EVE General Discussion

CSM & CCP Meeting minutes, May 30th – 1st June 2012 Page: 110

CCP Soundwave then took a moment to pose a philosophical question – “If someone joins FW, and just wants to run missions, is that actually a bad thing? Do we have to force people to PvP?”

The wondering ends...

whew, we have not had one of these today and I was scared something had gone amiss in the world.

To be honest, if the main reason people are doing FW is to just to farm LPs, then they could have skipped the entire FW system entirely and simply added FW Agents to the list; basically the same as Security Agents, but who always give missions against opposing factions. Added bonus would that the original Security Agents could have their anti-faction missions removed (as they would be moot).

If they wanted to encourage FW as a PvP game, on the other hand, then IMHO they should have it set up in more of an "arena" structure:

1) Create some new textures for ships in "Militia" paint jobs. See 4 below.
2) Create some new stats for these "militia ships" to go along with them.
3) Create some new faction militia systems (similar to regular navy gear). The perks for this gear would be reduced CPU/powergrid need when placed in the above mentioned militia ships.
4) Now put 2 & 3 together to make militia ship templates for each faction; one rookie ship, one frigate, one destroyer, one cruiser and one battlecruiser.
5) Upon joining the militia the player is given the militia rookie ship for free. In effect, it simply replaces the normal rookie ship you get free replacements of already.
6) The rest of the militia ships are then added to the FW specific LP store, along with other FW specific gear.

Note that these are not the same as Navy ships. Their equipment would be good, but not that good. The advantage, however, is that they can be bought with raw LP (no tags needed). While their gear could be outside of militia ships, it is designed to be used in them specifically (see 3). The militia ships themselves could be outfitted with anything, but again would be best fitted with their dedicated items.

Now to put some structure to the PvP aspect that would actually be very simple: Your FW PvP status would no longer tied to being in the militia. Puzzled? Joining (or leaving) the militia would now only affect one thing: Which free rookie ship you get when your smouldering pod docks in the station. Your "FW PvP" flag would instead be determined entirely by whether or not you are flying a militia ship at that time.

Meaning: You want to do some FW. You fly over to the area in any ship you want without incident. Upon arrival, you either grab a free rookie ship, or buy a better one from the LP store, or simply ship one over with you in your industrial. It is only when you get into that militia ship and undock that you are now considered to be part of the FW PvP rules-set. When your return to base and switch back to your old ship then you are now done with FW for the time being.

Note that these mechanics would make pod-killing outside of nullsec still a CONCORD violation, as a pod obviously isn't considered a FW ship. On the plus side, that might actually encourage more people to join FW.

Effectively this would elevate the status of faction militias from being whatever grab-bag of ships people are willing to sacrifice, gank, or overkill with (which, incidentally, is why so many people use disposable alts for this aspect of the game, as disposable alts have nothing to lose and therefore are risk-free) and instead more closely resemble an actual structured military force.

It kinda already is in a way, at least a quasi-arena structure, compared to SWG faction wars (pre-cu). That game had GREAT FW, loved it, and a lot of people were involved, a big part of the game for many. Note how every screwed up update hit FW until the game was a virtual ghost town (eg. CU - NGE). FW could be a hell of a game, drawing many players, but as it stands it's NGE *shrugs* - just used to bring players to lowsec.