[reposting under suggestion from a thread I just started]
I had an interesting conversation just before this latest hotfix, concerning the fact that resources are pretty homogenized and static in general. Though they shift, rare materials are pretty consistent across the nullsec islands (sorry, I'll use Eve Online parlance a bit). This leads to a stagnation between the powers as they squat on a zone and hold their resource stockpiles under lock and turret. There is less need to fight because everyone has [relatively] equal access to those materials so long as they can maintain their outpost. The player I was chatting with found this to be counterproductive to the game as people squat and turtle up and the only fighting happens not over land but just... because people want to squabble and nothing more.
So, I propose a slight adjustment. This will require additional 'rare' resources beyond the (3?) currently limited to gamma, and perhaps a couple more that are only available on beta to encourage trade. There should be a total of 1 rare type per gamma island, or perhaps per 2 islands.
Each rare would have one specific reaction result that cannot be attained by recycling drops. Likewise with the beta island resources in the form of a more complex reaction using rare resources.
Now, these resources are generally constant as far as availability, but their quantity in any given area is finite. So, let's say island A has 100m units of Epitron, and all of the others have 10m each. This will give the residents on those islands some Epi to work with, but not a great deal. But as the residents of island A mine their 100m units, it replenishes *very* slowly if at all. Meanwhile it is increasing on another island entirely, while those residents are busy accessing their more prevalent resource... let's just say it's HDT for this example.
As resource balances shift the residents will experience a feast of one or two types, but a famine on most of the others. Over time these balances shift, entirely at random, and suddenly those who feast are finding famine.
A slow shifting of resource balance will lead to conflict between islands trying to find the next big strike of a given resource, or protect a resource that they're suddenly finding more prevalent in their zone.
This will also require one additional geoscanner charge: General Area Scanner. This will tell the user exactly what is in the area they just scanned, but not how much. For that they'll have to use individual resource type charges. This charge scans a circular area about 3 times the size of a focused area charge (which scans in square blocks), so knowing what's in a scanned circle may not be so easy to pin down with smaller square scan charges. Type specific directional charges would help narrow the search, as usual.
This would help prevent the Dysporium (sp?) moon problems that Eve had when those moons were available primarily on one particular region and the big power blocks pretty much locked it down to monopolize the resource. This forced CCP to implement many changes to give the less powerful at least some sustainable access to the most rare resources.
