Alright, here is a continuation of what was discussed on IRC:

For those unaware, the question posed is, what does this system do for those corps that don't want land themselves, in particular, but still want to happily blow up and take the stuff of another corp?

There is the option of merc'ing out, yes. But no one is going to hire a no-name corp on faith alone, and there's always the chance that such a proposition does not suit some, or possibly even rankles to consider. There is also still the meta-game to keep in mind as well.

To put this in perspective, an example:

Player 1 is a CEO for X-Corp. X-Corp is relatively unknown, overall. One of the members of X-Corp gets into a troll/flame war on the forums with another player from Y-Corp. Player 1 decides "The hell with that" and decides to systematically destroy Y-Corp. He doesn't want their districts or land. He and X-Corp just want to smash Y-Corp.

There are several problems with the current system though (as clone counts, etc are not accounted for in the proposal, I will use the Dev-described system where applicable):

1) X-Corp, while having good players, is mostly unknown. So they will either depend on some other Corp being charitable and hiring them in order to earn enough coin to engage another corp in battle (buying clones, equipment, etc). This raises the question; how do they earn the currency prior to engaging in war in a self-sufficient manner?

2) A corp that maintains a district is going to, by virtue of district ownership, have a pool of clones to send in to battle. With the current system X-Corp would only have what they could purchase from the NPC's (one time) available to them. Attacking in this state, even victoriously, would be operating at a loss. This would make this style of game-play untenable.

3) Assuming the prior two problems are solved, and they are able to attack the district successfully and repeatedly until Y-Corp is removed from it; what do they do with it? As previously stated, they don't want to deal with the care, feeding and upkeep of a district.

This also brings to mind another question at the tail end: Were the system to support such a corp, how would another corp go about attacking them in kind? Or would the others be forced to resort to politicking and other meta-means to try and assault them?

I agree wholeheartedly. The only point that I'd like to make is that the cost of maintaining control of a district should not increase linearly with the number controlled. The cost should increase exponentially such that controlling larger areas becomes increasingly more difficult. The exponential curve would need to be tweaked by CCP to give a certain threshold maximum area controlled without too much fuss. Frankly, this is how SOV should be in Eve as well.

And yes, I realize that larger corps/alliances will split into smaller groups to exploit the nonlinear costs, but nevertheless, a nonlinear, exponential cost growth is the best way to encourage more dynamics and entry points for smaller groups.

First I agree with the preface problems I have played eve and know the dull and drull of no fighting.

I agree with the goals of the idea mostly. With the major exception of exponentially increasing costs of control. This is a partial factor in NAP fests as its all different faces of the same dice. The effort should be static per territory. Thus larger corps need more 'crop hands' to make use of all they currently have or get more folks to help out with new territory.

Having said all this, I don't want to further hijack Free Beers' thread with my tweak to his idea.

Rewarding EVE pilots shouldn't happen. They shouldn't need an extra incentive to help their alliance hold sov. Besides which, they're most likely going to be dropping OBs from battleships, BCs or destroyers, and are very unlikely to be able to have much cargo space available to hold any loot.

Any and all loot should go to the DUST mercs. And yes, I play EVE too.

Agreed re: not punishing large alliances. The "punishments" would come from the metagame, e.g. organising the alliance, maintaining hold on all the planets you want, and making sure spies don't infiltrate the alliance and do a BoB on you.

Alliances need their power, but if a small corp beats a large alliance, it should be able to hurt it pretty bad, or the smaller alliance should be rewarded bonus.

Agreed re: not punishing large alliances. The "punishments" would come from the metagame, e.g. organising the alliance, maintaining hold on all the planets you want, and making sure spies don't infiltrate the alliance and do a BoB on you.

Fine, it's your idea, but this is part of the nullsec problem in Eve. It's too easy for large alliances (note not corps) to just cordon off large sections of space and build static boundaries. Also, i wouldn't consider this a punishment, just a less than linear benefit. The real world works this way too (not that it matters much for a game) but larger populations become much more difficult to control than a linear curve would allow for.

Anyway, I'll defer to your judgement as it's your idea and thread. Also, I do support your idea in general, and even without my stipulation, I think it sounds better than what I've heard from CCP.

Pilliage mechanic (aka telc takes your stuff): The idea is that if a corp attacks a district and wins the battle they have the option to continue seige or pillage and leave. If you select pilliage and leave you get loot (isk/bpc/whatever)

This is intended to be district raiding.

*Your standing against that corp goes down (good thing if you hate them)
*Your corps sec status with that district(and npc gear corp) goes negative (you can start as low as -1.00)
*If you control districts near by your sec status will take a hit (well, they know people who you just pilliaged)

Now I haven't thought of the rest of the pieces to it yet, will add more

i really like the pillage idea
sometimes u dont really WANT the district but just to fck around in someone back yard and grief them
would also encourage more fights as ppl know they wont necessarily have to look to defend another district if they end up claiming it instead just select the pillage option and get paid

of course its a good idea, telc came up with it.

I'm just waiting on CCP foxyfour to post his list of excuses on why risk514 will be so awesome

pfft not all telc ideas are good, he plays darkfall after all and bad games like defiance