Sovereignty

New Eden is divided by System Security into: high security, low security, null security, and wormhole space. High and low security space are also referred to as "empire space", because every system is claimed by either Amarr, Caldari, Gallente or Minmatar.

Null security (or nullsec) space is not claimed by the empires, and can be split into:

• NPC nullsec regions (Curse, Great Wildlands, Outer Ring, Stain, Syndicate and Venal) are claimed by a number of different NPC factions, either pirate or corporation. These factions allow capsuleers to dock at their stations in the same way as low or highsec stations.
• Sovereign Nullsec - the subject of this article - comprises the rest of the nullsec regions, which can be claimed by any capsuleer (player) alliance. Stations in these areas will be owned by a player alliance, and will usually only allow the owning alliance (and perhaps their allies) to dock.

All nullsec areas are essentially lawless: neither CONCORD nor the empire navies respond to aggression, there are no gate or station guns, and aggression will not result in the loss of security status.

The sovereignty system described on this page is often referred to as "Fozzie Sov", being named after a CCP employee that worked on the system and presented relevant dev blogs.

Sovereignty Structures

Each system in Sov Null can potentially have one of each of the following structures associated with it.

• Territorial Claim Unit (TCU)
• Infrastructure Hub (I-Hub)

Each of these structures provide benefits to the owner.

TCU and I-Hub can be destroyed by their owner. Any director of their owner corporation can warp to them, right click the sovereignty structure, and select "Self-Destruct". If it is not canceled, it will explode and disappear, allowing players to place a new sovereignty structure in a different location than they want. Any director of their owner corporation can warp to them to cancel Self-Destruct by right clicking it and selecting "Abort self-destruct sequence".

Initiating and canceling Self-Destruct on a sovereignty structure will cause alliance members to receive a mail for it immediately.

Territorial Claim Unit

Main article: Territorial Claim Unit

Territorial Claim Units or TCUs are essentially flags put up by an alliance. Whoever owns the TCU in a system will be listed on the starmap as the owner of the system.

TCUs do have one tangible benefit, though, by way of a 25% reduction in fuel consumption to any Player-Owned Starbase owned by the same alliance in that system.

Infrastructure Hub

Infrastructure Hubs or I-Hubs are used to upgrade the system, allowing it to spawn more Combat Anomalies, Ore Sites, or Signatures, or allowing the owner to set up more advanced flex structures such as Jump Bridges or system-wide Cynosural Field Jammers. Maintaining an I-Hub costs an upkeep bill which is charged to the alliance wallet.

Upgrades, which are actual items that must be produced and delivered to the I-Hub for installation, are unlocked by achieving specific System Index Levels.

Claiming Sovereignty

The mechanics of capturing and defending structures are based around the use of an Entosis Link.

Placing structures

If a system does not currently have an I-Hub, or TCU a player may place one. Deploying an I-Hub or TCU involves buying or making one, and then launching it in to space (right-click and "launch" or dragging the structure to space). Once this is done the structure is in a neutral state and owned by the SCC. To gain ownership of the structure, a player must activate an entosis link on the structure to capture it. Other alliances are free to attempt to capture the structure while it is in this state.

Capturing existing structures

To capture or disable a structure, attackers must first use an entosis link on the structure during its Vulnerability window. Once the link has completed its first cycle, the capture process begins and the alliance owning the structure is notified of the attack. Once the entosis link has been active and uncontested for a certain amount of time, the structure enters reinforce mode and a reinforce timer begins. The duration of this timer depends on the type of structure attacked and the Activity Defense Multiplier (ADM) of the system. These timers are all affected by Time Dilation.

The base timer for each type of structure is:

• Structure (I-Hub, TCU): 10 minutes
• Command Node: 4 minutes

ADM is explained below.

There is no speed benefit to having more than one entosis link active on a structure, the time to capture a structure is the same whether the attacker has 1 or 100 links active. If both the defender and attacker have an entosis link active on the structure, all capture progress is paused. If only the defender has an entosis link active, the timer counts up towards its starting value. A structure that was attacked but not fully captured will slowly regen; eventually the timer will return to full.

The reinforce timer will end at a randomly determined point during the structure vulnerability timer two days later. Once the timer expires, command nodes will begin to spawn in the same constellation as the contested structure.

Command node

Command nodes are objects that appear in space. They are shown on the overview and it is possible to warp to them directly. These nodes can spawn in any system within the constellation, regardless of the owner of that system. Their name in the overview identifies the system they are connected to as well as the structure in that system. They also have a unique ID to help identify which node in a system players are referring to. For example, a command node for the TCU in O1Y-ED may spawn in X36Y-G with the name "O1Y-ED Territorial Claim Unit Command Node NK17".

Command node control

• Once the reinforce timer for a structure hits 0, command nodes spawn randomly within the constellation. Initially 5 of these spawn, with more spawning as time goes one. Once a node is captured, a new node spawns.
• As the command nodes spawn, a progress bar for the structure appears. It starts at 60%. If it reaches 100%, the defenders have won. If it reaches 0%, the attackers have won.
• Capturing a command node moves the progress bar by 7%. This means that attackers need to capture at least 9 command nodes. The defenders need to capture at least 6.
• If an attacking force does not attempt to capture the command nodes, they will automatically regen for the defending team. An unattended capture node event will self-complete in < 196 minutes.
• Any entosis link activated by a player not in the defending alliance is counted as attacking. This means that an alliance can not enlist other entities to defend their structures with entosis links.
• If the structure currently has an owner, the capture timer for attacking forces on nodes related to that structure is modified by ADM. The level of ADM bonus is determined by the indices of the system containing the reinforced structure (at the time of initial reinforcement).
• Once one side has won the event, all other nodes related to that structure will self-destruct.

