The New Coming Reality

UPDATE: After I posted this there was this Dev Post update which bumps Jump Freighter range to 10 light years, completely obsoleting my musings about supplying Nennamailia. The hazards of running a blog.

This Great Jump Nerf of 2014 is the gift that keeps on giving. As the playerbase moves from resistance and/or shock at the coming change to acceptance we start to see people thinking about what the new reality is going to be.

For us in Aideron Robotics it means analyzing what the warzone will look like from the perspective of a capital projecting force, something we have been reluctant to commit to in the past due to the bigger players in low sec like Pandemic Legion, Shadow Cartel, Overload Everything, and others.

Fortunately, using DotLan maps is not out of the question! It turns out that if you use a supercarrier with Jump Drive Calibration set to 0 you get a range of exactly 5 light years! So I plugged in those values and took a look at what the neighbourhood of Fliet was like.

The bolded red squares and circles are low sec systems in range, squares for ones with stations.

The total is 43 low sec systems in range spread over 6 regions. Notably not in that list are other Gallente Militia strongholds Vlillier and Nennamailia. In fact, both of those are 3 jumps away from us! The warzone just got a lot bigger for capital operations.

Locally, its not surprising that Heydieles and Old Man Star are within range, but one jump gate more to Ladistier and you are out of range. As you can see from the image above, Fliet and its constellation are sort of in a gap between Gallente space and Caldari space, explaining the large coverage of regions it reaches. Let's look at Old Man Star's range:

Just two jumps from Fliet and the number of systems in range is still 43, but now limited down to 4 regions and in Black Rise there are just two regions at the limit in range. Expanses between regions will be very important going forward all over the place. Gallente regions are very dense, look at what the Gallente stronghold of Nennamailia in Black Rise has in 5 light year range:

Just 22 systems in range and only in Black Rise and Placid regions, and more importantly the only low sec system in range with a station and connection to contiguous high sec is Kinakka, a system frequented by all manner of hostile forces.

In other words, while a jump freighter with supplies destined for Nennamailia can jump from high sec to the system safely enough, getting out back to high sec involves running the gauntlet through stationless and frequently contested Akidagi next door, or jumping to pirate infested Kinakka and getting to high sec there.

"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."
- Gen. Robert H. Barrow, USMC (Commandant of the Marine Corps) noted in 1980

The war is going to be very interesting when this change goes live.