Fox Gaden wrote:Location, so important in so many things, but so meaningless in Planetary Conquest.
CCP promised that Planetary Conquest would be tactical like the board game Risk, but introduction of unlimited Clone Packs changed that. Now every planet is the same from a strategic point of view and there are no defined battle lines.
I implore CCP to make Location relevant again! Make Clone Packs only deployable from High Sec systems, with the same clone death rates for travel as when you move clones from a District.
This would mean border systems would still be open to new Corps trying to get into Planetary Conquest, while systems deeper into Low Sec could only be attacked by people who owned a district close by. It would give systems deep in Low Sec a greater tactical advantage. It would also create battle lines and make it interesting to look at the district ownership map.
If CCP wanted even more control over the tactical situation they could have Clone Packs only deployable from Genolution stations/facilities, which they could place in High Sec systems bordering Low Sec, and then to expand PC in the future they would simply open another Genolution station/facility on the boarder of another Low Sec Region.
The problem with your solution is there are no such barriers in EVE. A capital ship (which I'm assuming is what a battle barge is) can just cyno into any low or null sec system. Yours is a 2D fix to a 3D environment. However, they could definitely implement things like neutral spaceport districts on an actual map being the only places you can start a planetary invasion from to mitigate some of your concerns.
Personally, I think it would be cool if they went in the direction of cost over distance as the main barrier to corps and alliances hopping all over the map at will.
Every player should have a current home or district where they are currently based from. For PC battles, you should have to pay for transport for everyone involved. If you are on the same planet, it would be next to nothing, a small amount for the same system, a lot more to a different constellation, and so on.... This would have no effect on public or FW matches, but it would be interesting if there was a cooldown timer on home changes with penalty charges to transfer before the cooldiwn is up. If they ever expanded PC to other regions or introduced a null sec sov raiding feature, where your clone is located could have a big impact.
I also think the metagame would be incredible if vehicles used in PC were corp assets. Throw in similar travel costs as mentioned above and I think you could build a risk-like metagame, with the barriers being cost, not invisible space fences.