other idea:

your corp can set up a "home base" thats a corp skill and no personal. this home base can be any terninal. alpha/beta/gamma. this can not be changed fast and takes 48h to take effect.
every corp member can spark to the corp home base just as it would be a spark target. for noob corps these are of cource the alpha 1 main terninals

the costs of the sparks should not depend on the island type. it should depend how far away from your corp home base it is.

that way you can easy maintain sparks on "your" island(s).

- your home island and neighboring islands cost one point
- 2-3 islands out cost 2 points
- further away cost 3 points

that way you can easy manage your "home terretory" and if you want to be all around teh word then this will be hard.

dont make stuff hard for ppl who live in the pvp areas. sparks there are essential.
alone for effectivly defending a gamma (if there is a war) you should have at least 3 sparks there. or you will be significant at the disadvantage.

but i guess the ppl that complain about sparks have forgotten how it is to live on gamma, and what it takes to do and maintain that without having to use half the day for logistics.

"Blood sparks": this will be reverted to the old system where you can only set a home base to the terminal you're currently at.

Spark teleports: beyond the slots idea we'll also explore how we could exponentially increase the teleporting fee based on range to the target.

Well, Mongolia Jones' slots idea, but to specify and expand a bit:

* Your 10 target slots become 10 "slot credits"
* Different terminals/outposts cost different slot credits:
   - 1 slot: Alpha 1 terminals and outposts
   - 2 slot: Alpha 2 and Beta main terminals
   - 3 slot: Beta outposts and Gamma terminals
* Teleport fee would depend on range to the target, could be in the range of 10,000-5,000,000 NIC on an exponential curve

And I have to talk to the guys about this, can't tell any dates until that.

Burial: well if that's a concern then simply have beta outposts take 4 slots. I know I said I could be convinced to have only 1-2 sparks but I'm not sure whether that would be an overkill or not. The main concern seems to be intrusions/pvp/maybe gamma, I would not nerf alpha teleporting just because of that.

With 4 slots people would have to decide between having targets to 2 important outposts or putting 3 targets to the main beta terminals and move out from there (and still have free slots for one outpost). The latter is not an option for outpost-only Beta2s obviously.

I don't see that as an inherently bad thing, how much you have to walk on open PvP terrain is more important isn't it?

I'm convinced that spark teleports can have a positive effect on PvP if balanced properly and I don't want to nerf it to the point again where half an hour of PvP would require an hour of walking beforehand.

Current mechanics allow Pvp from alpha easily - I inter zoned in to a fight yesterday smiting horse *** with my wrath quite effectively.

That said I think alpha should be two points, beta outposts 4, beta stations 3 and gamma 3.

I know that and you know that, but 1000+ posts show that people are in a hysteric mindset where spark teleport is the root of all evil and without it we'd be having 100+ battles again and there would be joy in PvPland again.

I don't want to stop power projection because it cannot be stopped by anything we do to spark teleports. I only want to make it harder, cause that's what most of the complaints are about as far as I can see.

I don't want to make it easier for newbies to conquer betas because quite simply I don't think that's newbie content. (We could argue about what a newbie is but that's a whole different topic.)

What I'm trying to achieve is to keep the positive aspect of spark teleports (less walking) without it being overpowered in PvP (harder power projection).

That's a hard nut to crack, Zoom.

If you want non-PVP activities to still benefit from Sparking while PVP activities getting a nerf, then I would suggest you into looking options such as this. It's not really a simplest solution that fits all, but the overall effect seems to fit. Penalize PVP activities and sparking while keep everything else pretty much the same.

Something like a 10-15min cooldown doesn't sound too bad either.

Zoom, don't listen to the TOURISTS who come play the game for a week or two every few months and leave dissapointed when unable to ripple political landscape.

Um, Zoom people only complain about ICS B, ABT, and TMB. 

The reasoning behind this is they are tired of getting ganked and sparked into.  I do not see any reason why a owner of a station should not be able to get there when they wish.  Gamma's should never have a penalty of getting there when you wish.  The risk is far to high, for the investment that is made. 

The only reason we can deploy so fast is we have taken the time and invested into beta outposts.  Other's need to do the same.  (And they are currently and will continue to do so.)

10 sparks in relation to a bigger world would make sparks less of a issue.  You will still have your hot spots (that's the point) and you will have your dull spots.   Players can make of it as they wish. 

Zoom look at beta 2s.  They have sparks, we have the power to lock whoever we wish out.  Yet most of what this topic is about is attempting to make beta 1s more secure, like B2's.  Why are we trying to pull the diversity out of the game?  Look at where the PVP is occurring, its all out of B1's and the open terminals.   Why is that a bad thing?  Because one side seems to be winning all the time.  (Which isn't the case at all.)   

I would much rather your Team continue to work on what your already doing.  Making the beginning side of things more user friendly.  Rather then, being lulled into a false premise of a argument.

One last point, as the game stands now, those three termails have ZERO value.  All of the mining for Epi, and other beta related activity's (so far just well Epi) will go on at Beta 2s.  Some will attempt to say that beta 1s are great for missions, not so much. 

Why are beta 1s so hostel then?  Its because we have a player base that chooses to make them so, for FUN.  We dont need them, so why fight for them, and lose bots over them.  Well again, its for fun.

As it stands now we have two side of how we wish for this game to be directed.

One side wishes to have open choices and fluid movement, not of hard game assets, but rather the opportunity of movement of your character, over the game world.

The other wishes to have movement restricted, making a more cell blocked game.  Meaning more people into higher concentrated groupings, in more concentrated land masses, with very small fluid movement.

How you decide this will change the game greatly.

Spin much?

I apologize that I haven't read the entire thread.  I am likewise certain that I don't fully understand all the concerns but I think I see most of them.

What if we changed the mechanic of owning stations rather than sparks.  Make owning stations based on some CEO/Corporate skill that is expensive.  Owning one is cheap, with the cap of station ownership less than half of all stations.. and make it about picking the RIGHT stations rather than getting all of them.

Then change the spark mechanic to allow corp only use of a teleport between corp owned stations.  This would make it so corps could rally to their own troops and defended their limited stations easily..but not provide offensive advantage for teleporting.  The point is to create incentives to select from all the available stations those that best serve the corporate interest but provide a game limitation on no corp every being able to dominate the entirety of the station inventory.

It won't prevent alliances from cooperating, but the teleportation limits the cooperation instantly (has to be planned for all to arrive on time) as well as provide more roaming/away from station convoy ambushes.  This spark limitation would not apply to alpha 1 or 2.  Ie., don't impact the industrials as harshly.

An example maxxed pvp character (spark 10) with maxxed corp would have:

Up to 4-6 stations that can be owned of the 18 stations.  The member would use 6 of his teleport sparks on those terminals, leaving 4 sparks for alphas.

A intermediate player with moderate skills (spark 7) could have 2-4 stations of the 18, with the remaining
3-4 for alpha.

The new player (spark 0-4) with newb corp could have 0-1 stations fairly easily.  Leaving 2-3 teleports for alpha.

Uber alliance with 6 maxxed corps could conceivably control all stations, but that would mean significant ep investment, major coordination, and could be challenged at weak points for other to break.  The alliance would have to roam to support the member corps instead of just insta-jump.  Also limit the number of stations on any one island.. maybe to no more than 2/4 1/3, preventing a corp from "owning an island".  They either recruit an alliance corp to join them or they leave themselves open to island warfare with enemy.

I intended this as a balanced submission, not as a partisan post.  Be kind.

Funding