Warfare & Tactics

The Accel Gate Mechanic is fine to me in my own humble opinion and is extremely important to the small scale PvP that is supposed to be fostered by the FW Plex system.

The vast majority of people who are complaining about the mechanic seem to be completely blind to the fact that in a large majority of situations regarding this mechanic their are things that the fleet can do when the other fleet warps past them into the plex.

First Off. RESHIP. The Plex system is made with ship restrictions so that when you are faced with this situation you must SHIP DOWN!!!!

Second . Warp to the Medium or Major. If you want the positional advantage (considering the FWeddit fleet already seemed to have the numerical advantage this doesn't really apply to them) in a case where the dessy fleet outnumbers the Larger fleet you warp to the other plex and head into THOSE plexes and if the other FC wants to fight you can fight.

Thirdly. Wait for them to warp out to a stargate and then catch them their. If you outnumber them and they won't engage you, and you reaaaallllyyy wan't to gank them so bad. Do it like everybody else and camp a stargate for gods sake. If they warp to the station then their going to do your best to avoid you anyway, and then your just going to have wait to gank them somewhere else down the road or move on to option four.

Four. MOVE ON. If someone is going to extreme lengths to avoid you (considering you both outnumbered and outshipped them it's pretty obvious they wern't going to fight you) you might as well move on to find something that you CAN gank or fight.

Their are probably many different scenarios that can play out here but the point is that their are plenty of ways to adapt to the Mechanic instead of having the mechanic adapt to you. This is similar to the station lockout situation that us FW players were faced with when inferno came out. We gave a logical reasoning that station lockout would decrease the ease of small gang PvP, which it did. The Null Seccers laughed and said "Welcome to Null Sec" and the traditional. HTFU.

Considering that, it's hilarious for a Corporation that is primarily made up of Null Sec alts(My apologies if your a member of FWeddit thats either not a null sec alt, or a null seccer that agrees that this fosters small gang PvP and should remain as is) is complaining about a well known mechanic and complaining this is an "exploit". You know what? Welcome to Low-Sec HTFU.

Also for those who are claiming that the mechanic should change to punish people for not checking their DSCAN. Well if someone were to camp an accel gate with something that can actually get into the plex, you know, like the rest of low sec and fw does all the time, then that guy will get ganked and blow up. However the Minmatar fleet in question I am pretty sure warped to the gate knowing the mechanic(like everybody else in fw) would allow them to bypass the camping fleet.

In short, the mechanic is completely fine the way it is. Any discussion about changing whether difficult or easy is completely unnecessary considering the fact that people can easily adapt to this mechanic if it detriments them. The positives of the mechanic strongly outweigh the negatives, which only exist if people make it exists.

This is actually an excellent point, you are quite correct in the fact that they could get a 200+ thrasher gang. and just roam around killing everything however that isn't the case as you can see. Its been what...a week or two since Nulli joined. I have joked with several Gallente/Minmatar about this frequently. Nulli SUCKS at smaller gang PvP. I think the Amarr have capped one or two systems since Nulli joined? And the big one Kourmonen was capped by the Original Amarrian Corps not Nulli. A lot of the systems are vulnerable yes, but my understanding was that these were vulnerable for the most part before Nulli showed up.

Hopefully CCP has iterations for plexes on the way that will gimp the incredibly MASSIVE amount of farming that is going on on all sides. Of course their has been no sound of CCP anywhere when it comes to these threads that i have seen so i am not wasting my breath.

Now back to the plexing mechanics. The reason that it encourages small gang PvP is that their is a time limit on the plex, and because of the accel gate/no cyno/ no warping. It allows a well flown smaller fleet to outmaneuver a larger fleet, and reduces the chance of a a blob surprising the smaller fleet. And the timer gives a sense of urgency so that the fleet has less of an incentive to build up a massive blob fest and just force them out of the plex.

And speaking of 200 man thrasher gangs i haven't been in the Amarr/Mini theater have their been any of these? Could we get a kill report or something?

Your looking for ganks.

Which is fine, but the restrictions on plexes are what makes fw the best place for quality pvp. Having these gates camped by mouthbreathers will just make eve that much worse of a game.

What they didn't bring the right ships for the plex? Very smart.

Except the "session change" mechanic has nothing to do with jumping or dock session changes, because when those happen you can't even be shot or targeted. The mechanics you just described have nothing to do with what actually happens, since the reason you have unscramable acceleration gate situations is due to the server ticks counting in seconds and the way your velocity is checked when going into warp as you come out of another warp.

If a target sits on the gate for more than a second, then activates it, after which you lock and point them, you will break their warp.

Stop comparing this mechanic to jumping through a gate or docking up. It may seem similar, to many of you, but the game mechanics and checks involved behind them are totally different.

People seem to think that allowing a fleet with fast lockers to camp gates would be a death knell to any sort of fighting inside plexes, to which I completely disagree. If you're camping a minor acceleration gate with a larger fleet, you'll probably only catch a handful of ships, limited to the number of ceptors you have before the rest slip through. In most cases, most of the fleet will be able to slip through, however it provides the fleet that was able to setup on the gate first, the ability to thin out some of the numbers and deny any reinforcements once a second force starts fighting inside of the plex.

