This month's topic comes to us from @Tetraetc - "Tetra's EVE Blog" - who asks: "Have Alliances and the sovereignty system limited the amount of PVP and RP potential in Null sec? Imagine a Null Sec where anyone could build outposts wherever. Would the reduction of the alliance game mechanic, and the removal of the sovereignty game mechanics (or the modifcation of it from Alliance level to Corp level for that matter) force more PVP into Null sec, or would giant power blocs like the NC still form themselves?"
I'm not sure if a change in the sov mechanics would definitely increase pvp but I do know one thing. Sov warfare is a bloody waste of time. Only large capital fleets get the job done fast otherwise its a bitch and guess who can afford cap fleets? Large alliances and power blocks.
So if the whole alliance mechanic got removed but sov mechanics stayed then I doubt corps could afford the large cap fleets. This would result in large bs fleets roaming around to kill sov structures which would increase pvp because they can't just cyno in like cap fleets.
If it was the other way around and the sov mechanics were taken out I would guess more pvp would occur but that's just a guess. if you were "able" to setup a station in someone else's system it would need to be onlined so there would likely be huge battles caused by that.
If both mechanics were removed I would say there would be a mixture of both angles that I have stated. One difference being, if the corps can't fund capital fleets they will probably think twice before putting up a station in someone else's system because they cost an arm an a leg. This may stop people from setting up stations and have more gang / skirmish warfare which would be cool.
All in all I think removing these mechanics would increase pvp but I don't think they should be removed. They definitely need some tweaking though.
ps. sorry if this looks like a rush job. Its hard to write long things on my phone ;)
