We'll be right back at it." It takes the DO or DIE nessecity out of defending your outpost at a less then optimal time every 3 days.

As you said, CiR and RG own the two outposts on novastrov. That's exactly how many people should be in the alliance. The rest are renters. How many renters do you need?

pmsl

This.

The system as described actively discourages the formation of benevolent defensive alliances.  The only forms of alliance possible after this takes affect is an aggressive alliance (whose only purpose is to deny outposts to others, since they can't/don't have the manpower to hold them) or a mercenary-style defense-for-pay alliance (interesting thought, but not very reliable overall). 

In both the old and the new system, if an oversized entity can dominate an area, then they can.  The mechanism may be changing, but the reality is still the same.  The problem with this new system is that it is bypassing the indepedence that an alliance allows and forcing corporations to actually merge if they want to grow.  The old phrase "Join us or die" is suddenly not only viable, but enforced by the nature of the rules. That is not the direction this game should probably go.

The difference is that in the old system, an oversized entity can dominate MANY areas at the same time - because they only have to "prove" their power once a week at most. Here, they have to prove it daily, and so they can only dominate the space they actually DOMINATE - not the space they show up in from time to time with overwhelming force.

You don't even have to have 24/7 domination of a single location to hold an outpost. You have to have 13/7 - some people are just choosing to ignore that to push their own agendas. Realistically, 8/7 would probably be good enough, since it's very unlikely that every SAP that comes up when you're not around will be captured by someone else, and it's reasonable that some of the SAPS that come up when you're not the dominant entity will still be captured by you, the outpost holder. But, again, that's not what some people are choosing to see and focus on.

They way I read it was if the SAP was not captured by the owning corp, you lose stability. The difference when someone else takes it is the snowball effect, which allows a single corp to actively capture an outpost quicker.

Over time, they would eventually be reduced to under 50% stability, at which point the benefit of owning an outpost is negligable. If the game is still low population, then this state could continue for a time, but if there are powers actively pursuing a limited number of outposts, any post under 50% is a prime candidate.

Right now, there are MORE outposts then there are corporations able to hold them. There are actually just too many small corporations that have been unwilling to lose thier identities, so they have formed alliances. It isn't a join or die situation, its a join or be indepenant, but you won't hold an outpost. Alliances can still exisit, those small corps can be allowed access to outposts, they can even help defend the territory (meat sheild) they just won't get any direct benefit from owning an outpost.

There are 15 outposts currently. The average online base is around 400 (200-600) meaning if the server divided up evenly, there each outpost would have 27(ish) people online 24/7. Probably 50% of the population are in smaller corps under 10, while there are just a few large circles taking up the rest. Meaning that there are only an average of 200 players online in corps capable of holding an outpost at a reasonable stability level (above 50% assuming 12/7 coverage) is going to take 50 people, that's 4 of 15 outposts that will be fully occupied.

Now, those are just rough numbers, but the picture they paint is generally correct. There's no way that all 15 outposts are going to be over 50%. The ones that aren't will probably have corps wasting resources and complaining about how Beta outposts aren't worth the effort... the pattern continues.

Tl;dr

So, the issue isn't the system, its a small community with too many small tribes and not enough civilizations to realize the conquest.

It would be great if maybe the old Beta outposts where somehow 'outpost-light' with maybe a longer SAP timer, and the ability to hit 100% stability, but that 100% only provides the benefits of 50% of the Beta-2 islands.

This reduces the number of outposts that would need 24/7 coverage to 6, which better fits the current population.

The point I raised wasn't because of how easy/difficult it would be to control something.

The point I raised is that allied corporations are put at a DISADVANTAGE, because they live and operate in the same place as the "owning" corp but they are unable to touch the SAP for 2 hours unless they want to harm their own alliance.

So, if RG's SAP is active, CIR - even with RG being brosefs in the same alliance - cannot do ANYTHING but camp the SAP for 2 hours and hope nobody comes along to ninja-grab it.

The only functional answer to that is that allied corps merge into one mega-corporation, or that the Devs provide an alliance-feature.

Syn - That's not wholly accurate.

If RG isn't going to get there to cap the SAP themselves, they are going to lose the stabilization regardless, so you can cap it for them. They only time that would be bad is if you capped 2 in a row, which would start the snowball. Capping it early helps would stop the snowball if it was capped previously by another corp.

That's assuming that RG doesn't have anyone online at all, or that the SAP is under attack by a force greater then those online can handle, in either case again, if an alliance corp capped the last one, its actually better to let this other corp cap it so you don't snowball them.

I don't feel this system actively hinders alliances, it does however make it mandatory that all outpost owning entities of an alliance be capable of fielding active forces at least 12hrs/7days.

The answer to that, is if RG only misses a few caps, that's not bad. If ANY corp can't support a 50% cap rate themselves, then it may require a merger with another corp and that corp may have to own both outposts and take the NIC penalty (only using you two as an example since you brough it up).

This is anything new, its the same thing people have been complaining about, in that Beta is too hard for the reward, but as I showed with numbers, when your small it's going to be a continual struggle to maintain a presence.

Edit: The merger doesn't have to be a "Mega" corp, but it does need to be larger than 50 people to ensure an active membership.
There are way too many small corps now, and that was supported and encouraged by the previous intrusion system. Beta corps should have to have an 'active' player base. This doesn't mean 'blob' because as I pointed out, sending your whole fleet out to attack a neighbor's SAP leaves you open if your own goes active.

The idea is that the defender has to have a presence online to complete the SAP's as they come due. If they don't actively recapture the SAP then it's a 'loss'. That was the case in the old system, where if it was uncontested it goes to defender, but if the SAP times out, it wasn't defended - it was ignored, which isn't what they want to promote.

They compensate for each lost SAP by making it take more then 1 to have a significant impact. You would lose 100% bonuses though by even one SAP timing out.

Edit: But you don't lose the outpost by missing a few SAPs, just a few % of stability.

You need some more sleep Anni

SAPs are PVP events.

Maybe an occasional PVE event could happen, but actually that would be a lot funner if it occurred at Tellesis.

What's the average size roam group now?

There's two sides to this, attack and defense. The SAP goes active for 2 hours, but if an attacker is actively trying to take over an outpost, they really can't just wait until it does. If it's an active/passive SAP, all it takes is 10 min to cap it, and the attacker loses their snowball. I highly doubt that any corp could get a force over to a SAP in 10 min unless they were already formed up and ready to go. If the defenders don't have a presence, then the attacker has 2 hours to get there.

Therefore in order to maximize the ownership of your outpost, a corporation needs to recruit in all timezones to ensure there is a large enough presence/defense force to take care of the potentially spawning SAP.

Sorry but that is ludicrous. Especially since alliances like SovNov, New Hope and the Hokk Wambulance guys are all in MULTIPLE CORPS, therefore every defender outside of the owning corporation is fuc*ed because they're damned if they do, damned if they don't.