Forcing all of the fights to happen inside of the plex ultimately constrains the potential for varying fleet engagements. It would be much more interesting if there was more potential for fights to happen outside of plexes rather than just inside of them. What many people fail to realize is that theres an inherent balance regarding this mechanic which is built in.

Inside of a plex, the defender has a distinct advantage. However, outside of a plex, the attacker has the advantage, since they're able to pick their warpin range and direction they choose to warp in, making the defender extremely vulnerable to long ranged sniping fleets or in the case of a conventional fleet they can warp each component of their gang in at their desired optimal. In fact, in most fleet battles that happen outside of the gate, the attacker wins.

People need to stop thinking in terms of what they're used to and defending that playstyle as the only way that combat should happen in FW. There are lots of exciting possibilities, but you need to learn to think outside of the box.

Yeah camping an acceleration gate is an extremely risky proposition because:
1. The other guys can hot drop you.
2. The other guys can get a warp in on you with their cloaky scout.
3. The other guys can jump into system and warp to plex at any range from any direction to land right on top of you.
4. Your fleet doesn't know how to align and use D-scan.

Edit: <--- Rolling eyes inserted before the "THEY CAN'T HOTDROP YOU, WHAT'RE YOU TALKING ABOUT!" crowd chimes in.

Otherwise, just let me know what the rules are and I'll adjust. CCP wants to allow for easy ganks of noobs on acceleration gates? Fine. CCP wants to allow noobs to get into plex? Fine. Whatever.

Once again, this is the kind of predictable thinking that most of the older faction warfare players seem to have. Complaining that this will suddenly result in gankers sitting on acceleration gates as people warp to them in droves. If i'm in a plexing mood and I see a ceptor and a DPS ship sitting on an acceleration gate, i'm pretty sure i'm not going to warp to it. Most of the people seem to be opposed becuase they think it will suddenly create a lazy PVP environment, yet they're unwilling to let go of the ability to be lazy and warp to gates knowing you'll be able to slide through and the other person will have to reship while also giving you tons of time to see them coming on dscan. Sounds to me that people are just being lazy and unwilling to face the possibility of having to come up with new tactics.

1) Hot drops are rare enough at least on the Amarr/Min side that I wasn't even considering this most people run the second a cyno goes up anyways. Once again, the inability to hotdrop makes it risky since the static gate campers are essentially cut off from any sort of hot drop reinforcement trickery.
2) Maybe not cloaky scout, but you can warp loki boosted Arazus in at 100km that can point from 107km and hold down targets while the rest of the gang jumps in and warps.
3) Bro, you can warp every element of your gang in at the desired range, Falcons and snipers at 100km, logi at 70km and DPS at 0.
4) Even if your fleet knows how to align and hit D-scan, if you warp a smaller gang in to pin the larger enemy gang down, before you jump in your main fleet, unless they have you scouted, they're dead and theres nothing they can do about it.

People that think camping acceleration gates is risk free PVP with no hard counters are also the people that think you can't counter neutral logistics in highsec and that camping the Jita 4-4 undock is completely risk free.

I said before, in a fleet setting its unlikely that an overshipped fleet will be able to catch an entire opposing fleet on a plex gate. Most of the opposing fleet will still likely be able to get through, however, now they have the ability to thin out some of the enemy gang and putting some consequence in their ability to take the plex.

The ability to gate slide pretty much results in the following scenario.

Attackers - Reship to appropriate size. If you have equal or fewer numbers, concede the plex, unless you just want to fight or are bad at estimating strength, in which case die gloriously.

Defenders - Did the other gang bring a fleet that you can't beat? If no, then proceed to kill their entire fleet. If yes, GTFO and either run plexes somewhere else, or ship down and get inside a smaller plex, or upship and get into a bigger plex.

Both parties repeat the process until one side gets tired of reshipping and/or overestimates their fleet strength and decides to fight otherwise dock up and smack from inside the station.

The ONLY complaint was your mischaracterization of RISK associated with busting up a plex gate camp.

1. There are STILL no hot drops on FW plex gates.
2. 107km "Loki boosted Arazus" can't stop sombody from turning on their MWD and burning away.
3. You can warp every element of your gang at the desired range - FROM a warp in locations. Put your gate camp away from any aligned celestials. No warp-in maneuvere is practicable.
4. This is not a problem if your crew is smart enough to position themselves properly in the first place (See Point #3).

Will you at least retract the following statement?

Or reship to a smaller or larger class of plex and run that. See if the enemy can bring something to fight. Or spread out and start running several plexes. If the enemy sits in one big blob in the plex you will be doing multiple times the amount of plexing they will.




Again you are assuming neither side is willing to split up their gang to get fights. I understand that is the case often. But that is your choice. Its not forced on you by the mechanics.