After the event

If the defender wins the command node event, the structure being fought for becomes invulnerable and will remain that way until the next vulnerability window occurs. If the attacker wins, the next steps depend on the type of structure being attacked. For I-Hubs and TCUs, the existing structure explodes. This allows anyone to anchor their own structure in space to replace the old one.

Regeneration

Structures that have been attacked but not reinforced and command nodes all have defensive regeneration. This means that if the structure is left uncontested, eventually the defending side will win. The maximum regeneration times are as follows:

Structure	Regeneration time (min)
I-Hub	50
TCU	50
Command node	98

Note: It takes 196 minutes for an uncontested command node event to end as initially only 5 nodes spawn. This is not enough for the defenders to regain control, so they must wait for 3 of the second set of spawned nodes to regenerate to win the event.

The full flow of structure contesting is shown here:

Activity Defense Multiplier

The length of time it takes to reinforce a structure or capture a command node depends on the Activity Defense Multiplier (ADM) for the system. This rewards an alliance for holding and being active in the system, making it easier for them to defend.

The base timer for the structure is multiplied by the ADM to give the total amount of (uncontested) time required for an attacker to reinforce a structure or capture a command node. The time taken for a defender to regen a structure or capture a command node is unaffected by the ADM.

The ADM is calculated based on the value of 3 defensive indices:

• Strategic Index: Automatically increases as you hold control of the I-Hub over a continuous period.
• Military Index: Increases in proportion to the number of NPC ships killed in the system.
• Industrial Index: Increases in proportion to the volume of ore mined in the system.

In terms of the Industry index: mining waste is NOT going to be part of the ADM calculation.

Each of these indices has a level between 0 and 5. To determine the current ADM of a system, find the corresponding modifier for each of the system's indices in the table, then add them all to the base value of 1. For example, a system with Military Index 3 (+1.7), Industrial Index 1 (+0.6) and Strategic Index 5 (+1.0) would have an ADM of 1.0 + 1.7 + 0.6 + 1.0 = 4.3. The maximum value for ADM is 6, which would extend the time taken to reinforce a structure to 60 minutes, or capture a command node to 24 minutes for an attacker. As 6 is the maximum ADM, if the calculation produces a value above 6, the ADM for the system will be 6.

Index Level	0	1	2	3	4	5
Military	0	0.6	1.2	1.7	2.1	2.5
Industrial	0	0.6	1.2	1.7	2.1	2.5
Strategic	0	0.4	0.6	0.8	0.9	1

Below is a partial list of possible total multipliers based on different combinations of system indices:

Military Index Level	Industrial Index Level	Strategic Index Level	Total Activity Multiplier	Time to reinforce a structure	Time to capture a command node
0	0	0	1x	10 minutes	4 minutes
0	0	5	2x	20 minutes	8 minutes
5	0	0	3.5x	35 minutes	14 minutes
0	5	5	4.5x	45 minutes	18 minutes
4	2	2	4.9x	49 minutes	19.6 minutes
3	3	5	5.4x	54 minutes	21.6 minutes
4	4	4	6x	60 minutes	24 minutes
5	3	5	6x	60 minutes	24 minutes
5	5	5	6x	60 minutes	24 minutes

Capital systems

Major staging systems aren't necessarily a safe place for activities that boost Military or Industrial indices, which can have a negative effect on the ADM for those systems. This could make it more difficult for an alliance to defend their home system. To counter this, each alliance is able to designate one system as its Capital system. The alliance must own the TCU in the system it chooses. The system set as the Capital system will have a +2 bonus to the ADM. The maximum ADM is still 6x, the capital boost acts purely as a mechanism to make it easier to reach ADM 6. Changing the capital system of an alliance takes several days to take effect.

Raising indices

In 2009, CCP posted this chart indicating the time required to raise strategic index levels. The exact formula for raising of the other indices is unknown.

Index Level	Time
1	7 days
2	21 days
3	35 days
4	65 days
5	100 days

Vulnerability window

Structures are not vulnerable to attack 24 hours a day. Each alliance has a window of time set during which their structures are vulnerable to attack. This is usually their "prime time" where they are best able to fend off any attacks. Newly deployed or captured structures will inherit this setting from the alliance that controls it. However, the alliance can choose to change the window of any structure the default setting to a custom value. If a structure is partially captured at the end of a vulnerability window, it will remain vulnerable until it is either reinforced or successfully defended.

Changing the vulnerability window

To stop an alliance shifting vulnerability timers at short notice in an attempt to avoid an impending attack, it takes 96 hours for a change in the vulnerability window to take effect. At the end of this 96 hour waiting period, the structure will be vulnerable twice within the same 24 hour period, during both the old window and the new one. From then on, the new vulnerability window setting takes effect.

ADM scaling

The default length of the vulnerability window is 18 hours, but this can be reduced by increasing the ADM of the system. The length of the window is 18 hours divided by the ADM. This gives a window ranging from 18 hours for ADM 1, to 3 hours for ADM 6. The length of each day's vulnerability window is locked in at the midpoint of the vulnerability window the day before. This is to ensure that players are not surprised by last minute changes to the window.