The CCP KB article is:
http://support.eve-online.com/Pages/KB/Article.aspx?id=343Which to paraphrase:
Constellation Sovereignty
In order to acquire constellation sovereignty, the following is required:
* At least three outposts or conquerable stations within the constellation.
* At least one system with sovereignty level three, with the two following added requirements:
o An outpost or conquerable station located in the system.
o This outpost/conquerable station set to be the capital under the station management tab.
* Sovereignty held in at least 51% of the systems in that constellation.
* All of these conditions need to be met for 14 days.
Once all of these conditions have been met, constellation sovereignty will be enabled for that constellation after the following downtime.
Benefits
There are several benefits to constellation sovereignty:
* A further fuel usage reduction, 30% instead of the usual 25% for all alliance owned control towers in the same constellation.
* All outposts within the constellation can receive further upgrades. For more information, refer to the outpost upgrades article.
* Any systems within the constellation with no sovereignty claim can be claimed after only a single day by the alliance holding constellation sovereignty.
* The system set to be the capital of the constellation can, when the other requirements are met, become the Constellation Capital.
Constellation Sovereignty Warfare
If one of the following requirements are met, constellation sovereignty will change to a contested mode:
* The alliance holding constellation sovereignty loses sovereignty control of the majority of the systems in the constellation.
* The alliance holding constellation sovereignty loses control of the minimum of three outposts or conquerable stations in the constellation.
* The alliance holding constellation sovereignty loses control of the capital outpost or conquerable station.
When constellation sovereignty has been contested for a period of seven consecutive downtimes, constellation sovereignty will be broken and the attacking alliance can take over the former constellation capital.
While it's not required - it would be ideal in many ways: It means running towers costs less (lower fuel needs for the towers) and allows some handy POS modules for defence and transport.
If the allaince is too big then there are likely to be high competion for the 0.0 resources (ratting mostly) and higher alliance costs (the corp will have to pay a weekly/monthly amount to be in that space). An alliance that's too small will control less space and probably be more fragile. Many smaller alliances will be essentially part of 0.0 factional warfare - meaning merc type corps. Some of the smaller alliances I looked at yesterday were approx 8 corps - many of the corp had only a few players in.
You can find information about alliances in eve here:
http://www.eve-online.com/alliances/default.aspIf you look at the UFA alliance here:
http://www.eve-online.com/alliances/a_849565342.asp - then you'll see why they are attractive. Many of the corps in the alliance are around our size, they have a decent number of players for the space they they occupy in 0.0. They are anti-priate - which is good as it means they're not making an income only by living off other players. They're also in an expansion mode - which means the space they control is growing and there is an opportunity for directed pvp. It also means we get a chance to prove our worth and grow with them into new areas without taking on too much. Additionally they're not too far from us - which means we don't need a JF from day 1 and can look to getting one 4-6 weeks down the line.
Once we find an alliance and we're accepted it'll take us a week to: buy the resources needed to setup (towers, fuel, etc), move and setup POS's, move ships & eq into the area and, should they have an outpost - setup Jump Clones.
Then once in 0.0 it'll take us 4-6 weeks to get used to the space, recover the investment costs of setting up, to have built up enough local resources to start pushing our manufacturing - and to understand how 0.0 works with combat & pvp.
Combat in 0.0 has many faces and many of the skills you currently have will be valuable. It's hard to stress how important it is but being able to tackle (small fast ship that can lock down a hostile) is much more valueable than something that just deals dmg. Yes - you're gonna get blown up a lot - but a tackling ship is generally very cheap and we will *always* have tacklers at our POS. Tackling is also a very good way to just learning about pvp and it's a very good foundation as you get larger ships.
Combat in 0.0 is also rarely alone. You'll be part of an alliance with alliance intel channels. You'll be able to particiapte in alliance gangs as soon as you're in 0.0.
