Welcome to Providence

For those that have never visited, Providence is a region south of the Amarrian and Minmatar empire regions bordering the hi-sec regions of Domain and Tash-Murkon. It has a rich history being originally infested with capsuleer pirates, and at one time the battleground between the amarrian paramilitary faction CVA and the minmatar freedom fighter faction Ushra'Khan. It has been under the control of CVA, one of the oldest exisitng alliances, for some time now. The region is generally considered as insignificant since it has neither good moon resources or ratting grounds. As if often stated by larger alliances, no one really wants it.

Providence holds significance to me, since like many other new players, it was my first foray into null sec. I entered the region as part of a corp with lofty goals to acquire a few sov systems in the region. The plan was to help to defend the area in hopes CVA would give them something in return. Needless to say, the corp never got any systems, and when they tried to make a move to buy a system from an exiting CVA coalition member...CVA put a quick stop to it. The lesson to learn is sov isn't gained by favours or promises. It takes power to take sov, by combination of diplomacy, isk, and force where required.

A unique thing about Providence is that it employs the NRDS policy (not red don't shoot). Effectively this means that neutrals in theory could enter the region, dock at stations (for a fee), and fly about in relative safety. In practice it wasn't so simple, you could never trust a neutral was in fact neutral. There was of course a convoluted website app called KOS checker (kill on sight) that CVA uses to tell good neutrals from bad neutrals but imo it really defeats the purpose of the NRDS concept.

NRDS as a concept has good intentions, it can attract non-aligned players into a region to live, rat, conduct business and hopefully help defend the area. I think in practice this fails to materialize, partly due to how the standings mechanics work in the game, and due to the security of the region. It didnt help that CVA has the reputation of turtleing/blue balling during any major incursions by hostile alliances. Would you want to live or setup shop in a neighbourhood where the police hide in their stations when the criminals come out? If I were to form a corp/alliance I would stick to the standard NBSI (not blue shoot it) policy. Unless there was some game mechanic change to the standings system that allowed non-aligned corps to share or identify the standings set by the sov holding alliance its too messy to know friend from foe. Perhaps some form of criminal flagging system could work in null sec with the criminal status set by the sov holding alliance for all to see.

Although I don't believe NRDS works as policy I do believe in the concept of opening the region up to attract non-aligned but friendly players/corps. The question is how could you make a system work to attract these corps and solve the issues of who can shoot who? The answer to this will have to wait for a future post.